Category Archives: Opinions
Will Bradley-Boggs House rise again?
Great David Franklin Bradley’s ghost! It looks like Pickens’ Bradley-Boggs House will rise again.
Or at least a building that looks a lot like it and has a good bit of the original materials in it.
The city of Pickens’ Board of Architectural Review has approved detailed plans presented by owner Charles Monks, who intends to build a microbrewery there.
The new structure will stand at 118 Main St., on the same lot from which the iconic landmark graced the streetscape for more than a century and a half until it was torn down in July.
“It looks almost exactly like what was there,” city planning and zoning director Jennifer Vissage said of the rendering
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Ignore advice from the fashion experts
There used to be a television show titled “What Not to Wear” featuring ordinary people going about their lives in horrible clothes that didn’t serve them in their professional lives.
It was interesting. A couple of experts in fashion would swoop in unexpectedly, throw away the victim’s entire wardrobe and give them $5,000 to replace it with.
Then they’d supervise their shopping expeditions in New York to help them learn how to dress appropriately.
I’m thankful I was never selected as a candidate, because I really love my around-the-house and yard clothes and would hate to give them up.
As long as we live on a farm, we must accept the fact that good clothes are not to be worn. If they are to stay good, they must remain hanging in
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The joy of getting old, part 1
As the little pills rolled into my open palm the other morning, I stared at them for a moment and thought, “are these things keeping me alive?”
It was then I realized I had finally gotten old. No, I don’t mean the grandfatherly, humped-shoulder, carry-the-prodding-cane-type old. I had reached the mythical, elusive middle-aged years that all my older friends had been telling me about.
Older friends … wait a moment, I don’t have that many older friends left. Much to my chagrin, when I find myself in a group, I am noticeably the oldest one. Could this be just a coincidence? Have I somehow missed the
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Courier Letters to the Editor 11-13-19
Nasty local elections
Dear Editor,
I have lived in Pickens 20 years, and I think last week’s election was nastier and more chaotic than most.
Elections have always had their dose of inaccurate, false and outright slanderous statements. And don’t be fooled, much of it comes from the opposition campaign. The oldest trick in the book is the candidate stays positive aiming to look like Mr. Nice Guy to the voters, but his volunteers sling the mud at the opposition. We saw too much of that in the Easley election. Average voters do not care enough about who wins a local election to get on social media and smear a candidate with baseless statements and lies. Most of the time that person is a friend, relative or volunteer of
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Appreciate your right to vote
I wasn’t around 100 years ago, but I can imagine what discussions about the radical notion of allowing women to vote must have sounded like around here in the year 1919.
“Well, you know we’ll be on the road to ruination if we let these ladies vote,” Jasper P. Goodbody might have said, snapping the strap on his suspenders for emphasis.
“Yeah, they’ll even try to elect a woman president one of these days and make a law requiring men to help out with the cookin’ and cleanin’,” his buddy Willie T. Melonhead might reply, spewing a stream of tobacco juice out the corner of his mouth to punctuate his disdain for the dystopian future he imagined women’s suffrage would bring about.
I’m sorry, ladies, but our Founding Fathers didn’t think y’all were smart
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An ode to Cynthia’s ‘leaves’
Oh how majestic a tree may be
It fills one with inspiration
When Cynthia sees the leaves a-fallin’
They fill her with anticipation
When the ground is covered to the hilt
It makes her want to wilt
With nary a leaf left on a tree
They make her want to flee
But with rake so true and head so somber
She proceeds to give them all a number
Ah one, ah two, ah three
Aw, that’s too boring for thee
Methinks I shall name them
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Courier Letters to the Editor 11-6-19
In memory of Harward
Dear Editor,
I was shocked and hurt to hear about Lucy Harward passing away. She was a very special, smart, kind lady who shared her talents with others at the Pickens Senior Center.
She founded the Fiber Arts Center there, where she taught fiber arts skills and actively volunteered. Her special creations are displayed there. She was recognized many times for her quilts and designed the quilt square for the
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Leaves aren’t the only things that fall in fall
When fall finally gets here, I’m more than ready for it. It’s wonderful to go outside and feel the change in the air. Wednesday was just such a beautiful day. October’s bright blue sky, mild temperatures and the sun feeling warm on my back felt like heaven.
Warm, not hot. There’s a difference. We’d been to the flea market and bought some apples, because I wanted to make a fresh apple cake and an apple pie.
There are lots of recipes for fresh apple cake that call for walnuts, but I like the one like Grandmama used to make with pecans.
Also, she liked to mix her apples, as do I. This time we found Granny Smith and Pink Lady for $4 a peck. The apple seller let me mix the varieties and didn’t mind at all. Now that’s service.
We went home and Fowler switched to the farm truck, loaded a long metal pole and took along two half-bushel
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What do you think Eugenia would say?
I generally try to stay away from legal quagmires, but when the forces of Northern Aggression presume to inject incivility into something as pure and good as Duke’s mayonnaise and the legacy of the sweet sandwich-making lady who invented it 102 years ago, I feel compelled to weigh in on it.
Because here is a prime example of how Corporate America, in its ruthless pursuit of ever-larger piles of money, is threatening the very foundation of our nation’s cultural cohesion. Or at least our sense of what is real and authentic.
Let me explain.
You may know that Eugenia Duke started a business in Greenville in
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A basketball legend in the making, part 2
Editor’s note: This is the continuation of a column that began in last week’s issue.
I quietly hoped that I could still pick up the ball and shoot it toward the net and hit some part of it. It never occurred to me that it would actually go into the net.
As I stepped up to the foul line, the referee handed me the Spalding 100 men’s basketball. Even it looked like it had had enough bouncing for one night. The referee backed away slowly as I looked him over briefly. The poor guy looked like he had just emerged from a non-working sauna in the middle of the Gobi Desert. His uniform was dripping wet with perspiration. Even his eyebrows were dripping with sweat, even though
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