Don’s Books

REDHEADS AND FLASHY CARS

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Seeing the trailer for The Quiet Man awakens a few memories. There stands Maureen O’Hara with her green eyes flashing. Those have to be real because I don’t think contacts had been invented yet. The memories triggered are not about green eyes, though, but about red hair. You see, my mother was a redhead. A real redhead, not the burgundy head that comes from a bottle, but what I guess is called bright red. She also had the freckles to go with her hair and the alabaster skin underneath that caused her to turn bright red after more than thirty seconds of exposure to the summer sun. I’ve heard that complexion called “peaches and cream”…or maybe “milk toast.” After being in the sun a little while, it was more like “peaches and strawberries.” In other words, she did not tan but went straight to burning and peeling.

I would not call my mother a classic beauty, mainly due to the presence of the Griffin’s nose which has a tendency to dominate one’s face. That proboscis would dominate the entire face of Mt. Rushmore. If I were going to compare her to a movie star of the “Golden Age”, it would be a redheaded version of Geraldine Page who, by her own admission, was a bit plain. Luckily, my mother also had the Griffin height making her a statuesque woman. If she were not my mother, I would also describe her as full-figured.

She was very shy; so shy, in fact, that she allowed her grades to drop enough in order to not have to give a valedictorian address her senior year in high school. Armed with all of this information I was shocked, appalled and quite amused to discover newspaper clippings of a local beauty pageant sponsored by Springs Mills as I went through a cedar “Hope” chest after her death.

Had I not asked myself the question, “Why did my mother keep this?” I would not have given it a second look. There was my mother, along with four other young ladies, and she was in…Gasp!..a two-piece bathing suit! The suit featured the Springs Mills logo “Miss Springmaid” – a pinup-style milkmaid, with a lot of cleavage and leg showing. I think the term “cheesecake” would be applicable and that would be the milkmaid, not my mother.

My shy mother was vying for the title of “Miss Springmaid” to represent Springs Mills, a company that made cloth for sheets and foundation cloth which an advertisement agency described as “for hip-harnesses and breast-holsters.” My mother’s suit bared her legs and midriff and accentuated other key attributes. There sure was a lot of skin being displayed! Thank God, I saw no belly button. Oh my, who was that young woman with the “come hither” look? Rita Hayworth or Lauren Bacall? She wasn’t even a redheaded Geraldine Page. Oh no! It was my MOTHER!

I guess that until that moment I had never thought of my mother or rather my parents as young people with the same drives and desires as any other young people. Even now I have an urge to blind myself for those thoughts but I don’t think it would erase them.

According to my Aunt Joyce, Eldora was quite popular and was pursued by many suitors until Ernest swept her off her feet. My parents romantic? I just can’t see it…but then again I was not adopted. At five-foot-six I find it hard to believe my father could have swept the floor much less Mom off of her feet. He did have a kind of dashing look in those photos from the Thirties and Forties.

I don’t even know how they met but would guess it would have been through friends or work. With no online-dating services or hopping music clubs, I don’t know how people actually met during those days. Church? What an interesting concept. In the same box as her clippings, I found the letters they had written to each other while Dad was island-hopping in World War Two. I’m happy that they knew the mail was being read and censored but the “R” rated versions were still “tres” uncomfortable. With silk kimonos contained in the same cedar chest, I am trying to purge the thought of Mom playing dress up as a Geisha girl. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh!

A family member related a story that made me both uncomfortable and thankful at the same time. While still in high school my mother and several of her younger female cousins were taken with a very, very distant cousin who was, like them, attending a large family reunion.

The young man was described as very attractive with piercing eyes and a strong jaw to go with a very charismatic personality and a rich baritone voice. There was a mention of a smile that would “make your knees weak” so I am guessing that this storyteller might have been smitten, too. According to her story, he also had “very wavy hair that appeared to have been styled.”

He was driving a very flashy red convertible. It might not have been red but red fits the story. This “flashy” young cousin was taken with my mother-to-be and asked if she might go for a ride with him. As you would expect during these times, he asked permission to take her for a ride in what I hope was his car. My grandparents, after some thought and discussion, refused to grant their permission citing that they felt he “might be a little too fast and flashy for Eldora.” It turns out this “flashy and fast” distant cousin would slow down and become the much beloved and revered “Reverend Billy Graham.” While he does have really nice hair, I’m glad not to be his son Franklin.

DEVIL ON MY SHOULDER IS AN EXCERPT FROM FLOPPY PARTS BY DON MILLER http://goo.gl/GIssEq

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DEVIL ON MY SHOULDER
…and in my pants, I might add. In the movie “Animal House,” Larry’s evil conscience extorts him to “F@#$ her, F@#$ her brains out!” Larry’s good conscience counters with “For shame! Lawrence, I’m surprised at you!” As the scene plays in my head, the evil conscience takes on the voices of every male friend that I had in a kind of “choir from hell” while the good conscience takes on the angelic voice of my mother. Although the movie doesn’t come out until almost ten years later, it characterizes the period of my teenage years that ended with the loss of innocence on January 4, 1969. Rest in Peace, Virginity. You are gone forever but like the song said, “gone but not forgotten, dreadful sorry”…and it was not lost without putting up a fight. It also reminds me of my Mother’s admonishment, also delivered in an angelic voice that may or may not have been hers, “Your virginity is a gift from God and once you give it away you can’t get it back; so, make sure you give it to someone worthy of it.” According to my Mother that gift should only be given on my wedding night. Sorry, Mom, Christmas came early. After the fifteen seconds it took to lose it, I had to wonder, “What’s the big deal and why would I want it back?” Well, I guess it was a big deal for me but a brief deal for my partner. I did better the second time…I think.

Male-female sexual dynamics have always been confusing to me and I refuse to take all of the blame for my confusion. I also don’t claim to be the only person afflicted with this conundrum. At least, I hope I’m not. When it came to the subject of sex, I paid rapt attention like most adolescent boys…and I guess adolescent girls. I aspired to be an honor student. The problem was a lack of information. What little available information there was tended to be conflicting and often quite useless. There was no handbook for us, unless you count the Bible, and our “education” was either delivered at church or by our parents, best buddies or bragging upper-classmen. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that we found the latter two sources to be the most interesting. Premarital sex was a sin punishable by “hellfire and damnation” which did not sound like fun. Pretty much any fun was deemed a sin by the Methodist Church of my youth. At a summer revival I found myself gazing longingly at the visiting preacher’s drop-dead gorgeous older daughter while day dreaming about…. The minister, of course, was delivering a loud and lively message on the evils of the modern world, including but not limited to, premarital and extramarital sex. Why would you put something like that on the front row and then try to convince me to stay away from it? Later as I looked across the aisle at Elizabeth, another object of my confusion, I thought “Oh how I wish….” Suddenly, I could almost smell sulfur being given off by brimstone burning in hell. Okay, maybe if I do that other thing until I just need glasses. I know that’s a sin, tooooooo!

The rest of this story and others may be purchased in FLOPPY PARTS through Amazon at the following link: http://goo.gl/GIssEq

WORSHIPING AT THE ALTAR THAT IS FOOTBALL

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IN HONOR OF A FOOTBALL SATURDAY

I am avoiding returning a phone call to a friend and former coaching and teaching peer. This is not a “Hey, how are you doing, whatcha been up to?” kind of call because we have been keeping up with each other. I know what it is. This is the fourth time that I have retired and for the fourth time someone is going to try and get me to UN-retire. “Why won’t you just let me slope off into the sunset and enjoy the cigar and beer?” Why do I keep saying, “Yes?” Not this time! It is enticing with all of the interactions: team building, being a part of something bigger, the comradery with the players and the coaches that you just don’t find anywhere else short of a foxhole…and those Friday night lights. I have always missed football Friday nights. There is something about that green field with sharply laid down lines that almost glow they are so bright. There is probably nothing better in life than taking the field for your first home game…Well maybe one thing but that was so long ago…. What I have not missed yet are the practices, especially those that begin on July 31st… in South Carolina. It looks like they are going to catch a break with temps in the nineties and lower than normal humidity. Oh no! The early week looks bad for them. I say they and them because I am finally going to turn someone down. Sorry, Robbie.

