"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 (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. It’s great to have some time to write songs and edit fiction, but gosh, it feels good to get out in the heat and snap photos of cute kids tossing the old pigskins around. It’s almost impossible to take bad photos of kids. They were scattered around …
Continue reading County Signs: ‘In the summertime, when the weather is hot …’
Coleman Coker (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I was working on the photos from the Greer-Laurens baseball game, and I decided I’d watch West Virginia play Iowa and check out Caitlin Clark for a while. I like her. But the Mountaineers took over the game in the second quarter while, for nearly three minutes on …
Continue reading County Signs: The fight is on for Region 2-4A
(Monte Dutton photos) Click here. As dreary and drizzly as the Friday weather was in Laurens County and hereabouts, the games were rather spectacular, even thereabouts. The Laurens baseballers took the over while the softballers took the under. Translation: The Raiders won in extra innings in baseball and by run rule in softball. The Presbyterian …
Continue reading County Signs: Raiders, PC win in varied fashion
(Monte Dutton photos) Click here. The women's basketball bracket at the Southern Conference tournament in Asheville, N.C., was a brief encounter for Furman. The Paladins won their women's tennis match over North Florida in Jacksonville. A Furman runner is competing at the NCAA Meet in Boston. The start was moved up a day for women's …
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, January 6, 2019, 4:45 p.m. An alarmingly large array of life’s experiences are stupid, but that’s too broad a topic for a blog being written while watching NFL playoff games. Sports is also too broad a topic, and this isn’t going to be comprehensive. It’s going to be limited to what …
Continue reading To Think, Sports Was Once Considered an Educational Experience …
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 …
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, May 2, 2018, 11:03 a.m. My preferred form of journalism is sports. It’s the source of most of my experience. Recently I’ve been writing lots of news. It’s interesting. I derive some satisfaction. I’ve done it before from time to time. On Tuesday night, sitting in the home grandstand of Wilder …
Continue reading If Only News Had a Scorebook and a Means of Keeping Score
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
This short story is about a cultural conflict at a fictional college on Homecoming. Here’s the first episode. Jonathan Elbert McCutcheon was a direct descendant of the founder of Calliham College, his great-great-great grandfather Estes Calliham, who had also been a lieutenant governor and signed the Articles of Secession that briefly separated the South from …
No afternoon baseball today. I pay to get all the games on TV, mainly because I love the Boston Red Sox and live in South Carolina, but I often use other teams’ games as a soothing background for writing, reading, playing guitar and sketching. I look up when I hear yelling, and then I watch …
Nightrider's Lament 