By MONTE DUTTON
It’s great to have some time to write songs and edit fiction, but gosh, it feels good to get out in the heat and snap photos of cute kids tossing the old pigskins around.
It’s almost impossible to take bad photos of kids.
They were scattered around K.C. Hanna Stadium at Monday morning’s Laurens District 55 High School’s camp for kids from 7 to 66 (the last being me). I was working on my snapping. Photo snapping.
I was thinking of long ago when we went to stadiums to hunt Easter eggs.
Sometimes, after the hay was in and the pasture was mown, we chose sides and played baseball. It wasn’t necessary to touch all the bases, and sliding was both forbidden and unwise.
The bases were cow pies.
A better diamond was in Lydia Mill behind Providence School. The preferred bike-racing venue was the roller-skating oval at Clinton Mill. Some kids bowled at Palmetto Lanes, but most played the pinball machines or the piccolo. (For some reason, jukeboxes were called “piccolos.”)
Most basketball was played outside on courts that may or may not have had nets. The best place to play was sneaking into Leroy Springs Gymnasium at PC. The National Guard Armory (Japan restaurant is on that site now) had a court that was as slick as any hockey rink. Traveling was unavoidable.
“The Show” wasn’t the big leagues. It was a movie at the Broadway.
Hey, let’s go to the show!
My favorite matinee at the Broadway was when the crowd of kids thought 2001: A Space Odyssey was a slapstick comedy. It seemed too weird to be anything else.
I remember the student protest when the cost of admission rose from 25 to 35 cents.
We might have stormed the Capitol if it hadn’t been named the Broadway.
Old movies occasionally came through town. The Broadway was where I first saw my favorite movie, Lawrence of Arabia, as well as Giant, Shane and Gone with the Wind.
No one wore seatbelts or bicycle helmets. Swing sets were used for a variation of the ski jump in which, at the top of its arc, we sailed through the air and landed in the sand.
Incredibly, I know of no deaths or even dismemberments.
Eating out was uncommon. In fact, I remember when it was a big deal to drive all the way to Greenville to go to Shakey’s Pizza, preferably after watching the Atlanta Falcons work out at Furman University. Until my senior year of high school, I had never visited the Furman campus for anything else.
Had I not tagged along with my friend Roy Walker to watch the Paladins upend Appalachian State at Sirrine Stadium, I never would have gone there. What a Furman faux pas. The Paladins recruited Roy and got me. Roy became an All-American at PC. I became a crack equipment manager at FU.
In Simpsonville, Golden Strip Post 271 scored at least a run in all but one inning and cruised to an 11-4 American Legion baseball victory over Chapin-Newberry Post 193/24 on Monday night.
The four Laurens Raiders in the Golden Strip lineup – Hunter Nabors, Asher Goss, Coleman Coker and Owen Pridgen – combined for three hits, three runs and three RBI. Pridgen homered.
The big run producer for Golden Strip (5-2) was Alex Lacoste, who drove in three.
Clinton’s Brett Young, playing left field for Chapin-Newberry (7-5), singled in a run. Only Jake Peterson, the losing pitcher, collected two hits. The winning pitcher was George Massengill.
Easley Post 52 scored four times in the bottom of the seventh inning to edge Greenwood Post 20, 16-15, in Easley.
Center fielder Aaron Tolbert singled up the middle to drive in the winning run. Third baseman Braden Mauro drove in three runs – three others had two RBI apiece – and Levi Recio scored three runs.
Laurens’ Jaedon Goodwin, playing center field and leading off, scored three runs for the Braves. He and right fielder Jackson Martin each had one hit.
Out of the bottom of the batting order, third baseman Ryan Stone went 4/4, scoring twice and driving in two more, for Greenwood (4-6).
Presbyterian’s men’s soccer team, coached by Nick Finotti, is to play seven home games at Martin Stadium, beginning with an Aug. 24 match against the Erskine Flying Fleet.
The Blue Hose open the Big South schedule with home games versus Longwood (Sept. 22) and UNC Asheville (Sept. 27).
Presbyterian is coming off a 5-8-3 record a season ago.
Check out the full schedule here.
Stop baseball right now, and the Boston Red Sox make the playoffs.
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