There is a nice lady in our church who professes to be 88 years old and has given up driving, so my darling wife gathered some friends and they take turns going after her on Sunday mornings and taking her home when the service is over.
But Sunday, when it was Diane's turn, she had overbooked herself. She was trying to figure out how ot get everyint done, so I stepped up. I volunteered to pick her up. On the way to the church, sshe mentioned having a sore on one toeand since she is diabetic she is having to be very careful lest it get infected.
That's when I remembered about Big John. Now when I talk about Big John, I am not telling tall tales. But Big John fits the bill. I don't want to disrespect him, either. If anyone in this world loves to eat, it's Big John. You could render him down for the lard and have enough to grease up a fleet of Yellow Cabs.
Anyway, I had just bought a Jeep Commando. I had been trying to buy the thing for a long time, and was successful that very day. When John got to our house, the first thing he wanted to do was drive that Commando.  I told him the gas hand didn't work, there wasn't any insurance on it, and it just wasn't a smart idea. John said he just wanted to drive it 'around the block'.
Down here on Route 4 Piedmont, around the block is about eight miles. Maybe six. But a long way.
We got almost home, if you consider a mile and a half almost, then that Commando chocked and died. A mile and a half. Uphill. Every step uphill. John wanted to know if I was going for gas, and I replied that I certainly was, and I was scared to walk alone on this bright sunshiney afternoon so he had better walk with me. He got the hint. We walked home, grabbed a can of fuel and a funnel, and headed back to the Jeep.
a few weeks later, John was on the phone. He said he had an appointment at the hospital in just a few days to have a toe removed.
'When we were walking home from that Jeep, I was wearing a pair of birkenstocks, without socks, and I blistered a toe. I didn't know it and it got infected. They are going to have to take it off.
How I get these ideas I will never know, but I told John, immediately, his problems were over. I had the perfect solution.
'Yawl come down Saturday for steaks, and bring all of your insurance information and stuff you would carry to the hospital,' I told him. Only John is the nosey type and he wanted to know more.
'When I was 14 yeaers old, my uncle Clarence gave me a1916 model Colt .45 revolver. I don't get to shoot it much but it shoots a lead bullet the size of your finger. You don't have any feeling down there in your feet, anyway, so when we get out beside the truck I will just shoot off that toe, You won't feel a thing. My homeowners will pay for the accident, you will be rid of that infected toe, and I will get to tell eveyone i shot you and got away with it.
He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't even come to eat until his toe had been removed by a licensed doctor. It's hard to please some people.
By the time we arrived at the church, the lady informed me if her toe got infected, she, too, would want a doctor to snatch that thing off.
Nobody will let me shoot them.

The human element?

 Every time I wrote anything that could be considered illegal, immoral, or fattening, that could corrupt our youth or give adults ideas about how to see the humor of a situation, I'd hear from the puritans of this world. I'd get letters every time I dangled a participle because there are a whole bunch of retired English teachers who subscribed to the newspaper for only one reason. They would sit down with grease pencil every morning and read from cover to cover, drawing bit circles over anything that was the slightest bit away from the norm. 

Well, I don't have to worry about these buttholes any more.

If i want to write about someone taking one too many drinks and driving, I do not expect to get letters telling me how I am single-handedly corrupting the youth of our lfair to middling community.

If I take a notion to write about LeeRoy Yarbrough racing through rural Florida with a parade of police trying to catch him I can, and if anyone doesn't like it, that can just quit reading.

When I signed on at the Greenville Piedmont, just as the 60's were winding down, the Sports Editor looked u pone day and asked, 'Do you know anything about stock cars?', the assistant sports editor almost choked. "He may have driven one to work," he said. "He's been around racing his entire life. His uncle Charlie built and promotes Anderson Speedway, and the whole family works out there. His Grandma Robie takes up tickets at the main gate. Charlie is the promoter and race director. Uncles Howard and George are the tech inspector and flagman, respectively." Then he looked over at me and said, "Any other family members work out there?" 

