Author: thegraymaniac

1988 was a good year for me. I went to work in February of that year for a company in Calhoun, Georgia as Quality Control Supervisor for their Dalton, Ga. plant. I was thirty eight years old that year. My kids were still all living at home, and all in school here in Trion. There was a lot going on. Paula went to work at the same company a few months later, and for the next 10 years we commuted out and back from Trion to Calhoun to work. We went out to lunch with each other pretty much every day, and saw each other quite a bit during the course of the work day. It was a really good situation for us, and a really good time, in my life.

Because we were working out of town, there was a lot of pressure on our three children to take care of themselves until we got home in the evening. Kirsten being the oldest, was designated pretty much as the “range boss” There were epic battles, but they were survived. On weekends I always tried my best to do something with the boys. We went to a lot of baseball card shows, comic book shows, and hot wheels shows. Back then, that’s how you got collectible stuff. There was no internet yet, believe it or not.

We had a lot of spaghetti and meat sauce, salmon patties, and fish sticks during those days. We eventually graduated to some different types of meals, but those three things were staples of our existence.

We started out the year with Reagan as President and ended it up with Bush Sr. It wasn’t too contentious of an election as I remember…with one of the most memorable moments being when Sen. Loyd Bentsen of Texas, who was running as V.P. told Dan Quayle that he “knew John Kennedy, and you aren’t any John Kennedy” …and he wasn’t

There was a lot of stress which came along with my job, but looking back now with 20-20 hindsight it was a great year, and led to a great decade.

I could go on and on…but maybe another day. Suffice it to say, that my mind has drifted back just a bit today and I wanted to share. Hope everyone else can remember what they were doing in 1988! (if you were around and kicking)

One of the places which I used to like to go and take a walk when it’s rainy and bad outside, is the Mt. Berry Square Mall. As a matter of fact, my wife and I went there a couple of times last year before the pandemic, and walked to get our cardio workout. Unfortunately, as my Dad once sang about the old gray mare, “she ain’t what she used to be, many long years ago.”

Mt. Berry Square Mall opened back in 1991. It was brand spanking new back in mine and my wife’s “heydays” of our working careers. It was beautiful. Skylights illuminated the food court and it was full of new stores with new smells, and stocked full of stuff we needed in our lives. Our sons were still living at home with us then. If I remember correctly, they opened it early in 1991….almost a “late” 1990 opening. The first Christmas we shopped there would have been in December of 1991.

As with all other years, 1991 had it’s memorable historical moments. The first Gulf War took place that year. Space shuttles were being launched with regularity. The shuttle Columbia carried another piece of Spacelab into space that year. In December of that year, Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union collapsed. Memorable historical events.

Of course there were the everyday events also occurring in our lives. Paula and I got on the same shift at Crown Crafts where we were working that year, and we rode out and back together to work every day for the next eight years or so. We had a lot of discussions and listened to a lot of music in those years. We went to lunch together practically every day. We were very lucky to have good jobs at a good company.

Then, on a lot of weekends we went to Mt. Berry Square and shopped. Afterwards, we might go to the movies in Rome. A couple of years later, can’t exactly recall when, they opened up a movie theater there at the mall. We made a lot of trips to Rome during the ensuing years. A lot of trips to that mall. Most of them were great trips.

Paula’s Mom and Dad made one of their last “spring visits” to Georgia the year the mall opened and we took them there. Cancer took them both in a few years after that. My dear mother in law died first in 1992. She really enjoyed her first and only trip roaming around that mall. She would always say “Wow” or “Oh my” if she thought something was special. She was a wonderful, caring woman who passed too soon.

There were the Christmas shopping trips, when we would always buy a Christmas ornament from the little old folks from Loganville, who set up in the middle of the mall. They always had some interesting and nicely priced things, and it was a pleasure to look at them and select “just the right thing” Evie played with a set of Russian nesting dolls this year that we bought from those good folks way back then. Good quality to have lasted so long.