I’m not the first to compare football in the South to a religious experience but that is not going to stop me from talking about it or turning the job down. It is just different and better in the South. There are a few cathedrals to the gridiron gods throughout the rest of the country but those don’t compare. I just don’t think Buckeyes, The West Coast Condoms or Irish Elves can display the trappings for the football sacraments as well as those teams south of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of New Mexico. Tailgating, bands with majorettes, cheerleaders…welllllll, I might have to give the nod for cheerleaders to Oregon. I don’t like the Green and “Yaller” but they wear so little of anything there’s not a lot of it showing…colors I mean.

I began my worship of football at a Clemson game in the early Sixties when invited by a friend to go with his family to watch his brother play at Death Valley. I guess that is when I became a full-fledged Tiger fan and began to worship before the altar that is football. It was not the cathedral it is now but it sure did beat the heck out of Indian Land on a Friday night. I got to meet the “minister” of the gridiron Tigers legendary coach Frank Howard, and could not help but remember our introduction later when I went to a coach’s dinner that featured him as a speaker. The man was a riot and I had a hard time reconciling that this Frank Howard was the same man I met earlier. I guess it was his pregame jitters. A different time in 1976, Howard told a joke on Willie Jefferies, a hall of fame coach for the predominately black South Carolina State University Bulldogs. Howard joked that he had attended a State practice trying to pick up a nugget of information that might lead to a victory and noticed that all of the footballs were painted dark green with lighter green stripes. When asked about them Jefferies responded with a question, “You ever seen a black boy drop a watermelon?” The laughter was lead by Jefferies, a black man himself with tears rolling down his cheeks. My playing days were different from my coaching days. I never played with or against anyone who was a different color. When I coached I found out that there was but one color that mattered on a football field and that was the color of the jersey that you wore. An avowed racist of any color would help, hug, stand up for and drink after members of the other races during their entire careers. I hope that this carried over into their lives after football, as well. Things that were said inside of the locker room might get you beaten severely or worse if they were said to anyone other than your teammates outside of that locker room.

To bring locker rooms into clarity, many activities had nothing to do with dressing and would not be considered religious unless we were talking about the Inquisition. Managers or younger players were sometimes wrapped like mummies and secured to benches with athletic tape. Cramergesic analgesic ointment was applied to heat hip pads or jockstraps of the unsuspecting. And the absolute worst torture known to man, was being told that Atomic Bomb was the best cure for Jockey Itch! Yeeeeeowwwwwwww! I coached a particularly salty group of young men that must have decided that Voodoo should be the religion of choice. Adopting the book Helter Skelter as their bible and Black Sabbath as their choir, this team employed hangmen’s nooses to hang dead birds and snakes around the locker room. A dead squirrel hanging from a noose was presented to the captains of one team to celebrate Halloween. I don’t know if they sold their soul to Beelzebub but they did win ten football games in a row.

I have memories galore associated with football. Most were happy and not blasphemous but there are a few…mostly revolving around practice… which to me were akin to the self-flagellation practiced by certain religious sects. On the practice field behind the gym where we did all of our drill work, morning worship began with the fog evaporating from a copious dew that transformed our heavy elastic and cotton practice gear into individual saunas as our exertions increased. After “Down-Ups,” “monkey rolls” and “Bull in the Ring” our practice uniforms were wringing-wet and ten pounds heavier. We were also a bit bruised. By the time practice was over, the field had dried out so “Sahara-like” that the only place more arid was the inside of our mouths. During those days there was no time limit to practice and water was withheld to make you tougher. Coaches can’t do that now and I am glad. We were kids who grew up without air conditioning and spent our summer days outside working or playing because it was actually cooler there than inside our homes. “You chaps get outside!” shouted by my grandmother was the order that kept me “acclimated.” If you did that to a kid today he would simply die from heat and dehydration. Even though we thought we were dying, it was just a form of heat “castration”…from sweating our balls off! I remember nursing on the edge of a bloody sweat-soaked towel in hopes of getting a single drop of moisture.

I believe the worst travesty ever perpetrated by a coach to his team was carried out by Bennett Gunter, our coach. On a particularly “crusty” day, he carried a bucket of water with ladle and covered it with a towel to keep the bugs out. It must have been the only thing we could think about because as a group we sucked. During the middle of practice he called us over to tell us that, and with the water bucket in the middle of our little circle, took the towel off, removed the ladle…and then tipped the bucket over onto the ground! As I watched the water-parched earth consume our water, I wondered how much trouble I might get into if I dove face first into the mud hole and tried to suck the liquid through my teeth.

During those August practices as soon as we had run our sprints, several of us would head to the boiler used by the cannery and drink the cold boiler water that seemed to be as frosty and tasty as a clear mountain stream, despite its metallic taste. I wonder what kind of health “time bomb” I have residing inside me from drinking that water.

I was fortunate to go to a small high school because fewer students meant that I got to play sports. Luckily, football, like most religions, accepts all comers, at least at the high school level. There were twenty-one bodies in my graduating class in 1968 and only ten were male. Of those ten, only seven of us played our entire high school career and that was a good thing for me. Timid, geeky in a non-geeky way, athletically challenged, clumsy in all other activities, and with an aversion to physical pain, I was not prime football material, at least early in my career. As a junior high player or even later, I would have earned the title “top water superstar.” Remember, cream is not the only thing that will rise to the top. Bobby Beechum, a seven-hundred and fifty-pound eight-foot-tall giant, taught me my first lesson. Throwing me like a bowling ball and making a 7-10 pin split, I learned that it is better to “give a lick than to receive.” I also remember running sprints one day when Coach Gunter exclaimed for everyone to hear, “Miller, I have to line you up with a fence post just to make sure you are making forward progress.” It could have been worse. A friend of mine who walked on at Clemson was told by Coach Howard that, and I quote, “Son, you are a wasted fuck!”

Most of my career I probably would have agreed with that assessment had it been made about me. With a series of injuries limiting my already finite abilities, I struggled through my freshman and sophomore years before getting “mostly” healthy. Still, my career up until my senior year might be summed up by my introduction to Pageland great, South Carolina standout and Hall of Fame Coach Al Usher. During a game my junior year we said our hellos at our five-yard line. I was high and he was low and leverage wins. Five yards later it was a touchdown for Pageland, just one of many that night that saw us embarrassed on our own field. During halftime, my coach RO Potts, slammed my shoulder pads and blew chewing tobacco breath into my face while yelling, “And you! How do you let someone drag you five yards into the end zone?” My brain reasoned, “Because that’s all he needed.” Luckily, I kept my mouth shut!

My senior year, hope sprang eternal, but it didn’t start too well. We made a road trip on a rainy night to Pageland, the self-proclaimed watermelon capitol or the world. Nothing good happens to me in regard to Pageland and, for some reason, I have had no success growing watermelons. I try to avoid Pageland at all cost. Driving rains kept both the worshippers and the offensive output down. Early in the game we drove for a touchdown but missed the extra point. For three quarters we moved the ball up and down the field without scoring. Deep in the fourth quarter and, in our end of the field, we lined up to punt, giving me the opportunity to break the football commandment – “Thou shalt not snap the ball over your punter’s head.” As the long snapper, it was my responsibility to spiral the ball to my punter. The ball was wet and heavy and my last thought was, “Keep your butt down and don’t snap it over his head!” I did neither. Our punter covered my errant snap for a safety and two points. The resulting kick from our own twenty gave them great field position and eventually a narrow eight to six two-point victory. I was probably at my lowest when “an angel fell from the sky” in the form of my coach. Coach Potts could have ruined me for life but instead placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “The game did not hinge on that one play. We had every opportunity to win that game and should have. We all share the loss.” “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” It is a religious lesson that I have tried to remember and live all my life.

