Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, September 13, 2018, 1:55 p.m. Florence is coming to town. In fact, it looks like it’s going through Florence (the city) on the way. Not Florence Nightingale. Not Aunt Florence. They are both no longer with us. Hurricane Florence is very much alive, but I hope it’s on its deathbed by …
Tag: football
Words and Lyrics and Titles and Tunes
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, August 26, 2018, 2:42 p.m. I listened to a Johnny Cash song that had slipped my mind. “See Ruby Fall.” I feel I know exactly how Cash wrote it. He was in his tour bus, heading through the country, probably in the mountains of the Appalachian chain, and he saw an …
Don’t Even Try to Put All This Together
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, August 23, 2018, 10:11 a.m. Two days ago, I ate at KFC for the first time since the horrible commercials started. I bought a three-piece, Original Recipe, Big Box Meal. It was all dark meat. I like white meat. I deserved that. Why do I hold silly commercials against restaurants where …
If I Knew Then What I Know Now
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, August 17, 2018, 10:54 a.m. This morning I learned about the wet-bulb thermometer. So enriched was I that I moved on to wet-bulb temperature. Am I a man of boundless curiosity? I’d like to think so, but the short-term answer was that I was trying to figure out why Clinton High …
Up on the Hill
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, August 8, 2018, 11:38 a.m. It seems there’s always a hill. It might be a plateau above a practice field, with a town’s young men busily preparing to represent their school and town in battles for football supremacy, scattered a week apart throughout the fall. It might be a manmade hill, …
A Man Must Carry On
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 9:49 a.m. How the mighty have fallen. Okay. I was never that mighty. And I haven’t fallen. The last time I fell was on the sideline of the Clinton High School spring football game in 2017. On Tuesday, I merely wilted. On the practice fields, a half mile …
The Charm of Sports this Spring
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, May 10, 2018, 10:40 a.m. Spring sports are winding down. Here in town, and throughout this end of Laurens County, all we have left are some girls competing in the state track meet and boys playing for the state tennis championship. Even football, for which the town is known, rises and …
Don’t Ask; I’m About to Tell
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, March 24, 2018, 4:46 p.m. Surprise, surprise. I awakened this morning to discover that a close friend’s edit of my next novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, had arrived via email. Last night I arrived home from a free-lance assignment to discover that my stock car racing novel, Lightning in a Bottle, …
A Mere Thirty-Two Years Ago
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, February 15, 2018, 12:54 p.m. I'm watching the Independence Bowl of December 21, 1985, on YouTube. Why, you ask? Rickey Foggie, who will be inducted next month into the Laurens County Athletic Hall of Fame, was the game's MVP. He quarterbacked Minnesota to a 20-13 victory over Clemson. I'm waiting on …
Love Among the Ruins
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, December 20, 2017, 3:30 p.m. One characteristic of most ivory towers is that they are imaginary. Last night, I was on the top floor of an ornate Greenville building, nibbling away at finger foods and hobnobbing with former football players and coaches who served at the foot of the inimitable Cally …