There were several. I ran the Pit Gate, and any time a fight broke out, I was expected to get to the scene in a hurry to protect my kin. We didn't have to worry about Howard, who was much man and could defend himself. One time at the Toccoa track someone ran up to Howard and hit him across the top of his head with a hammer handle. A few days later, a lawyer friend of our  family  found out and said, 'Whoever hit him  was extremely lucky it knocked him out' and my daddy said, 'But it didn't knock him out. When the policle got there, Howard was standing there with his head cocked sideways to keep the blood from running in his eyes while he had both hands wrapped around the guy's throat, just watching him strangle to death. The deputies grabbed both arms and pried them apart enough for the man's body to fall, and he started breathing again. They asked Howard what he was trying to do, and he saie he was trying to choke him to death. Howard just didn't play. He was much like the state of Texas. There, if you kill someone, the state will kill you back. You hurt Howard, and he would see to it you hurt for days and days.

But the rest of the family were smaller people and when trouble broke out, it was up to Howard and that Fant youngun to get there as fast as they could to jump in the middle of whatever was going down.

Yeah, I knew a little something about stock cars. I knew how to move engines back in the frame for better weight distribution, I know how to cheat up engines. I knew how to mix fuel. I knew how to offset weight to the left side for better handling. I knew a  little something about stock cars.

So the Sports Editor said, 'Well, you are going to be our racing writer.'

I tried not to laugh outloud (lol). (Is outloud one word, or two? I don't care) The funny part, to me, was, I was the third man in a three man sports starff. .The Editor was in his supper 50's and he would come in every morning and write his column. And go home. His assistant would lay out the pages, make sure everything w as where it should be, then he would start listening to Big Band mucic. He was in his upper 50's, too. I was 27, and I was hired to cover everything.

They told me rigiht out of the box that I would go to the games and write the stories. That's it. I didn't have any extra special office duties. Back then we had a room full of Western Union machines where stories came in. I would tear these rolls loose tear the individual stories, and put them in order. The news side, and the sports side. I'd have everything sorted, and a list of what had happened overnight all ready when someone else showed up to go to work. 

Then we would 'put out' the pages, and about 9:30 in the morning, my day was over unless there was some event happening that night. I'd cover that.

So when I was told I would be the racing writer, I just added it to my list of things to cover, like football and basketball and baseball, dog shows, horse shows, tennis matches, and automobile racing.

I didn't know the rules to half of these things, and cared less, but I knew how to  talk to people, and ask questions, and get quotes, and  that's where my stories came from. I didn't care about the event so much, but I wrote about the people in the event.

I seem to have drifted far away from My Yarbreough. LeeRoy was a good race car driver. And a heavy drinker. He was in a Daytona bar, either Mac's or the Paleface Harbor, and he took drunk.

When LeeRor took drunk everyone knew it and tried their best to stay out of LeeRoy's way. So when he decided to leave, nobody suggested he was too drunk to drive. Nobody tried to get the keys to his rental car. Nobody said a single word. Everybody just hoped he wouldn't kill himself or a busload of other peole before he got where he was going.

When LeeRoy hit the street, he hit it wide open. If you have heard the expression, Wide Open, Drunk, and On Fire, well, LeeRoy wasn't on fire. But he had the tires smoking on the rental car, and drew the immediate attention of Daytona's finest polie officers.

With sirens wailing and lights flashing, they headed off to show LeeRoy the error of his ways. Only LeeRoy didn't want to know the error of his ways. LeeRoy ran from them.

The police cares were faster, had bigger engines and heavier suspensions, but LeeRoy was a professional race car driver. Even drunk, he had talent. They couldn't catch LeeRoy. They could stay in sight, and talk all about what he was doing and how he was driving on their radios, but they couldn;t get him stopped. Finally, way out in the middle of nowhere, LeeRoy went into a wide, sweeping turn of the highway that was covered with gravel. LeeRoys rental tires had taken all of the abuse they could stand, and LeeRoy went sliding out into a corn field. Afrer harvesting about a half acre of corn, LeeRoy came upon a drainage ditch -- sideways. The rental car every so gently rolled over into the ditch and came to rest on it's top.

The police had seen the whole thing and were rushing to see if anyone was still alive. When the policeman looked in the window of the upside down vehicle, there was LeeRoy, hanging upside down by his seat belt, trying to get a wet cigar lit, and every tim ehe tried to light it, the flames would come back onto his hands. Leeroy didn't really realize he was upside down.

The officer gasped a couple of time and stammered, "Why, You Are DRUNK!!!"

LeeRoy looked over, smiled his upside down smile, and said, "Of course Im drunk, you idiot! Do you think I was a friggin' STUNT CAR DRIVER?

