Over the years, I also got to know plenty of Troy State athletes, who I pulled for at their games, and discovered they were much more approachable and not the prima-donna types you might find at the “blue blood” SEC type colleges.
Generally speaking, I suspect small-college athletes are a little nicer. And some of those athletes were really good - just as good as the big-college athletes.
Every year, Troy football, basketball and baseball player go to Jack and Maggie's school ... and help kids get out of the car and ask them to come to games that year ... I don't think they do that at Alabama, Auburn, Georgia or Florida.
Before Troy University's recent Spring Game, Jack participated in a youth football clinic - put on by the players who were getting ready to play the game!
Likely EVERYone at small town colleges is nicer than the precious blue bloods - this is not limited to the athletics department. I guess if you've hocked five years' future income to pay tuition, you're gonna preen and swagger to compensate.
Between the ages of 8 and 13, baseball was the biggest sport in town. In that age period (back before pitchers knew how to throw curve balls), I could hit for a respectable average … but I never once hit a home run. To this day, this bothers me.
One day, however, I almost hit a home run in a Dixie Youth game (Astros vs. Mets). In Troy, we had two Dixie Youth fields and this one was played on the bigger field. The fences were 199 feet from home plate. (It’s funny the details you remember).
That morning the father of one of my teammates, Mr. Barron, took me and his son, Levon, to the town’s one batting cage at Troy State’s baseball field.
So I got some extra batting practice. I think Mr. Barron perhaps knew a little more about hitting than my youth coach and passed along some good tips.
My first at bat against the Mets, I hit the ball right in the sweet spot and it kept going and going and going into right center field.
“Ah, finally, my first home run,” I thought as I started my maiden home-run trot.
Alas, the baseball gods weren’t smiling on me as the ball hit the very top of the fence - I think it hit one of those little fence pegs - and bounced back into play.
I ended up with a double and I never hit a home run in a real game the rest of my life.
I take my kids to school and every day we drive past that very field, which is no longer used as a baseball field. Still, the exact same outfield fence is still there.
Maggie and Jack must be tired of me telling the story “that’s where I almost hit a home run. That dang fence right there. If I had just hit that ball two inches farther.”
If any subscriber passes through Troy on the way to the beach, give me a call and I’ll give you a quick “ride-around” of Troy. The college is far prettier than it was when I was a kid. That college baseball field with a few wooden bleachers is now a bona fide stadium - with four batting cages.
The baseball field where I almost hit a home run is not the prettiest section of town, but I’ll take you by and show you that dadgum fence. I’ve ridden by it a thousand times - and a thousand times I’ve thought about this story.
(But this is the first time I’ve written about it).
I was not a horrible hitter, but no home runs... until one of the blast games in my last little league games. Hit two back to back... thought for sure I'd be a star. Next year, the curve balls came for me. Wasn't meant to be... but I still smile when I see one of those baseballs. Haven't kept any other youth sports memorabilia but that one ball...
Quick Edit: I forgot to run the photo of my son Jack at last night's game in the same stadium I played on a thousand times. I've now now added that photo to the end of the story. The stadium has certainly changed! If you want to see what I looked like when I was 8, just look at a picture of Jack today.
I'm a little older than you Bill but I have many of the same memories. Not the same world here in my metropolitan area as all the schools from grade school on up, padlock their campuses. Little wonder that today's kids veg on video games. No where to go to play an ad hoc sport.
There are so many changes from when I was a kid. For example, I never see a pick-up game of football in any big front yard, where there used to be several going on all around town. I actually wonder how kids today learn to play football, but they still do.
Many play soccer, which didn't even exist in the rec leagues when I was a kid.
Someone using my name and photo has hacked my account and is making comments throughout, apparently, all of my stories. This isn't me. I don't know what's happening or why. I've reported this to Substack.
The posts - made hundreds of times - is asking people to text them about some financial service. Don't do that!
It inspires me to maybe tell another story about my youth sports playing days.....you know I loved pee-wee football organized - I means seriously - I loved it.