We always looked forward to the day that Santa came to the mall, and started letting the kids come sit on his lap and have pictures made. I think we have photos of almost all of our grandchildren sitting in that mall Santa’s lap. A couple of them are hanging on our refrigerator now, held up with assorted animal magnets. I know my children could recall a lot more memories associated with the mall than me. Ted was learning how to drive during those years, and I am sure that old red EXP of his went out and back to Mt. Berry quite a few times.

The stores were jam packed with great merchandise back in those days. You could always find what you were looking for to celebrate a birthday, or any other special day. For years, businesses were on waiting lists to open up a storefront in Mt. Berry Square. It was bustling and full of people on weekends. Not anymore.

As we walked around and around today, there were more empty spaces than spaces with stores. Sears, which had a presence in Rome for over 100 years closed up last year and sits empty. The mall has up ads begging businesses to come move in. It’s a little sad. No, more than that, it’s a lot sad. It’s amazing how quickly things change in the world of business, as well as in our lives. Just as Walmart opened up their stores in many small towns across America and closed up most of the “Mom and Pop” shops in those towns, the Amazon’s and other “online” shopping ventures have begun to cause many malls across America to close up. I suppose that’s progress, but not for a sentimental old guy like me.

I hope that Mt. Berry Square manages to stay open for a while. I go out of my way to go there sometimes just to walk and to remember. There are still sights and smells which invoke the nostalgia of days gone by. Good days, wonderful times, great memories. There are closer places to where I live in which I could walk in the rain, but none of them have those memories contained in their walls. They don’t contain my memories, which are kindled and which burn warmly inside my chest every time I go around one of those familiar corners

I hear a child’s laughter, and for just an instant I’m back to 1991, walking through there with Matt, looking for the newest and greatest transformer for Christmas.

And so, it’s worth the few extra miles drive. Well worth it.

COAL- My life story in a few paragraphs…..and in relationship to coal….

I have lived, up until this past year,…and for the short number of years I was away at college, I had lived in a little Cotton mill town all of my life. It was a great place to grow up, with regards to my own personal situation. A wonderful place really. But, things change. Things go unnoticed by most people if they don’t pay close attention to what goes on.

I know when Paula and I first moved back to Trion in 1974, we moved into a little house on Ninth street. The first 10 years or so after we moved back were “thin” years. We got by….we did get by, but on a lot less than most people would ever think or know. Our dinners were populated with a lot of fish sticks, creamed chipped beef, tuna casserole, spaghetti, and salmon patties. Now, don’t get me wrong. I still like most of those things. I still fix them from time to time. Brings back old, good memories.

One of the things about living in a cotton mill town is smoke. As I previously mentioned, we moved back to Trion to 9th street, which had always been know as “Smokey row” or smokey road. The reason it was given that title was because it was the street that led right to the mill, which was only a block away. Actually, the “back end” of the mill, where the boilers and power generators were located was only a few hundred yards from our house. When they were burning coal, hard and strong back in 1974, we couldn’t leave the windows open for a breath of fresh air at night. If we did, we would wake up the next morning with a coating of fine black dust and tiny black coal crystals covering the areas inside the house near the windows.

Of course this was nothing really new to me, having grown up near that mill. We had never lived out of sight of those gigantic tall smoke stacks at any point during my childhood. Simmons street and eighth street had been our homes and you could see the smoke stacks from both places. You could hear the “work whistle” as it blew at 20 minutes before the hour, and the hour itself at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., and 12 a.m., for all the shifts. Many times those smoke stacks would be belching out smoke. Sometimes white. Sometimes gray and sometimes black…especially when the stacks were being “blown out” As a child, I don’t remember it being as “nasty” as it was in the 70’s. Perhaps there was a reason for that. As I recall, we could go by the big coal stack as kids, and the coal was actually beautiful. Large, shiny, almost obsidian looking pieces lay all around the coal pile. I collected some of them as a kid, and took them home. You could rub your hands on this stuff and you would get very little, if any, black on them. It also burned very clean. It was what they called Anthracite coal.

