Quarterback

  Back in the late 1980's, I went to Hardee's to have supper which was next to the University of South Carolina.  It was my Monday-night ritual to eat there before going to play volleyball with my friends at church.  The food was good, and the restaurant was not too busy.

 One night, as I was eating, a student came into the restaurant wearing a Gamecocks football jersey.  I didn't recognize him at first.  He ordered a whole bunch of food which at that time came to $10.  When the cashier told him how much it was, he announced that he was the star quarterback for the Carolina football team, and he didn't think he should pay.  I was watching in amazement at this guy saying that.  For the next few minutes, the cashier would repeat how much it was, and the customer would repeat his declaration.  After this back and forth, the customer demanded to speak to the manager.  

 It became something of a shouting match between the customer and the manager.  The manager insisted that the customer pay for his food, and the football player insisted that the food should be free for him.  I sided with the manager, because I had seen these demanding customers before in my retail job.  Eventually, the manager took the food back from the counter and put it in the trash.  The horrified customer said some choice words and stormed out of the restaurant.  I applauded the employees, and they offered me a free dessert.  

 Every time I see that player now, who has since retired, I think about how egotistical he was just because he was a football player.  I could also identify with him, because my ego was pretty big as an actor.  People tell you how great you are, so you think they should bow down to you.  The thing is though that there is always someone bigger and more important than you.  That's life. 

Drugs

  When living in my dorm at PC, there were two bedrooms connected by one bathroom.  During my senior year, I was assigned a room on the top floor of the dorm with a freshman roommate.  He seemed okay, but he really wanted to join a fraternity and live in one of their houses.  He got his wish, so I ended up with a private room.  The guy in the room adjacent to mine had a roommate that also got his wish, so he had the room to himself.  It was a good arrangement.  

 One afternoon, he was leaving a class on the second floor and saw two policemen standing at the bottom of the classroom stairs.  He knew why they were there, and he jumped over the railing to try and get away from them. When he landed on the bottom floor, he broke his leg.  They arrested him.  As it turned out, he was a big-time drug dealer.  I had no idea.  When I got back to my dorm room that afternoon, I heard a lot of commotion coming from his room.  I tried to open the door to his room from the bathroom, but it was locked.  It sounded like some people were destroying his room.  I finally found out what was happening.  It was the police tearing apart his room.  From the ceiling to the mattresses to the furniture.  They found a lot of drugs mostly stashed in the ceiling.

 The police came to my room and questioned me about his drug dealing.  I told them that I had no idea what was happening.  They asked me if I had bought any drugs from him.  I told them no, but thankfully they didn't ask me if I had done any drugs.  I would have had to lie to them about that.  I saw the inside of his room, after the police left.  It was trashed beyond belief.

 He was in the Clinton City Jail, and I went to visit him.  It was the first time I had ever been in a real jail.  It was pretty scary.  He was in a cell by himself and was very glad to see me.  He apologized to me for what had happened and said he had learned his lesson.  His father was from North Carolina and pretty wealthy, so he paid a fine and was ordered not to come back into the state of South Carolina.  He had a motorcycle, and he came back secretly a couple of times for a visit and a deal or two.  I hope he got his life straightened out.  His dorm room was unoccupied for the rest of the year.  I imagine that the school had to pay a bunch of money to get the room reconstructed.  It needed new mattresses and furniture, as well as a new ceiling.  They weren't playing. 

Graveyard

  When I was a student at PC, I loved to go to the movies in downtown Clinton.  It started out being 25 cents to get in, and then they caused some consternation when they went up to 35 cents.  Even so, I went to almost every movie that came to town.  We were starved for entertainment, and going to the movies was about it.  The theater would usually only show the movies at night.

 After the movie, I would walk back to the dorm.  It wasn't very far, maybe a couple of miles.  Along the way back, I would get the urge that I had to pee.  So, I would walk by the First Presbyterian Church's graveyard and find a dark spot to relieve myself.  I suppose some would take offense of me going in a graveyard, but it was pretty much the only option.  On one occasion, there was a woman in her kitchen who saw me from her window.  She looked pretty angry and called the police.  I heard the sirens, so I quickly zipped up and ran away.  

 I learned two lessons that night.  One was to look out for a woman looking through a window at me.  The second was important later in life, when I became homeless, and that was to hide when going.  Going behind dumpsters were especially good.  If only I could find a dumpster in Clinton at night...