That was almost 50 years ago. I am sure the facts of the story are nothing like what I just related, but the meat of the thing is right there.

I don't care if it is right or wrong. It's entertaining. 

If I tried to put such in the newspaper, I'd get letters telling me how terrible it was to give young people such ideas.

Now, here, these people can fly up my drawer leg. I can write anything I want, and do not have to worry about corruption of any kind.

Foks that don't like it can qjit reading. I'm writing this to entertain myselfll. If you care to, read along. Otherwise, kust keep negative opinions to yourself. 

How I Got My Job

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a soldier. When I was real little, every Saturday my Grandma Robie and I would walk to town, about two miles, and do her shopping. And every Saturday we made the trip to Pruitt's Army Store. I would stay there as long as Grandma Robie let me, looking at the knives, helmet liners, jackets, boots, folding shovels, backpacks, everything the aspiring young soldier just couldn't live without.
I kept this up almost all the way through high school. I even had a job, for a while, at the Army Store, and nobody had to show me where anything was or what the prices were. I knew the drill from day one. Then, about the time I started driving a school bus and paying a slight amount of attention to world news, I realized there was a war brewing, a war somewhere 'way over there' that involved orientals, rice paddies, and an army that didn't wear uniforms while they were trying real hard to kill good ole out side.
I thought about going, but when I talked it over with my dad, he asked me what I was going to do when I got out of service, in two or three years. I had no idea. Jethro Bodine, of the Beverly Hillbillies had not uttered that wonderful line yet, where he was torn between becoming a brain surgeon or a fry cook. I may not even have the brain surgeon part correct. But his two dreams were in opposite directions. Dad suggested I go on to college, and get some background classes under my beltl, and if i still wanted to go in service, I would be coming back with some education behind me.
My high school grades were terrible. Other kids would make a C in a particular class and get depressed. I'd get a C and start the party. I just didn't care. A C was a passing mark, and that was all I was looking for.
I was always good in English, though, although it didn't translate into good grades. Little things, minute things, like term papers and book reports, even homework, were thrown my way to make my live miserable and take time away from important things, like riding my motorcycle and shooting pool.
I went to summer school from the ninth grade on. My daddy used to tell people I was the poster child for year-round education. One would think I loved school, but I hated the place. And I went to Boys High School. Now what does that name tell you? What  little detail just LEAPS out at you? Maybe the fact that there were no girls in Boys High School.
Let me say again that I hated school. The only thing that had my attention at all was the Library. Stuff to read. I started reading early and eagerly  devoured every book that I could get my hands on. That's all I wanted to do. English was the only subject I could abide, and to this day I have never understood the importance of math. If I wanted to know the answer I figured I could ask someone. That proved to be a valid concept.
I went into my 10th grade math class with no idea of learning math. I seemed to have the ability to disrupt a class qickern quick, and after just a few days the math teacher asked me to stay behind a moment after the bell. He asked me what I aimed to do in life. People were always asking me that question. I just smiled. He said the sweetest words I had ever heard in a math class. He told me if I would just sit and be quiet, not try to do any work or any homework or anything, just be quiet and let him teach the others he would give me a D--. That's D minus minus. The minus minus didn't mean anything. They didn't go on the 'permanent file' they were just there to piss off parents. D was passing. I leaped at accepting his proposal.
So, being semi smart, I was quick to make sure the taught the rest of my math classes i was required to take to get out of high school. We kept the same rules. I could count money, read a ruler, go fast enough to get speeding tickets and tell time. That was all I needed.
 When I got out of high school, finally, after getting into an altercation with an English teacher that resulted in me making a 45 on the final 'discussion' exam. If  yo didn't make a 50, you were not allowed to pass, and you could not graduate without senior English.
That English teacher stayed alive simply because I didn't want to go to jail.
So when I decided to continue my education by going to college, there weren't any recruiters waving flags to get my attention.
The only recruiter that was interested in my was Uncle Sam and Vietnam.
I took a look at the available opportunities, and it boiled down to a short list. Anderson College.
I fit their qualifications. I could be a day student. I had the money, and they could just expel me any time they wanted. It seemed my reputation had preceeded me. The whole town knew about that Fant youngun.]
I never have looked it up, but I may have been the first student every to START college on academic probation.
Back then you went to the library to sign up for classes. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the easiest things offered, so I could stay there at least until the water got hot. But when I walked into the library, my life took an upswing. Standing there, with his back turned, was my high school math teacher. I ducked out of sight and started asking, 'What is he doing here?' I was told he was the new math professor.  So I eased back up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, saw me, and started turning pail, I asked, 'Same deal?"
Yep, same deal. So I got all of my college math out of the way in short order, with a steady string of D minus minus marks.
I started liking college. There were women there. You could come and go whenever you wanted. I decided to stay in school. I did, too, because I had been there three years (AC was a junior college, a two-year design) the dean of men called me in.  He had called me in before, of course,  lots of times but it was usually for something small, like trying to burn the back tires off my T-Bird ragtop through the parking lot, smoking in the swings out in front of the school, stabbing another student, things like that.
