Mommas neapolitan milk shake and Sweet Billy in the Big Tub

It appears to be the case as our time is nigh--I figger I got about seven years left--the genetic program kicks in and we become our parents. Lately all the things I scoffed as simpleton are becoming Precious. Momma was happy on saturday evening with the Lawrence Welk hour and scraping a half gallon Neapolitan ice cream box and stirring it down to milkshake, a litte buttermilk didnt hurt.

  However I still dont care for Lawrence Welk other than an occasional trombone solo

   And my dad in the nineties in his last few years especially in the fall would come over and cut some grass--he told Wayne Whiteside I wasnt at worthlesss as it appeared he liked to cut some grass on the plot left to me in Alabama-- and get in the big tub on the old place that had been in Momma's family for seventy years. He couldnt sing worth a darn but he would spend 45 minutes to an hour with every door in the house open to catch the breeze. He's double down on George Beverly Shea Billy Graham specials especially I'd rahter Have Jesus than silver or Gold.

     I'm not a fan of the Gaither Hour but they had Bev Shea on for the hour yesterday and It brought tears to my eyes. Seveal including Rather have Jessus and OUt of the Ivory Palaces

       Shaved ice or snowballs are special again. There is a great place in Powdersville SC that moonlights at Furman home football games. I missed them all summer but got one last week at Furman game. Gonna catch them the rest of the home games as they are closed for the summer in Powdersville.

     Mike Francis locked Ole Man Hill in his stand up from the little league park, Irene Park in 66. Francis a bonified character is gone now. Hill moved his stand to the Mill Village down from the old High School. Lime was my favorite and grape and orange.

     In the early 50s  the great Shoelesss joe Jackson came over from greenville. He had a belly on him but he hit a home run at Irene Park,. Ive seen the picture.

    I think the end of Eight Men Out is one of the greatest scenes in American Cinema. As his former teammate says; that aint him, all those guys are gone now.

Trevor Lawrence will vote Harris Walz; Tim Tebow Eagle Forum Momma for Trump

Gene Frenette of USA Today and the Jacksonvile Florida Times Union had an exhaustive piece on the Faith Foundations of Trevor Lawrence about ten days ago. Dabo Swinney's church Dan Lian of Anderson SC is a major force in the the faith development of Trevor, it turns out.

     Four years ago during the Black Lives Matter event at Clemson I had a brief conversation with Trevor, and later with his Mother. On that Day Trevor confessed he came down with Drew Brees against Donald Trump on the matter of the Kaepernick affair saying in effect the President of the US shouldn't attempt to bully free speech.

     In the presence of Richard Shelby in 2016 Trump implied two of Nick Saban's Heisman Trophy winners were in his words Sons of Bitches for not kissing his ass on the matter of Kaepernick.

    This is not to say Trevor or Brees were in favor of Everything Kaepernick represented, they just didnt think Trump should go unchallenged on the matter.

     Given the evolving depth of Lawrence faith as magnified in the article and given the close relationship he has with his brother and sister in law and their faith I think Lawrence will not be voting Trump. And his sister in law is Jamaican and we know what Trump thinks of that.

    I have flirted with these notions with a couple calls to Paul Finebaum With Greg McElroy about seven years ago we talked about Howell Raines piece on Bear Bryant and Wallace , one of the best pieces ever written about the bear Finebaum conceded. With his new book Silent Cavalry who Finebaum had on air about three months ago, Finebaum talked about his concern Bama Senator Katie Britt faces with her endorsement of Trump and the implications Project 2025 has for people of color. Without people of color Bama wouldn't have much of a football team.

   Last week I called Finebaum to ask among other things if he thaink Katie Britt should call on Trump to apologize to the Bama Football Program and Ingram and Henry in particular. We had a bad connection and he dismissed me like he often does Charles from Reeltown as having his head in a mason jar too long. 

      Trevor grew up down the Kington HWY from my Grandmother's place on Dykes Creek. I think my first cousing by marriage was for a time the Lawrence family interim pastor at Tabernacle in Cartersville Ga about the time Trevor was in 7th grade.

     Tim Tebow mother Pam under the Tutelage of the John Birch Society's great friend Jerry Vines of West Rome and Jacksonville Florida; Pam Tebow was Eagle Forum woman of the year 2018. Consider that in the context of Jill Lepore focus on the Eagle Forum in her majestic recent history of America, These Truths.

     So the Truth is out there for ACC and SEC Football not to mention the NFL whats at stake in this election. I hope it breaks Trevor 's Way over Tebow 

"This is Wrong": Collinsville and Calvinsim and the 1946 Boston Red Sox

 This is Wrong is a quote from John Morgan recently retired after 40 plus years as pastor of /Collinsville Baptist Church where my Mother was baptized in 1936 and I lived for thirty years up until January 30 of 2020. I was voted out of the congregation on May 28 2006 by a vote of 32 to 20. I wrote that episode up for U Tenn Press, Exiled Generation, my essay titled Churchin in Alabama.