Acrostic

  At Anderson College, I had a reputation on campus for being a writer.  I had written a poem, which was published locally and nationally.  That story was covered earlier.  I had written a lot of the copy for the 1973 yearbook, especially as it related to Speech and Drama.  So, I was approached by the Academic Dean to write something that would entice high school students to come to Anderson.  This was a big honor for me, and I gave it a lot of thought.

 I had been writing poems in recent days using an acrostic.  I spelled a word going down a page and then using the first letter of that word to form a line.  The second line started with the second letter down and so on.  The Dean had told me that my creation would be printed on a poster and distributed to churches and schools around the state.  It would also be used on the campus to build morale amongst the current students.  

 I worked on it for a week or two, going through several drafts.  I spelled out "Anderson College" down the page and used the first letter of each word to write something about the school based on each letter.  It wasn't really a poem but more like a description on what AC was like.  Each line, in my mind, was perfect.  I loved Anderson College.  It had done a lot for me in getting me out of my shell.  I had received awards for Theatre and Speech.  Our debate team was undefeated and were ranked one of the best in the country.  I was awarded a spot in Who's Who in American Junior Colleges.  A lot of other accolades came my way, and I also found love there.  The best thing I could do was to carry on my legacy for future students.

 After going over it again with a fine-tooth comb, I turned it into the Dean.  He read it and liked it except for one line.  The "G" in College read:  "Giving all you have to give".  He said that could be interpreted as sexual, and I should rewrite it.  I didn't see that interpretation at all.  I saw it as a call for students to do everything they could possibly do to succeed.  He said that it could be interpreted at a girl losing her virginity.  Granted, Anderson College was a Baptist school and very religious, but I just didn't write that line in that way.  I showed it to my father who was a Baptist minister, and he said the same thing. It could be interpreted as sexual.

 Due to my incredibly big ego, I couldn't deal with criticism like this.  I had worked on this project much longer than anything I had done before.  I told the Dean that I wasn't going to change the line, so he got someone else to write some words for the poster.  To this day, I think they should have used my acrostic.  Why?  Because I was a creative genius in my mind, and that is what other people told me, too.  I hoped students were inspired to come to Anderson by whatever that other person wrote.  In looking back on their history since, they did, because now it is a university. 

Meditation

  When I was a sophomore at Anderson College, I had a private room.  I just kind of lucked out with it, because the guy that had it was graduating, and he recommended me to get it.  It was great.  The window overlooked the woods behind the dorm, so I didn't have to listen to traffic noise or yelling students.  During this time, I had adopted a hippie lifestyle.  I was into some antiwar activities and was on a lot of mailing lists from companies wanting to sell me buttons and posters.

 One of the catalogs I got was what looked to be an incense company.  They wanted to send me free incense and a magazine, if I said okay.   The people were with the Hare Krishna movement.  I was familiar with them, since George Harrison had endorsed them, so I said okay.  I got the literature, and they were promoting peace, so I signed up.  The incense was a little smelly, and some in my suite thought my room was on fire, so I had to stop using it.  I didn't have to shave my head to adopt their beliefs.  They did want me to pass out literature and flowers, which I did some in the community.  I didn't get a positive response from the residents of Anderson, SC, so I stopped doing that.  

 There was one thing that the movement taught me and that was Transcendental Meditation.  I was under a lot of stress at school, so I would take time to meditate and focus on an object.  I also learned how to relax by tensing and releasing the muscles in my body from my feet to my head.  All while concentrating on my breathing. I also had a mantra that I chanted while doing this:  "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.  Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare".  I found that the mantra would focus my attention on calming down and putting my mind in the right place.

 One day, a call was put out to have everyone meditate on a Saturday morning at the same time to keep an underground nuclear test from happening in Alaska.  The goal was to have our brainwaves to cause the test to fail.  I did that at the appointed time, but the test went on without a hitch.  I became a little disillusioned about the power of meditation in that form, so I didn't do it as much after that.  However, I did find that my mantra continued to relax me.  It still does to this day, if I am feeling very stressed.  I also have a prayer that I pray to God before any performance I have to do.  I get a calmness over me from that prayer, which I have been doing since I was thrust into the male lead of a play my freshman year at Anderson College. 