Time limits, unlimited water hydration and lighter, less water absorbent uniforms are not the only aspects that have changed about football since I played and since I retired from coaching football. For the most part I think they are good changes even though it is sometimes hard to recognize the game today as the one I played as a boy. Bull and the Ring along with Oklahoma drills have been outlawed as has using the head as a weapon since we have become more concerned about safety. Do I think our brand of football was tougher? Most assuredly! But I don’t guess “three yards and a cloud of dust” was nearly as much fun as the new version. Parishioners have embraced the new version and still cheer that “My god is better than your god!” no matter how many times the ball is thrown. Congregations have swelled at the cathedrals throughout the nation – not just in the South. Even our most conservative “ministers” are throwing the ball all over the field and the participation of “acolytes” has definitely increased. Still I find myself worshipping at the altars of Georgia Tech or the service academies that still run the option, at least when they are not playing the Tigers in the much improved cathedral known as Death Valley.

THE WRESTLER

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This is a story that should have been included in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING…but wasn’t. WINNING… can be purchased at goo.gl/dO1hcX
“Oh, sweet blindness, a little magic, a little kindness
Oh, sweet blindness, all over me”
“Sweet Blindness”-The Fifth Dimension

He stood with arms raised in triumph, the sweat of his exertion dripping onto the wrestling mat that he stood upon while his mouth curled into a slight smile. He had just won the Upper State Wrestling Championship in his weight class and was in the process of receiving a standing ovation from everyone in the gym, regardless of school affiliation. Well maybe not everyone, I doubt the friends and family of his vanquished foe were standing but you never know. As I stood and applauded, his coach sprinted to the mat and hoisted him into the air and I suddenly had a clarifying thought and felt more than just a little bit sad. Never having considered myself to be an emotional old softy, I still could not stanch the flow of tears that rolled down my cheeks.
In the middle 1980’s Greenville High School in upper state South Carolina had a large and modern gymnasium. The gym, named for the legendary Red Raider football coach James “Slick” Moore, had a problem. There were too many entrances and “hidey holes” that provided opportunities for many forms of teenage activities – the kind which were frowned upon by educators. I’ll let the reader fill in those blanks. Because of its seating capacity and configuration, the “double-decker” gym was host to many events including the Upper State Wrestling Championship. With upper deck seating and enough room for three wrestling mats on the main floor, James “Slick” Moore Gymnasium was perfect to host such an event. As the athletic director in charge of this facility, I found it to be imperfect because I had to administrate the whole shebang from the weigh-ins at dawn’s early light to the final heavy weight tussle at dark thirty. Thankfully, the area wrestling coaches were responsible for setting up and taking down the mats along with the other equipment needed to accomplish this event. I did make myself available for the pre-match set-up and post-match take-down drinks and “lie telling” at a local watering hole.
I first noticed the young wrestler at weigh-ins. I don’t know his name so I am going to invent one because he deserves to be referred to as something else other than “the young wrestler.” I’ll call him Marcus. Marcus wrestled in one of the one-seventy-something pound middle weight classes, traditionally one of the tougher weights to compete in. He looked just like the rest of the “ripped,” zero percent body weight wrestlers…except for the sunglasses that he wore in the pre-dawn light. He acted like the rest of the teenagers around him…except that his arm rested on top of his coach’s arm as he made his way to the scales. He wore the sunglasses and steadied himself on his coach’s arm because he was blind. Not totally blind, as I found out from his coach later. He could see changes in light but that was all. Wow, he could see if it was daylight or dark. I wondered if he could become confused if it was cloudy. I noticed that when he took his sunglasses off, his irises were not the dark brown that I would have expected but were light brown with bright yellow flakes that gave Marcus the look of a wild canine predator. I also noticed that Marcus’s eyes seemed to wander around without settling on anything. I suppose that when you are blind there is nothing to settle on. As he held out his glasses to be taken by his coach, I saw that the side pieces of his glasses had built-in hearing aids. Blind and, at best, he was hearing impaired. Even with these impairments he had a ready smile that made his yellow-flaked eyes become as bright as sunbursts. I use the word impairment instead of disability because he was, at least on a wrestling mat, anything but disabled.
Marcus represented the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind. He was the only wrestler representing the small Spartanburg-based school. In fact, he was the first of its students with whom I had had any interaction and he was the first student from SCSDB whom I considered NOT to be disabled. I had a great uncle who was both deaf and mute. A “dummy” was the term used to describe Claude’s impairment but, as we have become more aware of what is socially acceptable, thankfully, that description is no longer used. Later when I coached track at Landrum we competed against SCSDB and “Land O’ Goshen,” I found them to be as normal as any other teenager is capable of being. While standing next to a group of SCSDB track members cheering on a hearing impaired team mate, one black youth exclaimed in his best ghettoese, “Man, look at that N$%%@r run!” The youngster next to him said, “Now you know I’m blind and can’t see s@#t and neither can you!” Both of them just cackled over their joke along with everyone standing around them.
I don’t remember how many qualifiers were competing that day but, because of Marcus’s weight class, I know that he had to wrestle the full complement of “winner advances-loser goes home” matches before reaching the Upper State Finals. I know this because he was in the middle weights where all of the wrestling studs reside. As he advanced, the number of fans pulling for him increased as the word got around that he was almost totally blind and nearly totally deaf. Well, there is that saying that “everyone loves a winner.” I should point out that being blind is not necessarily a hindrance in wrestling. No really, by rule, when wrestling a blind person, physical contact must be maintained throughout the match. For Marcus it was almost an unfair advantage. In the first of three possible rounds, wrestlers face each other on their feet and work for what is called a “take down.” Because Marcus was blind, the wrestlers faced each other but with the palms of their hands touching, one palm up and one palm down. Marcus had perfected the art of grabbing his competitor’s wrist and when he came up with your wrist, the match was, for all practical purposes, over. None of Marcus’s matches had gone past the first period; most had not made it even into the second minute of the three-minute first round.
His final match would be taxing with both wrestlers evenly matched in desire, ability, strength and conditioning. Much to the delight of his cheering fans, early in the third period, Marcus reversed and held on to a victory by just a point or two. Who were his cheering fans? That would be everyone in the gym except for the opposing wrestler’s parents and girlfriend and I am quite sure they wanted to applaud for Marcus themselves. Both wrestlers hugged each other out of respect and admiration. As Marcus had his hand raised over his head in victory, the gym again exploded into even more applause and cheering. I suddenly had a thought that would cause chills to run up my back and explode onto the back of my head. Causing tears to form in my eyes, my thought was that because of his impairment Marcus would never experience the rush of emotions created by the applause and cheering – the same emotions that I was feeling for him. I know his coach’s embrace clarified his victory, however, I hoped that he could feel the vibrations and could somehow translate them into what a seeing and hearing person might experience. I questioned what he really felt until he walked off the mat and walked into the stands where people just reached out to touch him. At that moment, I knew he knew.

Again, though, his eyes found nothing to focus on and I found it impossible not to draw comparisons to Stevie Wonder. Marcus’s head had the Stevie Wonder “bobble” but he also had that huge Stevie Wonder grin. I decided that while we processed stimuli differently, Marcus had processed it his way and was both proud and happy. He would go on to win the state in his weight class. I am sure that there was plenty of applause and cheering that day, also. I hope and pray that there was “a little magic, a little kindness, Oh, sweet blindness, all over” Marcus at that moment and throughout the rest of his days.