This time he had my transcript out. He told me, like I didn't know, that I only needed one course to meet the graduation requirement and I wasn't taking it that semester. I told him I didn't intend to take it the next semester either. I couldn't graduate without it and so I could stay in school as long as I wanted, or until the war ended. I shouldn't have been so smug. He told me he was GIVING me that class and I was to graduate in June, which was about two months off.
I was so sad. I rushed down to Selective Service and asked the secretary, 'If I'm not in school in September, where will I be in October?' She mentioned Fort Jackson. I had to continue my education or get drafted.
So I got my transcript and headed off to the next-closest seat of higher education. I applied at Clemson.
I went sneaking in Tillman Hall with my transcript in hand, and signed in. I told the woman, "I want to go to school here in the worst way, and when you take a look at this transcript you will know what the worst way is.. She told me to sit down and wait for my name to be called. After about half a day, I heard, Jesse Reese Fant II called, loud and clear. I jumped up and had a leg cramp from sitting so long and almost fell in the floor. Then a woman halfway down that line of desks said, 'No, wait, I'll take Fant.' I was still hobbling around trying to get the cramp out of my leg. Then I sat back down with visions of me pushing a rifle, crawling through a rice paddy with bullets zooming over my head. I was past scared and was approaching skeered. Finally that woman finished with the kid she was interviewing and yelled, "Fant!" I walked up and before I could get seated, she said, "Is your daddy from Pendleton?' 'Oh, No Mam! My daddy is from LaFrance.' About four miles from Pendleton. She just smiled, and said, 'he's an old boyfriend of mine.'
Then we started in on that transcript. She took classes I had always been told just simply would not transfer. She took two Bible classes, Old and New Testament, that I had been cautioned that only God would give credit for, as two History classes. She took my entire string of D minus minus math classes and told me I had completed all of my math requirements to graduate from Clemson.
I went home that day and asked my dad if he remembered her. He just smiled. Then I said, 'I don't know what you did to her but she damn-sure liked it.' That didn't go over to well but he never denied anything.
But by then Diane and I had gotten married, and before the end of my first semester, she was taken suddenly pregnant.
Well, one day she was not pregnant and the next day she was. That's sudden, isn't it?
So, on the first day of February, 1967, while all those other Clemson students were signing up for additional biology or engineering classes, Diane and I were gettin gour trailer moved from Easley, where she had been working as x-ray tech, to a spot in the pasture of her parent's farm. Her dad had diabetic problems that left him legally blind and Diane could take care of him during the day while her mom worked in the Ellen-Woodside cafeteria.
And I went looking for a job. The first one I landed was setting up an inventory system for a company that sold construction supplies and equipment. i was told, 'This will involve a lot of math.'
"I'm good in math,' I said. 'I already have passed all of the math classes I need to graduate from Clemson.'
I got the job. I stayed there a year,and when the second inventory didn't come close to matching the inventory, especially in the diamond core-drill blades, the owner called me in to find out why. "Your outside salesmen are stealing you blind," I said.
He called me an incompetent smart ass and fired me. I went looking for another job and in a very short time the construction equipment  company closed it's doors forever. Why? Because the outside salesmen were stealing them blind.
Next I landed in the very middle of Donaldson Center, where American Iwer was busily installing Spanish shuttleless weaving machine throughout these United States. I was in Shipping and Receiving, which I was told involved a lot of math. But i had already proven I was good in math. It turned out I wasn't quite suited for shipping and receiving, so I went into technical inspector. Evidently Technical Inspector is the Spanish translation for scapegoat.
This outfit would ship the huge machines all over the countrty without half of the equipment necessary to get them going, and when the customers called in to complain, I would be called to th office where they would yell and scream at me for being a dumbass, while the customer listened in via the phone. Then they would grin, point me to the door, and I'd go back to technico inspectring. I loved my job.
I would probably still be there except for one thing. I bet $5 on a football game. The Greemville News didn't have the score in the Sunday paper or the Monday recap, so I just picked u the phone and called the sports department.
When someone said, 'Sports' on the other end of the line, I said something like, "Look, I know you are fighting a deadline, but  just need one football score.'
"What do you know about deadlines," the sports guy asked.
'I been fooling around the Anderson Independent in one job or another side I was 12-years-old,' I replied.
"Is this Reese Fant, the sports guy asked.
I was shocked, but agreed that he had me. I worked on the city staff there while you were in sports. And we are looking for a sports writer. Do you want the job,' he asked.
I said I would need to know more about this opportunity. He said they would hit deadline in about an hour and why didn't I come up and talk to the sports editor.
I went in to my boss and said, "I'm sick,and I want to go home."
He told me I was not sick, and I told him I wasn't going home, either.
And I headed for the newspaper. I talked to the sports editor, covered a basketball game that night between Carolina High and Walhalla, introduced myself to the winning coach, Lloyd Kelly, and asked him how long he had been coaching. He told me and I asked if he had been interviewed a lot. He had.
"Well, I'm here to interview you and I have never interviewed anyone in my life. If you will give me the answers, I will try to figure out the questions on the way home. He talked, I wrote it down, and went home to compose a story.
Two weeks later I was a sports writer for the Greenville Piedmont. And at that point, I was married, father of two children, we were expecting our third, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
But by and by, it came to me.

