A bunch of old lintheads get together
By Gene Owens
Over at Herb Padgett's place, on the second Tuesday of the month, you can use the word "linthead" without puzzling or offending anybody.
Some people, who may have been lintheads or who have relatives who are lintheads, may take offense at the word, the way some Southerners do when you imply that they're rednecks.
I proudly claim the right to be called linthead and redneck. I've labored in the fields during the blistering heat of a Carolina summer when my most visible reward was a sunburned neck. And I've labored in the cotton mill when lint filled the air like snowflakes during a New England blizzard and remained in my hair even after several combings.
I didn't have to explain that to the guys who gathered at Herb's place, way out in the country off Rainbow Falls Road, which connects my old hometown of Graniteville, S.C., with U.S. 25 a few miles east of Augusta, Ga.
Herb was a year or two behind me at Graniteville High School back during the hallowed '50s, when Ike was president, Elvis was just learning to swivel his hips, and Johnny Ray was the big voice among teen-agers. Herb could legitimately call himself a linthead, having grown up on a mill village kept neat and presentable by a company that practiced benevolent paternalism.
Herb, like so many of his contemporaries, graduated from high school, found his calling, and moved off the village into what we now consider middle-class housing.
But he achieved the dream of many a linthead of our generation: He found himself a place in the country with a pond surrounded by greenery. He built on it a neat pavilion and a small house big enough to accommodate a bunch of people for food and association.
And on the second Tuesday of every month, his welcome mat is out to fellow lintheads or linthead has-beens who want to enjoy the company of like individuals. It's a strictly informal event with few rules: no women, no alcohol, no serious cussing. The price of admission is a few bucks pitched into a hat so Herb doesn't have to bear all the freight.
I learned about Herb's monthly get-together from Kirk Bennett, a fellow graduate of Graniteville High School, a linthead who went on to professional success in Columbia.
I knew I was at the right place when I saw Rudy Bennett's old Nash Ambassador, which he had driven all the way from El Paso, Texas. Rudy is Kirk's older brother. Normally, he would have been driving a Hudson, but he was in the process of restoring the old Nash and decided to drive it instead. Rudy fell in love with Hudsons when he saw my grandfather's maroon Hudson Hornet back in the '50s. He has restored several of them, and still drives a '47 Hudson for everyday transportation.
I soon was mingling with people I hadn't seen in at least 50 years. I recognized their names, but the faces I remembered were the images preserved in my high-school yearbooks.
There's was Jimmy Carpenter, class of '53 at Granitevlle High School. He was a year ahead of me in school, and played football, basketball and baseball for the Rocks. His sister Jean, my classmate in the class of '54, had played on the girls' basketball team and pursued a career of working with young athletes.
"Do you know who I am?" asked another smiling linthead.
"Are you Ronnie Bryant, or his brother Eddie?" I asked.
He was Ronnie. Ronnie and Eddie looked almost alike. Ronnie was my classmate and Eddie was in the class of '55. Ronnie and I often played "buddies" during physical education on the open field that lay behind the school before the gym was built.
We played "roller bat," a game that could have any number of participants. When somebody hit the ball, we would race to field it. If we caught it in the air or on first bounce, we had the next turn at bat, and we would rotate with our buddies until somebody put us out. If nobody caught the ball, the batter would lay the bat on the ground and whoever fielded the ball would roll it toward the bat. If the ball hit the bat, you and your buddies were "in."
Ronnie and Eddie both married hometown girls. Ronnie married Sylvia Melton, class of '53, and Eddie married our classmate, Ann Hatcher. Ronnie pursued a career at the Savannah River site, where nuclear materials are processed. Eddie worked for the telephone company.
Hubert Kneece, class of '57, brought back memories. I had done a feature story on him and his twin brother Herbert for the school paper, the Rock Log. Fifty-six years later, Herbert was having health problems and couldn't make it.
A slender, handsome gray-haired gentleman introduced himself as Alva Woodward, and I remembered the young man with wavy black hair who had walked the hallways back when I did. And there was Wayne Thompson, whose sister Barbara edited the Rock Long several years before I did. She chose teaching instead of journalism for a career.
Back in those early days, we kids would argue over whether Joe DiMaggio was better than Ted Williams, a Lincoln would outrun a Cadillac, or South Carolina would whip Clemson at their annual show-down at the State Fair. Today, we were talking about Social Security, Medicare, and the dicey world of real estate.
But mostly, we talked about the old days on the mill village, when we played together and dreamed together. Some of us dreamed of careers that would take us far from Graniteville and into ringside seats on history. Others dreamed of a place in the country, close by the friends and family they had grown up with, where they could meet periodically with fellow lintheads and share iced tea and sandwiches.
I'm glad Herbert Padgett chose the latter.
(Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com)
