Breeze Pancake on Hometowns

This  post will not make much sense unless you google and read the phenomenal article on Breeze Pancake of last year in Oxford American. Or copy and link this URL :    https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-114-fall-2021/something-deeply-rooted

   Ive had similar thoughts about the ghosts and landmarks of my personal archaeological site in Gaffney and my Dad and Uncle Fremont had about Rome Georgia.

     Just today in the Post and Courier freely distributed in Upstate SC Libraries is a picture of the Renovated Historic T Bridge which I marched across in a zoot suit in July 1978 with Strom Thurmond and Billy Shatner in the inaugural Peach Festival Parade. Started out on the Interstate where Chic Fil A is now and marched three Miles downtown to the T Bridge and Piedmont Federal and then Down Limestone Main Street passed the community Cash and FBC to Hamrick's Big Mill.

     It was in Gaffney in sixth grade John Greene collected bottle caps all over the SE end of town. I found a gold mine in a neighborhood one room store where you could get moon pies and a coke without having to walk several miles if you were out at the house. 

     I think it was possible to get a leather football if you collected enough caps with NFL players inscribed

  About two weeks earlier a school board member came looking for me at Lynn's Diner about a half mile from my house, the church pastorium, which is another site in my Pancake History, great resonance. Fellow said he would stand on my toes and beat my ass into the ground.

     Up the road from the diner on a better day I donned my Lime Green Three piece suit and walked across the hwy to Sullivan Montgomery's Jet Cleaners. His wife said Stephen, You need that suit, you need that suit.

      So I bought it and went juking to Spartanburg and to my cousins wedding at Darlington in Rome Ga. One Juking night had big conversation with Clark Price at Thompson Park overheard by Mrs Reaves just up the Hill. Her son was a 69 casualty of Vietname. The Widow married David Wilkins one of the Most Powerful Bush Republicans in the State of SC.

      Then there was the Peach shed where I friended Roger Milliken Jr. and had good view of some of the prettiest girls of GHS that year.

     And the front steps of the church where I looked at the future.

      Central School where I still see some folks I met in the mid sixties and in whose fifth grade I was the Day Kennedy was assassinated.

     Remember clearly some bike rides on Anthony street and one chilly Saturday morning where time first registered with me.

     Google the Pancake article. Again it is magnificent.