A LOVE STORY

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An excerpt from WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING, a book about forty years of teaching and coaching. It maybe purchased using the following link goo.gl/dO1hcX

“You can’t always get what you want
but if you try sometime
well you might find
you get what you need”
“You can’t always get what you want”-The Rolling Stones

As you travel west on Highway 11 between Highway 14 and the Georgia State line, you will certainly understand why this particular highway is called the Cherokee Scenic Highway. Small mountains, water features galore, forested areas, parks and unfortunately, many golf courses cover the landscape around what was once a Cherokee trading path. Traveling is usually slow due to pulp wood trucks, bass boats being towed to and from Lake Keowee, or “Sunday Drivers” sight seeing on a Wednesday. I am fortunate to have lived on Highway 11 for nearly thirty years. Even after all of this time, Linda Gail and I still like to explore around Highway 11, looking for pig trails that might lead us on an adventure. Sometimes you get what you ask for.

Late one Friday, in the spring of 2001, Linda Gail and I were enjoying the evening while driving west in her Mustang toward the setting sun. We had eaten at a local golf course called The Rock and had turned west toward the sun instead of east toward home. I felt this was somewhat symbolic as I had made the decision before the 2001 baseball season to retire from athletics and ride off into the sunset. As soon as the baseball season ended, I began to regret my decision. While Linda Gail and I rode west, top down with the wind in our face, we talked about our careers, shared stories about former players and friends and discussed what I was going to do with those free hours I had not had for twenty-eight years. I did not have a clue but knew I did not like the size of Linda Gail’s honey do list.

I have often joked that if you drive far enough on Highway 11 you will reach the end of the world. If you turn left at the end of the world, you will find yourself in Salem. It is less than one square mile of mostly … nothing. The city of Salem boasts a population of one hundred and thirty five people according to the 2010 Census. The area adjoining it, Tamassee, is an unincorporated area whose name in the Cherokee language means “Place of the Sunlight of God”. It was named for an old Cherokee village destroyed by Andrew Pickens in the late 1700’s. There are a few businesses, churches and homes clustered around Highway 130 and what is called Park Avenue. There is also a fire department to the east and area’s namesake Tamassee-Salem Middle and High School to the west. This is where we found ourselves on that Friday evening with the sun setting behind the hill that the school sat on. The symbolism had not gone un-noticed as I joked, “I know what I can do when I grow up. I’ll come be the athletic director at Tamassee-Salem. They don’t have football or soccer. How hard can it be?” I have since re-thought the silliness of that statement.

As I looked at a South Carolina sports website the next day, I found a classified advertisement for a baseball coach and social studies teacher at, you guessed it, Tamassee-Salem. Once I got over the tingle up and down my spine I began to feel a strong pull toward the setting sun. I am religious but not in a recognized way. Even though I was publically dunked into the Baptist Church where I still attend, I lean more toward the New Testament Evolutionary Church of Christ according to Don. I even throw in a little Buddhism to add seasoning and for heat would like to combine it with some of the pagan activities that I have read about. For some reason Linda Gail won’t let me.

I still could not deny the feeling that I was being called to Tamassee-Salem. Like a moth’s attraction to an open flame or a siren’s call, the tug was unmistakable and strong. I discussed my feelings with Linda Gail but did not come to any clear decision. Linda gave me her normal “Do what you want” advice. The following Monday I continued to battle the feeling that I was being pulled toward Tamassee-Salem and decided that during my planning period I would call and inquire about the position. The telephone call was … well, interesting. Mr. Bill Hines, Tamassee-Salem’s principal, could not figure out why I wanted to come to Tamassee-Salem after my successes at Riverside. After the third time of being asked “But why do you want to come HERE,” I responded, somewhat testily, “I don’t know that I do, that is what I am trying to find out.” In Bill’s defense, he thought that I had committed one of the two cardinal sins of teaching or coaching that will get you fired faster than your won-loss record; diddling where one should not diddle or spending money that was not yours to spend. When I took the job at Tamassee-Salem a lot of my coaching peers actually thought the same thing. They could not understand why I was walking away from a successful program for one that had not even attained mediocrity. I wasn’t sure either but I told Mr. Hines that I was still a teacher in good standing at Riverside and gave him permission to call to confirm it. The next day he called back and invited me to come for an interview.

As I walked away from my interview, none of the allure for Tamassee-Salem had been displaced. I liked everyone that I had met and felt that the administration had gone out of their way to impress me which was quite flattering. (I am not easy but I can be had.) I also knew that athletically it would be a challenge, but I felt that I probably needed a new challenge. As much as I felt that I had “come home,” I was still in a conflicted state. I had many close friends at Riverside and had served in Greenville County for twenty-five years, but my biggest issue was with my wife. Linda Gail and I had spent over fifteen years involved with the Warriors. She was the junior varsity girl’s basketball coach and the varsity girl’s tennis coach at Riverside. Our support of each other athletically was part of our relationship. I was actually present when Coach Golden asked her if she was interested in the coaching position. Louie was trying to hire a body just to field a position and had not realized what he was getting into. This is something he and I share … the not knowing what we were getting into, not the body. Linda Gail and I had been intertwined with athletics and each other our entire dating and married life. I debated with myself the decision to change schools. Our intertwinement included friends, parents, students and former players in addition to each other.

When I returned to Tamassee-Salem for my second interview, it turned out not to be an interview but an offer of employment. I had decided to take Linda Gail with me and while driving around the community, I found her to be somewhat reserved. Anyone who knows my wife would never use that description, but she was on this particular day, which made me very uncomfortable. She realized that our lives were getting ready to change, something that had not dawned on me but quickly would. When I returned to my truck with the news that I had been offered the position she broke into tears which I found were not tears of joy. Linda realized that a large part of our lives together had “been torn asunder” and the man responsible was me. We recovered, as many couples do, when their unions were torn apart by seductive outside forces. Luckily my seductive forces were another school and not … well, take your pick.

My relationship with Linda Gail is and has never been an ordinary relationship even from its inception. Linda Gail and I disagree on when we actually first met but since this is my story I will tell it my way. I first remember seeing my future bride on Halloween of 1984. She had been in an off and on again relationship with my roommate and for some reason we had not met until that night. (She disagrees but I know that had I met her I would have remembered.) When I dragged myself in after practice that evening I saw both of my roomies sitting with sly grins on their faces. As I sat down and asked what was going on, two attractive young ladies slowly stood up from behind the wet bar, one had an inflatable pumpkin on her head, the other with a witch hat on. Linda Gail was the sultry, dark-haired beauty with the pumpkin on her head; Jeanie Reed was the pretty blond witch. They both made a positive impression.
I realize many of you might be thinking that since she was my roommate’s girlfriend that I might have gone behind his back and shot him out of his saddle. No, when he was shot out of his saddle it was a self inflicted wound. Linda Gail and I did not begin dating until after she and Jim had broken up and he had moved to another part of the state. Linda Gail had tried to “fix me up” with all of her friends, even the pretty witch Jeanie, and I think she simply had sympathy on me after she had run out of options. I am not saying that there had not been sparks early in our relationship, I had had plenty. Who would not have sparks for a short, pretty and well put together brunette with big ole … hazel eyes that tend to turn green with anger or mischief and a personality that reminded me of a humming bird on amphetamines? Over the next eight months or so, we became great friends, but that was all. Even after we could have begun dating, she had to make the first overtures and ended up asking me out … twice. Sometimes I am really slow to catch on. Once I caught on ….

The following Halloween found us not quite dating exclusively but close. This particular All Hallows Eve was on a Thursday and Greenville was playing Southside in a JV game at Greenville. I had to be at the game, while Linda Gail and Jeanie were going out to a costume party without me. Those two events should have been exclusive of each other but this particular night they became inclusive. It was raining and I had invited several of the booster club members to join us in the press box to stay dry. Booster club members being entertained in the press box was not an ordinary occurrence and had never happened before until this night. As the game went on, someone knocked on the door. My booster club president opened the door and found two pretty ladies opening their trench coats and exposing their somewhat revealing Halloween costumes. One was a vampire mistress of the night in a short black mini dress with lots of zippers and chains, the other a French maid complete with fishnet stockings, crinolines and a whole lot of cleavage showing … a lot of cleavage showing. I tried not to fall out of the press box window while everyone else was speechless. Utter and complete silence ruled until our booster club president paid them a left handed compliment and confessed that “If I had known it was like this up here I would have come up a lot sooner.”

