Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV Show; not exactly it was Clemson Trustee Nikki Haley sponsored by TPUSA

  You remember the song by Randy Newman about keeping the Niggers down, well same song different verse in almost lilly white crowd of 200 or so at the Strom Thurmond Inst at Clemson University last night with Nikki Haley sponsored by Turning Point USA.

   She did say Dabo should start Cade Klubnik this Saturday for ACC tourney crown but was reluctant to seek out with her good friend Dabo who she texts often, in the off season seek out a conversation with Dabo and Shane Beamer and members of the multitude of extended family members of color, an earnest conversation on the politics of critical race theory and integrity and honesty in teaching History in America's public school system.

     Nikki is called out in an easily googled review of the new book on the Movie Gone With the Wind with Key word Wrath, by Sara Churchwell.

    In all fairness to Ambassador Governor Haley she was charming at several instances and expressed some moderate views on occasion that would almost make her palata

ble.

   But My God, this woman endorsed Herschel Walker for US Senate and hordes of election deniers and is struck mute on Russell Fry  unseating Rep Rice in Horry County SC, which puts her at odds with among others recent chair of the Wofford Trustees, Tommy Brittain, attorney in Myrtle Beach networked in a Methodist dynasty in North and South Carolina.

     Like Newman's song, poor Nikki for all her conversational gifts and charm, don't know her Ass from a Hole in the Ground. Like a former chair of the SC GOP she likely hasn't read Joe Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America. She confessed to me in my statement from the floor, she has not seen the great recent PBS Documentary The Blinding of Isaac Woodard, nor the expose on Moms for Liberty and by association the SC Legislature Freedom Caucus in the New Yorker. Google that one for Class Warfare.

   Zero for Zero on those two. So pretty much a no brainer she hasn't read Jill Lepore new History of America. So how much is somebody not supposed to know to run for President of the United States or be a strong player in the process.

    I just got one question and a follow up but I also wanted to make it register with Nikki Robert Jones is on to her game with critical race Theory. His piece at religion news, shutting down CRT debate has the goods on the GOP strategy she flirts with, emanating from Lee Atwater Nigger memo. So however she wants to present her jobs strategy, her politics abets the unraveling of America's soul.

    But what could you expect from somebody sponsored by Turning Point USA. They were a key factor in Russell Fry upset and last year at Clemson their leader Charlie Kirk questioned the Patriotism of Chic Fila. Now that would be an interesting conversation for Haley and lets say, Paul Finebaum or Greg Sankey the Commissh of SEC Football.

   She is gonna think about a run over the Holidays. I bet she goes for it.

    Oh she did raise the specter of 5 year old white girls being shamed in Kindegarten for their color. I asked if she  knew of any incident like that in the State of South Carolina.

    She said No.

November 22, 1963 JFK and the Gaffney Lancaster Game Part two

 and over like a chant to ward off the real world. But then things would quiet down, and tongue-tied clumsiness would rule the bus again.

As we finally rolled into Lancaster, our football fire rekindled, and when the small stadium came into view, a scream went up from the Gaffney buses that startled nearby Lancaster townspeople walking to the game, bundled up against the cold.

The drivers parked the buses and we scrambled off, making our way quickly to the visitors' side of the stadium, filling it easily. We settled in and waited for the game to start.

Ah, the game. The Game. That great contest for the state title, this battle of undefeated young gods, the anticipation of which had nearly been the center of our lives for a while, turned out to be utterly anticlimactic. Flat. There would be no release for us.

The deflation began when it became obvious that the good citizens of Lancaster were less inclined than we to swallow their shock at the President's death. The hometown cheers were lackluster, and a preacher delivered a long-winded pre-game prayer of "sympathy for Mrs. Kennedy and her little children" and asked God to "give strength to President Johnson." I remember wincing at the strange new words "President Johnson."

Beyond that, the driving force of Lancaster High's success had disappeared. Their star running back, a 20-year-old named Jimmy "Muletrain" McGuirt, had turned 21 earlier that week, rendering him ineligible for this last momentous game. Gaffney's team, intact and ready to play, romped, 27-0. After the first two touchdowns, the night became a bore, allowing time for teenaged minds to wander back to what had happened in Dallas.

Friends congregated near the concession stand at halftime. Who was the guy they'd arrested for killing the President? No one anybody'd heard of. Is Kennedy's body still in Texas? No, they flew it back to Washington. How do you know? Somebody had a transistor radio on our bus. When'll they bury him? Everyone had heard something but nobody really knew anything, and the talk spun aimlessly.

