Category Archives: Opinions
Goodbye to Old Man Bradford
Old Man Bradford is dead.
I call him “Old Man,” but he was only 36. He looked like an old man, though — gnarled and pock-marked. Really, 
he was a monster.
Old Man Bradford never should have come into this world. He wasn’t created by the Lord. He was concocted by a man — a well-meaning scientist. Like Frankenstein’s monster, this creation didn’t turn out good.
Old Man Bradford stood in my front yard for as long as I’ve lived here,
in a quiet, wooded neighborhood in Easley. He stood there for 10 years before we bought the house.
I’m not sure how tall he was, but he was much taller than most. He measured 22 inches in diameter and boasted a girth of 67 inches. He was a big boy!
I hope you’ve guessed by now that I’m talking about my Bradford pear tree, whose kind has become the scourge of the Western hemisphere,
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Courier Letters to the Editor 10-27-21
Have a safe and happy Halloween
Dear Editor,
My, how times have changed. When I was a child, children went trick-or-treating by walking the neighborhood.
Some the parents carried in cars, and I remember
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Not the right kind of witch
National Witch Hazel Day was last week. So, who was “Witch Hazel” and why does she get a whole day devoted to her? Was she a good witch, like Glinda, the beautiful witch in the Wizard of Oz, who charmed the munchkins and 
everyone she met? Or was she like the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba (she even had a scary name), who frightened everyone she met?
Imagine my surprise to find out that witch hazel isn’t a witch at all. It’s
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On EMS issues
I’ve been living in Easley now for almost 27 years and I’ve never called the fire department. We’ve also never called the police department, except for non-emergency things.
I’ve only called the EMS one time, but, as it turned out, they saved my wife’s life.
I imagine the odds are probably pretty slim that I’ll ever need the fire department — although I’m certainly glad they’re there. More than likely, I’m not going to need the police for any life-and-death emergency, either, but I’m thankful for them, too.
I hope I never have to call for an ambulance again, but there’s a pretty fair chance that it could happen sometime in the next 27 years.
I’d like to feel pretty confident that if we have a medical crisis, the guys who are coming to handle it are well-rested, well-trained, happy with
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The great mystery of the fitted sheet
I don’t know if this is true or not, but it may be. My theory is that there is a giant secret society in the world whose members have been entrusted with the classified information of how to fold a fitted sheet so it looks like it did when 
removed from the store packaging.
It’s important that this information be kept secret so that the majority of the world’s citizens who use fitted sheets when they make their beds will feel inadequate.
Those who are in the know have a special aura. They radiate
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Pumpkins, ghosts, witches and apples
Halloween is fast approaching, and ghosts have begun to practice their materializing skills, witches are dusting off their brooms and vampires are pulling their capes out of mothballs.
Halloween is a tradition that originated with the Celtic festival of Samhain. Many Celts settled in this area of the Carolinas, where they continued the old custom of lighting bonfires to ward off ghosts. Samhain marked the end of summer, which also meant the end of the bountiful harvest season and the beginning of the cold, dark winter season. But that was more than 2,000 years ago, and Halloween has
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Wherever you are, He is with you
For those who try to live for the Lord and want to please Him, I’m sure you know what I mean when I say there are times when the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
When it comes to maintaining a red-hot enthusiasm for the Christian life, we are not robots, but rather we are 
emotional humans who have good days along with other times that are clouded with with feelings of melancholy. It does the heart good to quietly sit alone as we search within our soul trying to figure out what is wrong. It could be a nagging sin where we should have stood strong against it but instead we gave it control. God promises that in the midst of our misery there is nothing we can do that will make Him love us any less. Or maybe our hearts are weighed down with
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Courier Letters to the Editor
Playing the national debt challenge
Dear Editor,
Back in the 1950s, rival teenage hoodlum gangs would play out a challenge with their fast hotrod cars. Two boys would race toward each other, or toward a cliff. The first to swerve or bail out would be the loser — the chicken. Playing the national debt game has become like that. So has the federal budget with the government shutdown game.
Adult men and women in Congress and the executive branch, charged with governing a nation, have divided themselves into rival gangs, fighting each other over political turf, power, control, influence. They hold the debt limit or budget hostage for ransom or blackmail until one side or the other backs down and turns chicken. Meanwhile, the nation and people suffer the consequence, like the neighborhoods did when the hoodlum gangs
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Facebook’s influence
So, somebody accidentally pushed the wrong button at Facebook and brought the whole evil empire crashing down last week — for a few hours at least.
It didn’t bother me a bit.
I used to enjoy Facebook, back in 2009 when I first got on it. It was just a fun way to share your life with your friends and family and see what they’ve been up to.
That’s the way Facebook was intended to be used — or at least that’s what they say.
Gradually, though, it started taking up
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Courier Letters to the Editor
A Dia de Muertos in America?
Dear Editor,
In Mexico it is called Dia de Muertos, which translates into English as Day of the Dead.
Many here in America misunderstand it to be like Halloween. It’s worlds apart from Halloween.
The day is set aside to remember family members who have passed away. A kind of honoring dead loved ones. The families will get together and have a good meal, then go to the cemetery to clean off the grave of deceased loved ones. They also leave flowers on the grave.
I think it would be good in America if we had our own Dia de Muertos. When I was growing up, we had something called family reunions. We would get together and
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