In my youth various sporting activities - they run the gamut - we played kickball in the street all the time (boys and girls), my close pals of which there were four nearby - we always had a game of some sort going on - basketball, football - you name it. I remember a good friend named....well, the name doesn't matter, but he was a fine goalie in "street hockey" (played with an orange ball) and we would play 2-on-2 with him being the goal-tender against all players (both teams!). Damn - that was fun. His last name was "Volardo" if memory serves and like me he had a few older brothers and I remember in his house one of his brothers had some "artwork" with Elvis on it - and no matter where you stood in the room - Elvis was looking at you!
Good memories of growing up in Buffalo, NY. When we moved to Charlotte, NC - it was much the same, except not too much kickball being how hilly the roads are in Charlotte.
So...is one of your favorite movies The Sand Lot?? Great movie. I grew up in Red Bluff California in the late 70's and horses and rodeos and softball were my gig, but same thing. Taking a horse through the drive through at Burger King? Just another day. Blessed to know that. We moved to a tiny town in Idaho to raise our family because of the school. They have great memories of this town and my son is back with his 4 girls and is a board member of that school and my daughter and her family bought property up here and will be back soon. We are blessed. Thank you for this lovely trip down Memory Lane.
I saw a comment online from a city guy (para.) 'kids don't play sandlot baseball as much as they used to because people aren't having as many kids any more. You can't just form teams like we used to, especially in the cities. Also urban real estate is so expensive that everything is built on nowadays.'
Also, I totally agree. I grew up very rural, then moved to a small town and now live in a city. I absolutely hate it and would leave if I could. Urban living absolutely sucks, and Australian cities are finished - the crowding is intolerable due to explosion in immigration over the past two years. I think it's just because I know what I am missing out there in God's country.
I've actually got a small town story about John Cougar Mellencamp. The height of his popularity was around 1983, when I was a high school senior. One day in 1983, John Cougar Mellencamp himself was driving through Troy, Alabama (apparently on his bus on the way to another concert). He stopped in Troy at our one record store (yes, we used to have those) to apparently see how his latest album was selling.
I'm friends with the guy that was then a college student and was working at the record store. He told me he started up a conversation with John Cougar and learned that he just wanted to see how his album was doing and how record stores were promoting it with their displays.
I remember a good friend of mine, a high school junior female, who saw his bus and zipped into the record store and also got to see John Cougar in the flesh. This was the big buzz in Troy, Alabama - John Cougar Mellencamp stopped at our record store!
Troy sounds great, Bill. And I'm a State of Alabama fan overall.
I grew up in a North Jersey town of 17K. There were woods at the town's edge, where we played army and climbed trees. We were 21 miles from NYC; the nearest town to NYC to have any woods.
It didn't have Troy's facilities. But it had a river (runs through it) in which we swam and from which we caught sunnies, using cheap rods, with Wonder Bread balls for bait.
Oakland had many kids, nearly all Caucasians, from mostly blue collar-households. 440 in my HS class. Plenty of pick-up football and baseball, from two-on-two to ten-on-ten. Soccer hadn't been invented yet. And there were no public basketball courts; just some single--too high or too low---hoops outside schools. Fewer, later onset, travel sports. Much more informal play. More fights, but kids seldom got badly hurt in them.
And no computers or phones, so kids were too bored to say inside. We rode bikes a lot.
We had a swamp and an industrial park with a fake lake. Both froze for ice hockey about ten days/winter. My Mom put black shoe polish on cheap figure skates my sister had outgrown and I played in those.
Nearly everyone had a Dad and a Mom. Parents had kids in their twenties and early thirties. Most of the Moms stayed home with their kids. Most families lived in modest houses, on which they paid mortgages, and had three-plus kids. Divorce and single parenthood were nearly unheard of. My father worked in an auto assembly plant, the biggest in the world at that time. 5500 workers, three shifts, with Dad typically on overnights, seven nights/week. We seldom saw him awake.
There was only hospitalization insurance. Paid cash for all other medical and dental. When I broke my leg, my mom wrote a check for $400. That was two weeks take-home pay. But they didn't take 20% from my Dad's income, year 'round, to pay for insurance. And nearly no one was on meds. There were hardly any meds.
Weed was illegal and not as potent. Getting busted for it was a big deal, though by HS, some kids got high in secluded areas near the school during lunch hour.
There was no ethnic food in town, unless you count pizza. And no franchise restaurants or stores.
When I was in grade school, teens got drafted. Some went to Vietnam. Two didn't come home.
