asfoxseesit
About Me

- Name: foxofbama
Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Furman's embarassing Criminal Trespass Policy
Furman criminal trespass policy and its random implementation on whims of some faculty is beneath the good reptation of the University. A Mr. Suttles in 2019 discovered that and became of some notoriety in a column easbily googled at the Furman Paladin Newspaper.
I was told if I appealed my case I would charged with harassment. A few weeks ago I discovered the Furman Thrive committee and am seeking some sensibility from them to overule the decision so far by John Milby of campus security. He is a nice fellow trained to be a Swat officer; He is just doing what his handlers tell him to do.
So I hope the Thrivers will overrule him immediately as I desperately want to attend by 50th Homecoming celebration with outstanding lectures, Homecoming Day and the Sunday to follow when Alabama comes to the renovated Timmons arena to play Furman in an exhibition. My last five years back in the Upstate I have attended many games and revived some of the passion of the mid seventies with Clyde Mayes and Bruce Grimm
Furman stand to lose a quarter of a million dollars in the next few years from friends of mine who will no longer consider Furman in their wills. They think I have been mistreated and the word will spread.
On top of that several of us are pledging cumulatively a thousand dollars in the next decade if this outragesous and ridiculous charge is not overturned for homecoming
This is not Trone money, but a quarter million here and a thousand there and after a while we're talking real money.
Here is just a short list of Furman folks Ive become acuainted with over the last fifty years, classmates and the greater community I am convinced a Fair searing of my predicament would join my cause
Tomiko Brown Nagin of Harvard and Ratcliffe
Ainsley Quiros of UNA and Vandy PHD. I reviewed her book on MLK and Americus Ga for Christian Ethics Today whose editor in Furman class of 65
Historians Vernon Burton of Clemson and Ed Bridges who wrote the bicentennial history of Alabama. On my invitation he come to Collinsville Alabama in 2019 for a Presentation
Doug Cumming retired journalism proff at Wash Lee whose father Joe hired Marshall Frady in 1965 to work out of the Atlanta bureau of Newsweek
Classmates John Baker of Charleston, and Bob Carr. Bob was an English Major and made a B in Crabtree's Shakespeare class. Baker was on the engineering team that renovated and did the addon dining area the Dining Hall
Dwight Smith who has stayed around Greenville and acitve in the Furman community the last 50 years.
Vic Greene longtime Chaplain. As noted in an earlier blog, Jim Pitts said he would nominate for a Furman chapter of the Order of the Palmetto.
And John Adams pastor of fbc Easley SC Furman grad with Baylor PHD who has come to know President Davis of Furman fairly well in her seven year presidency of Furman.
Kathy Sharpe whose Mother was English teacher at Furman and husband Mark Stone just reitred from the Philosophy Department. And Kathy friend from Triune Mercy Center Elaine Nocks retired from Furman faculty
And I think if you asked him the right question Alec Taylor, trustee and benefactor would come down on my side. He was on my Intramural softball team. About 15 years ago he came to Collinsville where I had arranged for Hugo Black's Grandson Stepehn to have lunch with us
Sam Hodges the acclaimed Journalist of FU 77 is aware of my situation. We talked October16
I am open after Homecoming to meet off campus or wherever with the The Thrive folks or their representatitives to iron this matter out. Longtime Greenville asttorney and state senator Fletcher Smith who was SC campaign manager for Joe Lieberman and in 2008 a hot aommodity for Hillary Clinton and Obamahas told me his open to meeting with us. We have been friends since the days of integration in Gaffney
I mentioned this to Jane Robelot of WYFF this morning in a call to encourage her to go see the grand movie One Battle after Another.
Collinsville Panthers owned the Dekalb county basketball tourney in the nineties
A 1 A school halfway between Birmingham and Chattanooga was the best basketball team in North Alabama in the nineties. They won the county tourney four years in a row and were in the finall two more years. Starting in the fall of 93 with Billy Wayne Clanton they estableished some glory years as the Dutton brothers Mark and Chuckie then Solomon Stanton and Luke Griggs and Delvin George came along. Neal Thrash of Fyffe Alabama was their coach who sidelined in teaching Shakespeare..
Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Furman criminal trespass and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
This will begin a series of blogs on my drama with Furman and its criminal trespass policy of which I am the latest victim. Until January of this year I was convinced Furman was a grand place even with the unfortunate decision on Baseball during covid. At Furman I was an Argonaut for two years, in the Band a year and the Furman singers for several months. The fall of 1973 with Dicky Wilson of New Jersey I was co emcee for the Furman Homecoming production the Furman Follies. McAslister auditorium was packed out with Vince Perone present and Herman Lay of potato chips and Pepsi fame. We did a grand job.
My friend Jim Pitts recently deceased longtime Chaplain at Furman ssaid I was worthy of Furman's e uivalent of the order of the Palmetto for my piece in the Christian Century in the early nineties about Furman's dilemma with SC Baptists. Dr. Johns snet me a note of thanks. President David Shi for several years was a reader of this blog, teasuingly calling it "illustrious" at one point. With Shi and Sam Hodges FU 77 and Coug Cumming, son of Joe who hired Marshall Frady at Newswek in 75l we consider ourselves the Marshall Frady fan club of Furman
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Authentic Baptists as identified by Randall Balmer and the threat of the legacy of Charlie Kirk
In 1959 and I was baptized at the Truett memorial Baptist Church in Hayesville, North Carolina the birthplace of George W Truett. my father was the pastor there and it registered with me early the historical marker on Highway 64 on the sidewalk right in front of the Baptist Church. This historical markers said something to the effect-- and you can find it online --George W Truett, great Baptist who was 40 years to pastor the first Baptist Church Dallas, Texas was born 3 miles west of here. There is a camp in Haysville still there in Truett‘s honor and in fact, oh one of my daddy‘s good scrabble playing friends Hershey Miller was in the 10th grade in high school in those days. His father was the association of missionary and he slept in the room in George W Truett‘s bedroom at his house there at the camp in 1960. The great Baptist Stewart a Newman Came through Haysville with the president of Southeastern seminary, Sid Stealey and another fella on the way to Nashville in the early days of the Elliott controversy, mom made a good meal for them and when it was over Newman, who really wasn’t enthusiastic about what he knew he would face in Nashville told Olin Binkley said you fellas just go ahead. I think I’ll stay here with Billy. Newman I was later to find out was a mentor to James Dunn DUNN himself.Newman taught at Southeastern seminary was a teacher, not only for my dad, but his classmates Randall, lolley and Bill Self.
1960 would’ve been about four years after he followed WA Criswell while at the pastors conference in South Carolina after Criswell would’ve given a race speeding speech. Newman said W Criswell doesn't speak for me. See Duke's Curtis Freeman Dead from the Neck up on That telling piece of American history. The late 30s it turns out from a oral tradition interview with Newman in archives at Baylor, Newman was on a Train with George Truett from Fort Worth to Memphis and they talked a good four hours on that trip and Newman said it wasn’t long before Truett was talking about his entanglement with Jay Frank Norris. Norris did everything he could to be little Truett and to diminish his great legacy at first Baptist Dallas. In bigger context in what is to follow the great historian Jill LEPORE missions in her grand history of America These Truths;, she smart enough to see how Norris and his way of thinking was to poison America’s politics in the 20th centurycom that through the fundamentals take over the southern Baptist convention and it’s part with Bushes the guy he called the third and then perfected in what became the MAGA movement of fundamentalism is the key role plays the key part so much so that when Lepore gets to the 70s, she emphasizes the role of the eagle forum played in slowing down America’s Grudging advanced towards progressive thought in the presidency of Clinton and Obama
This coincides with her October cover story in the Atlantic on the Constitution. There is a parallel to the the inerantist mindset on Scripture to Originalist version of the Constitution. That came together in the great Baptist of Alabama in the mid 20th Twentieth Century Judge Frank HJonson. He saw the Constitution as a living breathing document and was certainl inerrantist. About him Bill Moyers said had Lincoln lived in Alabama in the mid 1960s he wouldve been Frank Johnson and had Johnson lived during the Civil War he woulda been Abraham Lincoln.