You see, back in the fifties, a lot of things were still being made in America. Riegel Textile had a lot of high end goods. Baby blankets, and cloth being made into all kinds of wonderful products. Government contracts making cloth for the DOD. Riegel had one of the best dye houses in the country, with men dying cloth who could make it look like almost anything. None of these people had been betrayed…yet. And times were pretty good in that small town, at that time, for those people. Not so much for some people in other places, but for those people…at that time, the fifties, the early sixties…perhaps even into the late sixties, things were good.

Jobs hadn’t been farmed out to China and India, or Vietnam and Mexico yet by the owners of the businesses, the soon to be millionaire and billionaire traitors who traded American jobs for money in their pockets. Some of the people who are still around today, and who still have that money. Some of the people….

By the seventies, I believe they were using Bituminous coal. The dye house was gone, and Riegel Textile had turned into Mt. Vernon mills. The big thing that was keeping the mill going, and the jobs there was denim. Blue denim. My Daddy and some more hard working men at that mill had gotten the mill switched over from running the cloth of the fifties, and the owners had switched the business model around to suit the fashions of the times. Everybody needed blue jeans, and things made from denim, and they were making the best denim in the world at that mill, at that time. When I went to work for them, and they were burning that Bituminous coal, and all I had to do was walk down the street to the mill, they were running seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. We got Christmas day off. They were making BIG money on denim, and they were taking advantage of it while they could. I can’t blame them. But I didn’t fit in that environment, like my Daddy and his Daddy had for so many years. I left working there in 1978 after four years of that seven days a week stuff. I never went back…except for a ultra short stent in the 90’s. But that’s another story for another day. Denim rocked on for quite a few years after I had gone. I continued to live in Trion, and work out of town. But I paid attention to the smoke stacks, and the coal. If you’ve been following me for very long on Facebook, you have seen some of my photos of those stacks. I may just attach one to this post if I can find one.

Now, the last time I looked at the railroad cars that were coming into the mill at Trion, the last time, before I moved out of town…before I stopped walking that little town and left for other places, that last time I looked they were using Lignite. The lowest grade of coal, the cheapest and the kind which burns the dirtiest. Denim was not king anymore and business was again changing. Some jobs had gone other places, outside the United States. But, some of them stayed, and they have stayed, and they still stay. And I admire them for that. One of the very few who could keep some jobs here, in the face of all the change, and all of the pressure of the years, and all of the temptations to put profit totally over location. They didn’t give raises, they hired the folks coming from down South, but they have kept the doors open. And they are still open, but things are not the same…and they will never be the same. From Anthracite to Bituminous to Lignite. The story of our country in coal. It’s just a story though, and I’m a poor story teller. I have not solutions. I offer no advice. It is what it is, and it will never be the same. And that’s the shame of it….that’s the shame..

If…the biggest, most awesome word ever invented.
My Dad always told me when I used “if” that “if a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt when he jumped” I guess he wouldn’t.
“If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?”
“If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway and would you have my baby?”
“If I listened long enough to you, I find a way to believe that it’s all true, knowing that you lied straight faced while I cried. Still I look to find a reason to believe”
Hundreds of songs, I’m sure….
Hundreds of quotes….. All beginning with “If”
We are all going to have hundreds of “if” moments in our lives. Those moments of choice that make a difference going forward in how we will live our lives. Moments we look back on and say: “if I had only done , then _. When we make those decisions, they are made.
I’m pretty tired of playing the “if “ game in my life. I’ve done what I’ve done…sometimes until I’ve become undone! It’s a game that’s a waste of time to play.
As that intellectual group of the 60’s “The Grass Roots” once said: Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today, and don’t worry ‘bout tomorrow….
It’s a good philosophy.

Common people badly need a place, a niche in today’s America. We little people, which includes not only those who work for hourly wages, but also the retired, the disabled, and the veteran’s who fall in any of the aforementioned categories…we need a spot in America. Unfortunately it’s been being taken away for the last thirty years or so, and I see little movement on the part of our constipated government to ressurect it.