In addition to being Emporer for Life on  Route 4, Piedmont, I am in complete charge when it comes to cooking pinto beans, cornbread, ao anythng to do with hog meat. Tonight, while i was sitting in the kitchen 'looking' a pot of pinto beans for the Wednesday evening meal, I realized the curent editions of the Greenville News are so thin, side by side, you have to open the paper all the way up just to pour out the beans in search for rocks. And I wondered how much the bean people pay for those little rocks the throw in very pound of beans. It just doesn 't seem cost effective to me.
Then I realized I getter get to 'looking'. I got my first cooking lessons from my 'Grandma Robie' Mama's mom, back years ago. My great grandmother, 'Miss Mollie' would always sit there and tell Robie she was wasting her time, that cooking was woman's work, not men's. But I learned, anyway, even how much fatback to put in a 'mess'. That got me to thinking about 'Miss Mollie'. She was born in 1882 and I've always been inquisitive about history, where people were when something happened and what they thought, and I bet I asked Miss Mollie thousands of questions about things that happened after she was born. This was only four years after Custer's last stand, and I asked about that a lot. She never said anything. Looking back, she never really said much about history, and how it effected people during her early years. I was lucky enough to have her alive way up in my 20's,  and it was only after she died thata lit suddenly hit my why she was always so vague about history. Miss Molly was born and raised in Demorest, Georgia, and with communication the way it was about 130 years ago, Miss Mollie probably never ever heard about most of the world's more important things. My Mama was born there, too, and when we would fuss I would somethings tell her they took the dumbest people in South Carolina and sent them to Georgia. And it raised the average IQ of both states.It was times like that when I really needed to know how to cook.
My Grandma Robie tired to teach me how to make biscuits like her's, too, but I never got that down. I watched her make biscuits twice a day every day, and she never measured anything, any time. She's get down that old wooden mixing bowl, open up the piece of cloth where she kept the rolling pin, and dig a hole in the flour. I'd ask how much flower and she'd say something like, 'this much' which didn't tell me anything.then the shortening and milk were poured in, and the mixing started. By hand. For while. Then she's slap the dough on that cloth, roll it out and start cutting biscuits using an old tin can she's cut bot ends out of . Perfect biscuits every time.
 After I great up and started writing a column for the Greenville News, every time I met a 'grandmotherly type' I'd try to get her to give me her recipe for biscuits. It was a game. I know she didn't have a recipe and she knew she couldn't tell me how much of anything she used, but it was lots of fun asking. Questions like that sometimes let me into other areas that turned into good stories, but what I have always thought was one of my better stories was out at the nursing home on Sulphur Springs Road. I was interviewing Paul Baker's grandmother. Paul was running the salvage yard on White Horse Road, and his Mom ran the office. We got to be good friends, and she was telling me about a story her Mom loved to tell about a wedding she went to in 1917. I couldn't stand it. I went to the nursing home and interview the lady, who had just celebrated her 88th birthday.
She told me about a wadding, in a textile community (mill hill. I can call it that because I came off of one. You try it and you are liable to get your eyes dotted.) Anyway, back then mill houses were usually four-room affairs built on brick pillars. There was no underipinning, or things like that. There weren't  inside toilets or runnig water, either on a lot of those mill hills. This wedding was being held in the bride's home, at night, and all of the neighbors were there. They had moved out all the furniture and put in chairs, and the preacher was standing at the outside wall. The bride and groom, both sturdy of frame, got the knot tied, then family and neighbors all rushed down to congratulate them.