There was no Coronamania. People wouldn't have fallen for it. They didn't watch 24 hour news.
There were local papers and journalists asked Qs. The adults had lived through a Depression and several wars and had dirty, dangerous jobs. People over 70 dying was not considered an affront to humanity.
You just wrote another great dispatch - in my Reader Comments section. More great bonus content for my subscribers!
My graduating class (Class of '83) had 136 students - and I knew every one of them, plus most people in all the other classes.
The Class of '81 had a huge class - more than 200 students. That's the class that won us our only state championship in football. They won it because that team had about 25 senior football players who had been playing sports together since they were in grade school. Nobody played both ways; of the team's 22 starters, I think 19 were seniors.
I was the third-team quarterback as a sophomore. I tell people I was the 1st team JV quarterback!
That 1980 CHHS State Championship team played in the same stadium as Troy State. I'm pretty sure we drew more fans that year than the college did at its game. I can remember two games where the 9 or 10,000-seat stadium was 90 percent full.
I go to high school games today and there might be 1,500 fans at the games. Most students don't even go. The band used to have 225 students in it. Today, I think the high school band has about 50 members.
I've watched a lot of movies or documentaries about people who grew up in big cities, like one of the NY City boroughs. It seems like they had a small-town feel just from their particular neighborhood.
We could come up with all kinds of games ... because we weren't glued to our "devices."
When I was living in Opelika, Evil K'nevil might have been the most famous man in America. So all the kids in our neighborhood learned to ramp trash cans with our bicycles. I once cleared six trash cans!
IMPORTANT: Hi Bill, I received this strange message in my email inbox (from: forum@mg1.substack.com) that seems to purport to be you through the Substack system:
[Subject:] New comment on I didn’t know the Depopulation Cult was this big.
Bill Rice, Jr replied to your comment on I didn’t know the Depopulation Cult was this big..
Thankx for the comments, I'll introduce you to a life changing 1nvestment that can change your financial life. If you're interested text me directly👇 +1(210) 951-8427
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
This doesn't seem normal. I looked at the thread to find this msg text in your original post and see it, but NOT under my name/reply (which was about the cartoon you used). So, I am not even sure this is the real you who posted this comment, or an impersonator. Very strange.
I didn't dare press any of the buttons in this email, for they could be phishing traps. I will keep the email message for a few days in case you want to forward it to me to possibly alert the Substack team if you deem it suspect. These kinds of messages could possibly entail security risks/breaches, as they seem not normal. Please let me know what you make of it. Thanks
Yes, someone has hijacked my name and posting handle. The same message has been made scores of times in the Reader Comments in my recent articles. But I didn't know it had been sent via email to my subscribers.
Thanks for the intelligence. I have "sent a report" to Substack and told them that's not me, please investigate and fix, etc.
This is just one more example of "funny stuff" that's happening to some of us "contrarian" Substack authors.
Thanks for reporting back on this Bill. It is concerning that some bad actors (CIA/Intel agents?) are trying to infiltrate this platform to attempt to de-legitimize authors/journalists like ourselves.
BTW, what is the link or email to report such kinds of suspicious activities on our accounts and Substack? Best to be prepared for when they start coming after me too. Be safe!
I remember attending a TSU football game in the late 70s. My 1st cousin from Andalusia was a majorette in the band. I grew up in Pensacola but that was my first college football game. I was HS class of 84 - you’re one year senior. We both went off to big schools - UA for you, FSU for me (many great memories of football before/as Bowden’s dynasty began).
But your writing almost makes me wish my parents had raised me where they’re from - Andalusia / Florala. You were blessed to grow up in Troy.
I have family from Andalusia and Florala. My grandmother, Kathryn Rushton, was from Andalusia.
I was a waterboy for TSU's football team in the late 1970s. Coach Charlie Bradshaw was the coach. My best friend, Charles Bradshaw, was Coach Bradshaw's son.
Loved reading every word of this, what great memories. Growing up in the 70’s was the best. I tell my wife if I had to pick one age to be forever, I’d pick 11. 5th grade summer was the best ever, riding bikes, pool hopping, wiffle ball, lunch at my poppop and grandmom’s, step ball…glorious.
