If a good hunt for you requires these: waking up at 5:30 a.m., shivering through a pick-up breakfast and hurrying countryside to meet your gang by six-thirty, a pheasant shoot may not be your ticket.

The place is Aberdeen, South Dakota; the time, 10 a.m. Eighteen Orangeburg-connected men have had a late, quiet sleep, then chewed through breakfast abundance from fresh fruit to second coffees. Among them are Braxton Wannamaker, who organized the trip, Bert Gue, Frances Faulling, Jimmie Terry, Thomas Richardson, Jim Wells, Rick Williamson and Wayne Chestnut. They have flown to Chicago, then to Fargo, N.D. and driven to an Aberdeen motel.

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“Times have changed. The odds have shifted. Today, if you don’t have a diploma, your chances of a well paying job with good benefits aren’t good. With every year our economy shifts more toward knowledge,” says Dr. Garrison Walters, executive director of the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education.

The unemployment rate in Orangeburg and environs, he says, is 16.1 percent as compared to only 10 percent in the U.S. Our rate for workers with a bachelor’s degrees or higher is only 3.7 percent, but even that’s a full one percent lower than the national percentage.

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In Orangeburg, city and county, garbage is still big. Piling one day’s collection in one place might create a traffic jam and a fly, gnat, ant, cockroach, buzzard, yellow jacket, rabbit and skunk zoo, too.

Durwood Bowden, director of Orangeburg’s Public Works, says there are 450 steel “dumpsters” placed around the city, ranging in size from two to eight cubic yards. Most are at commercial places like restaurants, factories, discount stores, etc. Some use as many as three.

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It’s feeding time, 4 p.m. on Bill O’Cain’s 30 acres out on North Road. He drives a pick-up from his brick, hilltop house through green grass fields back to a picnic-sized gazebo. There, he lifts in sacks of mixed grains, loaves of people-bread and other animal food. Then he drives through another green pasture to a warehouse where he stacks it all in the small trailer of a flat-bed golf cart.

The donkeys eat first. They are nine Sicilian asses, three-foot high adults and two white youngsters. All have been grazing in their own fenced-off pasture all day. No matter. With true donkey gluttony, they crowd against the fence to yank a slice of bread and chew greedily. The male, taller than his females, pushes the others out of the way to get more while Bill fills two large grain buckets and pours the corn, wheat, etc. mixture into two grassless places down the fence.

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“Sugar Mountain” is a great name, isn’t it? Lines of Carolina, Georgia and especially Florida vacationers have been driving the 100 to 500 miles up into the Blue Ridge all summer and the “village,” which is adjacent to Banker Elk, N.C., still has three autumn festivals to go. Then begin preparations for the winter fun.

If for nothing else, the delicious mountain air is worth traveling up for. Many tourists visited its forest-covered mountainsides cut with narrow, bolder dotted streams long before skiing began in the winters, then golf came right on its heels.

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Charlie McCain, Orangeburg High class of 1973, has written an acclaimed book called “An Honorable German.” It’s about a German submarine captain’s WWII exploits. Old friends of McCain’s like Marion Moore and James Guthrie say it’s exciting reading.

From his home in Washington, Charlie says, “I was born in Mobile, Ala. and grew up in my mother’s (Lurline Livingston McCain) hometown. During childhood, my grandmother (Big Lurline) would tell me stories about our family who had lived there many, many years.

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The state of Maine has a 2,500-mile coastline. Just below, squeezed in tight as a corset, New Hampshire has only 18 miles. But even this includes two or three nice beaches, craggy rock coasts, lines of fishing boats and all the aura of old New England.

Don’t let your mind picture South Carolina-like sand stretches. Come to a break in the cliffs with a bay of low waves. There, view 500 to 1,000 bikini-clad Yankees standing in the water, almost none above their ankles. Too cold. Even on high-80 and low-90 days, it’s this way.

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Last weekend, 300 or more Carolinians and guests got together in Santee to dance for two nights and an afternoon. They did the Shag.

The annual “Shaggin’ on the Santee” is hosted by the Orangeburg Area Shag Club, a longtime member of the Association of Carolina Shag Clubs. Some of the members are from Clarendon, Calhoun, Dorchester, etc. Guests came from other clubs in Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, N.C. and S.C., all to liven up the new ballroom at the Quality Inn.

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City history books don’t tell much about the daily lives of early 1900s citizens. We can’t prove they jumped in the Edisto to cool off, but you know they did – the men, anyway.

In the more than 90 degrees F. heat, the boys and even old guys couldn’t resist finding a secluded spot, skinning off shirts and pants and crashing into that smooth, cool, water.

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Have you hunters ever pictured yourselves far out in the center of a thousand or more uninhabited acres in Texas with a couple of your best friends? And with all the guns and supplies for shooting and bringing home a set of twelve-point, whitetail antlers?

Carroll Summers, Orangeburg native, can set you up.

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