Southern Baptists still fighting Lincoln with the Know Nothing Party

    Southern Baptists put food on the table for 25 years and more for my family. They got me to Furman University on scholarship where I heard about another Preacher's son, Marshall Frady. They are good hearted people many of them but don't know their ass from a Hole in the ground when led by leftover Birchers and White Citizen Counselors in the likes of Jesse Helms, Pressler, Albert Lee Smith,  Trey Gowdy, Jerry Vines and Adrian Rogers. Bill Moyers, Bill Leonard, Ellen Rosenberg, UNC Chancellor Bill Friday,  David Currie, myself and others have been saying this for forty years now.

      The latest iteration is in the Saturday July 16 

Ny times. FBC Gaffney, Easley, Collinsville Alabama, Clinton SC, Blacksburg , Inman leadership should read this weekend. Google Nation Magazine on SBC selling soul to the Devil over the politics of abortion.

    Chic Fil A is starting to lean forward to the chagrin of Nikki Haley and Turning Point USA. My God friends, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Frank Johnson, Randall Lolley, President Carter, Lottie Moon, Jill Lepore and Jia Tolentino didnt put their soul into America and a fine denominational tradition to see it become a bastard group for the Trump Base.

    Of course there a lot of nuances and inflections but the tangle at the top of the leadership of the current SBC like the Know Nothings of the 1850s are against liberal arts education in its best tradition. Of course the U of Bama has Bama Rush and is a mockery of higher education, but they also have a fine honors program and Nick Saban gave a million dollars to the student group of his local  Catholic church.

     Criswell , the Hunt Brothers,  Albert Mohler the Bastard , the Birchers, the Texas Regulars aint the way forward. And forty years into the mess some good women and men are gonna have to rustle some feathers in their local Babdist churches at the risk of losing social status --My God could be chaos at Trey Gowdy's FBC Spartanburg--if America is gonna get its ass halfway back on track.

    Group reading and remedial education etc. And what not.

Ruby Sayles, Jonathan Daniels and Evan Milligan

   Jonathan Daniels, the Episcopalian Priest assassinated in Lowndes County Alabama in 1964 is in bust in London as a great martyr of the 20th Century. He intercepted a bullet intended for Ruby Sayles. Marshall Frady of Furman was in town that fall to cover the trial, one of his first big stories for Newsweek just two years out of Furman.

    Ruby Sayles is close to the family of Evan Milligan who made national news yesterday recharting gerrymandered congressional districts in Alabama. It could change the makeup of the US house next fall to the chagrin of Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt and Will Ainsworth, but to the delight of the extended families of most of the football players for the Crimson Tide and the Auburn War Eagles.

   Even Alabama can't remain as MAGA Hypocritical and christian nationalist of Rick Burgess and Yellowhammer News for Eternity. 

   I think Nick Saban has a conscience and every once in a while he and Greg Sankey have a moment of conscience. I hope this registers with them and they take up the mantle with Paul Finebaum.

    All snark aside given the cauldron in which nobility often operates, Great day for America.

    Read more on Milligan and his story as this story evolves. 

Lewis Huskey asleep under the bleachers, Gaffney Track Annals 1970

     A couple years ago Johnny Dawkins told me about the Track Meet at Shelby HS where Gaffney woulda been on same field with future novelist Ron Rash and his four by 100 baton handoff the great David Thompson. Turns out Dawk was not in that race which he remembers as Jimmy Baker, David Roseboro and likely Lynn Mabrey and Lewis Huskey. Turns out they set a record for Gaffney High School but mighta lost to Shelby or the other NC school in the county as Rash team was first or second in the state of NC that year in that event.

       But according to two sources the more memorable event mighta been later in the spring of 1970 at the SC State finals in Columbia. Dawkins, Jimmy Baker, Lewis Huskey and Lynn Mabrey placed second in the preliminaries in the spring medley. A runner ran a hundred then two followed them with 220 s and the last runner Lynn Mabrey ran a 400 hundred.

    Those four had a chance to become legendary but Huskey fell asleep under the bleachers so Gaffney was disqualified for the finals. You have to have the same four as you had in the preliminaries. Huskey told me last night Coach Whitey Smith was furious and was gonna leave Lewis in Columbia. But as the bus was pulling out, a teammate spied Lewis under the bleachers and Jimmy Baker and Lynn Mabrey retrieved him for the ride home.

     Solid relay team. I wish they coulda brought home the title. 

What Shoeless Joe Jackson said about Baseball

    As Told to Mr. Kinsella for his book on Jackson.

    Joe said: I love the Game. I woulda played for food money. I woulda played for free and worked for food money.  I loved the parks the smell  the sounds. Have you ever held a bat to your face or a ball, the leather , the varnish.The crowd excitement a chorus rising like thunder when you hit the long ball, the tin lizzies in the parking lot chugging along, the hotels with the spittoons and brass beds. It gives me a tingle just to think about it, like a kid going to his first double header.