And the world collapsed. There had been a couple of lanterns lit. luckily one went out and a man slapped his hat over the other one. People were yelling that the world was ending. People who had been inside were suddenly rolling around on the grass. The end of the world, as folks know it in Spartanburg County, was coming to an end.
It turned out the world didn't end at all. It didn't even slow down. What happened was, the weight was too much for the framing, and the floor collapsed. She told me how, the next day, people were walking around looking at the damage, and she said there a lot of 'rats' laying around in the yard. The rats she was referring to was those round things women used to roll up their hair into a ball at the back of their head. I knew what she ment right off, because I was lucky enough to live on B Street, Anderson Mill, while my daddy was off in the 'Big War'. German U-boats put him to swimming, twice, in the North Atlantic Ocean, and the first time he ever saw me he was home on Survivors Leave.
But on B Street, there was Miss Mollie, her daughter and my grandmother, Grandma Robie, Robie's sister, Nora, Mama, her brothers Howard and Charles and George and me. Our mill house was four rooms, too. Charles and George worked at the Anderson Independent newspaper, so their hours were different than normal people. I learned pretty quick I had to be quiet at times during the day, because they were usually laid sideways across Nora and Miss Mollie's bed, alseep. I guess that's where I first started inhaling newspaper ink, something I have never been able to get out of my system.
It was a most unusual house. Notice the only males were mama's brothers, and me. no grown men. My great grandfather was killed building a bridge across the Broad River, in Columbia, and I was told my grandfather was dead, as well. They never mentioned how he died. I fought out years later, after Diane and I had set up housekeeping ourselves, that he wasn't dead at all. Miss Mollie had run him off and he had been running a store up near the edge of North Carolina. Or maybe Georgia. Somewhere not too far off. That's when they started calling me Little Man, a nickname picked up and carried a long way by all of the cousins on my daddy's side of the family. They had all been girls, so Little Man was a good fit. Daddy's people, though, called me Fant. My grandfather, Reese Fant, was still alive, and my father, Reese Fant, was alive. So was I. Everytime someone  yelled Reese everybody in the house would answer. So they started caling me Fant. I stil prefer it.
I guess living was hard, back in those days. Grandma Robie and Nora worked in the Cloth Room at the mill, and their sister, Blondine, lived up behind us, on C street, and she was a weaver.
Blondine was married to Bob Smith, and he took drunk one time and told her he was going to hit her. Blondine came down across that back yard so fasy you could have played checkers on her dress tail. She wa only there long enough to tell what Bob intended. Then war was declared. At least two butcher knives went into apron pockets, and there was enough stove wood being carried to have a good sized fire. They  ALL went up to confront Bob. Miss Mollie, Grandma Robie, Nora, Mama, and me. I didn't have a weapon and had been told at least 40 times to go back home, but I wanted to see them kill Bob. But Bob either wasn't as drunk as they thought or more intelligent that anyone guessed. Bob had left. He came back a week or so later, and Blondine took him back, but I think right up until he died he was afraid Miss Mollie was going to have him poisoned.
But they were clear. Nobody has ever figured out how to give someone else cancer.
I'm going to think about that for a while, but right now I'm going to bed. And I still can't make biscuits.

