When I was growing up in the little town of Lexington, SC, I held a variety of jobs. As a child, I bagged and delivered groceries at my uncles' grocery store, Mack's Cash and Carry, owned by Arthur and Eli Mack. I also peddled newspapers for the now defunct Columbia Record and even sold The Grit newspaper.

When I turned 13, Ralph Corley put me to work in his Esso Station changing tires and doing lube jobs. My next endeavor was writing for the Bruner family at the Lexington Dispatch-News (now the Lexington Chronicle) and their sister publications in Irmo and Batesburg-Leesville. I was even a stringer for The State Newspaper.

In high school, I needed wheels and couldn't afford to buy any so I began to drive a school bus. It allowed me to show up late for football practice, getting out of some of "Charge Driggers" head-on's… and it gave me transportation, paying a whooping $35 per month! How could you beat that?

Another job I had was sleeping at Caughman-Harman Funeral Home at night, taking night calls for both emergencies and deaths. Back then, the funeral home ran the ambulance service for the county. There were no paramedics in those days. The hearse doubled as an ambulance, and on occasion, was also a terrific vehicle for the weirdest kind of date you've ever been on. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

The late Steve Caughman, whom we affectionately called "digger," and his partner Harry Harman, had a number of part timers like me that hung out and did the night shift. The old joke back then was when you go out on an ambulance call, if the guy wasn't dead, you'd drive him around a while (sic) until you had a new customer. Just kidding! It's a joke; get over it!

My favorite thing to do was to go to the Columbia Speedway in Cayce, SC every Thursday night with Sammy Hendrix to work the races as the ambulance on call. It was there that I met David Pearson, Iron-head Ralph Earnhardt, Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough, all of whom got their start at dirt tracks in the southeast and many of whom I later interviewed as a reporter for a number of newspapers.

Caughman-Harman Funeral Home proudly provided the ambulance service for the Thursday dirt track night races, which allowed us to get on the track from time to time to help the guys who wrecked. If any were seriously hurt, we'd haul them to the hospital, but in all the years of doing that, I don't recall ever having to take anyone to the old Lexington County Hospital.

In fact, I don't ever recall rendering any medical assistance to any driver, unless you call breaking up a fistfight between disgruntled rednecks rendering medical assistance. Wouldn't have mattered anyway; neither Sammy Hendrix nor I had any medical training. We were just glorified taxi drivers.

NASCAR ran those races and decided to get uppity one year and required everyone who went on the track to acquire a NASCAR license, which was tantamount to us having to respond to five questions on a mimeographed form, most of which were answered with "turn left."

I was speaking to a group of medical professionals, firefighters and EMT's recently in Maui and told some of those stories. That's how things were done in small towns all over America in those days. We didn't have paid emergency services.

I was also a member of the Lexington Volunteer Fire Department. There were no paid firemen. When I graduated from Lexington High School, I went to work as a jailer at night for the newly Sheriff Carroll Day. I also was a volunteer firefighter as were most of the guys in Lexington.

Our goal was to get to the fire in time to preserve a good enough foundation on which the former homeowner could rebuild. We didn't save too many structures. Our goal was to keep the fire from spreading to the neighbor's house. My uncle, George Renard, was also part of the volunteer firefighters along with all his buddies from the National Guard.

I recall we were fighting a fire at Haygood's Pecan & Service Station on West Main Street in Lexington one night. I actually broke my right foot fighting that fire, but we did manage to not only save some of the structures but we kept the gasoline tanks from catching on fire.

Those were the days in grand old Lexington. I really do miss those days. As the great Italian philosopher, Berra (Yogi Berra) once said, "the trouble with the future is it ain't what it used to be!"