      The  former pastor owns a home in town about two football fields down Main Street from the church. He remains a member

     His full throated comment came during a business meeting August 31 where the former Mayor of the town and his son made a motion to change the bylaws of the church from  75 percent vote to a simple majority to rail road a Calvinist into the pulpit as Morgan's successor

      What disturbs Morgan and many others in the church is the Mayor and friends lost the first vote by two votes and called for a second which they lost. Now they are seeking to change the bylaws. The bylaw change is not sitting well with the dissenters

    Most of this year the Mayor took the Calvinist Bible Study leader to lunch every Sunday. I'm sure they talked about a lot of things including national politics 

     The mayor's father in law was a great fishing friend in South Florida with the Great Ted Williams and his wife played on the public tennis courts in Ft. Lauderdale alongside Chrissy Evert. Small World.

      But the Mayor s roots are in Collinsville where he has been most of his life. If you ask him the right  questions I think he would fit the definition of a Super Trumper and a Christian Nationalist. That is speculation is there. He reminds me of the leader of Home guard in Ron Rash Novel The Cove. He is very proud of creating a park between the library and RR in Town for veterans though he never served in the military to my Knowledge

     I have to give him credit, He did a good job putting together an event about six years ago dedicating the Memorial. He did most ot the talking so it kinda smelled of Trump's recent event at Arlington, still he brought up a civic band from Anniston and they did a great job.

       So its another get out the vote day in Collinsville. MorNee to come as this plays out including embellishement of the Bosox Angle and opportunities for recondcliation with a touch from my friend Randall Balmer at Dartmouth who is aware of the situation.

    If you live in Collinsville or are fascinated by Baptist drama find Mayor Carter at Cooks Barber Shop or somewhere around town and have him read ASAP, Urgent, Why a Calvinist may be coming to your Pulpit at Baptist News Global, published late May

PBS POV Almost American Doc indicts Trump Venal Border Policies

    I lived in Collinsville Alabama, my mother's hometown for Thirty years from Dec of 86 to Jan 30 , 2020.  In this most ethnically diverse town in the state I got to know the Padilla's from Elsalvador. We often talked about Oscar Romero. Tony the father as a boy on different occasions saw Jesse Helms friend Roberto Daubuisson and on another occasion Oscar Romero.

     Romero with Martin Luther King Jr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are in bust in Westminster Abbey in London as the three great Christian martyrs of the 20th Century.

     Daubuisson boasted of drawing straws for he considered the privilege of assassinating Romero.

      Watch this documentary if you have any idea of what it means to be a Christian who will cast a vote in November. Friends the jig is up. I told staffers for Bama Senator Katie Britt, a product of the FUMC of Montgomery Al as much this morning, and Congresswoman Bull Shit Nancy Mace of the Seacoast mega church of Mt Pleasant. You cannot square Jesus Christ and the legacies of King, Romero and Bonhoeffer  with Trump and his venal Borders policies and strategies. The Doc is clear on that.

    Marina was in a 92 doc on Collinsville Alabama, Blessings of Liberty whose director got a six minute standing ovation in Cannes two years ago for his doc on David Bowie. Brett Morgen has also produced and directed docs on Jane Goodall, and Crossfire Hurricane on the Rolling Stone.

    Ten years later Marina and her story were featured in a doc shown statewide on Collinsville produced by the University of Alabama.

     From the Catholic Student Ministry at St Francis in Tuscaloosa underwritten by Nick Saban, to the Collinsville Historical Association, to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Alliance of Baptists to the Auburn Democracy Project, Informed discerning Christians are on notice and invited to watch this doc in earnest and See Something, Say Something

     https://www.pbs.org/video/almost-american-x9dboi/

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.

Pickens county in MAGA land

     Kudos to the Post and Courier for shedding a little light on the underbelly of MAGA Land in Pickens County. But its just the tip of the iceberg. These folks are not Republicanss, certainly not Eisenhower, Lincoln and Alabama's Judge Frank Johnson Republican. 

    The following was submitted as an Opinion piece to the Post Courier in the wake of their June issue front page headline article on the MAGA takeover of the Pickens Co. SC GOP

     My maternal grandfather was of that stripe and a hundred years ago ran for school superintendent in NE Alabama and was soundly defeated. The good ole boys in dowtown Collinsville Alabama would brush their lapels when they passed him on the street on Saturdays and say "you can smell it on him, can't you".

     Charlottle Observer's Frye Gaillard and AJC Cynthia Tucker explain how the Dems and GOP flipped in the last 50 years, with an emphasis on Lee Atwater's famous NWord memo.

