On The Way

By Olivia Fowler

Olivia Fowler

I was 8 years old when I saw my first chocolate bunny. Until then, I didn’t even know there was such a thing. We were brought up with more simple candies.

Candy came into our lives only three times a year, as Mama believed it would rot our teeth out.

Halloween was the first candy celebration. We didn’t always get to go trick or treating, but when we did it was a very big deal.

We’d take our booty home, dump it out

All About Ben

By Ben Robinson

Easter Sunday our family had one of those once unusual days, just trying to get together to celebrate Easter.

Ben Robinson

It started with the Sunrise service, which our church — Nine Forks in Dacusville — celebrates every year with the church next door, which happens to been a predominantly black church, Shoals Creek. We’ve been doing this for years, with the service being held at Shoals Creek one year and Nine Forks the next. We may be mostly different races, but we’re all Baptist, so that means we have a meal after the service. When the service is held at Nine Forks, the Shoals Creek pastor — Rev. Charles Hendricks — preaches the sermon, and Nine Forks provides breakfast.

We were shown up in past years when our

On The Way

By Olivia Fowler

Olivia Fowler

Have you ever thought that so-called inanimate objects really aren’t inanimate at all? Well, I have. There’s a children’s storybook about how a child’s toys come to life at night and have amazing adventures. The movie “Toy Story” probably stole this idea

I have a theory, never disproved to my satisfaction, that this is what happens to many useful things I depend upon to get through the day. All I ask is that someone prove me wrong, and I’ll happily check into an asylum.

Maybe this doesn’t happen at your house, but it does happen at mine. It’s evening and you’ve come inside for the day. The first action taken after you

All About Ben

By Ben Robinson

Lately I’ve been concentrating on getting my act together. I have the opportunity to make a special trip to Kentucky.

Ben Robinson

I’ve already asked for the time off, and was simply told not to leave the paper in bad shape. That makes sense. The trip to Kentucky is on a Christian mission trip, and the way I figure it, if you take off and leave with no thought toward your coworkers, you’re not really showing any Christian spirit.

I also have my car taxes due this month. The county thinks a lot more of my car than I do. If I ever decide to sell the car, I need to let the county folks market it for me. But taxes do not work that way, so I need to just be quiet and pay my share.

So with the taxes and the county taxes coming up, I’ve got quite a handful to save up for. But looking at my income coming in and comparing it to the bills

On the Way

By Olivia Fowler

Olivia Fowler

There is a trellis made of cedar on the pathway from the house to the tractor shed. It was the joint project of Fowler and our daughter Katherine several summers ago, and they built it from cedar limbs and posts on one of the hottest days of the summer.

They said it was one-of-a-kind and that there would never be another. They said some other things too that don’t bear repeating.

There’s a clematis vine that’s grown over it now, woven in with a rambling rose. On a hot day after the vine has leafed out, you can stand beneath it in the patch of darkness and enjoy the shade.

To the right of the trellis are a mixed group of yarrow, iris, lamb’s ear and spring bulbs that are supposed to bloom in increments but don’t. An old oak stump serves as an anchor for the garden angel. She’s made

All About Ben

By Ben Robinson

Ben Robinson

Good news.

After last week’s session of moaning “poor me” about not having the Pickens-Twelve Mile trip to Kentucky available for this year’s vacation, Bobby Haley called me and invited me to go with a group he’s taking from Easley First Baptist to Kentucky.

I was overwhelmed. The chance to go with Bobby Haley to Kentucky is a rare one. He’s been retired several years, but wherever he decides to attend church usually finds a way to sponsor a trip to Kentucky. He sometimes accompanies his son Jeff, who is a youth minister at a church near Columbia.

Plus, I worked for many years in a building next to Easley First Baptist, and I consider its pastor, Dr. John

On The Way

By Olivia Fowler

Olivia Fowler

As children we’d often go to the movies on Saturday mornings while Mama ran errands and bought groceries. We lived 10 miles from town, so going to town for supplies was a pretty big deal. We didn’t refer to it as going to the movies.

Mama would say, “Would you like to go to the show?” And of course, we always did.

There were two movie theaters in town, the Gibson and the Centre. Movies stayed on sometimes for several weeks until everybody in the county had an opportunity to go.

This was at a time when Saturday morning movies began at 10, and there would usually be a double feature. The Lone Ranger and Tonto were very popular, as were Davy Crockett and Tarzan.

Mama thought snacks bought at the show were way too expensive. After all, you could get a

All About Ben

By Ben Robinson

Ben Robinson

It happened Sunday night. I was at church for a meeting preparing for Vacation Bible School this summer. I just had to listen, agree to do whatever I could to help, and smile a lot.

Before I went into the meeting, I was stopped by Wilburn Pitts. I grew up with Wilburn’s son, Teddy. Since then I have had several opportunities to work with Wilburn myself. His sense of humor makes some think he never takes himself seriously, but I’ve come to know that Wilburn is one of the most dedicated friends any person could have. That night he was at the church preparing for the upcoming Easter production by our choir.

“Did I tell you about Kentucky Missions?” Wilburn asked.

I figured that Wilburn had heard of a theme being adopted.

Fiefdom mentality

Dear Editor,

Until we all realize that we are all one county, that our cities make up one county and that our counties are one Upstate, we will continue with “one step forward and two steps backward.”

There are too many fiefdoms in existence already. What’s good for Easley is good for Liberty, what goes on at Clemson makes us all look smarter. What a company locating in Pickens does is good for Six Mile.

I recommend Googling “Ten at the Top” and visiting that website to learn more about the

On The Way

By Olivia Fowler

We have a new animal for Fowler Farm, and I’m not really sure how this happened.  One evening during supper, Fowler said he wanted to clean up the old bird dog pen, an area which has fallen into disuse with the disappearance of quail from the landscape. He has been thinking about breeding rat terriers again and would need the area for this purpose. Since the death of Queenie, our last pointer, who departed this vale of tears more than 20 years ago, the pen has

Olivia Fowler

been taken over by honeysuckle, small oaks, wisteria vine and poison ivy.

The pen is made of chain link fence and encompasses an area measuring about 40 by 100 feet. Fowler decided to acquire a goat for the purpose, so he says, of cleaning out growth both inside and outside the fence. But before this could be done, he spent two full days cutting down small trees and dragging out enough undergrowth to make access into the pen possible.

He then built a neat goat shed inside the pen before picking up the goat from our neighbor, who raises them.  She is a Nigerian nanny goat who is expecting kids sometime in May.