 When I got to seminary, I took a class on Comparative Religions.  I wrote a paper on the Krishna Movement.  The first line of my paper was:  "When I was involved in the Krishna Movement...".  I turned it in, and the teacher called me into his office.  He said that I wasn't a Christian, because I was involved in an Eastern Religion.  I asked him if he had read my paper, and he said he had.  I asked him to read the first line of my paper.  He did and then apologized.  He gave me an A.

 I believe there is only one true God.  God the Father.  God the Son. And, God the Holy Spirit.  Three in one.  Jesus was sent to Earth to save people from their sins and to give us eternal life through Him.  That's really all you need to know.  Praying is our way to talk directly with God.  No need for chants or incense. I respect other religions for their beliefs, but in the end, I will be going to Heaven one day.    

Valentine

  Back at Crayton Elementary School, there was a tradition that every Valentine's Day we would pass out cards to students we liked.  Some kids also gave them to our teachers, but that didn't happen often.  This exercise was supposed to be fun.  The teachers would pass out those wretched candy hearts with sayings on them.  It was supposed to be candy, but they tasted more like chalk.

 Every kid had a small box on their desk with a slot to put the cards into the box.  The girls would come around and put their cards in the boys' boxes, and then the boys would put their cards in the girls' boxes.  The key to both of these groups doing this was that the boys had to close their eyes, when the girls passed out their cards and vice versa.  You weren't supposed to see who had put a card in your box until you opened it.

 When it came time to open the boxes, some kids had a lot of cards, while other kids might have had only a few or maybe just one.  That is what happened to me.  I wasn't one of the studly boys in class that all of the girls liked. Some girls weren't the prettiest in the class, so they might have gotten a few or maybe one.  It was basically a popularity contest.  The other kids saw me as not being very athletic or handsome, so I guess that's why my box wasn't brimming over with cards like some other kids.  They also saw me as being the smart kid in class, since I wore glasses.  

 So, one year, it was obvious that the teachers had talked to one another about the disproportionate way that some kids got more than others, because the teachers required that the girls would give one card to each boy, and the boys would give one card to each girl.  We all knew why.  At least, it made those of us that didn't get many cards to feel good.  The teachers took the status kids out of the equation.  It didn't mean that the popular kids liked us any better by giving us cards.  It just meant that the teachers made them do it.  No love lost between us and them.  The teachers took pity on us unpopular kids.  Even though we all got cards, we were still picked last for games by the other kids.  They wanted to make sure we knew our place.  We did. 

April

  My mother had a great sense of humor.  She loved Monty Python and George Carlin, until he started getting dirty.  Much of her humor was imparted on me.  It was our way of getting through our days.  I would sit in my highchair and read funny books to her, while she was cooking.  I should point out that they kept my highchair after I had outgrown it, but I could still fit into it. 

 People, who knew my mother, didn't know that she liked to play practical jokes on us for April Fool's Day.  For me, it was always the same thing...she would wake me up announcing that it was snowing outside.  I would get excited and look outside to see it was a bright sunny day.  So, I would have school that day.  She would laugh, but I would be disappointed.  As time went on, that day would come, and she would say it was snowing.  I would humor her by looking outside to see a sunny day.  She and I would laugh, and I would go to school.

 When I got to high school, her waking me up on April 1st to say it was snowing was getting rather tedious.  When I was young, it was funny, but now not so much.  That day came, and she woke me up to say it was snowing.  I didn't want to play along anymore, so I said "Yeah, right" and tried to go back to sleep.  "No, really, it's snowing", she said.  After a little back and forth, I finally broke and looked out the window just to get this over with.  To my shock, it really was snowing.  There would be no school.  She laughed at my doubting her.  Never doubt what your mother says, even though you think there is no way it could snow on April 1st.  It did.

 

Shop

  I wasn't a very good student in junior high (middle school).  I couldn't really concentrate, since I was getting beat up all the time.  At least, that was my excuse.  I've already written about how much I hated gym class, but there is another one I hated almost as much:  Shop Class.