How this got a name....

  I got my start in Newspapers when I was about 12-years-old, working Saturday nights putting the comics in the Sunday edition of the Anderson Independent  -- by hand. It wasn't hard work, just rapid. The press didn't slow down for anybody, and there were 22 of us, on a line of tables, working just as hard as we could. You don't have to think as an inserter. You have to pray. You pray for a web-out, where the paper going through the press would suddenly hang up, or rip. You pray for an electric motor to burn out. You pray time passes fast.
the way it worked, the back half of the tables were stacked high with comics. We worked the front half, We'd run to the press, and grab off a stack of 50 papers. Then we't slap them next to a pile of comics, open up the first section, and stuff in the funny papers.
That's something we didn't do. The whole world referred to the comics as the funny paper, but to us, there wasn't a darn thing funny about them. We grew to hate funy papers.
I stood that for as long as I could, and right after my 14th birthday I got a call from Mr. Wilton Hall. He owned the newspaper, as well as Palmetto Pubishing Co, a print shop, and the conversation that day went something like this.
"Fant (back then my whole family and everyone close called me Fant. This was mostly because every male Fant around as also named Reese, so it was hard to get in touch with the one in trouble. Taht was me, and they started calling me Fant as soon as I could walk.) "Fant," Mr. Hall said, "Why didn't you come to work today?"
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I had turned 14 on a Sunday, and got my driver's license on July 2nd. It would have been the first, but I didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign, so I had to go back the next day to become a legal driver. I'd been driving for years. I drove back and forth to the newspaper on Saturday nights. We worked from  midnight to about five so there was no way my daddy was going to take me to work and then come after me. I drove, and every week my life was threatened if I did anything besides go straight there and return straight back home.
Now, on Wednesday, Mr. Hall was wanting to know why I didn't come to work. It turned out I was supposed to report to the print shop bright and early to do all of the delivery work, to clean presses, to cut paper to the right size, and to run out for sandwiches. I was the official print shop gopher.
I did that for yeares, until I got far enough through school to drive a school bus. Then I quit the print shop. I had dropped out of the inserting job a long time ago.
After getting all of the public education I could stand, including two years in the 12th grade, I enrolled at Anderson College. The Vietnam  War was getting bigger and bigger, and the draft for the military was running full speed. I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to kill, or any reason to crawl throgh a rice paddy, so I was determined to stay in school and get a good education. And a deferment.
I'd been at AC for a while, taking anything and everything I could, when my daddy walked in the house one day and told me he had run into Mr. Hall. Mr. Hall wanted to know how 'Little Fant' was doing, and daddy told him I still living at home, taking classes at AC. Mr. Hall said if I wanted a job to help out, for me to come see him.
I went right then. I was instructied to introduce myself too the Sports Editor, and go to work on the sports staff. Johnny Martain was the Sports Editor, He was single, smoked the most vile cigars in the history of the world, and could not drive. If you know him you automatically knew he was single. He and his cigars smelled like wet rope, and he got transportation to games with free tickets.
I held that job for over a year. Until the day of the Clemson spring game.  I was scheduled to work at the paper that afternoon, but Johnny called at noon and asked if I wanted to see the spring game. I did, of course, and he said to pick him up in 30 minutes.
So we drove to Clemson and Johnny told me there wasnt room in the press box. So I sat outside in a mostly empty stadium, while Johnny and a half-dozed sportswriters were in the pressbox that owuld hold dozeens of people but wasnt big enough for me to sit in a corner. At halftime, Johnny came out, eating an apple, to see how I was doing. I told him I was fine, that I would put up with anything as long as I was getting paid. Johnny laughed and told me he had called someone else to work in my place, and I was not getting paid.
I waited until he went back in the pressbox, then I went down, got in my car, and went home. I told my daddy what I had done, and he told me to go right then and tell Mr. Hall, to get my side of the story out front. So I headed to the newspaper. Mrs.. Barbara Gaines was Mr. Hall's secretary, and she told me Mr. Hall was way too busy to see me, but what did I want. I told her I had left Johnny in Clemson, and why.  She laughed outloud (lol) and told me to wait a minute. She went in to Mr. Hall, and I could hear him laughing, too. Then she told me to come in and tell what I had done. So I did/. Mr. Hall really did laugh out loud (lol) and told me to go on into the sports department. I told him there was already someone working, and he said he wanted me to stay there until Martin came back from Clemson so I could tell him to report to his (Mr. Hall's ) office.
Sure enough, a couple of hours later, a nasty cigar came huffing into the office, saw me, and told me I was fired. Only he wasn't that nice. Then, and only then, did I tell him Mr. Hall was in his office waiting to see him. And I went home.
