The Forrest Gump of S.C. Music Scene?

"When you were at USC," my brother asked, "did you know Darius Rucker?"
No. I worked with his girlfriend, I said. I didn't elaborate, but she was at The Gamecock. She was in production, I was in editorial.
I could further elaborate that I did talk many times with Mark Bryan, guitarist for Hootie and the Blowfish. My mom even met Mark once, a long time. I could further further elaborate that back then, H & the B was just a bar band, popular with the frat boys.
Why do you ask, I asked back.
Rucker, lead singer of the Blowfish, commonly, mistakenly believed to be Hootie, was on some special about South Carolina.
Oh.
They had also talked about Dizzie Gillespie on the special, John said. That he was from Cheraw, and Cheraw had a jazz music scene going on.
"And you used to live in Cheraw, right?" John asked.
Yeah. I still couldn't tell where this was going. Again, I didn't elaborate, but I didn't get to know many people who knew Dizzy Gillespie. I did go to Dizzy Gillespie Apartments many times. It's a housing project. Many times it was for drug busts. Once for a murder. Many times also I went there for "Take back the community" type events, because most residents didn't buy into the crime that seemed to be rampant in that community. Cheraw has since dedicated a statue in memory of Gillespie, and is honoring his tie to the community.
However, in January of 1995, the old Holly Inn burned to the ground. The inn had apartments out back in which Dizzy's band members used to stay when he came back to town. It was a decrepit structure. There was still enough to restore at the time of the fire, but not enough after the fire. I walked to that fire and beat the fire department there. It was a block from my own apartment building.
Dizzy used to come over to the inn and have jam sessions with his band.
Anyway, back to my brother. He said the show also talked about James Brown, the Godfather of Soul.
"Said he was from Barnwell," my brother said.
I knew where this was going.
"You used to work in Barnwell, right?"
Yeah. My Godfather of Soul story/
I interviewed him once, but that's business. Doesn't count in Six Degrees of Stephen Guilfoyle.
But I met him. We all knew, at the paper, that Brown was from Barnwell, and being just down the highway living in Beech Island, he sometimes dropped by. So we always thought it was a possibility.
Barnwell is not a nowhere town, and a stretch limo can make the rounds. But when a black stretch limo passed through town with a license tag that said GDFTHR or some such variation, we knew we could find him. I sent my reporters out to find James Brown.
They came back, none successful. So I went out myself.
I found the limo parked on a street behind our building, in front of a law firm. James Brown was meeting Miles Loadholt, a local attorney. They were of a generation, and I think their families knew each other growing up. James Brown called Miles "Mr. Miles."
They stood outside, I took a picture of them shaking hands, a friend of Miles had it framed for him a while later. It was a good picture.
That was the first time I met the Godfather of Soul.
I could hear the wheels churning in my brother's brain.
Hootie, Dizzy and Brown, oh my.
I'm the Forrest Gump of South Carolina's Music scene. I'm always there, in the backdrop.
Or at least that's the impression my brother has.
Mama says, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get."
Unless you buy a box of plain chocolates. Then, you pretty much know what you're going to get.

FIRE AT TONY'S II: Softball team backers punt their barbecue

It’s not a football term, but the Carolina Angels softball team and their backers had to punt Saturday.
They were to hold a barbecue fund-raiser at Fest-i-Fun. They had the backing of the Bare Bones Barbecue team. They had about 500 pounds of Boston butts to be smoked up for hungry festival-goers and a prime spot, just next to the big white main tent, from which to sell.
Like in softball and many sports, the threat of rain wasn’t a sure bet to call the game.
But Tony’s Pizza caught fire early Saturday morning, and Fest-i-Fun was cancelled by city organizers.. Fire trucks remained on Tom Hall Street, downtown Fort Mill’s main drag, late into the afternoon, and much of the downtown was blocked off by police cars and yellow tape.
So the Carolina Angels punted.
Michael Kidd, who coaches the Angels and is also on Bare Bones arranged to set up at the Presbyterian chuch a couple of blocks down S.C. Hwy. 160 across from the walking park.
The girls on the team made a couple of signs, got at least one white balloon — just circular — and took to the sidewalk hawking ’cue.
Kidd said he “grew up” in the church, so it wasn’t a problem getting the location.
This is the second year Bare Bones has cooked ‘cue for the Angels. They raised about $2,000 at Fest-i-Fun last year, and had hoped to raise at least that much this year, selling, by the plate, barbecue that has won awards in the Greenway Barbecue and Bluegrass festival in the fall.
The barbecue is smoked in a cooker after being prepped with a ketchup/vinegar mix sauce. Brian Kidd worked the smoker Saturday.
About five or six of the girls on the team were working the signs, one for the softball team, another for the barbecue team. They were working hard but laughing.
They seemed to be having a good time despite learning that sometimes, in life, sometimes even in softball, you have to punt.