I wandered down to the bottom of the stands and managed to get Crush-Shirley to walk over and talk to me across the barrier between the spectators and the field where she and the rest of the cheerleaders stood.

"Hey, Shirley looks like we've got 'em beat."

"Yeah, it’s great. We’ll do the same in the second half, too." She jumped and did a split in mid-air, as if performing a cheer. Her hair bounced up, down, and then away from her face. She wasn't in the least embarrassed about doing this; I was enthralled, hormones ablaze.

"Yeah. It's great. Say, um, you think you'd..."

"It does seem kinda weird, though, you know, with Kennedy and everything. I dunno." She looked to the side, toward the ground.

"Oh... Well, yeah, it does. . ."

She soon realized I had had no compelling reason for hailing her away from her cheering duties. She looked over at the other cheerleaders, looked back and shrugged her shoulders.

"I'd better get back."

Before I could answer, she turned and ran back to her friends. It hit me then that that had been as close as I'd ever get to dating Shirley. She was in the crowd, just out of my reach.

Things weren't the way I had thought they were.

For the rest of the game, I split my time between friends -- roaming the stands, buying Cokes, cracking stupid jokes -- and my Dad, who, although never a terribly expressive man, was more distant than usual. Not much passed between the two of us. He bought me a hotdog and a drink and asked me about one or two of my friends. We tried talking about the game, but there wasn't a lot to say except that Lancaster sure missed their big guy, and that our quarterback, Rodney Camp, sure could sling the ball, and that the whole thing was "a smear." When it was over and Gaffney’s latest state title was guaranteed, the crowd was subdued as we walked back to the buses, took our seats and headed home.

The ride back to Gaffney was by turns raucous and uncomfortably silent, as the late night of November 22 lurched unnaturally between reckless championship

furor and the dazed anxiety the rest of the country was enduring. My father and I sat next to each other, but we may as well have been in different vehicles. We were unused to talking about anything more substantial than TV or movies or sports, and the disabling enormity of the day, and the letdown of the deflated game, seemed to silence any hopes we had had of quick reconciliation.

About 20 miles from home, chatter and laughter was rumbling through the bus when a student, thinking he was funny, yelled out, "OK, let's all have a moment of silence for our beloved President." He laughed, then choked it back as all talking on the bus stopped, all of us suddenly embarrassed.

My father and I got back to his house after midnight and I went to sleep on that uncertain night in a bed that seemed foreign. In the morning, we rehashed the game over breakfast, trying to inject some retroactive excitement into it; we finally gave up. After awhile my eyes wandered to the newspaper lying on Dad's kitchen table, so I grabbed it and read aloud the latest details of the tragedy that had fragmented so many people's fragile plans.

After breakfast, I packed up my clothes from the previous day and Dad drove me home.

Much of this account is only clear in retrospect. It was only later that I realized what I'd really been after during that trip; just as it was only in retrospect that we could see the outlines of the downward slide toward rancor and division the country embarked on after Kennedy's murder. That Saturday morning it all felt a lot simpler: I just knew that something awful had happened.

At the top of my driveway, I got out of Dad's car, talked through the open window, agreeing to maybe go to a movie in a couple of weeks. I turned and walked down the hill and through the sliding glass doors and into my home, where my mother and stepfather were watching the televised aftermath of Kennedy's death. They seemed to look me up and down to see if I was all right. Then, after a brief exchange of information about Friday night's game, the three of us turned to the TV and slipped into the four-day shared national intimacy of grief.

John, or Johnny Grooms was born in Gaffney in 1949, son of a Gaffney textile employee and his Belgian “war bride.” He graduated from GHS in 1967, left town in ’73, worked for a couple of decades as editor-in-chief of an alternative newsweekly in Charlotte, circ. 60-70K. He lives in Charlotte with his wife Pat.

Part One November 22, 1963 Gaffney SC

     John Grooms is a 1967 grad of Gaffney High School and former editor of Creative Loafing in Charlotte NC. This is his piece also published in his opinion piece compilation, In Praise of Weasels.

      From November 1998 -- Published on the 35th anniversary of John Kennedy’s murder, this piece is a portrait of a teenager and a small town on the brink of changes.