Johnny called the next day to give me my schedule for the week, and until I finally quit, on my own, he was the nicest man in the building.
And, a couple of years later when the Greenvlle News offered me a job, Martin gave me a glowing recommendation. It wasn't necessary, because one of the guys in the Greenville Piedmont sports department had been working in Anderson when Johnny and I had our run-in, and cautioned them that some way, some how, I always had a hammer ready if I needed it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The name of this Blog, which I have been writing for just today, is called Reese At Random, and I'm calling it that for a specific purpose.
And I need to dedicate everything I write, ever, to Mr. Lawrence Webb, the journalism professor at Anderson College.
Here's what happened. I was at AC, trying hard to keep my grades high enough to stay out of Selective Service' gunsights, and I was always in need of help with my  Grade Point Ratio. Mins was bad from day one. It may have been because I never did homework, or read the textbooks, or really cared. But I prefer to think the professors had it in for me.
Anyway, I saw where they offered a journalism class, and since I knew all about how to run a newspaper, from the newsroom through composing, pouring the place, running the press, and seeing the papers go out the windows of the mailing room, I figured it would be an easy course and help my GPR.
Little did I know it was going to change my life and that Mr. Webb was going to do it. As soon as I reported to the first class he informed everyone that since we had enrolled in journalism, we had also enrolled in the school newspaper, The Yodler. I figured I'd get demoted right back into some mailing room.
Then Mr. Webb said he wanted each of us to write a theme that would not be graded but would help him determine what job we would hold on the paper staff. I don't remember what I wrote, something stupid that went on and on, probably , but the next time the class met Mr. Webb announced newspaper positions. He named the editor, the women's page editor, the lifestyles editor, the business editor, the sports editor, and on and on, while I just sat there waiting to get put in the mailing room.I knew what I was good at.
But Mr. Webb finished assigning positions, and my name was not mentioned. I had realized, just before the end, that every other student had a position, except me. I could see a mailing machine in my future, and wasn't really ass tore up about it. But several other students were. One guy, who always wore a bow tie and was a revolving butthole, wondered aloud how I had been missed.
Mr. Webb told everyone that every newspaper had to have someone to write a column. And that was to be my job.
I was to have a pretty good spot set aside for me in every edition, that it would be called, Reese and Random, and I could write about anything I wanted. There were no rules, regulations, or restrictions on what I wrote.
My firest column was about a dice game. It as well received by the students. By the teachers,not so much. But they had mostly all had problems out of me at one time or another, anyway.
By writing one five-page theme, Mr. Webb saw that I could make some stories interesting. One five-page theme.
I was in the Greenville Piedmont Sporets Department almost 8 years before a new Executive Editor wanted me to write a column about politics and have it on his desk in a week. What he didn't know wass my own father had served in the House of Representatives, and I was about eleven years old before I found out not every home had a kitchen full of lawyers every night. I knew politics.
I had the story on his desk, in an hour. What I wrote was the overall condition of politics in South Carolina at the time. 'Pug' Ravenel  had been running for Governor, and had spent $4,000,000 on his campaign before he found out he was a legal resident of Washington and couldn't run for SC governor. And we had Strom Thurmond running, again, for Senate.
My conclusion was we had a man running for Governor who didn't know where he lived, and a man runnig for reelection to the senate who was in his s70's, and he had four children under 10-years-old he thought were his.
After reading that story, the big boss came straight to the sports departmen where he said, "We will never be able to print that story, but it was terrific. You have just won yourself a promotion. You will write three columns a week. They will be called The Yarnspinner, and they will be funny."
I asked when I could start, and was told as soon as I could get my desk moved across the room to the general news section and get my phone changed. I grabbed up my typewriter, set it in my chair, pulled open the top drawer to my desk, and said, "I have my end, you get yours."
And the Executive editor helped me physically give myself a promotion. When I got my desk moved, he asked what I was going to do about a phone, and I showed him how close I was to the 'telephone room'. The ran a cord under the door, and I had my phone is less than an hour.
I am calling my blog Reese at Random in honor of Mr. Webb, who knew in two days that I could write, something it took a real newspaper almost a decade to determine.
Thanks, Mr. Webb. Without you, I would have someday had to go out and find work, something I have trried to avoid all my life.
I did have a real job for abut 18 months, though, before I went to the Piedmont. And I managed to leave that job by betting on a football game.