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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, December 29, 2016

2016 in review: "It's all so fuckin hysterical"

  This was is a work in progress so check back in in ten days or so. I got some more to say   

For the record the f bomb was frowned on in my house growing up and I didn't cuss at all till I was about 25. But most people in Gaffney didn't understand what you were talking about especially in commerce and politics unless you were versed in the dark language. I remember the first time I heard the word. I was in about the fourth grade and a black kid about 3 years older over on New Street came out with it. Ricky Bailey and Barry Moore had heard it but was new one for me.

    I asked about it at supper that night. Lot of silence, can't remember an attempt to define, but it was clear not a word that was to be uttered in our house.

    But as earlier blogs have discussed this is the year the country was Rattfucked and Donald Trump became President of the United States and Franklin Graham said it was less Putin's hacks as it was an "act of God". That is why it's all so fuckin hysterical.

   Some of you I'm sure know the phrase from Connor before he became James Bond in the Tom Hanks and Paul Newman Road to Perdition of about 15 years ago, a great movie in my book as is this year's Manchester by the Sea. Fuck em if they don't give Casey Affleck the Oscar on that one.

     My friend Bill Leonard got it right today in his piece in Baptist News about the Wind Up Jesus. Google that one. Will Campbell and Jonathan Daniels. Ive lost two facebook friends in the last 36 hours trying to explain how Adrian Rogers and WA Criswell got us to this Trump moment. And research the life and career of the Baptist bastard James Deloach who did the bidding of Jesse Helms in getting rid of my Dad's classmate Randall Lolley at Southeastern Seminary.

   Rick and Bubba don't have a damn clue neither does Cliff Simms of Bama's Yellowhammer News but they are ridin high now thinking the pussy grabber is the second coming of Jesus.

     Well lets move on. I kept my head above water for the most part last year and kept despair at bay. Leon Russell died and Leonard Cohen and Muhammad Ali and every year it is ever more apparent I'm gonna die too. What was it Ziggy Stardust, who also left us last year, said: When the world is spinning down, you take the rest of what's still around." With Leonard Cohen's Broken Bell gonna do my best to put one foot in front of the other this next year and shed a little light where I can and damn the darkness when needs be.

      http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/leonard+cohen/the+bells_20589877.html

   I fell off my bicycle back in January. Embarrased myself in downtown Collinsville but didn't break anything. Bled a little so I went to the bench across from the Barbershop to give the Historical Society a little banter for the next meeting.


  I had 8,865 hits on my blog last month. so somebody is reading and I feel a compulsion to get more sanity out there for my audience (ha)


   Was a good year for Martha Barksdale as you see back in July in the apotheosis blog. I congratulate her for that. The Lighting of the Cricket Marquee was a good day for Collinsville. I hope we can get Mark Wilson to the theatre for a much needed conversation about Trump and the Daughters of the Confederacy, maybe a group read of Kathy Cox, Dixie's Daughters.

   At years end caught Manchester by the Sea and Jackie. Mrs Kennedy Onassis did not smoke as she makes clear in the film but she did remember everything. Her conversations with the Priest are as good as Fleming Rutledge sermons and a good Marilynne Robinson essay.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

HS Basketball in NE Bama on Eve of Trump Administration.

   The Little princess gymnast cheerleader from Sand Rock, The Rock, High School was barking like a dog by the 3rd period of the boys game last Friday Night in the LD Dobbins arena in Collinsville Alabama.


   The place was packed and rocking as Collinsville just a few months ago had renewed the football rivalry with Sand Rock about 7 miles away up on mostly Lily White Lookout Mountain, Alabama.


  I knew it was gonna be a helluva game when I looked up from sittin with Donnie Mac Myers of the Weldon Parrish administration, looked up and saw 8th grader kayla Beene hittin a layup calm as a cucumber. Out there with the big girls. Was proud to know her Uncle Russ who once tried to put the ball in play in the same arena through the backboard. Kayla may not be the next Heather Mayes, but then again nobody will ever be the next Heather Mayes. The Panthers had Mayes teammate at Jax State, now the Rock Coach, sufferin. Got close at the end but shoulda been a route.


   One of the biggest crowds I'd seen since the Wayne Dowdy days of the late 80s and Solomon Stanton's glory years in the mid 90s.


   I traveled over to the Waffle House back in October on a Thursday night trying to get on the radio with Scott Wright and Sand Rock legend Rusty Jacoway radio, but there audience tech man wasn't present so no on air fame for me. Meanwhile I had missed the memo and didn't get to see Raymond Weaver at the Collinsville pep ralley in front of the lit up marquee Cricket Theatre in Downtown Collinsville.


   Weaver reports say recounted the second game he played against Sand Rock about 76 when Wellington Hope ran all over the Rock Wildcats. Caused Bad blood and the on again off again football series ended in 94, 95 or so and didn't pick up again till last year.