Once Linda Gail and I decided to jump the broom I felt that I needed to cloister her away in order to keep her subtle way of expressing herself from getting me into trouble. She knows how to turn a word but sometimes lets emotion rule the day, which sometimes makes me rue the day. I did not want to turn her loose on some of my unsuspecting critics and decided to put her on the press box with my video guy. Ever the critic, even then she found a way to get her points across to me. Normally we graded our own video on Sundays before watching our opponent’s film and putting together a game plan. We rarely watched video with the audio on but for some reason this particular morning we did. I really was not paying attention to what was being said until Ray Riley, one of my assistants, asked if I had heard what had just been said on the audio. We reran the video and I heard the shrill and acidic voice of my beloved screeching like one of Macbeth’s witches: “Come on coach, why don’t you try running your other play.” Linda Gail was my greatest advocate but was also my greatest critic. For the past thirty years Linda has critiqued my every athletic decision which is the only type of decision she has ever let me make.

While she still coaches me, Linda Gail no longer coaches on her own court. I truly miss watching her coach basketball. I have never been a big fan of basketball because I was never very good at it and never coached it. Well there was that junior varsity girl’s team but that was Linda teaching me the day before I taught them. I once had a friend and fellow coach that described girl’s basketball in this manner: “There are three activities that should take place in private: “Prayer, couples involved in amorous activities and girl’s basketball.” While at one time I probably agreed with him, I had to take Linda Gail’s teams off of the list. Not because her teams were good, and they were always better than they should have been, but rather because of the way that she coached. Perpetually in motion, she coached everyone on her team for the entire game from start to finish, along with anyone else who could be reached by her voice; in other words, everyone in the gym. She also really looked good doing it. When Linda dressed for a game she wanted everyone to know that girl’s basketball coaches and players could be feminine. She was quite successful imparting this information. The worst rule ever enacted was restricting a coach to a coaching box. Why? It stopped me from getting to watch my wife, “dressed to the nines,” run up and down the out of bounds line yelling at someone other than me. The new rule also got her a technical foul or two because she just doesn’t like to be told what she can or cannot do.

My all time favorite memory of her and her teams involved one of her tennis teams. They were playing Clinton for the right to go to Columbia and face Myrtle Beach for the state championship. Because of previous weather conditions, the match had been postponed and both teams had to be packed and ready to go to Columbia immediately after the match. Riverside was supposed to win but sometimes tennis gods, like baseball gods, enjoy upsetting the ball cart. We lost. What do you do with a van full of girls, loaded with bags for a road trip? You invite them for a sleep over at your home. That is just what Linda Gail did. One guy in a farm house with seven teen age girls and a teen age girl want to be. Oh joy! It was a blast. We dined on pizza that evening, my breakfast that next morning and hiked all over the property that morning and afternoon. They even named our one legged and one eyed rooster, Boomer. It was a great way to get over a season ending loss.

Linda Gail and I have now been involved for nearly thirty years and I can still pick out her voice anywhere on an athletic field. The parents that help me at Northwest are in awe. “She coaches our kids, their kids, their coach and us,” one of my assistants exclaimed with a smile on his face. I find it comforting that she is still around to criticize my every decision as it relates to baseball. She even lets me make a few important non-baseball related decisions like, say, should I take out the garbage or should I walk down to get the mail. You know the really important stuff. The simple stuff, she takes care of, and that is just the way I like it.

And what about my second love? If I had a choice and could go back to any point in my career I would choose to go back to Tamassee-Salem. I felt at home and appreciated, maybe even loved there. The area hasn’t really changed and is still surrounded by great expanses of mostly nothing. Rumors are that she will close as a high school just as soon as new Walhalla High School is completed. My logical self probably agrees that it should. Greater choices of courses and services can be offered to the students now served by Tamassee-Salem. My illogical and emotional self disagrees with my logical self. Athletically most of the kids that play for Tamassee-Salem could not play anywhere else and the students would not get the one-on-one assistance available to them now. I guess that is no reason to keep a school open, but I did say it was my illogical self thinking. Unlike Odysseus, I am just glad I did not resist either of these siren calls.

BARNS AND BUTTERMILK

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Sitting across the road from my house is an old red barn. Some one hundred and twenty years ago that same barn sat on land that was part of an original two-hundred-and-fifty-acre tract of farmland formally known as The Bramlett Place. By 1987, when we signed over our lives over to it, that original tract of land had shrunk to eighty-five acres which was eighty more acres than we were looking for.

The original tract had been dispersed to who knows where. I know part of it was sold as a tract of land across the road because, at some moment in history, the original barn was separated from the farmhouse by what is known today as Scenic Highway 11 or the Cherokee Foothills Highway. My garden is located directly across the road from the barn and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t commit the deadly sin of envy because I covet the barn. I guess it could be worse; I could be coveting my neighbor’s wife.

I love old barns. I stop and take pictures of old barns and try to visualize how they would have looked in their “hay” day. I have even drawn plans for my own barn that I am going to build one of these days, if that day ever comes before the sands of the hourglass run out. I love what I would call old southern barns that aren’t tobacco barns, although even tobacco barns beat the gambrel or saltbox roof…for looks. For some reason I associate gambrel-roofed barns with the barbarian part of the world located above the Mason-Dixon Line. I’m sure that, for usable space, gambrel roofs allow you to put more hay in the loft but how much hay do you need for one horse and one cow?

I associate barns with my youth. One plow horse and one milk cow were all we had, and our barn didn’t have those nifty advertisements painted on the side either. “Visit Lookout Mountain”, “See Rock City” or “Drink Coca Cola” would have been nice, but you could not have seen it from the road anyway.

My grandparents’ barn was a slab-sided barn. For the uneducated, slabs were the outer bark covered planks that were first trimmed from the log that is being processed. Because a log has a rounded surface, slabs cut from a log had one round side and one flat side. Since they were cut from different sized logs there was no rhyme or reason for their width. This made them only useful as barn siding or for burning in a wood stove or fireplace. We did both.

My grandfather and his brother, Banks, ran a sawmill during the winter months to help make ends meet until my grandfather began working full time at Springs Mills. The sawmill itself consisted of a large rotating circular saw blade that was turned with a pulley belt attached to an incredibly old tractor. I do not know this for sure, but it makes the story in my head warmer to believe that Paw Paw not only built the barn with his own hands but also built it from the lumber that he and his brother milled themselves. True or not, that is the story that I have decided to believe.

As a child that barn seemed huge but, as I sit here as an adult, I realize it could not have been that big. It had only a pair of stalls on one side and a tack room and workshop on the other. It was separated by an entry way large enough to accommodate an old wagon and various plows, planters, and a drag-harrow. Above it all was a loft that was a child’s dream of a playhouse…until I found the twenty-foot snakeskin. Okay, it might have been a little shorter.

Cowboys and Indians, war games and hide-and-seek were all played in and around that barn and in its loft. One game that almost got out of hand was played after seeing some old western movie where the hero jumps from the second-story balcony onto his horse and, without so much as a grunt, rides off after the desperados.

My best bud decided he wanted to imitate Roy Rogers but because we didn’t have a second-story balcony or a horse at the time we decided to use the loft and his bicycle as stand-ins. That didn’t turn out too well and, thankfully, he jumped first while I was holding his bike. Ouch! Not that I was a chicken or anything, but I decided quickly that I didn’t want to imitate him. I wonder if he ever had any children.

One of the first clear memories that I have as a child is of following Nannie, my grandmother, into the barn at dark thirty to milk the cow. Winter or summer, clear or rainy, it did not matter. The cow had to be milked and it was milked every morning before my grandfather returned from his third shift at Springs in his ’49 Oldsmobile Rocket 88.