Extra Meatball Please: Fire At Tony's

Tony's Pizza in downtown Fort Mill burned Saturday morning.
Owner Joseph Randazzo says he thinks he is going to build back, but it's too early to tell.
I understand it being too soon. The fire started around 3 a.m., and it's just about 1 p.m. now.
But he needs to build it back. Not for his own business plan or for its historical value.
No, it's just that I think Tony's Pizza is tied inextricably both to my life in Fort Mill and my marriage.
When I was a' courtin' my wife, many is the time I would drive up to Fort Mill. The first place she took me to lunch in Fort Mill, when I came up on a Friday afternoon, was Tony's Pizza.
She said I had to have the lunch special.
Yumola.
The lunch special. Spaghetti and meatballs and garlic knots.
It might have been that first lunch there, but it was there I met Jeff Updike.
He was having the lunch special. I think, for some odd reason, he did not have the meatballs. There certainly weren't any meatballs on his plate when he invited Patricia to come on over to his table and sit. They were Rotary buddies.
He looked me up and down kind of like he was a big brother checking me out, knowing that Patricia had a new "beau."
I guess he found me worthy enough. At Patricia's prompting, he told me all about about his work with the Nation's Ford Land Trust, a conservancy to protect land in York County. Despite his unredeemable character flaw of being a Clemson fan, I made a friend that day.
That was just the first time I had lunch there, just the first of many fine Fort Mill Township people I met and befriended.
And the special was always so good, I took to ordering an extra meatball.
I branched out just once, and tried the lasagna.
With an extra meatball on the side. I just had to have it.
Yumola.
There are other restaurants in the Township. But Tony's Pizza is just a piece of downtown Fort Mill that needs to be there. Since I ate there with my fiancée who has since become and remains my wife, the two are linked in the back of my mind in some weird way. It is not logical, I admit. But it is what it is in my mind.
If Joe Randazzo and building owner Bayles Mack do not build it back, who knows what will happen to my marriage?
It's not just me. When my brother and sisters came to Fort Mill to meet Patricia, they went downtown. It was lunchtime, late in the week. So they went to Tony's.
They know it too, though they rarely get to downtown Fort Mill when they get here.
So Saturday, May 5, 2007, might end up bring a real sad morning, if the fire marks the end.
It has to come back. I need my lunch special.
And an extra meatball.

Check out the Fort Mill Times breaking news coverage of the fire here.

Casualties of war: From the first to the 41st

You know who George Buggs is, though you probably don't remember. But I remember.
In 2003, I was the managing editor of The People-Sentinel in Barnwell. When the war broke out, the publisher said we had to do something for the troops. that's it. Something. No explanation or ideas.
i brainstormed with my lone reporter, and we came up with an idea.
Just days into the war in Iraq, a story was foisted on the American public about a little girl from West Virginia in a military convoy gone astray who bravely fought off swarming Iraqis until she ran out of ammo. She was later rescued by a special ops team.
Turned out it wasn't quite true. She was captured, but never fired a shot. She had broken legs It was a cynical attempt to manufacture a heroic symbol. The worst part of it was others were killed in that convoy, but they were ignored, and are, in many ways, still forgotten.
George Edward Buggs was in that same convoy with Jessica Lynch. He might have been in the same vehicle. We'll never know for sure what really happened. But while Jessica Lynch survived and was rescued, George Buggs was one of eight soldiers killed in that action, the first soldier from South Carolina to be killed in either of these latest wars.
Because of what we had done in our paper, we should have been prepared. But Buggs' family had not filled out a little slip of paper nor given us his photo. We had to go find them to get their story.
Over the course of two weeks and three papers, we covered the story of his life and death as well as any paper.
Like a good community paper, we not only wrote stories, but we helped the funeral home with some of the things they needed. We enlarged the few, poor Polaroids the family had, for one thing.
Because he was the first Palmetto State casualty, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford attended his funeral and spoke at it, hopping down from a stage to give a Palmetto State flag to George Buggs' son.
It was a big event. The death scarred the community a little.
When the war is over, they are supposed to do something special for him and all the men who served.
When the war is over. Some now might call that a cruel joke.
George Buggs was career military. He left behind a wife and a son.
When I heard how Buggs used to love to take his son to the movies, I was tempted, so tempted, to fill that void. I love movies, after all.
I wasn't to stay much longer in Barnwell, it turned out. But my heart went out to the son, the wife, Buggs' parents, and the community.
At that time, I didn't understand why a boy was left without a father, a mother without a son, a wife without a husband. A few months later, another young man died, an Allendale County native.
Orenthal Smith was his name. He was the fourth South Carolinian killed in the war. I sat down in my office and talked for a while with his mother and sister. We got the reaction of friends, family,
I remember having again the thoughts. Why?
It is more than three years later. I'm in another community, and I have to retrace some of my old steps to tell a story that I've told in some ways before.
Spc. D. Logan Tinsley is apparently the 41st person from South Carolina to die in this war. But he is the first from Chester County.
He is the first war zone casualty involving a Chester County man since the Vietnam War, his ROTC instructor said. So the county might not fully be prepared for this. We don't know what will happen to the community. His mother doesn't even know for sure when his body will be brought home.
I talked to my mother the other day. It was Christmas after all. I don't know in what context it came up, but at one point, she said she believes in miracles. Her faith is a tower. Mine isn't even the straw hut blown down by the big bad wolf.
But I flash back, sitting in a crowded school gym and at the graveside with the family of the first man from our state killed in this war, I remember sitting there with the family of the fourth, in my office, talking about a lost loved one. And here I am again, sitting in the home of the 41st young man killed in this war.
I don't know why and can't fathom why this happens.
But I hope my mother is right, that there are miracles. I pray Logan Tinsley will be the last from South Carolina to die in this war.
But it will take a miracle.