I’m not sure the “powers that be” realize that you cannot have a “body” without a middle. They may want to have an America with just a head and an ass, but without the guts and especially the heart, you have a country which will soon be DOA in a world full of sharks which have been circling us since World War II. They smell our blood in the water and they want a piece.

We haven’t had leadership in this country since the fifties or very early sixties who have had the welfare of our middle class, and so by default the welfare of our actual country at heart. They all have either been under the control of the billionaires, or trying to become billionaires themselves. I’m tired of hearing all the patriotic hogwash about some of them, and about the fake progressiveness of others. You know what I’m talking about. They all have sucked when it has come down to the brass tacks of making America work for Americans.

There are SO many balls in play in the court of mistakes made, or purposeful acts committed in order to hurt common Americans, that the Williams sisters couldn’t keep them in play. It’s time we realize, we little people, that they.. the rich and super rich, and the Wall street minions intend to enslave us. If you think I’m wrong or I’m kidding, just sit quietly somewhere for a while if you are over fifty, and think where you are now as opposed to where you used to be. Then think about how the media feeds you milktoast in the form of the Kardashians, Deflategate, the Oscars, House of Cards, HDTV, the Cooking channel, the Today show, Fox news, the Weather channel, ESPN, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Think of how they seek to divide you by keeping issues such as gay marriage, guns, religion, abortion, and wars always in the forefront while never mentioning how 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. As long as they have that power they don’t give a crap about anything else…period. Listen to Robert Reich, that inequality gap really is the issue.

I for one hate being manipulated and even sometimes falling for the manipulation.

America is lagging behind the rest of the world in so many important areas that it is shameful. Other countries take care and revere their elderly. We put them away, and allow the system to bleed them dry to the point of poverty before they die. We produce High School and College graduates who have NO practical knowledge about what it takes to really function.

So, I guess I’m just fed up with being fed up tonight. I’m touching on unpopular areas which people would rather not think about. Unfriend me if you can’t stand to hear it because I’m probably just getting started. Somebody, somewhere has to piss people off in order to get them to pay attention and perhaps…just maybe begin to participate in taking our country, the little people’s country, the hourly worker’s country, the disenfranchised veteran’s country, the honest teacher’s country, the former manufacturing worker’s country, the small three bedroom house owner’s country, the hunter and fisherman’s country, the small farmer’s country. Maybe if we work together and forget about some of this manure they are trying to use to divide us…maybe we middle class Americans can make a come back.

I swear I hope so…and my apologies in advance for rambling, preaching and blowing off steam.

Are things going to get worse before they get better? Maybe so. It depends on how we define “worse” What we need is for another generation of activists like the ones we had in the sixties to come along. I know that people often misconstrue that period of time as only the “hippie” generation, but there were millions of people protesting an unjust war in Vietnam….a war which was not winnable, a war in which good men were sacrificed to whims of the military industrial complex and their supporters, such as Monsanto and Brown & Root. And then when these men came home, the government had NO support system for them. People were protesting for this men to be brought home, a huge number of Veterans themselves coming home from Vietnam ended up protesting the war…but the government would NOT support them and then in order to cover their inefficiencies the government came up with the propaganda both back then and now, as the speech in commemoration of the 59th anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam war on Memorial day in 2012…to which President Obama alluded: “You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor,” he told veterans. “You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.” All of this dovetailed with previous administration’s attempt to mislead the American people. People who do not see that Obama has fooled them by campaigning to stop wars, but instead just continuing them, are not looking very closely. I am going to include a couple of good links to read which are enlightening about how history has been twisted about the last 50 years. Children who are exposed to incorrect history will only perpetuate the ignorance which leads to allowing themselves to be led by liars.

Now we need another generation of people…perhaps the generation of my little grandchildren, who will protest the involvement in current wars which are also not winnable, and perhaps change the way of life in our country. It has to happen from the “ground roots” up. It has to be “raised” into our children to question everything which is not right. We have way too many people in this country now who do not question the way things are done. Too many follow blindly like sheep. We gotta’ stop being sheep to Wall Street’s wolves.