During the spring and summer, after a breakfast that always included fresh milk, biscuits, grits or oatmeal and eggs, he would trade the Olds for the plow horse and head to the fields before finally going to bed in the early afternoon to rest for his next shift that began at ten that night. My clear memory is of Nannie milking that cow while squatting on her heels in the manner that only country folks can seem to achieve. The memory must have been of an event that took place in winter because my memory is of the steam first rising from the water Nannie used to wash the cow’s udder and then from the milk itself as it hit the cold milk bucket.

Before being refrigerated, the milk would be placed in a clear pitcher and allowed to separate. Cream would rise to the top and be skimmed off and used for baking or to “whiten” the bitter Luzianne coffee with chicory that my grandparents preferred. Of course, there would be raw, unpasteurized milk for the rest of us.

Once a week it would seem, leftover milk would be poured into a churn and turned into sweet, pale-yellow butter and its byproduct, buttermilk, which unlike the butter, was not sweet at all. While I cook with it, buttermilk is not something that I have ever developed a taste for so. I got lost on that path around home.

I remember meals that involved leftover cornbread crumbled in cold glasses of buttermilk. In my mind’s eye I see both of my grandparents wiping their mouths after finishing off a glass of buttermilk and smiling in such a way to make me believe it was the best liquid libation one could have. Eventually the “buttermilk gone bad” would be fed to the hogs.

Periodically, I drink a little buttermilk just to remind myself that I still don’t like it and that I don’t really know how you tell if buttermilk has gone bad. Aside from what was used to make biscuits, it all could have gone to the hogs. Luckily, my youthful memories are as rich as the raw unpasteurized sweet milk in my grandmother’s milk bucket. There are only a few memories that remind me of the soured buttermilk we fed to the hogs.

Common Ground

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Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…”

“There is a long hair that doesn’t like the short hair
For being’ such a rich one, that will not help the poor one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and Scooby dooby doo-bee
Oh, shasha, we got to live together”
“Everyday People”-Sly and the Family Stone

I was not a happy camper. As I returned from my early Sunday morning run, I had gotten a text from former player and student Jamie Bennett. He was preaching at his childhood church, Gethsemane National Baptist Church.

Jamie, now James to everyone but me, would be described, according to my religious upbringing, as a Lay Minister. He does not have a divine degree and is not ordained in a traditional sense although within his own church he has been ordained.

I had heard him preach before He is a good preacher and a true man of God. So why was I not a happy camper? It had been my intention to go to church after completing my run this Father’s Day. It was because he is a BLACK man of God preaching to a BLACK church.

What do I have against black men of God? Nothing except that they attend black churches whose services tend to run awfully long . . . and then some. I knew my wife was not going to let me out of this one. Well to be honest, my conscience was not going to let me out of it either. Being invited meant a lot to me, especially on Father’s Day and going was more important than an early lunch and an afternoon sitting in the sun. I just hoped my stomach would agree with me.

Both Jamie and his brother Boo, or Carolus as he is now known, played for me at Riverside. Both were pitchers, both were outfielders and they both had their struggles hitting pitches that bent. During the late Seventies and early Eighties, I taught with Jamie’s and Carolus’s mother Carol Ann, but it was when my wife came on the stage that our families became close.

Linda Gail had taught most of the Bennett-Brooks clan elementary physical education. Linda Gail and Mother Carol Ann developed a bond that gradually expanded to include both sides of the Bennett-Brooks family: grandparents, dads, sister, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and many cousins, who were, in some cases, many generations removed. This is a huge family. They rent motels and cordon off city blocks when they have their family reunions, and it seems Linda Gail taught them all.

More importantly, they are tight. Tight like a moonshiner family from the Blue Ridge. Mess with one and you find yourself messin’ with them all, especially the sisters and sisters-in-law. By the time younger brother Carolus had come along, Linda and Carol Ann’s bond had strengthened to the point of a sisterhood of sorts. So, honestly, my relationship with the family expanded when I came along for the ride as Linda became matriarch, Grandmother Chancey’s adopted daughter.

Okay, I was wrong. I cannot totally come back to Jamie and his family until I give you some personal history and further confessions. This story really has less to do with religion but has everything to do with cultural differences which involve religion and a gazillion of other diverse variances between the races. It is called diversity, right?

I was a child in the Fifties and a teen in the Sixties and am a product of all the prejudices that were taught to me during that period. Even though my family was one of the least prejudiced that I knew of, I do not say that with pride because they were still prejudiced. I recognized that there was a separation between the races in addition to cultural differences even if I didn’t quite understand them.

Watching the nightly news, I saw buses burned, church bombings and fire hoses along with German Shepherds turned loose on masses of black people while I attempted to enjoy my Birdseye TV dinner. It did not make me particularly proud tof my prejudices whether I understood the dynamics or not. Now that I understand the dynamics,

I have spent the best part of fifty years trying to both get over and to atone for my prejudices. Most of the time I have been successful although there have been times that I have reverted to the prejudiced hick I don’t want to be. The good news is that unlike a lot of the other prejudiced hicks, I feel bad about it when it happens, pray for forgiveness, and thankfully, my prejudices rear their ugly heads less and less as time marches on.

Much of my racial understanding is as conflicted as is my racial makeup, which I am certain, is made up of all recognized races except Oriental – and who knows, I do have a love of Chinese food.

Nannie’s best fishing friend in addition to being part time hired help, Maggie Cureton, was “colored” and in my mind’s eye I can still see them both sitting under a shade tree gutting and scaling their catch, joking, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. It was the same when there was ironing or wash to be done.

They had a lot in common. Both had lived hard before and during the Great Depression and had lost their husbands. Before and during the depression, Nannie and Pawpaw had farmed “on the lien” while Miss Maggie and family were sharecroppers. Either way their lot was a hard way to make a living. While Nannie treated Miss Maggie as if she were white, I was once taken to task over referring to black brick mason Pepsi Cola Mobley, which was not his real name, as Mr. Mobley. Nannie informed me that you didn’t refer to “coloreds” as Mister. Miss Maggie, Mr. Mobley, Confliction! I should have called him Mister Pepsi Cola.

It is hard to understand and easy to fear what you have never interacted with. I had little interaction with other races during my pre-teaching years. Occasionally I played with the Cureton grandchildren, but it was rare, and it certainly did not increase when I went off to primary school.

Despite the Brown vs. Board of Education court ruling, blacks and whites did not attend school together. Here in South Carolina and in most of the Deep South, when our state governments heard “with all deliberate speed” we focused upon deliberate rather than speed. So, as I entered the first grade in 1956, my class was “lily white.”

The Cureton grandchildren were bused eighteen miles away to an all-black school. It was still that way when I entered junior high school and high school and did not change until my senior year when “token” integration was forced upon the state by that “Yankee” government in Washington. The eighth grade Springs twins, Charles and Leroy, became our “tokens.” Nothing changed when I went off to college either. Newberry College was so white it would blind you in bright sunlight. I did work with a few African Americans but even in the cotton mill in the sixties and seventies, African Americans were few and far between and all were older adults. Even as I developed friendships in my teaching career, I felt that there was always a wall of distrust that kept friendships from developing as deeply as they might have. Thankfully by the time I had gotten to the end of my career that had changed. There I developed deep friendships with people of many races; most that I hope will survive for the rest of my life.

Jamie was not the first African American that I coached nor was younger brother Carolus the last. I have been lucky to coach many fine young men, some who just happened to be black. Because of Linda’s relationship with Carol Ann, Carolus and Jamie became the first that I developed a relationship and understanding with that went deeper than the classroom or athletic field. With most of my players, white, black or in between, I keep up with those that I can, enjoy the interaction when we cross paths and consider them all to be special, but basically they have their lives and I have mine. That is not the case with Jamie and Carolus. They are a part of my life and I am proud of what they have accomplished. It has also led to understanding. When I say black now, it is simply an easy way to describe who I am talking about. You know, “The black kid that pitched for me back in the early nineties that gave up that gonzo shot to Chad Roper” or the black kid who was an All State singer, church goer, and outstanding student, diligent son to his sick and dying father and a rock of strength to his mother. In other words, the great kid who just happens to be black.