 The boys would take Shop, while the girls took Home Economics.  The first semester of Shop required the boys to plane and smooth a block of wood and then take it to the lathe to turn the block of wood into something useful.  Some would make baseball bats, while others would make legs for a small chair.  So, to start off, you put your block of wood in a vise and started planing.  The plane was pretty heavy, and the wood had bark all over it.  I just couldn't get the plane to smooth the wood.  When I would get to the end of the block, the plane would go down instead of up.  It was the plane's fault.  The end of the block had to have square corners.  Mine were round.  I went through several blocks.  Once someone had squared off the ends, they were to saw off the edges to make them straight.  I never got to sawing.  Mr. Sease was an ex-military man, who may have had high blood pressure.  I know that I would see his face get beet-red, when he saw me just planing away.  By the end of the semester, I hadn't sawed much less lathed.  The school lost a lot of money from blocks they bought, and I had planed.  

 The second semester was Mechanical Drawing.  I thought this would be easier than Shop.  It involved sitting at a desk and using instruments to figure out degrees and measurements to create a house on paper.  Since my father had studied architecture at Clemson, I thought this would be easy for me.  For some reason, I was always 1/16th of an inch off in my drawings.  Our teacher wasn't pleased.  My lines were straight.  My angles were good, but I was always 1/16th of an inch off.  I'm sure it was the ruler's fault.  

 I failed both semesters. My father wasn't pleased, because he knew I would never follow in his footsteps with architecture. I can say that I have never used a plane to smooth wood since, nor have I had to measure something within 1/16th of an inch.  I have built stuff, including stage scenery, but nothing that precise.  Almost but not quite.  The story of my life.  I guess that is why I am a perfectionist today.  A teachable moment from school.

Covenant

  When I graduated from seminary, I was the first person to basically have a major in Religious Drama.  At that time, there were only four of us in the Southern Baptist Convention that did religious drama as monologists exclusively.  We were all very good at what we did.  That is not an ego thing.  That is just the truth.  The word was out around the convention that we were marketable.  People wanted us.

 One day, I got a call from a drama group called the Covenant Players.  They were a travelling Christian drama group, and they wanted me to join.  They did their own scripts, and I had been writing scripts for some time.  The problem was how would one get paid?  Their answer was that the group would take up an offering in a church to pay for their motel and food.  However, if they didn't get enough money for the essentials, they would sleep in their van.  That didn't sound very appealing to me.  After all, I was this great religious dramatist.  It sounded to me like a hippie commune sort of thing.  I knew about hippie communes, because I used to be a hippie.  If there wasn't going to be a guaranteed salary, I didn't want to do it.

 I was nice and thanked them for thinking of me.  The Covenant Players are still around, although their main work is on the West Coast.  If you get a chance to see them, you should.  And, give them a couple of dollars to buy food and maybe a motel room or two.  

 

Tumbling

  I used to hate my physical education class in junior high.  For starters, my teacher was a sadist.  I don't mean that in a funny way.  He loved to punish people for not following his direction.  I have already written about the time he told me to bend over and grab my ankles for him to use a fraternity-style paddle on me, after he caught me spitting on a bully.  Even though, the bully started spitting on me first.  

 He would demand that all of the guys take showers after gym class.  I didn't want to take community showers with other boys, so when he would walk around the locker room and see me, I would start taking off my clothes and then put them back on after he left. I wasn't the only boy who did that.  Since most of the boys taking showers were the bullies, I felt I didn't need to get more abuse there.  

 One week, we were to do tumbling in the gym.  The boys were on one side of the gym, and the girls were on the other side.  Due to some unknown reason, I just couldn't do a summersault. I would end up on my head but not able to go all the way over.  I tried, but it just wasn't happening.  Our teacher wasn't very helpful, and all the boys laughed at me.  After several tries, he gave up on me and sent me over to the girls' side. He just wanted to embarrass me further.  Thankfully, their teacher was more empathetic towards me.  She took her time and showed me how to do it.  However, the girls weren't as sympathetic either.  Being made fun of by both sexes just wasn't nice.  Their teacher was the only one who seemed to care.

 So, I began to get sick every Tuesday and Thursday right before gym class.  I would go to the school nurse, and she would call my mother to get me.  After the second week of getting sick on these two days, my mother asked me why it was at the same time.  I told her that it was gym class.  She called the principal, and I got an excuse not to do gym class anymore.  I would come to class but just sit in the bleachers and watch the others.  Of course, this made the bullies want to beat me up more, because I was getting preferential treatment from the school.  I got hurt more after school from them.  

 If that was today, the boys' gym teacher would have been fired.  It was a different time.  

