As a kid growing up in the quaint community of Lexington, SC, we had very limited activities available to us, so we made the most of all of them.

During the summer, we played Pee Wee baseball, then Little League, then Pony League, then Colt League and eventually American Legion ball. My baseball career started as a pitcher, shortstop and catcher for the Mack's Meat Heads, the Pee Wee baseball team that was sponsored by my uncle's grocery store, Mack's Cash and Carry. The Mack boys were known throughout the midlands for their top quality meat, thus the name "meat heads."

During the cooler months of the year we played other sports, but you had to find ways to keep busy during the summer months. There were two kinds of people that lived in Lexington in those days, poor and poorer. Nobody had a pool so we went swimming at Gibson's Pond, if you could afford the $1 charge that got you a day's worth of time in Lexington's number one waterhole.

If you couldn't afford the buck, all you had to do is go down stream and swim in the old Mill Pond, which fed from the same source as Gibson's Pond. It didn't cost anything to swim there and I could hop on my bike and be there in about two minutes. The old Mill Pond was at the base of the hill below our home on South Lake Drive.

I'd meet up with neighborhood buddies and we had the entire pond to ourselves. Al and Thad Roberts, who lived a stone's throw from our house, were a couple of friends whose yard we'd cut through to take a back path down to the pond. We'd meet up there with Jimmy Prather, who lived in the old Amick Apartments and other childhood friends like the Jumper boys, the Yenny brothers, Brooks and Matthew Bennett and a host of others, depending on the day.

The old Mill Pond had an island that was our private domain. We built rafts to float out to the island and did our own Huck Finn thing. I smoked my first pipe on that island and I got so sick I thought they were going to have to call Dr. J.S. Liverman to revive me. I also learned that you're not supposed to swallow chewing tobacco. I got my first look at a girlie magazine on the island, the source of which shall remain anonymous. What happened on the island--- stayed on the island!

I suspect that if we had had the courage and the knowledge, some poor unsuspecting young girl would have been introduced to some of our childhood desires. Frankly, we were all too stupid to even know about stuff like that, which, in the long run, was best for all parties.

My favorite day of the week was Wednesday. When all my friends departed for home I would always lag behind so that I could go home by way of the woods behind the AME Church at the base of the hill on South Lake Drive next to the Mill Pond.

I think I got my inspiration to become a speaker during those summer months of my youth. I would hide in the trees next to the AME Church and listen to the great, black preachers as they offered a display of rhetoric the likes of which I had never seen or heard before. There was no air conditioning in those days, so all the windows were open and everybody had a hand fan waving away the South Carolina August gnats and the dreadful heat of the night.

Mind you, this was before the days of television preachers so my only exposure to the clergy was the conservative Catholic priests in our church. I never saw any priest rail at his parish like those old black ministers. Pearlee Summers, who worked for our family and was a close personal friend, once explained black preachers to me: "They gots to preach 'em into hell … and then preach 'em out again."

I truly believe I made a decision to be a speaker during those dog days of August. I thought I wanted to be a priest myself until I found out about the celibacy deal. So much for that career path, but it speaks volumes about the path I did choose. Funny how the events of our life shape our future.