   Several fights over the years. Revenant and local historian Wayne Clanton Sunday night was telling me about the famous game in 58 in the old gym now dedicated to Bama Hall of Famer Lindy Hood, where the local crackers were stacked in like Pancakes. Collinsville teacher  Wendale Tidmore hit the end game buzzer while a sand rock basket was in the air, a shot that made its mark but the game was called for Collinsville and it was bedlam. Big Brawl, even a woman takin off her heels and beating a man in the face on the floor.

   Brawl lasted an hour plumb out to the railroad across Highway 11.


   Then there have some near misses and almost brouhahas over the years, a tense game I saw in 88 when some Rockers at their place went after my friend Dwight as he was headed down the stairs to the away locker. That was right after the Fred Lockett era, Fred from Lebanon and one of the finest Americans Ive ever met anywhere.


     There were rumors of the N Word being trafficked on snap chat and Instagram this year. But Nigger aint what it used to be as my friend Herman Kerley dismissed the term in a doc on Collinsville back in 2002 shown on statewide PBS. Good doc featuring former mayor Willingham who has property in the Brownfell community near The Rock, and Herman Prado.


    Kerley, who a student at Alabama state in Montgomery in the late 50s was in church with Martin Luther King, Jr and Rosa Parks. Kerley said in the doc there used to be a sign in Crossville about 8 miles west of Collinsville on Sand Mtn, that said: "Read Nigger Run and if you can't read, run anyway."


    He laughed and he should.


     So I guess the Sand Rock princess had reason to be barking by the 3rd period as the Rockers were down by about 20 points in their new uniforms. I laughed with her. In another time, another place we could be friends. She reminded me of a joke a Miss Alabama contestant from Gardendale told me once but I fear misinterpretation at this point. About JAPS, an anacronym in a Joan Rivers Routine.


   I wouldn't be surprised if she goes into real estate some day.


    The Rock is in the Provinces but things aren't like they used to be. Scott Wright wrote up their 85 gridiron campaign in Fire on the Mtn, and those children get around. Wormy Norris's grandson Riley,  is a starter for U Bama roundballers and does a good job. These kids go to Rome Ga and Disney world and have seen some things and had conversations with the rich kids who come up from Atlanta to Lake Weiss in the summer. Bush 43 Atty Gen Alberto Gonzalez Mother in law  lives there and BeyoncĂ© herself has ancestry in Gaylesville which you can almost get to on the Lake.


   And from Collinsville Charlie Hood escaped in 65 and went to Berry and over to Cobb County Georgia where he coached Dale Ellis who played for UTenn and then Patrick Ewing's son who played for Georgetown where my hero LJ Peak of Gaffney South Carolina, now owns the court. So if the locals say Nigger as Kerley points out, they don't say it with as much confidence and enthusiasm as they used to cause they know it don't scour very far after they leave the front yard.


   I'm hoping some of them become acaquainted with Isabel Wilkerson who has roots in Rome Ga and is calling for some truth and reconciliation conversations. With the event today in Gadsden Alabama with Bryan Stevenson that is not as far fetched an idea as some in the Daughters of the Confederacy might've imagined even a couple years ago.


   Who knows what Jennifer Wilkins and Mark Wilson will bring to the Cricket Theatre in the next couple years.


   I imagine about 87 percent of the Collinsville crowd voted Trump and 96 percent of the Sand Rock crowd. All that wasn't race based though a member of an influential family in Collinsville is convinced Hillary Clinton killed 34 people. Not too many people in either school listen to Diane Rehm show. Most think the Daughters of the Confederacy tell the truth about the civil war.

    Hal Crowther's piece on the DAC and the New Mind of the South Revisited is as easy google at John Grisham's Oxford American, but you won't find Oxam  Mag at the Collinsville Public Library at least until Wilkins gets a stamp of approval from Mark Wilson is my existentialism on that one.



    Even more disappointing is a few folks who think James Dobson was a better person to trust on who Christians should vote for, him and Rick and Bubba over Jesus Christ and Bishop Willimon; and I'm afraid too many fans never read my friend Sam Hodges For the Love of Alabama or Pelikans Jesus Through the Centuries or even are aware of the Collinsville connections to all three Christian martyrs in bust in Westminster Abbey.


   I think Gloria Morgan has added one more to her list and I'm proud of her for that. She was at the game Friday beside the scorer's table. Her sister's church in Cobb County Ga, Bryant Wright's Johnson Ferry BC--they got spotlighted on CBS 60 Minutes in October-- is housing Syrian refugees so there is a finger in Trump's eye at least on one count.


     I had a lot more I wanted to say about the history of the county and the cross pollination among the teams and the unofficial visit of some girls in the class of 91 to Sand Rock and how both sets of cheerleaders should see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and talk to their Mothers about The Heathers which was a big flick in the 90s.


   But here. I have to live here and so far except for the chase in 06 that got a few sirens relatively unscathed, at least physically. Thirty years in Bama will take its toll on anybody.