JFK, Dallas & High School Football

John Grooms

My high school's football team played for the state championship on the day John Kennedy was killed. That night, actually. There was nothing anyone could do; I don't think there was any official discussion about whether the game should be postponed. The showdown had been scheduled for a long time and when would it be played if not on November 22? In any case, there was no way I wasn't going. There was too much riding on it.

I was a freshman at Gaffney High School in South Carolina, and my answer to the standard boomer question of where I was when I heard Kennedy had been shot is that I was waiting at the water fountain before going into sixth period Latin class. I was third in line behind a cute strawberry blonde cheerleader I’ll call Shirley, who was the object of many freshman boys’ crushes, including mine.

"Just shot, that's all I heard," said the girl who ran up to our line to tell us about it. "Just shot."

I imagined at the time that the President had been hit in the arm or shoulder and that he'd be all right. I gulped the cold water from the fountain and walked into Latin class, a couple of steps behind Shirley.

Gaffney High School would play its last football game of the season that night 60 miles to the east, against Lancaster High, in Lancaster, SC. Both teams were undefeated going into this last game and, as there were no playoffs then in South Carolina, the winner would be declared state champion.

Small Carolina towns like Gaffney had grown throughout the 1950s and into the Space Race decade, but the undertow of the past still tugged at us mercilessly -- in the sluggish pace of everyday life; a resistance to change so deep that it was

nearly a primal instinct; the narrow field of interests; in all the slow, stifling ways that drove high school students away after graduation in those days. In short, towns like Gaffney and Lancaster had precious few things to get super-excited about, and very often the high school football team became the focus of the town's energy, both incubator and repository of its dreams.

We were lucky. The Gaffney High School Indians had won so many state championships over the years, triumph had nearly become routine. A truly great football team, which we had that year and knew it, was enough to whip everyone into a frenzy. Add to that a season-ending state title game against an equally undefeated rival – and Got-o-mighty, that was almost more than we could stand.

No one had talked about anything else for a couple of weeks. Folks on the street, fellow students, even teachers, neighbors and checkout girls at the A&P, friends on the phone, deejays on the radio, columnists in the town newspaper, everybody everywhere. The air was heavy with weeks' worth of boasting hurled between the two towns.

School boosters had the idea, unprecedented in town at the time, of chartering buses for the drive to Lancaster.They were overwhelmed by the demand, so they enlisted even more buses, also quickly filled. The championship game had become a juggernaut, by far the biggest event of the year. We were wrapped up, secure in our own drama, our self-contained world, basking -- perhaps for the last time -- in small Southern towns' traditional disconnection from the big national picture.

During football season, Friday's last class was cut short so the students could hold pep rallies in Gaffney High's wobbly, classic old auditorium. Our rallies were so wild and raucous -- just a notch below a riot, really -- newspapers from neighboring towns would sometimes send reporters to cover them. For a solid half-hour or more, we let loose a fire hose blast of clamorous, howling cheers, fired by teenage dreams of greatness -- singing, screaming, jumping up and down and flailing around and roaring in a ferocious way that could only happen in a town where speaking in tongues at revivals wasn’t uncommon. The rallies always

left us hoarse and rasping as we slammed out of the auditorium, facing yet another five hours before the actual game.

On November 22, though, most of us were uneasy as we filed into the auditorium around 2:15, wondering what had happened to President Kennedy.

I felt a small tug in my chest as I spied Shirley the Crush on the freshman cheerleading squad, standing onstage, hands on hips, next to the older cheerleaders, awaiting the word from the principal. She was biting her lower lip, her gaze darting randomly around the auditorium while the other cheerleaders focused intently on the pep band, seated in the front rows.

The principal, a big man who rarely exhibited interest in students’ day-to-day concerns, walked up the side stairs and across the stage to a microphone. He motioned for silence, and then told us what he had learned on the radio: President Kennedy had been critically wounded, "but he's OK."

The rally went on as scheduled, one of the wildest and loudest ever, a wall of championship fever denying entry to the dark outside world.

When we left the rally, we heard right away that Kennedy was dead.

My father had bought tickets for us on one of the chartered buses to Lancaster to attend the game. We didn't see each other much, as the weekly visits mandated by the divorce settlement had petered out a couple of years earlier. My mother had remarried, to a man I didn’t like and who was getting tired of my reminders that he wasn’t my father.