11 or 12 were great fun for me too. Really, ages 5 through 18.
From 2nd to 6th grade, I lived in Opelika, Alabama, which was another small town (right next store to Auburn). My "Opie Taylor days" were actually spent in Opelika. I remember trail riding on our bikes, playing wiffle ball in the street, pine cone wars, climbing trees and a lot of tackle and touch football games - plus "tackle the man with the ball."
Our music was good too. I've been educating my own kids on the great music from the 1970s and 1980s. (They like it!)
Agreed. I had the privilege of growing up for part of my childhood in a rural area and had some of the best times of my life there. I think this is a universal theme.
Every time you do this, write something from the heart, I feel like we're connected. Keep it up!
I grew up in a smaller town, no college, but very similar "share with the kids" hospitality. Even shared most of the sports venue experiences... diving in ponds for golf balls, high dive competitions, pick up games, 2 on 2 football. Fabulous memories, made more fabulous if you can share them with your son.
As a freshman at Texas A&M, we played pick up football games on Kyle field, which was never locked (1981). My Aggie daughter could not even imagine such a privilege.
Times have changed in bigger venues. I think you are in to something with the small college town thing. Aggieland is way to big for that sort of community experience now.
Over the years, I also got to know plenty of Troy State athletes, who I pulled for at their games, and discovered they were much more approachable and not the prima-donna types you might find at the “blue blood” SEC type colleges.
Generally speaking, I suspect small-college athletes are a little nicer. And some of those athletes were really good - just as good as the big-college athletes.
Every year, Troy football, basketball and baseball player go to Jack and Maggie's school ... and help kids get out of the car and ask them to come to games that year ... I don't think they do that at Alabama, Auburn, Georgia or Florida.
Before Troy University's recent Spring Game, Jack participated in a youth football clinic - put on by the players who were getting ready to play the game!
Likely EVERYone at small town colleges is nicer than the precious blue bloods - this is not limited to the athletics department. I guess if you've hocked five years' future income to pay tuition, you're gonna preen and swagger to compensate.
Bonus Nostalgia ...
Between the ages of 8 and 13, baseball was the biggest sport in town. In that age period (back before pitchers knew how to throw curve balls), I could hit for a respectable average … but I never once hit a home run. To this day, this bothers me.
One day, however, I almost hit a home run in a Dixie Youth game (Astros vs. Mets). In Troy, we had two Dixie Youth fields and this one was played on the bigger field. The fences were 199 feet from home plate. (It’s funny the details you remember).
That morning the father of one of my teammates, Mr. Barron, took me and his son, Levon, to the town’s one batting cage at Troy State’s baseball field.
So I got some extra batting practice. I think Mr. Barron perhaps knew a little more about hitting than my youth coach and passed along some good tips.
My first at bat against the Mets, I hit the ball right in the sweet spot and it kept going and going and going into right center field.
“Ah, finally, my first home run,” I thought as I started my maiden home-run trot.
Alas, the baseball gods weren’t smiling on me as the ball hit the very top of the fence - I think it hit one of those little fence pegs - and bounced back into play.
I ended up with a double and I never hit a home run in a real game the rest of my life.
I take my kids to school and every day we drive past that very field, which is no longer used as a baseball field. Still, the exact same outfield fence is still there.
Maggie and Jack must be tired of me telling the story “that’s where I almost hit a home run. That dang fence right there. If I had just hit that ball two inches farther.”
If any subscriber passes through Troy on the way to the beach, give me a call and I’ll give you a quick “ride-around” of Troy. The college is far prettier than it was when I was a kid. That college baseball field with a few wooden bleachers is now a bona fide stadium - with four batting cages.
The baseball field where I almost hit a home run is not the prettiest section of town, but I’ll take you by and show you that dadgum fence. I’ve ridden by it a thousand times - and a thousand times I’ve thought about this story.
(But this is the first time I’ve written about it).
Dadgum, you did it TWICE in one post!
I was not a horrible hitter, but no home runs... until one of the blast games in my last little league games. Hit two back to back... thought for sure I'd be a star. Next year, the curve balls came for me. Wasn't meant to be... but I still smile when I see one of those baseballs. Haven't kept any other youth sports memorabilia but that one ball...
What a way to finish. Yes, I couldn't hit the curve ball, which is the main reason I started to focus on football by high school.