    I will say this, back in the Spring when Black Lives Matter--see the story about the  Bunk Richardson fellow hanging from the Bridge in Gadsden in 1902 in tomorrow's Gadsden paper and read my spare parts blog--was a good story about a 20 something of color from Bama coming back from NYC with a Yankee friend of same race. As they got to North Carolina and then South, Georgia and then Bama the confederate paraphernalia was more and more evident waving from pick up truck and on bumper stickers. Yankee Negro was getting tense. It was evident. He said to the Bama POC how can you stand it. Bama dude said, chill out, these crackers are my friends. When I see all this shit and hear em chantin Roll Tide and for the Bear and Robert E Lee, that's when I know I'm home.


   Maybe there is some hope in that; that and maybe Mark Wilson and Martha Barksdale getting more people to listen to NPR and Jason Barnett as a Republican School Supe Expecting More.


    I guess we're about to find out.


   If you've read this far, come back early next year. Maybe some refinement and some add ons or a part Two


And here was the view from Sand Rock press


http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/cherokee_county/sand-rock-girls-comeback-attempt-falls-short-at-collinsville/article_1092dfba-bea8-11e6-97a0-2f9392ae98d4.html


Update, and the followup last night was something. I was there:


http://m.northwestgeorgianews.com/cherokee_county/rivera-s-clutch-layup-caps-collinsville-girls-comeback-at-sand/article_0278be42-d82d-11e6-99f5-278d36af78ce.html?mode=jqm

Thursday, December 08, 2016

Trump, NYTimes, Fake News and Bama's Rick and Bubba and Yellowhammer News; Samford YAF

    Samford U, historically Baptist college had a riff raff last week with Yellowhammer News over YAF student group wanting certification. I saw similar mess in 93 with the near 2,000 fundamentalist Baptist preachers and Bircher friends of Albert Lee Smith hold an Inquisition of then President Tom Corts.

     Will say a lot more about this later. But all in a package today with NPR sterling hours on NY Times and Trump on Fresh Air, and earlier Diane Rehm on fake news and its time for some conversations next year at Samford and Bham Southern. I'm ready to talk to Rick and Bubba, and Cliff Simms with somebody neutral moderating, holding the microphone.

   Sad when otherwise decent people convinced themselves Hillary Clinton killed 34 people, a matter addressed directly this morning on drshow.org; and James Dobson convinced Baptist preachers whose children go to UVA, Duke and Yale Trump is better for evangelical Christians than a lifelong Methodist Woman.

     Come back to this. Will spotlight the letter NY Times lawyers sent to Trump when he threatened libel. Up there with starkness to my facebook friend Tupelo Hassman's open letter to Jeff Sessions, roughly titled Kitty fights back.

   In meantime google, good Christian friends rejoicing over Donald Trump. As The Nutty Professor said to Cletus, "go ahead, it aint nuttin but a short walk!'

Friday, December 02, 2016

Alicea Fletcher Dreams politics; Joe Kennedy, Father Coughlin and Rick and Bubba

     Alicea Fletcher is a facebook friend of mine, I've never met her but I believe she is a graduate of Collinsville HS of the 60s and native of Lookout Mtn in the Ruhama community and a cousin of Mike Arthur. I know his children think she is a hoot and I have found her to be just exactly that on facebook.

     She lives in Dallas now.

    A Few days ago she posted a hilarious dream she had. She was at a restaurant with Trump and Melania and the Playboy star Pam Anderson insisted she order vegan. It got more hilarious after that; point being she's been as offkiltered by this Trump election as I have.

     For whatever reason I had a political dream last night though much darker. I think it mighta been that I tried to make it first night back in Bama after a twelve day stay in South Carolina with all the amenities without heat, Just the electric blanket.

    It got down in the 20s and I did not have my best boggan on my head. I'm balding on top and often about three am that stokes the demons in my REMs.

     This was Rothian, as in Phillip Roth. Seems like some 70s actor that wasn't quite Art Garfunkel from some of the dark stuff he did, or somebody from Carnal Knowledge got in this dream not quite whats his face from McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

    Anyway I awoke and had the thought Bobby Kennedy's grandson Joe Kennedy ought to go after Jeff Sessions like his Grandfather went after organized crime. The trick is RFK had an interesting relationship with Joe McCarthy as both were Irish Catholics of the prevatican II days as a Catholic friend from Ft. Lauderdale pointed out to me a month ago when I got excited about the nuances of Larry Tye's new bio of RFK with References to Gaffney SC's Marian Wright Edelman.

   Bobby Kennedy went to Joe McCarthy's funeral as incognito as he could be according to Tye.

     I called Joe Kennedy's DC office a while back and testified to as much. I hope Joe can come to Furman soon for a sweet time in Jesus.

    My brilliant insight stoked somehow by this dark dream was Joe Jr should bring Rick and Bubba of faux altright Baptist radio in Bama and their fellow traveler Cliff Simms in for some Q and A on the house floor and make Trey Gowdy's Fox News charade of a Benghazi investigation look like Sunday School. Nail R and B and Cliff as the Father Coughlin's they are. Joe knows a little about Bob Dylan's boyhood priest and McCarthyism he could do a great job.

    Let's tie some looseknits of Americas last 70 years together and resolve some issues.

    Bible says old Men Dream Dreams and Have Visions.

    I'm getting there!!!!!