Dark

 After Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, there were riots in the streets across our nation.  The city of Columbia was no exception.  Back then, segregation was still rampant in the South.  As I wrote about earlier, I was attacked by three boys in Five Points for being responsible for Dr. King's death.  They threw rocks at me, while I screamed that I had nothing to do with it.  I didn't get to tell them that one of my cousins was a Freedom Rider with Dr. King.  It probably wouldn't have mattered to them.  

 So, the Sunday night after the assassination, I was driving home from church.  I had just gotten my driver's license.  The city had turned off the electricity around Benedict College and Allen University, where there had been some unrest.  Both were historically black schools.  The police thought that if they cut off the electricity that the students would go back inside of the buildings around the schools.  By cutting off the electricity, the traffic lights and streetlamps were off, as well.  To say it was dark as night was an understatement.

 On the corner of Taylor Street and Two Notch Road, there was a policeman directing traffic.  He had a flashlight for drivers to see him.  He was standing on the line separating the lanes.  It was his fault for standing too close to my car, because I felt a bump under a tire and then another one.  I had run over his foot.  I saw him jumping up and down in my rear-view mirror, but I wasn't about to stop to see if he was okay.  I thought that I could lose my newly gotten license that I had worked so hard to get.  

 When I got home that night, my parents asked me if I had run into any trouble.  I told them no, other than it was really dark around Allen and Benedict.  I hope the officer recovered okay from probably a broken foot.  I hope the statute of limitations has run out after 57 years.  If not, it would be a strange conversation in jail, when they ask me what I am in for, and I tell them that I ran over a policeman's foot in 1968.

Bike

  The first bike I ever had was a red Schwinn.  It was big, heavy and not much fun.  So, I asked my parents for a lighter bike.  They got me a rust orange color with a banana seat.  The handlebars were in a "U" shape, and it had a 3-speed gear shift that sat between the seat and the handlebars.  It was cool.  

 I rode it everywhere.  The handlebars got loose sometimes.  Once, I was riding along a sidewalk, and the handlebars gave way.  I fell over the top of the bike onto the pavement.  I have a scar on my shoulder from that. It still got me where I wanted to go.

 One of those places was about five miles from my house, which was a movie theater.  I loved going to the movies there, because they showed a lot of foreign films.  I would park my bike in an alley between the theater and a drug store.  I had a bike lock, so no one would steal my bike, but it would always be there, when I left the movies.  Except once.

 I came out of the theater, and my bike was gone.  I walked back home not knowing where it was.  I was around 15.  When I got home, I told my father what had happened.  He suggested that we contact the police.  We went down to the police station to file a report.  I gave them a really good description of my bike.  It also had a name plate on the back with my first name on it.  They took the report and said that they would be on the lookout for it.  

 My father drove me around the neighborhood near the theater.  We saw my bike in the front yard of a house about two blocks from the theater.  My father called the police to report what we had found.  They told us that it could be anybody's bike, despite the fact that mine was unique, so they didn't do anything about it.  They said it would be my word against theirs.  So, I didn't have a bicycle after that.  Fortunately, I got my driver's license soon after that.  I hope the thief enjoyed the loose handlebars.

 

Snowman

 The first house I ever knew was on Seminary Place in New Orleans.  It was a modest home built in brick, and it had a carport next to the house.  My brother would use the adjacent roof of the carport to sneak out of the house.  I was too young to do that.  

 Although, I have just a few memories of that house like having to learn how to walk again after my hernia surgery and my highchair at the kitchen table, I do remember one very strange moment, when I was around 3 years old.  I saw my first snowfall.  Yes, it snowed in New Orleans.  My parents took me outside to experience this strange stuff on the ground.  They bundled me up with a heavy coat and hat.   I was pretty warm in this cold environment.  New Orleans was usually rather warm year-round, and we had a lot of rain but not snow.  

 It wasn't very deep, maybe 2 inches, but I was encouraged to build a snowman.  I really had nothing to go on how to do this.  I had seen pictures in books, but we didn't have enough snow to build one of those.  Fortunately, my best friend Paul had some experience in doing this, so we built it together.  When we finished, it was pretty short.   However, there was one problem.  We didn't have enough snow to make it in sections, so it was just short and thin.  I realized later that the reason my parents wanted me to make a snowman was to clear the yard of the snow.  They were clever that way. I have a picture of me standing next to the snowman.  I glad I do, because it melted the next day.