Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 12:03 p.m.
As the Statler Brothers used to sing, don’t tell me I’ve nothing to do.
As I peruse events in faraway Daytona Beach, I’ve been busying myself writing about local matters.
At the monthly meeting of the Laurens Commission of Public Works, a dozen or so citizens came to tell poignant stories of how impossible it is to pay their utilities. I felt their pain. So, too, did the commissioners who, with the those payments, have to pay their own bills.
CPW spent almost $1 million apiece on electricity and natural gas. January was excessively cold. The commissioners warned a week month earlier it was going to happen. That was the first meeting about which I wrote. I was naive. I thought, the weather is cold. Bills will be high. Duh. As it turns out, I buried that first lead.
Matthew Turner is about to be sworn in as the new Family Court judge. I remember when his father, Mike, was the bright, new lawyer in the county and was on County Council. I remember when the Family Court judge was Bill Craine, whom I helped in an unsuccessful bid for the General Assembly when I was a teen-ager. Bill was two judges back. Matthew says he still plays a lot of tennis.
Last night, the Clinton High boys opened the Class 3A playoffs with their best performance of the year to date. The Red Devils thumped Seneca, 70-47. J.D. Payne, who had been hampered by a sprained ankle when Newberry won the Region 3 championship in a tie-breaker game last week, had scored three points in his previous two games combined. He came out and scored seven in a row to start out and finished with 19. Jahleed Cook was the catalyst of the second half, finishing with 17. Now Clinton (16-7) must travel to faraway Camden, though that burg isn’t so far when compared to Daytona Beach.
Skip Lax, who was in my graduating class at Furman, now oversees the state’s officials for the High School League. He was at the Clinton High basketball game, which was a bit opportune because I was writing a story on Sam and Truman Owens, who are quite possibly the most distinguished set of brothers ever to referee, umpire and otherwise arbitrate sporting events in these United States. They’re being inducted into the Laurens County Athletic Hall of Fame next month, and I’ve been writing bios of them, as well as Red Devil legend Kinard Littleton, Laurens coaching great Bobby Ivey, and probably the best Raider ever, Rickey Foggie, who played quarterback for Lou Holtz at Minnesota.
Sam died in 2007. Truman is 86 and umpired a little softball as recently as last year. They officiated their 500th, 600th and 700th high school football games together, and the totals reached 795 when Sam died. In their spare time, Sam wrote a book on the history of Clinton, and Truman spent 41 years on City Council. Now that he’s curtailed his officiating, Truman shows up about every time the Red Devils take a floor, a field or a diamond. In the winter, Truman wears a stylish country gentleman’s hat about everywhere he goes. When it warms up, he’ll wear his Yankees cap. I fear that small towns don’t produce men like Sam and Truman Owens anymore.
“We loved every minute of it,” Truman said. “Sam and I worked together for about all our days.”
When I got home, I discovered an interesting coincidence. On Friday afternoon, Laurens Academy’s No. 1-ranked Class A private school girls’ basketball team, is playing a first-round playoff game in Sumter. That night, Clinton High’s boys are playing at Camden, a little over a half hour’s drive away. Destiny is such that I might just be able to travel way down there and write about both games. I’m not sure whether I look forward to that or dread it. It’s going to be a tough trick to pull. I’m a bit run down, owing to the sniffles and a cough, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to do it.
I’ve just got a hankering to get out of the county. I should be home by oh-dark-thirty or so after I file from some McDonald’s, where wi-fi is reliably available until midnight.
This morning, though a bit under the overcast skies, I drove over to CHS to watch Mark Wise, the county’s football Player of the Year, sign up to play football for the Newberry College Wolves, where he will join teammate Kody Varn. Mark, who played both ways for the Red Devils, wants to major in graphic arts. As three other members of the local media asked him about his decision, someone suggested that there might be a future in the media business. I told him don’t listen that nonsense.
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