The same thing could be said about Carolus although our understanding may have taken longer and it was not my fault. Carolus lived on my route home so it was inevitable that, by mutual agreement between Linda Gail and Carol Ann, I would be enlisted to become a taxi and would drop him off from practices. What ensued was a very long, silent and for me uncomfortable five mile drive. Carolus would not speak unless spoken to and then would only answer in the shortest possible manner. The only Carolus-initiated communication was the “Thank you” that I got when he exited my truck, and I got one every time I dropped him off. I should point out that I am quite sure that listening to Willie Nelson and George Jones while riding around in a big Ford four by four made for an uncomfortable trip for a young black male as well. With adulthood, all of that has changed except for his thank yous.

These drives were not quite as uncomfortable as I remember the first Bennett Fourth of July party my wife and I attended. It was a lesson on what it is like to be in a minority and the way that I am sure a lot of my black friends and acquaintances felt when they showed up for parties hosted and attended mostly by whites. It did not help that I knew maybe ten of the fifty plus people there and the only person that I would guess to be more uncomfortable would be the “lady of ill repute sitting on the front pew at church.” I don’t think that I imagined the stares and silence that greeted us as we came through the door. I am sure there were a few questions like “Who are they and why are they here?” running through some people’s minds. With introductions and explanations this changed, but that wall I talked about earlier was still firmly in place. Over the years, the party has become much more comfortable. I am sure that the walls of distrust still exist but believe that many holes have been opened up in it. As I sat and gorged myself on pulled pork and ribs along with some of the best potato salad of all time, I became involved in conversation with Uncle Butch, a member of my generation. It did not take long to realize that we did not grow up much differently despite our skin color. Our roots were stuck firmly in the soil and the textiles that were produced from it. The only difference was the color of our skin and the distrust fostered by slavery, Jim Crow and the racism that is still evident today. Funny odd, now, twenty years or so later, if we are unable to attend the party for some reason, our absence is a source of concern.

Today I look at racial diversity as a smorgasbord of delights. I believe we should just focus on how diversely different people party. How can you be distrustful of people who produce such wonderful food? My life without Latin, Soul, Oriental and Cajun foods would not be life ending but life would not be as joyous, especially without a Belgian or German beer or maybe some Tennessee whiskey to go with it. Someone might as well play some Blues, Reggae or a little Zydeco to help the atmosphere along. It is just as easy to focus on the positives about diversity as it is the negatives and again with knowledge comes understanding. I thank the Bennett’s friendship for that.

Incidentally, the service that Jamie preached was wonderful and thought provoking. Brother Carolus sang, large portions of the Brooks-Bennett family were in attendance and the service was uplifting and motivating in every way. I think every person there shook my hand and wished me a happy Fathers Day. Their pastor gave me a huge bear hug and has been in contact twice since the service. Truthfully, we did “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” and because of that I don’t remember it being a longer service than normal. In fact, it might not have been long enough.
“Winning…” may be purchased through Amazon using the link: http://goo.gl/Saivuu

Enjoy a great read for Labor Day. FLOPPY PARTS by Don Miller http://goo.gl/GIssEq

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THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING BETTER
There were no baseball cups at my high school in 1967 or 1968, or if there were, no one took any time to explain the need for one to me. Instead, we had a chest protector with an extension that hung down between our knees when we went into a squat. This particular chest protector probably had been acquired when catchers still set up ten or twelve feet behind the batter and caught the ball on a hop in the early 1900’s.
IT WAS AN ILLUSION OF PROTECTION! IT WAS A BELIEF IN A FALSE GOD! Take a common household sponge and rest it against your face. Now let me uncork a baseball into it. Really, no one wants to do that? You know you are going to get a broken nose, black eye or lose some teeth. I should have known that a little extension, the thickness of a common household sponge, would not protect my little friends but bought into the belief that if struck by a bounced pitch or foul tipped ball, the little boys would be ok. In other words, the seventeen year old me was A DUMBASS! Just so you know a foul tip on to a cup will still take your breath away. A foul tip to an unprotected man part will make you contemplate suicide to make the sickening pain stop. To quote a friend who had tried to cauterize a wound with a red hot poker, “the pain was exquisite.” I knew exactly what she meant as I remembered a foul tip that bounced off of the plate and up into my chest protector extension making solid contact with my man parts. One definition of exquisite is keen or intense. Yeah, the pain was exquisite in its intensity and sharpness. It was also sickening to the point of regurgitation, and it wasn’t even a direct shot. Sick, Sick, Sick!
Strangely, somewhere in the small portion of my brain that was not dealing with pain receptors, I remember thinking, “Don’t grab them. Don’t grab them.” This I thought, despite the almost uncontrollable urge to do exactly that. “DON’T RUB IT! IT MIGHT SPIT AT YOU!” That was not very likely to happen for a long, long while. Even today there still seems to be an unwritten rule that keeps a catcher, or any other player for that matter, who has just taken a hundred mile per hour shot directly off of his cup, from grabbing his little friends. Even sportscasters will skirt the issue by saying, anything other than “OOOOh, he just took one off the nads!” Well, Bob Uecker might, but Curt Gowdy would say something about “…a glancing blow to the groin” or “he has just got the air knocked out of him” as the poor catcher was being led stiff legged into the dug out for an “equipment adjustment.” As the replay unwinds, over and over, you can almost hear the collective intake of breath as millions of male baseball fans react to an event that we are all too familiar with. Just in case you are ever in a sports trivia contest, Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench holds the dubious career record for broken cups, seven. From someone who knows the truth, this should be one of his least coveted records.

SUGAR AND SPICE

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Excerpt from Don’s book “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” which may purchased using the following link. Enjoy! goo.gl/dO1hcX

“Sugar and Spice
And everything nice
That’s what little girls are made of”
Nursery Rhyme-Robert Stanley

