Revisiting Memories From The Day Of The Reunion ::

When I was on my way to the reunion last month I made a very slight detour to see my great-uncle who lives on Flat Rock Rd. just a few short miles from the Shrine Club. I had not seen him in many years and I just wanted to say hello. He will be 91 in November, lives alone, drives himself around, and still runs a small herd of cattle. He looked great and it was wonderful to see him!

This will lead me into my reminisce about the photograph below.



When I was a little guy this building housed county prisoners who made up the chain gangs that went out and did road work. It is diagonally across the road from my great-uncles house and his father-in-law worked there in some capacity. I don't remember just what he did. He may have been in charge or he may have just been a guard, but I seem to remember him being in some administrative position.

When the ditch in front of my grandparents house would clog from dirt run-off after rains my grandfather would call Mr. Burch and he would send over a chain gang to shovel out the ditches. I vividly remember them wearing the striped uniform of prisoners and their hobbling leg irons all the while with a shotgun armed guard watching over them. I don't know when this building was put out of service as a work camp, but it surely does remind me of Cool Hand Luke!

Just to add a bit more to this post, My great-uncle is J.E. Horton, father of Betty Slade and grandfather of Laurie Slade Funderburk. When I was a kid I spent many wonderful times playing with Betty!

Times surely have changed!

Camden High Bulldogs ::

And the Bulldogs march on. Last night score was:

Camden High Bulldogs--33
Andrew Jackson--14

I got this score from The State newspaper this morning since Johnny Deal was busy dressing in drag last night!

Oh yeah, Camden is leading the region 6-3A standings.

Camden High Bulldogs ::

The latest courtesy of Johnny Deal:

Camden Bulldogs--20
Lugoff-Elgin--10

Congrats to the team and its supporters!

I'm curious. How many of you who live in or near Camden still go to Bulldog football games? I've never been back to a high school game anywhere I've lived since I graduated from high school.

A Photograph ::

from the morning of the reunion:

Camden High Bulldogs ::

This is a bye week so there will not be a score. Good luck to the team next week when they face Lugoff-Elgin.

All Things Change ::

I think that I must be getting more nostalgic as I get older. I remember driving by this building for many years and I always considered it to be a landmark. I am sure many people remember this as the garage in Lugoff with the Studebaker on top. I remember reading in the on-line edition of The Camden Chronicle-Independent a couple of years ago that the building was going to be remodeled. Here is the result:




A laundromat! The owner of the building could have at least remodeled as another garage. Here is what the lot looked like on a trip to Camden about 3 years ago:





I have to say that I very much prefer the the building and lot the way they were before the remodel job! Here's another view from the previous visit with part of the building visible next to the fence on the right:





At least they put the car back on top of the building. I happen to love Studebakers and I love seeing them restored. There used to be a garage up in Shelbyville, Tenessee specialized in restoring old Studebakers. Sadly it is now long gone also.

Johnny Jaynes Photographs ::

Johnny's photographs from the reunion are now up with the link over on the right. I still have a few more photos to put up and I'll post here when I do.

A Message From Jim Ring ::

About the reunion:

A week has gone by now but each day I think about the reunion last Saturday. What a great party! Jerry Sheheen and his crew did a fine job putting it together. Having not lived in Camden for 45 years means there were a lot of childhood friends I saw there for the first time in forever. My only sadness is that there just wasn't enough time to spend with everyone I wanted to. But that's my problem. Bottom line is that it was wonderful seeing so many people who were part of my youth.



Many thanks to Fred Deaton, Paul Rowell and Johnny Jaynes for taking all those great pictures. I look at them every day. The pics will allow me and everyone else to to look back on August 28, 2010 with great big smiles as often as we wish to.



It was sad looking at the board honoring the classmates who are no longer alive. I'm glad the committee made sure they were part of the reunion, at least in spirit.



Will we have a reunion in 2015? I hope so. We are not getting any younger and opportunities such as this are no longer in abundance.



Again, thanks for the great party. I had a ball.

I have to add my thanks to Jim's for the effort put on by the reunion committee to make this a great success! There will be more photos posted in the next couple of days. I have some from Bonnie and John Jaynes, but if anyone else has photographs they'd like to share please forward them to me and I'll put them up also. After looking through some of the photos I've downloaded I'm surprised at just how many people I did not get a chance to speak to!

New Reunion Photographs ::

I finally got Paul Rowell's photographs up. If you looked at them earlier this morning they were not displaying properly because I had the pages trying to call up a style sheet from another location. Everything should be fine now, but if you see any problems let me know and I'll fix them! I've tested the pages in both IE7 and Firefox (my preferred browser) and everything seems to be ok.

I still have some other photographs to put up, but that'll have to be a little later this weekend. Time to cut the 2 acres of grass!

Camden High Bulldogs ::

Final score:

Camden Bulldogs--32
West Florence--27

For the season 3 wins and 0 losses!

Reunion Photographs ::

I've been collecting some photographs from other attendees but I've been pretty tied up trying to catch up from the trip over the weekend. I hope to have more up on other web galleries by sometime this weekend so keep checking back!