USC 31- Clemmons 28, Team Good Luck Charm

No comment, other than, "Ain't he cute?"

D is for Dad, D is also for ????

(Click on the title for a link to pics.)

D is for Daddy, but D is also for ????

There aren't too many books about being a Dad. They have plenty about the baby, plenty about motherhood, pregnancy galore. Breast-feeding, etc.
But they don't give you the secrets, if there are any, to being a dad.
My son was born Friday, Sept. 22. I was expecting a girl, and when they held him up for me to see, I kept waiting for them to say what it is, so I could "announce it."
My wife signed the birth plan and assigned me the task of announcing the sex and cutting the cord. I actually would have liked to pass on the latter, but after the entire delivery process, cutting the cord was a piece of pie.
While the doctor holds up the baby, I realize she was waiting for me to say what I was looking at. Announcing the sex means announcing it, apparently, to the doctor and nurses, who, having seen more of these things than I ever have or will, ought to know better and not need my help.
To be honest, though they said my son came out pretty clean, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I was thinking that might be part of the umbilical chord, because it was a little darker than the rest of his skin.
"It's a boy," I said. But it was more of a question than an announcement.
I had been expecting a girl. Why, I don't know. Just some feelings here and there. We had a boy's name picked out from the get go, but I thought for sure when we decided to name her, in part, and call her after my Aunt Kathleen, that a girl was coming.
I read Bill Cosby's "Fatherhood." It's some of his routines, watered down substantially, and the lessons, at least so far, aren't all that revealing. Not bad. Just not a sermon on the mount or the wisdom of Solomon.
The only thing that has surprised me so far was the amount of driving.
When Patricia went into labor, she decided to stay home about five hours past the point where I was ready to go. We drove to CMC-Pineville at 4 a.m.
Patricia told me after I drove great, calmly, coolly. Not my usual style at all.
She did say at one point during the drive, as a contraction hit, "Could you at least drive the speed limit?"
I was, at the time, at the limit.
I punched it.
I had worried about going to the hospital on 485 at around 4 of the clock, concerned about traffic.
In the afternoon, that is. If you are having a baby, 4 in the morning is a much better drive time on the Outer Loop. It was so clear that, I didn't have to stay between the lines, technically.
I drove out to get her a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger the day after the delivery.
Drove the baby home the day after that.
That night, we needed the proper kind of bottle, one with a low-flow nipple. They said Target carried them, so I assumed that Wal-Mart would have the brand. No such luck.
They used to have them, but no longer.
Timing is the family curse.
So after driving to Wal-Mart in Rock Hill, I head on out to Super Target in Lake Wylie. They had just closed. A store worker outside said to try, they were closing, not closed. I went in, but the security guard told me they were closed.
Timing is the family curse.
I tried the Super Wal-Mart on 49 and 485. No such luck.
My wife called. They had the brand at the CVS a half mile from our house. When I get there, it wasn't the right size/age nipple. But I got it anyway. About 50 miles right there.
The following Monday, I drove to go shopping. The following Tuesday, I drove to the pediatrician. The following Wednesday, drove to the lactation consultant.
The following Thursday, drove with my brother to get a late lunch for the visiting family.
My lovely bride is not allowed to pick up anything heavier than the baby, so the car seat and the baby are, by definition, heavier. So I have to take them everywhere.
The following Friday, and I went to get a new phone because our old one burned out and we need something that works. Can't have just two phones in the house with people sometimes calling around the clock.
It's a good thing I filled up the tank in my car when I went to the first Wal-Mart.
But the price of gas had not yet dipped below $2 a gallon.
Timing.
So I'm a Dad, trying to figure it out.
I knew the D would be for Dad.
But D is also, apparently, for driving.

Saw 'World Trade Center'

You can click above or click here to read about my reaction.
I'm trying to get a photo into the column, but it's giving me fits.