JUST TODAY I saw a commercial from “Quicken Loans” talking about how they could not make home loans “without inspections” and “without all the paperwork” of conventional loans. Here we go again!! It’s only been since 2007 when our economy almost…really it did…collapse, and Wall street and the banks were bailed out with OUR tax money. Have we not learned anything!! Apparently not, since we send the same damn people to Washington who were there when the economy almost collapsed…or we send worse representations of the ones who have resigned, such as Georgia’s new Senator Perdue. We also are again being fooled into thinking that President Obama is reluctant to continue the current wars, or to embark on new ones, such as a war against ISIS. He’s not the reluctant warrior which he seems. The biggest enemies of the American people are not the ones in the horrific videos which they show you on T.V. Certainly these “terrorists” have the capability to do what they do best…which is to make people be appalled at what they do…and make people want to strike back at them, perhaps even go to war and kill them…but they represent a lesser threat to our freedom than the people in our own country who finance these wars, and who meet in fancy board rooms in New York city.

Without a doubt, much of what we think we know is false. Even being as “smart” as we humans think we are we don’t even know everything about our own bodies. When we move out from there, into the world around us, and eventually into the Universe that surrounds us, our knowledge becomes exponentially less and less.
There are SO many theories on how the Universe started, where it’s headed and how it’s going to end. Some of them are theological in nature, and some are scientific. None of them are right, probably not even near right.
I shudder when I think about how little I know. I have to take most things I do every day on faith. I have faith when I plug in the coffee machine that it is going to make me a cup of coffee. If it didn’t, I don’t have the knowledge to tear it apart and remake it so that it would. If I put my key in the car, and turn the switch and it doesn’t start, most of the time I wouldn’t know what to do. When I had my heart attack, I couldn’t fix my arteries. Of course there are people who DO know how to fix these things, and it’s a good thing too. Otherwise, most of use would be in a heap of trouble.
But, even those people who are “technologically” smart, don’t have all the answers. Every few years or so, a new theory comes out about how the Universe began. Of course, all religions would acknowledge that it was ‘created’ if you will, by God. A thinking consciousness started the ball rolling and made use what we are today. Makes sense to us as humans, because WE are conscious thinking creatures. That’s what separates us from the rest of the creatures….at least so we “think” ( I am not so sure sometimes, when my little dog plays me for a sucker that she is not “thinking” about what she is doing) I guess there is all different levels of thinking, and I am SURE that we are not in ANY way close to the “thinking” if that is what it is, of a consciousness so powerful it could create the Universe.
Now secularists have a harder time trying to explain how something like the Universe started on it’s on. I read somewhere a few weeks back that they think all the matter that it took to get the Universe started, could be compressed down into a ball the size of a basketball, but that it would weigh some astronomically heavy weight. Some basketball! When this thing decided to explode and start the Universe, it continually spread from a central point and made us what we are today. The scientists can look at light coming in from outside our Galaxy that took billions of years to get here. That’s cool. When we look up in the sky at night, and see the stars, we are not really seeing what is happening at the moment we are looking, but what happened years and sometimes hundreds or thousands of years ago and is just now reaching us. For all we know, some of those stars could be, and probably are, gone. Mind boggling ain’t it?
Well, I just don’t believe that either group has ALL the right answers. I personally believe the Universe was created, and didn’t just happen, but I don’t even PRETEND to understand the type of intellect it would take to do it.
　
　I know that we have had books and bibles, and documents from the beginning of the time that man learned how to write, with all the theories about how things happened. All of those came from the minds of man, and have been shaped by the mind of man down through the centuries. None of them are accurate. I don’t think that we even know how to define accurate.

Now, don’t go all funny on me, and think I am being sacrilegious. I’m not. I don’t go around telling people what to believe, OR that what they believe isn’t right. I don’t have the right to do that, and neither does anyone else. There are, however, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. who would disagree with me. All of those religions consider that they have been given the innate approval, by the being that created the Universe to tell everyone that there way of thinking is the only one that is correct. I happen to disagree with them. There may be some correctness in all of them. Being a Christian, I personally believe in that philosophy and some may think it is a conflict of teaching that I would state I don’t believe in telling OTHER people what to believe, but I don’t. Everyone has to decide for themselves, and I think on that particular point that the being that created us, God if you will, has been totally succinct. You choose for yourself whether to be good or bad, light or dark. This choice is yours no matter what your religion or philosophy.