Few people know that early in my coaching career, I coached soccer. I have tried very hard to keep this a secret because I was always afraid that I would be forced to coach it again. I don’t have anything against soccer or soccer players; it’s just that they don’t think like football players. If you were to tell a football player to run through a wall, he would do it and then ask to do again. If you were to tell a soccer player to run through a wall he would ask why? The word why is not something a football coach really wants to hear. When I really think about it, I probably think more like a soccer player than a football player. Please don’t tell anyone.
The first soccer match I saw was the first soccer match I coached in. This was in 1975. The internet did not exist. There was no Soccer Channel or even YouTube to search for help. We had these odd, rectangular shaped objects made of paper called books. They actually contained information on a plethora of subjects including soccer. I read books, talked to soccer coaches and went to clinics to learn the game of soccer. A crop of athletic, soccer playing freshmen came through Mauldin in the late 1970’s and I rode them for four years. They won four region championships and an upper-state title to go along with a state runners-up trophy. I actually “retired” with the second highest win total in state history at that time, seventy seven. The game has since changed to the point that you can’t find my name on the list anymore.
In the early 1980’s our court system decided that girls had the same right to play soccer as the boys. Unfortunately the courts decided too late for the girls to have their own teams and for that one year the fairer sex was allowed to try out for the boy’s teams. None of the soccer coaches expected any of the girls to make their team but none of those soccer coaches had Laena Marie Karnstedt. Laena had played a lot of soccer and had a skill level on the par with my best guys. What she lacked was speed and strength. Laena made up for this lack of athleticism with determination, hustle, great ball handling and passing skills. She made the team as a midfielder where speed was an asset but not a necessity.
Laena had a bubbly and vivacious personality to go with blond Germanic good looks. I cannot remember if she had blue eyes but it is my guess that she did. Laena was of medium height and her frame reminded me of a cheerleader more than a soccer player. Guys know what that means. Ladies if you don’t, go ask a guy. I did not know what to make of my newest charge but decided to treat her exactly like “one of the guys.” I did not really convince myself and ended up treating the guys more like her. Those “good job” slaps on the butt had to come to an end.
I had never coached girls before and have coached very few girls since. Only one season as a junior varsity girls’ basketball coach and one as a junior varsity girls’ soccer coach made me an authority on how NOT to coach girls. I went into each season thinking the only difference between girls and guys besides the obvious, was that girls looked and smelled better. I found out by season’s end that there were huge differences in the way male and female athletes view their game. At this time, men were more team sport oriented while women were still learning. I also found out that emotionally men and women were just wired differently. Remember, the Mars and Venus book would not be published for several decades and I only had my experiences with a few girlfriends and two ex-wives to go on. Two guys will get mad, explode and fight, and then shake hands. Later, they will go get a beer and then, together, chase after girls. When women get mad they stay mad and plot how to get even. Women will usually wait several weeks and ask a question like “Do you remember three weeks ago when…?” Seriously, I don’t remember the football score from three hours ago much less some perceived slight. They will also try to get as many of their friends involved as possible. Another difference is that guys cry when they are very, very sad. Girls cry when they are very sad, very happy or when they are very mad. Guys have a hard time determining which of these three situations are in effect until it is too late. For this humble coach, women are at best, a conflicted mine field of emotions. Laena did not really fit this mold except… when she did.
Women have always been confusing to me. The only one I really understood was my mother but that was because she actually had my best interest at heart. Sometimes I even understand my daughter, but even she is not a sure thing. Laena was confusing when she wasn’t actually on the field. She reverted to the “girly” girl. She would bring cookies and brownies to practice. I never had a player do that before or since. They might bring bubble gum or sunflower seeds. Sometimes they would bring pork rinds. Never did they bring cookies and brownies. Whenever she was not playing, she became a cheerleader with all of those cutesy cheers you have heard before: “Chewing tobacco, Chewing tobacco spit, spit, spit….” She always seemed to be in very close proximity and underfoot when she was on the sidelines. I think it was because she knew if she was tucked in under my shoulder that I would not curse too much or if she made me uncomfortable enough I would put her in the game. She made me uncomfortable a lot. She even had a unique way of falling down which involved somehow landing on her butt with her feet still planted on the ground while giggling the whole time. Soccer players shouldn’t giggle.
Hidden behind her blonde good looks and cheerleader personality was a competitive streak the width of the Potomac River. Her competitive streak, along with a high level of technical skill made her formidable. She was especially formidable if you underestimated her because “she was a girl.” Please don’t misunderstand; Laena was a good person until you treated her like a girl. Then you should watch out because you just might get hurt.
It does not matter if you are a girl or not, new team members have to prove themselves to their teammates. It is an unwritten law and Laena was no exception to it. She came to me in private before practice and told me that a couple of the more Neanderthal of our guys were giving her grief about being a girl on a boys’ team. Not exactly bullying her but doing what guys do when guys think there is a weakness. Immature boys will try to pick any perceived weakness like a scab and make it bleed. She did not know what to do. I didn’t know either. I told her that anything that I did would probably make it worse. I told her to ignore it unless it got worse and then come back if it did. As with most women I have given advice to, Laena didn’t listen and decided to take matters into her own hands or in this case her feet. We had a one on one drill we called The Gauntlet. Everyone lined up in two columns facing each other. Two people went to each end of the column and a ball was placed in the middle. On a whistle, they had to attack the ball, gain control and dribble the ball to the opposite end of the column. To be honest it was a type of “anything” goes kind of drill that are frowned upon today. I can see Laena in my mind’s eye, running with a purpose, shoulders over her driving knees with determination written on her face as she went hard into a shoulder tackle. Before the drill was over, Laena had put both Neanderthals out of the practice with bloody and bruised ankles. Unless you count their pride, they sustained no permanent injury and had perhaps learned their lesson. The problem went away. Maybe women are the smarter gender.
As we approached the first match of the season an interesting situation occurred. It appeared Laena was the only female soccer player playing state wide and it was deemed news worthy. Media coverage was not something that high school soccer teams expected in 1982. This was still the era of print media coverage and sixteen millimeter film. We were rarely covered by the newspapers or local TV. Suddenly that changed. Laena was a star. She was interviewed, I was interviewed, along with team members, parents, ball boys, administrators, and my third cousin twice removed. No one ever asked what kind of team we were going to have. It was always the same variation on a theme. “How does it feel to be the only girl on a team of boys?” “How are coaching girls and boys different?” “How do you like having a girl on your team?” Blah, Blah, Blah.
Our first match of the season was against Greer. Greer, during this period, was known for its football and not its soccer. Midfield is the most strenuous position on the soccer field because you are running from penalty box to penalty box. I always tried to rotate midfielders to keep them fresh. Laena was in the rotation. As the match proceeded, I sent Laena to the substitute’s area to await a stoppage so she could enter. When it occurred, she was waved onto the field by the referee and a new era in South Carolina athletics began. Almost immediately she found herself shoulder to shoulder with a Greer player, fighting for control of a ball, and she went down hard on the ground. The young man, being a fine southern gentleman, did the chivalrous thing and offered her his hand to help her up. It was chivalrous but it was not smart. She took his hand, stood up and cut both of his feet out from under him. He went down hard right in front of the referee. He whistled play dead and pulled out a yellow card. She actually giggled as she received a warning from the referee. If she had not been accepted by her team before, she became a team member after her warning.
If this were a novel, the Mauldin Mavericks would have gone on and made it to the State Finals. They would have found themselves down by a big score, crawled back into the match to tie and then after two overtime periods, Laena would score the winning goal on a penalty kick. Sorry, this is not a novel. Laena and the Mavericks did go on to have a great season and went deep into the playoffs but no State Championship winning kick. The next season Laena had her own team to play on and I had moved on to Greenville High. I wonder if Laena would have rather competed with the boys. I have not been in contact with Laena since she graduated from Mauldin but we are Facebook friends and it appears that her successes have continued. She became a doctor and there are pictures of Laena smiling her big smile and of her family and home. I see two blond daughters. I wonder if they play soccer or whether they know what their mother did in the early 1980s. I doubt Laena has told them that she was a pioneer of sorts nor does she know what a tremendous impact she had on my own life. Maybe I’ll get to tell them.

SOUTHERN CROSS From the book FLOPPY PARTS

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

An excerpt from FLOPPY PARTS by Don Miller
http://goo.gl/GIssEq
Every time I run I listen to music on my pink IPOD Shuffle. It helps with the monotony and pain of mile after mile after…. With me for nearly every running or walking miss-step for the last several years, it has long outlasted several less colorful IPODS or Shuffles and due to its longevity, owes me no service. What is disconcerting about my IPOD is that it seems to have a mind of its own or, at the very least, is inhabited by a ghost. No matter what playlist I transfer to it, the Crosby, Stills and Nash song “Southern Cross” somehow finds its way onto the playlist. I even have a Jimmy Buffett version which doubles the chances of it haunting me. It is not as good as the original but not bad and when I hear it or the original I am transported back into my memories. It’s not that I don’t like the song, I do. I like it very much because the memories that the song invokes makes me think of a longtime friend who was for a short time the object of my floppy parts and affection. She left this world several years ago and I find that the song makes me a bit sad and introspective. After a while I do begin to smile over our antics from almost four decades ago as we traveled a bumpy path toward “hooking up.” If you have read the “Devil’s Spawn” you are ahead of the game. After teaching together for several years, we would both go through trashed marriages and without consulting each other decided to make the typical lifestyle changes associated with newly divorced folk. As a male I felt duty bound to go out and purchase the requisite sports car that I could not afford while Jane lost forty pounds in weight, which she could afford. Yes, typical, and for a brief period I found Jane riding around in my sports car.
Kindle Floppy