Late that afternoon, Mom dropped me off in front of Dad's house. On the way she asked me if I was sure I wanted to go ahead with the trip, in light of the day's tragedy. I looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

For me, excitement about the game was entangled with expectations of sharing it with my father. We had taken in more things together in the past couple of months – a movie, a football game, a county fair and such -- and seemed to be building to a new reconnection. The championship game could open that door. If Dad and I joined in the intensity of the contest that was consuming the town, and breathed the same air as the thousands of others who were just as crazed, then we

could catch up on what we'd missed during the past few years. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

Instead, that was the most awkward evening I ever spent; and awkward in an indescribable way, as nothing like it has happened since to compare to it.

At Dad's house, he and I talked numbly about the assassination before we left, both of us either looking at the floor or at a spot a few inches to the side of the other's face, exchanging whatever information we had gleaned from radio or TV news reports. Then we got into his car and listened to more radio news from Dallas as we drove to Gaffney High stadium, where a fleet of buses waited to take the tribe of fans to the big showdown.

But obviously, everything was different, and in ways we could neither quite grasp nor fend off. The murder felt more monstrous than anything I had known, unnatural and overpowering, like a force of nature that had suddenly turned evil. Its appalling pull drew us into its awful maw, and we had no choice but to talk about it, react to it anyway we could, just to see if our ramblings would accidentally make some sense of it. It didn't work. Dad parked the car at the school and we climbed onboard our bus for the trip to Lancaster.

Feelings on the crowded coach during the long ride through the dark were tangled and confusing. Rather than the all-American communal football fever we had had every reason to expect, our high spirits – genuine but sputtering, in fits and starts - fought against uneasy silences, and our conversations avoided Dallas, shoving back the obvious for just a while longer.

Cheers often erupted, like fireworks exploding over a fog, but just beneath the surface of our rolling pep rally roiled a strong, unspoken guilt for going ahead with the game in spite of Kennedy's death. That guilt fit tightly into our resentment that something the world considered more important -- the outside, mostly Northeastern world that defined American reality and in which we were only partly included -- was draining the meaning from our dramatic local clash. We hated it, even as our bus kept rolling eastward toward the season's close, and bravado and boasting filled the coach with the hubbub of teenagers on the move.

Now and then during that bus ride, we lost ourselves in the upcoming showdown and yelled out old favorite cheers like "Two bits, four bits" or just

"Indians Indians Indians Indians," over and over like a chant to ward off the real world. But then things would quiet down, and tongue-tied clumsiness would rule the bus again

Amos BBQ and Johnny Unitas; Alabama Travelogue weekend of Nov 12 Turkey Trot

        Took a two night trip to Bama this last weekend to hit the annual Turkey Trot in Collinsville Alabama and check on the house. Also hit what I could including Bill Glenn's Mtn Grill pristine catfish and potato salad, Lupe's China House Hot and sour soup, and the chicken fingers and home concocted Ranch dressing the best ever.

   Had a first time chic fil a Bacon egg and cheese. On way to Bama in a dank Drizzle stopped by Culver's on 400 West of Gaineville, but a highlight was coming home. I rarely function without lunch by 1:30 but left Bammer later than planned and kep traveling. Was about four oclock when I stopped at Amos BBQ on 369 West of the Matt Community and East of Madeconia outside Canton. Its just couple hundred yards east the Circle intersection coming down from Ball Play.

    Had notice it sixty times of more over the last 20 years going and coming from SC. Things always looked promising with half a forest of split hickory in the front yard and rustic setting. The ambience is perfect, got a sandwich with slaw to go. Very very good, I will be stopping again.

     Had a great chat there with a dentist from Decatur about Forsyth County and politics. He wrote down Patrick Phillips, Blood at the Root.

     My Lookout  Mtn cousins were very kind to offer their cabin for two nights which was quite an adventure and eighty mile round trip for two night but worth it. Was great being out in a forest on top of Lookout not far from Where Sherman took the Battle of Chicamauga and Chattanooga, in a heavy rain about two in the morning and a roof over your head.

      Had good conversations at the Trot and just missed Jane Peek's Red Velvet cake by one step in the Cakewalk. Told Terah Coker Patton and good joke, and had delightful exchange with Thomas Barksdale and Jeff Graves. My friend Brenda Monteagudo was in the tax office and couldnt come out.

     Note Historian Wayne Flynt will be in Collinsville at the Cricket Theater April 16 to talk about his friendship with Atticus and Harper Lee and her sister Alice.