I think we will all find out one day, of course. I think that God would be totally unfair to just leaving us hanging about the answer to things. Of course, I could be wrong about that too. We may go to Heaven, or we may lay unconscious of the passing of time until we come back around in the endless cycle of the Universes coming and going. We MAY know nothing, and that’s that. I highly doubt this to be the case, but….

Days….My word how time passes by, the days moving with the speed of hummingbird wings, As the babies who listen to our lullabies, leave the notes of the last song they sing.

Echoing in the hallways and the bedrooms, as they pack their bags and wave so long. So long, see you soon. Maybe that might be.

So long, but oh so very short… that distance in between. When we can call them our very own, and not someone else’s.

But it turns out that way, and it’s a natural thing. Like a long cold old winter, that turns into spring.

Always moving forward as we catch a fleeting glimpse, and turn it into memory, a color of love that age can’t eclipse.

By Larry Bowers.

I took up playing golf when I was fourteen years old. I had ruptured some ligaments in my knee while swinging too hard at one of Don Durham’s curve balls. I was looking for a fast ball, and had dug my spikes into the ground really deep at home plate. Don had a ferocious fast ball. However, I had always been able to make some contact with the bat against him, and usually ended up getting a hit. The slow curve ball totally fooled me, and as I over swung at it, my spikes hung up in the soft dirt, and I felt something pop in my knee. Pain shot through me from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes, and I grabbed my knee and fell to the ground writhing in agony. To beat it all, it was only strike one!

I ended up staying for three nights at the Trion Community Hospital, with my leg in traction. It wasn’t so bad, as the only thing I had to do was lay around and read comic books.

After about three weeks of recuperation, old Doc Clemens said I should start to get some exercise, and that walking would be good to build up my thigh muscles, and hopefully prevent that type of injury again. (It didn’t) My Dad had played golf when he was younger so he suggested we try that. He bought a used set of left-handed clubs for me, and we drove up to the Trion Golf Club.

It was early May, and as we rounded the big curve right before the entrance to the course I gazed out over the course with awe. The greens were a deep emerald color, with flag sticks that had bright red flags on top, flapping gently in the spring breeze. The Chattooga River flowed by the first hole, a deep sapphire color, not having been by the mill yet to pick up any contaminants.

The old log club house looked pristine, sitting dignified on a little rise overlooking the river. You could smell the sweet Bermuda grass as it was being cut, a pungent, lovely odor that lingered in the air like a kind of hypnotic perfume. Big tall pine trees whispered their spring symphony as the winds blew through their closely knit limbs. It was magnificent, and I fell in love with it at first glance. I still get the same feeling even now whenever I go to that familiar site. Goodbye Mickey, Roger, Yogi, and Whitey. Hello Arnold, Jack and Gary Player.

Some of the members of the club were teeing off when we pulled up, and I watched as they sailed those Titleist and Maxfli’s straight down the fairway toward the number one green. J.W. Greenwood was playing and saw us walking up, and referred back to the beginning of my little league career: “If you knock all your golf balls in the river HERE, you won’t be a hero.” He laughed. (referring to the time I had hit all the practice baseballs into the Chattooga river during my first little league practice)
“Looks pretty easy to me.” I exclaimed excitedly. I couldn’t wait to get up there and smack one of those little white balls straight down the fairway. It could not be any harder than hitting one of Camp’s fast balls.
We paid our green fees and my Dad teed up and went first. He took an easy swing, and sailed the ball about 200 yards down the middle. It was my turn now.

