"Why do they [write] for their money? Why do they [work] for short pay? They ain't getting nowhere and they're losing their share. They must have gone crazy back there." — Michael Burton (paraphrased)
By MONTE DUTTON (Pixabay photo) Click here. I’m no expert at Fourth of July celebrations. I’ve been to a few ballgames. For many years, I wrote about a stock-car race thereabouts. Mainly I just hear the bombs bursting in air. I miss the rocket’s red glare. Small towns have more sense. One of my familiar …
Continue reading Furmanology: Hits and misses at Fourth funnies
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. The United States Open is being played in Moore County, N.C., which is a golf principality. Just to the south is Richmond County, which is a onetime NASCAR duchy. Every time I wrote about a race at Rockingham, I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Southern Pines, …
Continue reading Furmanology: The need for speed(ing tickets)
By MONTE DUTTON Presbyterian's Daniel Eagen (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. When the United States Open is played at Pinehurst No. 2, I have a small degree of familiarity. I played it. Or, rather, it played me. Several times. Back when it was Winston Cup, and Rockingham hosted two races a year, an annual junket …
By MONTE DUTTON Paladin Stadium (Furman photo) Click here. I watched the ceremonies from Normandy on Thursday morning, and it made me wish America could come together like that on anything now. Culture shock hurts. Growing up, World War II veterans were prevalent. Teachers showed us mementoes in class. People told stories. The most mild-mannered …
By MONTE DUTTON Mike Bothwell, triumphant (Elena Davidson photo) Click here. I see lots of celebrations. The baseball ones, I think, are the best and most dangerous, albeit no precincts report these days at Furman. Basketball players are prone to exult in somewhat smaller groups. A single pair of eyes cannot capture the scene fully. …
By MONTE DUTTON Charlie McDaniel (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Not enough people realize what Presbyterian College baseball has just done. Going to work on the Blue Hose’ sweep of UNC Asheville on Friday, I anxiously awaited the local news. PC won the Big South regular season for the first time in history, that being …
Continue reading County Lines: PC baseball deserves more than it gets
By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. On Saturday, I watched the closest finish in Kentucky Derby history. On Sunday, I watched the closest finish in NASCAR history. On TV, mind you. I’m not some globe-trotting bon vivant hiding behind a cloak of seeming poverty. I’m worse than a poor boy. I’m a poor old …
By MONTE DUTTON Evidence suggests the rain-shortened game was justified. (Furman photo) Click here. All is tangible, and all is not. Time, for instance. Precise. Measurable. Inviolable. Examined another way, it is not. For me, time crawls every morning, and then it gets faster and faster until late at night, when it runs out of …
Continue reading Furmanology: But first, a bit of aged philosophy …
By MONTE DUTTON Zane McLendon has that sinking feeling. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. A Furman release revealed that the Paladins have signed two “rising juniors.” I thought, Thank God, they aren’t falling juniors. Yes, I know, “rising” refers to someone in the next class. It’s spring, and those two promising athletes are sophomores now, …
Continue reading County Signs: A mostly bleak night on the diamonds
By MONTE DUTTON (File photo) Click here. I went through college in a period of little unrest. I read about the 1960s and watched it all on TV as a boy, but the biggest threat to the Furman campus in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the invasion of Citadel cadets the night before …
Continue reading Furmanology: Just call the latest Paladin Smitty
Nightrider's Lament 