     I plan to be there.

     But icing on the weekend cake since Ole Miss lost in the last seconds to Bama--saw that in Los Amigos in Toccoa Ga before getting to Clemson just in time for Game Day Traffic and a chat with number 44 at Five Guys who supposedly is reading my blog on Tackle football--Icing on the cake was conversation Sunday in the sunlight at Ingles Deli, Liberty South Carolina.

     A gregarious fellow was talking with a fellow worker who I was chatting with when a Young fundamentalist offered me a pamphlet on the Romans 8 road to Salvation. I had her call her Mother come over and concede a lot of Christians didnt vote for Trump. She did and asked me if I was a Christian. She said yes which was kind of surprising....

    I shoulda told her about Shoemaker's new book on Baptism or demanded her church lyberry get one if I was to read her pamphlet.

     But the gregarious fellow turned out to have a raising in the Peninsula of Maryland. As such not far from Harper's Ferry and John Brown's Raid, his thoughts on the Civil War were bent a little sideways. But we got passed that and somehow Johnny Unitas name came up. He said He caught some passes for Johnny U the authentic GOAT. I told him he was lying. He said no he wasnt' as a nine year ole Jiffy Lube had a promotion in his small Md town and hardly nobody showed up to see Johnny Unitas. So the Great one threw this fellow eight or nine passes.

     I took his picture and told him about another friend who had eight super rings on his hands at one time in Nashville, Tn.

Meeting people of consequence and having conversations in Upstate SC

    Yesterday on the 6th I had every intention of meeting my sister at Triune Mercy in Greenville on All Saints Day. They were to recognize my brother and several others associated with the church who passed this last year.

    But the time change got me in a fog and I took a nap thinking I had an hour cushion. But between Meet the Press and church you only have an hour and I got out of the shower at 10 45 looking at a forty minute drive to Greenville.

    So I settled for early lunch at Schlotzky's in Seneca SC. A full table adjacent to the window a young fellow said something about a short story. So I had to introduce myself as an acquaintance of Ron Rash and talk about Lake Jocassee, to which the grandfather in the bunch said I'm Mark Powell's father and here is his sister and younger Brother. It was selfie time

    Mark the Walhalla native, Citadel and Yale Div grad is a beautiful soul. His father said and this was news to me, Mark's wife's Uncle is  Frazier, the author of Cold Mtn on which my Sacred Harp friends from Henegar Alabama own the soundtrack.

   So great meeting them. I told the sister to make sure Mark knows about Matt Potts new book on Cormac McCarthy and the Sacraments.

    Left there for a nice ride on 11, the high road back to the library in Central with time to kill. At Ingles deli walks in Karen Atwater Baker Carter and her Republican husband in a resplendent jacket for some ice cream . Had another photo opp with them as Karen knows Dabo and everybody in the county. We may get Mary Goforth and Penny and hit the Bohemian downtown Greenville this winter.

     Today I'm in Easley to get a tire and hit Jimmy's for a fine take out of their illustrious turkey and dressing three days a week and Sundays. Had intense but civil chat in waiting room with an 80 year old man who said he would vote from Trump over any other Republican who may be on the ballot in SC GOP Presidential primary in two years. Then he said there is nothing you or I could say that will change the mind of the other. I agreed with him on that and we talked baseball for a little.

    Then  a woman is walking out who turned out to be a Furman 63 grad and knew Marshall Frady well. She gave Frady a ride to Sumter in the early sixties cause he didnt have a car. She said Frady was Furman's first rebel and she had a point.

    Then some serious business people come in with BMW, two from China. I asked if they knew Sky Foster and told them Nixon sent my Grandfather's Brother Paul to China in 72. Was gonna tell them the Shah of Iran story but their number came up.

    Last week at Furman homecoming classmate Bob Dickinson was there to sign his book on Jesus and Cigars. Vernon Burton the esteemed Historian was there and Penny Cooper's friend Harry Shucker, Dean of Students who never left campus after he graduated in the sixties.

   So it has all been serendipitous and full of coincidence, but the upside of being gregarious cause you never know once you ask the first question.

   Robbie Caldwell was at Furman homecoming, but didnt get a chance to speak to him. He's a friend of Dwight, and I didnt mention my new friend from London, Wofford sophomore tennis player who is gonna take his family to Bridges BBQ in Shelby when they come over in the Spring.