Quick Edit: I forgot to run the photo of my son Jack at last night's game in the same stadium I played on a thousand times. I've now now added that photo to the end of the story. The stadium has certainly changed! If you want to see what I looked like when I was 8, just look at a picture of Jack today.
I'm a little older than you Bill but I have many of the same memories. Not the same world here in my metropolitan area as all the schools from grade school on up, padlock their campuses. Little wonder that today's kids veg on video games. No where to go to play an ad hoc sport.
No place to build a "fort" in a city or play football, baseball, have bike races, capture the flag, on and on
I miss all that much. Kids today have no idea how fun outside can be.
There are so many changes from when I was a kid. For example, I never see a pick-up game of football in any big front yard, where there used to be several going on all around town. I actually wonder how kids today learn to play football, but they still do.
Many play soccer, which didn't even exist in the rec leagues when I was a kid.
Someone using my name and photo has hacked my account and is making comments throughout, apparently, all of my stories. This isn't me. I don't know what's happening or why. I've reported this to Substack.
The posts - made hundreds of times - is asking people to text them about some financial service. Don't do that!
Wonderful article Bill.
It inspires me to maybe tell another story about my youth sports playing days.....you know I loved pee-wee football organized - I means seriously - I loved it.
In my youth various sporting activities - they run the gamut - we played kickball in the street all the time (boys and girls), my close pals of which there were four nearby - we always had a game of some sort going on - basketball, football - you name it. I remember a good friend named....well, the name doesn't matter, but he was a fine goalie in "street hockey" (played with an orange ball) and we would play 2-on-2 with him being the goal-tender against all players (both teams!). Damn - that was fun. His last name was "Volardo" if memory serves and like me he had a few older brothers and I remember in his house one of his brothers had some "artwork" with Elvis on it - and no matter where you stood in the room - Elvis was looking at you!
Good memories of growing up in Buffalo, NY. When we moved to Charlotte, NC - it was much the same, except not too much kickball being how hilly the roads are in Charlotte.
~
This is a fine article.
Peace!
Ken
Ha - fake alert to the fakester responded to this - that ain't the Bill I'm familiar with....
pathetic...
So...is one of your favorite movies The Sand Lot?? Great movie. I grew up in Red Bluff California in the late 70's and horses and rodeos and softball were my gig, but same thing. Taking a horse through the drive through at Burger King? Just another day. Blessed to know that. We moved to a tiny town in Idaho to raise our family because of the school. They have great memories of this town and my son is back with his 4 girls and is a board member of that school and my daughter and her family bought property up here and will be back soon. We are blessed. Thank you for this lovely trip down Memory Lane.
Thanks, SadieJay. I have not seen The Sand Lot. Sounds like I need to check it out. Also, sounds like Idaho sounds pretty good!
I cannot speak to you until you have seen The Sand Lot. Lol.
I'll tell my wife - who finds our movies - "find The Sand Lot!"
This was really beautiful, thanks Bill.
I saw a comment online from a city guy (para.) 'kids don't play sandlot baseball as much as they used to because people aren't having as many kids any more. You can't just form teams like we used to, especially in the cities. Also urban real estate is so expensive that everything is built on nowadays.'
Also, I totally agree. I grew up very rural, then moved to a small town and now live in a city. I absolutely hate it and would leave if I could. Urban living absolutely sucks, and Australian cities are finished - the crowding is intolerable due to explosion in immigration over the past two years. I think it's just because I know what I am missing out there in God's country.
Move to Moura mate! MMM
LOL why Moura specifically?
"Small Town" by John Mellencamp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CVLVaBECuc
What a great way to grow up! Surely a blessing. Basic, pure, wholesome, and simple, with the appreciation of true friendships on hand.
R.
I've actually got a small town story about John Cougar Mellencamp. The height of his popularity was around 1983, when I was a high school senior. One day in 1983, John Cougar Mellencamp himself was driving through Troy, Alabama (apparently on his bus on the way to another concert). He stopped in Troy at our one record store (yes, we used to have those) to apparently see how his latest album was selling.
I'm friends with the guy that was then a college student and was working at the record store. He told me he started up a conversation with John Cougar and learned that he just wanted to see how his album was doing and how record stores were promoting it with their displays.
