Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, January 26, 2019, 12:01 p.m. I was tooling around Spartanburg, driving a hot rod that looked like about a ’57 Thunderbird. It was two-tone red and white. I stopped at a drive-in for two hot dogs and a chocolate shake. I drove over to the Piedmont Interstate Fairgrounds and took a …
Tag: music
Life Gets Artificial
Clinton, South Carolina, January 21, 2019, 12:02 p.m. I was just reading a book (My Exaggerated Life, by Pat Conroy as Told to Katherine Clark), because it’s MLK Day and I thought I ought to do something beside editing news releases and obituaries and compiling a crime report, and I heard a crash. It was …
Both Sides Now
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, January 15, 2019, 9:53 a.m. Money can’t buy love. Lack of it damned sure can’t. It has, however, put me in a much better mood. Last week was the culmination of months of negotiation, ably handled by nephew who has business sense, that began when the mayor asked me if the …
Another Year Begins on High Notes
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, January 4, 2019, 10:52 a.m. I don’t make resolutions. Progress is a day-to-day matter. I just do what I need to do every day. Everyone has to roll with punches to some degree. The year just completed was one of turnaround. I have high hopes that the one ahead will bring …
One More Year in Review
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, December 24, 2018, 1:31 p.m. I’ve been working on stories about the year in review, so I guess I might as well take up the subject of my own. Milestones come at intervals by definition, I suppose, but they’re not necessarily significant just because they end with a “0” or a …
‘Happy Thanksgiving from the Fam-uhhhh-leeeeee’
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, November 23, 2018, 8:46 a.m. When Ray Phillips was a child, he realized that Betty Dutton’s oyster dressing was a national treasure, not to mention a rare and precious thing. Ray is my nephew. Betty is my mother and his grandmother. Ginger Sacarrere is his mother and my sister. For two …
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Bumping Along in a Crazy World
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, September 6, 2018, 1:15 p.m. Not much of me has been literary in recent days. Oh, there has been beauty in my world. The Red Sox’ seven-run eighth-inning rally and Brandon Phillips’ ninth-inning home run against the Braves was, as Dennis Eckersley is fond of saying on TV, “a beautiful thing.” …
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 …
This Was a Friday Night that I Ain’t Got No Money
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, April 14, 2018, 1:30 p.m. Friday was incomplete on the sports front, that is, unless going to a gathering to support youth tennis counts as sports. It didn’t seem particularly sporting. The food was great. A bunch of people got together to play their guitars and sing songs. I talked with …
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A Day and Night of Mixed Results
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, February 17, 2018, 11:13 a.m. Friday was a day of extremes. It was a day of the anticlimactic and the climactic, the decisive and the indecisive, and the relaxed and the nerve-wracking. Let me explain. By coincidence, the girls' basketball team of Laurens Academy, seeded No. 1 in SCISA (South Carolina …
Nightrider's Lament 