    The MAGA s are more like the Know Nothing party that Lincoln faced. Look them up on Wiki pedia and for further context read with meditation Jill Lepore's grand recent History of America These Truths.

      There are products of Pickesn Country who I imagine are embarred and ashamed on these Know Nothings who made the front page page of the Post and Courier. Among them Shannon Vickery of NC PBS, Joni Tevis who has written beautifully about the end of the textile era in Easley, Dr. Batson longtime pastor of FBC Pickens, and Dr. Gravely the Wofford grad who wrote the definitive book on the lynching of Willie Earle.

    Sadly Clemson Trustee Nikki Haley has more in common with these Pickens County Retrogrades than she does with David Wilkins brand of Bush family Republicans. Haley embraced Charlie Kirks poisonous brand of MAGA Turning Point USA politics November 29 2022 at Clemson. She had public interview with TPUSA president Taylor Rogers who comes from the Southlake region of the Dallas Suburbs which is subject of the New Book by Hixenbaugh, They Came for Our Schools. Dabo Swinney and Clemson administration ought to call Haley on the carpet for this entanglement.

     In  nearby Wahalla, favorite son Mark Powell, a grad of the Citadel and Yale Divinity School explores the same world as JD Vance but has much more Moral Fiber--see Oh Brother Where Art Thou--not warping his his insights for political expediency.

      Furman recently boasted of its Riley Institutes summer program for teachers to enhance civics education. Pickens County public schools should reach out to them to tour the system and shine the light on Johnelle Raines and her misguided zealots.

     At Furman I was introduced to a great Baptist of the Civil Rights era, Will D. Campbell banned from Ole Miss in the early sixties for playing ping pong with a black exchange student. Now there is a plaza outside the Chaplain's office there in his honor.

     He called the fundamentalist leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention "soul molesters" And that is what this group of MAGA activists are in Pickens County. Lacking moral fiber and shamefully ignorant, they are shallow and should be shown the off ramp.

       

On August 5 Eva Said Spartanburg

  Eva is my brother's grand daughter. For more than a year Ive been teasing, prompting her to say Spartanburg. I ask her where she lives Greer or Spartanburg. Yesterday first time she said, I live in Green, I do not live in Spartanburg.

     Said it clear as a bell perfectly enunciated before the turn four in a couple months. I think next step is to go to the Beacon to reify the word.

    She said there is a horse on Stone Mountain which she visited recently. I told her the horse name is Traveler but she forgets. Pretty soon Traveler will be in her working conversational knowledge like Spartanburg and strawberry ice cream and her favorite colors Blue and Pink.

    She doesnt know the difference between Duke Blue and North Carolina Blue

     It was her Dad's Birthday and the 25 anniversary of the funeral of my Dad and her Great Grandfather Billy Fox, a Baptist preacher.

     I gave a eulogy later reprinted in the Gaffney Ledger and linked at Baptists Today. I think President Carter read it. I quoted William Blake and the Great Hymn For All the Saints.

    My neighbor in Alabama died ten days ago. His son a reticent young man spoke and gave some humanity to the fellow.

      We All got to Go  

The sordid world of Trump most of my friends can not admit

  This is for my classmates at Gaffney High, the boys at the Shed in Collinsville, some family members and 85 percent of the white deacons in Southern Baptist churches  of which my father was once a pastor. And the School board members in Gaffney South Carolina.

    And Ciff Simms and Yellowhammer News in Bama

     This election is not a reality show. It matters. Fox News is poison and PBS, NBC and NPR will 99 percent of the time tell you the truth and have their facts to substantiate it.

     Some of you are scared because a Black woman will be the next president just eight years after OBAMA. Hillary shoulda won in 2016 ; In fact she did win by 2 million votes but the electoral college fell to the Bastard Trump and his surprise.

        The election is not so much about personalities, even the price of gas which easily googled Forbes article will make the case except to the most literacy challenged, is a non starter to begin with.

      The election is about an administration the President will bring to govern Harris will bring wise people to the Cabinet and she will listen to their counsel. She have a middle of the Road vice President and will listen closely to that person. Roy Cooper, and the governors of Penn and Kentucky and the Senator from Arizona are not off the rail radical leftists. I doubt your competency for the school board lets say in Gaffney SC if you don't get that point.

     Trump will bring punk asses like Steve Bannon, or RicknBubba from Alabama, Robert Jeffress of FBC Dallas,  Tommy Tuberville, Stephen Miller and others in the project 2025 network. Listen to NPR On Point of July 31, JD Vance wrote the introduction to the new book Dawn's Early Light

     Upstate Media in SC Should talk to Mark Powell of App State, an Appalachian novelist who I have reported earlier has Mah Fybah. Talk to him and Ron Rash and David Joy.

     More later but the country can't take another term of God Damn Soul Molesters like Donald Trump and his minions in the "leadership" team