I teed up a new ball, took my stance, and did a little be-hind wiggle like I had seen the other guys do. I took a huge back swing, and uncoiled in an explosive and powerful movement which ended up with a beautiful follow through, looking down the fairway to see where my drive had gone.
“Nice swing,” coached my Dad. “You missed the ball, though.”
I looked down at the tee, and that little white, dimpled devil was still sitting there undisturbed.
I slowed my next swing down slightly, and this time made contact, and sent the ball bouncing down the fairway about fifty yards.
“Topped that one.” Advised my Dad.
I took an eight on that first hole. A quadruple bogey.
“This is not as easy as it looks.” I muttered
On hole number 2, which was a short par three, I took a seven iron out of the bag as my weapon of choice. As I stood over the ball, I looked out at the two creeks, and one swamp that the ball would have to cross before getting to the green, and bowed my head and prayed silently to God to please let me at least not lose all of my golf balls on this one hole. I exhaled, kept my eye on the ball, and took a smooth swing. The ball sailed over both creeks, and the swamp, bounced in front of the green once, and rolled gently onto the putting surface about six feet away from the hole.
“Nice shot, son.” I could barely hear my Dad say, over the pounding of my heart.
There was enough adrenaline flowing after that shot for me to have picked up an automobile.

Although I played another year of Pony league baseball, my High School athletic career goals had just changed. Goodbye Mick. Hello Arnie.
Anyone who has never played golf, can’t understand what motivates people to chase a little white ball around a large field, whacking it with a club. All it takes, however, to remain motivated is one great shot every once in a while. About the time you’ve topped three in a row, and are ready to throw your clubs in the creek, the good Lord, who I believe approves of the game, looks down and commands the next shot to be a humdinger.
“How ‘bout that shot I made on number four,” you reminisce as you write down your third bogey in a row on hole number eight. “Almost a hole in one!”

Steve Hammond and I were passing acquaintances before we both took up golfing. We went to the same church, and Steve’s brother Tommy was the same age as I was, and we were often in the same classes at school. Steve and I never got to be close friends until my freshman year in High School when I went out for the golf team.
J.W Greenwood was the golf coach, and when he saw me come walking up to the clubhouse on the day we were to play a round as a tryout he again ribbed me good naturedly:
“There comes ‘ol scatterarm.” He grinned. “This ain’t the baseball field Bowers,” he continued “It’s the golf course.”
“That’s O.K.,” I said “I’m here to try out for the golf team.”
I don’t think J.W. thought I was serious, but he got the idea when I teed off of number one, and put one straight down the middle.
“Dang boy, you must have been practicing.” Said J.
I had. Every day it didn’t rain since I had picked up my clubs. Many days me and my neighbor Mike Brown had taken our clubs and walked all the way from Eighth Street. I made the team, and so did Steve. We became practice partners, competitors, and teammates. We were golfing maniacs.
Every time we had a spare minute, it was up to the golf course. We practiced drives, putts, irons; you name it, and we did it. Swinging a golf club became such second nature we could do it in our sleep. We read Arnold Palmer’s book and studied Jack Nicklaus’ grip. Our record as a golf team reflected our practice. We won the region title in 1967 at Hogansville, which was Steve’s senior year. I had a chance to win as low medalist that year, but fate wouldn’t allow it.

I was in the lead by one stroke coming to the last hole. It was a dinky little par three, with no hazards whatsoever. Just a straight shot up a little hill. All I needed was bogey to win. I was confident, I was pumped up! I was stupid. I went with too strong an iron, and it sailed over the green by about twenty yards. I heard a loud ringing sound:
“Dong!!!”

I didn’t have a clue where my ball went, because I’d never seen it land.
As I approached the green, J.W. was standing there shaking his head slowly from side to side in disgust. My ball had landed smack dab in the middle of the big thirty gallon barrel that was being used for a trash can. The rules for the tournament were very strict. You had to hit it from where it lay, no matter what. If you couldn’t do so, it was a stroke penalty for a drop. Not being able to crawl into the trash can for my shot, I had to drop the ball, and take a stroke penalty.

