"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)
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, February 2, 2019, 1:49 p.m. I just checked the TV listings and see that PBR Bull Riding is on from Oklahoma City. Now, PBR stands for Professional Bull Riders, so what the message on TV indicates is that what is on is Professional Bull Riders Bull Riding. What a surprise that …
Continue reading They’re Only Words, and Words Are All I Have …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading ‘Happy Thanksgiving from the Fam-uhhhh-leeeeee’
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.” …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading This Was a Friday Night that I Ain’t Got No Money
Nightrider's Lament 