I remember a good friend of mine, a high school junior female, who saw his bus and zipped into the record store and also got to see John Cougar in the flesh. This was the big buzz in Troy, Alabama - John Cougar Mellencamp stopped at our record store!
Only in a small town, I guess.
Troy sounds great, Bill. And I'm a State of Alabama fan overall.
I grew up in a North Jersey town of 17K. There were woods at the town's edge, where we played army and climbed trees. We were 21 miles from NYC; the nearest town to NYC to have any woods.
It didn't have Troy's facilities. But it had a river (runs through it) in which we swam and from which we caught sunnies, using cheap rods, with Wonder Bread balls for bait.
Oakland had many kids, nearly all Caucasians, from mostly blue collar-households. 440 in my HS class. Plenty of pick-up football and baseball, from two-on-two to ten-on-ten. Soccer hadn't been invented yet. And there were no public basketball courts; just some single--too high or too low---hoops outside schools. Fewer, later onset, travel sports. Much more informal play. More fights, but kids seldom got badly hurt in them.
And no computers or phones, so kids were too bored to say inside. We rode bikes a lot.
We had a swamp and an industrial park with a fake lake. Both froze for ice hockey about ten days/winter. My Mom put black shoe polish on cheap figure skates my sister had outgrown and I played in those.
Nearly everyone had a Dad and a Mom. Parents had kids in their twenties and early thirties. Most of the Moms stayed home with their kids. Most families lived in modest houses, on which they paid mortgages, and had three-plus kids. Divorce and single parenthood were nearly unheard of. My father worked in an auto assembly plant, the biggest in the world at that time. 5500 workers, three shifts, with Dad typically on overnights, seven nights/week. We seldom saw him awake.
There was only hospitalization insurance. Paid cash for all other medical and dental. When I broke my leg, my mom wrote a check for $400. That was two weeks take-home pay. But they didn't take 20% from my Dad's income, year 'round, to pay for insurance. And nearly no one was on meds. There were hardly any meds.
Weed was illegal and not as potent. Getting busted for it was a big deal, though by HS, some kids got high in secluded areas near the school during lunch hour.
There was no ethnic food in town, unless you count pizza. And no franchise restaurants or stores.
When I was in grade school, teens got drafted. Some went to Vietnam. Two didn't come home.
There was no Coronamania. People wouldn't have fallen for it. They didn't watch 24 hour news.
There were local papers and journalists asked Qs. The adults had lived through a Depression and several wars and had dirty, dangerous jobs. People over 70 dying was not considered an affront to humanity.
You just wrote another great dispatch - in my Reader Comments section. More great bonus content for my subscribers!
My graduating class (Class of '83) had 136 students - and I knew every one of them, plus most people in all the other classes.
The Class of '81 had a huge class - more than 200 students. That's the class that won us our only state championship in football. They won it because that team had about 25 senior football players who had been playing sports together since they were in grade school. Nobody played both ways; of the team's 22 starters, I think 19 were seniors.
I was the third-team quarterback as a sophomore. I tell people I was the 1st team JV quarterback!
That 1980 CHHS State Championship team played in the same stadium as Troy State. I'm pretty sure we drew more fans that year than the college did at its game. I can remember two games where the 9 or 10,000-seat stadium was 90 percent full.
I go to high school games today and there might be 1,500 fans at the games. Most students don't even go. The band used to have 225 students in it. Today, I think the high school band has about 50 members.
Yes, the stands at all HS games are nearly empty.
People just stay home and watch D1 an pro games on TV.
First team JV is good.
It was good enough for me. As long as you get to play...
Funny, but I grew up in a big town.
And I loved it!
We played tag football, "birbie", against a brick wall at my junior public school.
I played real lacrosse, but was too tall and slim to survive the crosschecks which seriously bruise your upper arms.
It was idyllic living on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
I was taking the streetcar, and subways, on my own, since I was eight.
I'm retired, and moved 60 miles north to cottage country, 35,000 population...
My hometown (Toronto), has turned into an absolute shithole, and I dread driving back, typically for a friend's funeral.
I would never live in a large city again...
I've watched a lot of movies or documentaries about people who grew up in big cities, like one of the NY City boroughs. It seems like they had a small-town feel just from their particular neighborhood.