I could still win, all I had to do was to get up and down in two strokes. However, the combination of the trash can shot, and the crowd which surrounded the green, had also shot my nerves. I chipped the ball up and over the front of the green, eventually struggling to a six, for a triple bogey and third place. J.W. Greenwood never let me live down that shot in the subsequent 45 years I knew him. Every once in a while, he would still poke me about it:
“You remember that shot you made at Hogansville that year that went into the trash can?” He would ask.
Yes I remember, but luckily time has made it much less painful than it was on that day.
J.W. passed away not long ago, and he is a man I surely miss. Always willing to help children and budding athletes. Always giving his time to other people. He was a great man.

Steve and I even liked to keep our swing in sync during the winter.

One gray, cloudy, bitterly cold December day, we put on three sweaters and a scarf, and went up to the golf course to play nine. The weather prediction was for snow, but we figured if it started in snowing too bad, we would just get in Steve’s car and come back home. As luck would have it, we were excellent, and I mean EXCELLENT that afternoon. We were both one under par when we reached number four, and the flakes started to descend.
“Let’s see if we can finish.” Steve suggested “We’re playing too darn good to quit.”

I agreed and we kept on going. By the time we got to number six, we were beginning to have our doubts. The snow was coming down faster and faster, and had already accumulated to about two inches on the flat fairways. As we teed off on number seven, the only way we knew where the ball was at, was because of the furrow it dug in the newly fallen snow.
“Uh…I believe we had better go.” I suggested
“No way!” Steve hollered back over the howling wind.
Despite the semi-blizzard, he was still one under par.
We played on to number eight, and when I chipped my ball up onto the green, it gathered snow as it rolled, and ended up as almost a baseball size snowball.
“How in the heck am I going to putt that?” I thought
Suddenly we heard the blast of a car horn from behind us, and turned to see Steve’s Dad sitting in his work truck, with an incredulous look on his face. We were supposed to have left if it started snowing, and Steve’s Dad had visions of us off in a ditch somewhere in the blinding snowstorm.
“Are you idiots’ crazy??” He yelled.
This display of emotion from a man who normally never, ever raised his voice was alarming to me. However, it did not seem to bother Steve.
“C’mon Dad,” Steve shot back. “We’ve only got one more hole to go, and I’m one under par!”

Amazingly enough, Mr. Hammond waited on us and followed us home in his truck after we finished the round. Steve lost his ball in the snow on number nine, and I made him take a stroke penalty! Thus his splendid one under par round in the blinding snow was snuffed out. It was the most fun I ever had playing a round of golf, before or since! Wish I coulda’ played yesterday….

I remember watching the drag races on television when I was a kid. I remember Don “Big Daddy” Garlits’s cars would just sit there on those gigantic twin back tires and spin, and spin, and spin. They would spit smoke out, like a gigantic volcano, and the sound was so loud you would want to stick your fingers in your ears. Finally, that car would get traction and go flying down the track like a bullet shot out of a gun. I miss those drag races. Used to watch them on T.V. with my Daddy. Now that…was really a sport.

Sadness seems to creep up on me lately, mostly in the form of nostalgia. There’s no use in giving in to it though. So, at night…now very soon, I will meditate, I will pray (some will be surprised at that) and I will turn over and go straight to sleep.

You see, I feel everyday which I live is a gift, and a pop quiz. I didn’t like those pop quizzes when I was a student! I usually did better than most though. But when life throws them at you, it’s a bit different.

“Did I take my meds today?” ….and the answer is….dang I dunno!

If I didn’t do that, then the rest of the quiz is going to go really bad.

We have so many things coming at us on a daily basis in such an unexpected way, we are definitely tested. The world continues to test us. It will chew you up and spit you out if you’re not careful…sometimes even if you are! Rely on your family, and friends…those who love you, to help you through. Most of the time they will be there for you, and give you the boost you need to feel better about yourself.

And don’t forget to enjoy the gift of life. No matter where you think it came from. Don’t quibble about the root origin, just live. It’s a one time, no satisfaction guaranteed if you don’t try, awesome experience. I think it’s a great gift, but you guys call it what you wish.

I’ll hopefully continue this journey when the sun rises tomorrow, and maybe I’ll see you round. If I don’t I’ll send you a picture or two and maybe write a couple of lines.