Jill Lepore in her recent history of America These Truths put the Truett Newman Conversation on the train ride in larger perspective. She has the savvy to make note of the legacy of J Frank Norris and the political evolution of his fundamentalism in her segment on the Scopes Monkey trial. By the end of the 20th Century Karl Rove was perfecting the strategy of molesting religious convictions that have given us the MAGA Base. Lepore doubles down on the Eagle Forum, a sister the John Birch Society and umbrella groups Paul Pressler, Patterson and Jesse Helms were energetic about. It is of some note that Tim Tebow's Mother, a member of Jerry Vines FBC Jacksonville Florida, was the Eagle Forum woman of the year in 2018
Saturday, September 20, 2025
Charlie Kirk in perspective, Legacy, Stuckey and what not
Check her next week for a review of Randall Balmer book on church state separation. On Tuesday Balmer one of the leading scholars on evangelical politics in America at Good Faith Media named Kirk a "Charlatan" . As it is also with Eric Metaxas and david Barton. Somebody please tell FBC Spartanburg and Trey Gowdy, his Mommo Ovalene and Nikkiei Haley on the Clemson Trustee board and her friend the Management Bien Milstead a wayward Wesleyan with the voice of Clemson athletics: The ROAR
Friday, September 19, 2025
Saints in Newport Tenn and Bethany in Gaffney; Bethel and Bethany
Come back to this next week as it will need some edits and refinement.
Couple weeks ago I turned up the obituary for Paul Rufus James of Newport Tenn. Goodgle it up for background of this blog. He was a choir director for 70 years, four of thos at my dad's first church in the Baltimore community of Parrotsville and Newport Tennessee. I was born there in 1953 when Steve Spurrier was in the fourth grade on the Hill at Newport Grammar School. James was a lifelong friend of my dad coming to his birthday party in 1997. My Dad 's first baptism was his son Freddy who became principal of Cosby High School, made famous in Cormac McCarthy;;s last novel, the Passenger where the protagonist Bobby Western toys with going off the grid to Cosby.
INez Thompson, served Kool-Aid for 10 years or more vacation Bible school at Bethany Baptist on Wilkinsville Road in Gaffney where my Dad was pastor from 1962 to 1978. we had this two week 10 day vacation Bible school. This memory celebration of two saints is provoked in part by the cook the goose ecumenical conference in NE cranny of North Carolina of Virginia and Tenn in the New River vicinity annually for the last seven years on a farm. Kevin Heffner, the Kidney doctor in Arkansas who has a pine forest and a nice home . His father of Plain Dealing LA father work for the Sunday school board is Todd‘s brother. They’re big fans of Justin Cox, a preacher who interned with Jack Causey in Statesville so there’s that connection to Gaffney though it’s a little bit of a reach
I went by the Thompson house last Friday on KNOT T St.. It’s hard to find it. It was closed off two different ways and you can’t get to Jackie Simmons and Chip Sheffield. Can’t get on that street anymore. It’s got a bit tough hill, but it was in that yard my fourth grade , a Sunday, the fifth grade they invite us over for a very modest charitably, house on that street they invited us over for lunch and we get there and some of their extended families cause of such a big spread. We’re invited up from Pacolet. They hadn’t gone to church that morning when I one of their cousins in law smoking his Marlboro with his cigarettes wrapped up it is His sleeve and his T-shirt. First time I heard the word politics registered with me as it was an earnest conversation. and then I became enamored with upstate politics with Roger Milliken and his Gaffney associate John Hamrick and textile Mill workers
Paul James came over to Newport from Warren Wilson school learned that in the obituary in . Later moved his letter from Bethel Church to English Creek, he was choir director song leader for 70 some ideas. He was a good man. He got into local politics on the county commission and his obituary speaks for itself. Carlyle Marney, the great Baptist Wiseman and intellect came down to Gaffney from Charlotte in 1978 two years two months before he died to speak to ministers and I crashed it and I think Mike Hammett was there but somebody was talking about integrity just a few years after Watergate and he was talking about all the scandals in church life in here and there and somebody ask him so where is integrity in America these days. and he said he said you preachers see it every Sunday morning when you look out in the congregation, all your churches have five or six people, families that hold it together that tithe give 10% of their income they show up for the services. They have a prayer life. They read their Bible. He said that’s where it is And so it was with Paul James and Inez Thompson, James Broome and Esther Dawkins, and there’s all kinds of others in mom’s hometown I don’t know if he does his daily Bible reading or not but Thomas Barksdale is a good man in the mold of Paul James and Jeff Graves. is a good man and and my friend on the water board in Momma's Hometown of Collinsville Alabama where I lived for thirty years. Peggy Weaver the good Methodist wife of a high school All American quarterback is in the Lamb's Book of life as well