We could come up with all kinds of games ... because we weren't glued to our "devices."
When I was living in Opelika, Evil K'nevil might have been the most famous man in America. So all the kids in our neighborhood learned to ramp trash cans with our bicycles. I once cleared six trash cans!
IMPORTANT: Hi Bill, I received this strange message in my email inbox (from: forum@mg1.substack.com) that seems to purport to be you through the Substack system:
[Subject:] New comment on I didn’t know the Depopulation Cult was this big.
Bill Rice, Jr replied to your comment on I didn’t know the Depopulation Cult was this big..
Thankx for the comments, I'll introduce you to a life changing 1nvestment that can change your financial life. If you're interested text me directly👇 +1(210) 951-8427
[View Comment + Mute Thread buttons]
© 2024 Bill Rice, Jr.
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
This doesn't seem normal. I looked at the thread to find this msg text in your original post and see it, but NOT under my name/reply (which was about the cartoon you used). So, I am not even sure this is the real you who posted this comment, or an impersonator. Very strange.
I didn't dare press any of the buttons in this email, for they could be phishing traps. I will keep the email message for a few days in case you want to forward it to me to possibly alert the Substack team if you deem it suspect. These kinds of messages could possibly entail security risks/breaches, as they seem not normal. Please let me know what you make of it. Thanks
Yes, someone has hijacked my name and posting handle. The same message has been made scores of times in the Reader Comments in my recent articles. But I didn't know it had been sent via email to my subscribers.
Thanks for the intelligence. I have "sent a report" to Substack and told them that's not me, please investigate and fix, etc.
This is just one more example of "funny stuff" that's happening to some of us "contrarian" Substack authors.
Thanks for reporting back on this Bill. It is concerning that some bad actors (CIA/Intel agents?) are trying to infiltrate this platform to attempt to de-legitimize authors/journalists like ourselves.
BTW, what is the link or email to report such kinds of suspicious activities on our accounts and Substack? Best to be prepared for when they start coming after me too. Be safe!
I remember attending a TSU football game in the late 70s. My 1st cousin from Andalusia was a majorette in the band. I grew up in Pensacola but that was my first college football game. I was HS class of 84 - you’re one year senior. We both went off to big schools - UA for you, FSU for me (many great memories of football before/as Bowden’s dynasty began).
But your writing almost makes me wish my parents had raised me where they’re from - Andalusia / Florala. You were blessed to grow up in Troy.
I have family from Andalusia and Florala. My grandmother, Kathryn Rushton, was from Andalusia.
I was a waterboy for TSU's football team in the late 1970s. Coach Charlie Bradshaw was the coach. My best friend, Charles Bradshaw, was Coach Bradshaw's son.
Loved reading every word of this, what great memories. Growing up in the 70’s was the best. I tell my wife if I had to pick one age to be forever, I’d pick 11. 5th grade summer was the best ever, riding bikes, pool hopping, wiffle ball, lunch at my poppop and grandmom’s, step ball…glorious.
11 or 12 were great fun for me too. Really, ages 5 through 18.
From 2nd to 6th grade, I lived in Opelika, Alabama, which was another small town (right next store to Auburn). My "Opie Taylor days" were actually spent in Opelika. I remember trail riding on our bikes, playing wiffle ball in the street, pine cone wars, climbing trees and a lot of tackle and touch football games - plus "tackle the man with the ball."
Our music was good too. I've been educating my own kids on the great music from the 1970s and 1980s. (They like it!)
Agreed. I had the privilege of growing up for part of my childhood in a rural area and had some of the best times of my life there. I think this is a universal theme.
Every time you do this, write something from the heart, I feel like we're connected. Keep it up!
I grew up in a smaller town, no college, but very similar "share with the kids" hospitality. Even shared most of the sports venue experiences... diving in ponds for golf balls, high dive competitions, pick up games, 2 on 2 football. Fabulous memories, made more fabulous if you can share them with your son.
As a freshman at Texas A&M, we played pick up football games on Kyle field, which was never locked (1981). My Aggie daughter could not even imagine such a privilege.
Times have changed in bigger venues. I think you are in to something with the small college town thing. Aggieland is way to big for that sort of community experience now.