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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.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Graduation 2012

I graduated from Gaffney High School 41 years ago, 71. The festivities were delayed about ten minutes and I remember future Olympic hurdler Charles Foster just in front of me turning around and saying, Fox Let's get this show on the road, I'm hurdlin out of this town. We were on the tennis courts behind Gaffney's then 5 or 6 year old gym, where proud parents from Grassy Pond, Goucher, Corinth, Elm Street, Daniel Morgan,Hetty Hill, New Street, Granard and various other places inside and out the City Limits were waiting. Wayne Whiteside presented the diplomas that year. I didn't speak, but my sister did in 74; and outside event. I think we all got four tickets as the gym packed out in a hurry. The year before I was a marshall; one of my shining moments, up there with emceeing the Furman Homecoming Show in 73 for Herman Lay of Frito Lay Potato chips and the President of FSU. Maybe I peaked out too soon (ha) But in the spirit of Buckner Fanning of San Antonio Texas Trinity BC where I first heard Tony Campolo sermon on Four Whores in Honolulu; and a graduation Buckner's remembrance of a late 80's foray out to LBJ's Hill Country; which we all know is in the direction of Friday Night Lights, Billy Bob and Lucas and Buzz Bissinger. Lately in a mad dash toward penury abetted by illtimed bout with pollen and breathing maladies, I have been overdosing on The Hart biography of James Dickey and last couple days back to back stellar installments of the NPR Diane Rehm show; plus Girl Child's Tupelo Hassman has become my new best Facebook friend. Yesterday drshow.org featured Dennis Johnson's Train Dreams with a stellar panel--two of whom are enamored with my friend Ron Rash; and today Eudora Welty's neighbor from Jackson Mississippi Richard Ford. His Canada is strong stuff and I recommend both to all. Ford's reading from the new novel about a father, reminded me of many folks who sat in the gym at GHS in 71; a possible version of my last ten years or so on the earth. But as a friend from Bham said on the phone today as I was contemplating leaving the House for FPayne, Alabama and the internets, or staying homebound; as we both were raised on the cliches and wisdom of Marshall Frady's Baptist faith: "Go ahead, cause you never know what tomorrow may bring.: Charles Petty and Raymond Harrill couldn't agree more; even Wayne Whiteside. P.S. Kathleen Graber's New Yorker poem The Transgression of Noah also informs this little riff, as does the conclusion of the chapter on the Anchorite, the priest and the Colindancia in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing.

posted by foxofbama | 11:43 AM

1 Comments:

Blogger foxofbama said...

And the last verse of the Noah poem of which I spoke:

And sometimes we never speak that for which we could

only too easily find the sounds. Noah lived 350 years

beyond the flood & became a man of the earth, intoxicated

in old age on the vines he’d raised. Even in our silence,

we are told, we carry the Word. This morning in the shower,

I looked down & saw my mother’s bare body asleep in mine.

Noah’s nakedness fills the canvas, making it impossible

not to look. As though simply to recall the tale is a sin

whose penance is to live knowing you have somehow

made it happen again. The memory flickers, almost

without detail, shorter than a dream & threatens to go out—

illuminated not by an orange flame but by a brutal whiteness.

The snowy blast from a television screen. Or a fluorescent light

with a faulty ballast which hums & winks all night in an empty hall

2:15 PM  

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