(Monday night, May 13^th, the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame honored Ken with the Herman Helms Excellence in Media Award. This is a column Ken wrote about the Hall back in 2004.)

COLUMBIA – History is really nothing more than our collective memory stitched together with golden strands of facts and figures that keep it all from being frayed and forgotten. But history doesn’t preserve itself.

What we know about our past depends largely upon people caring enough in the present to write it down for the future. And it takes stewardship to keep it from fading away.

Thursday night, more than 500 people attended a gala here in the capital city where eight former athletes were inducted into the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame. But if you’re looking for the actual Hall of Fame, it’s a bit difficult to find.

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(Reprinted from “Baptized in Sweet Tea,” a collection of Ken Burger’s columns celebrating the South)

In small towns, you’re never out of your mother’s sight, or somebody else’s mother.

In today’s world, you’re lucky to have one mother, much less a hundred. But that’s the way it was when I was a kid. No matter where you were or what you were doing, you were always under the watchful eye of a collective group of women who took it upon themselves to raise each other’s children.

While there was no formal contract to do so, it was understood that they all had equal powers of discipline when it came to your behavior. Whether you were standing in the lunch line at school or sitting in a pew at church, one wrong move and somebody’s mother was there to straighten you out.

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As I travel around giving talks about my Southern novels (Swallow Savannah, Sister Santee, Salkehatchie Soup) and my Southern gift book (Baptized in Sweet Tea), I’m often asked what makes the South different from the rest of the country.

Granted, many of the audiences I talk to are usually peopled with people who moved here from somewhere else. They all have opinions about the differences between living “up north” and “down south.” But mainly they moved here for the weather.

Later this month I’m on a couple of panels at the S.C. Book Festival in Columbia (May 17-19) where I get to talk about my books. One is called “To be Southern, How Sweet it is” where I’ll be joined by authors Tom Poland and John Jeter.

Later we’ll introduce a new book offered by USC Press titled, “State of the Heart,” which includes essays by dozens of South Carolina writers including me, Pat Conroy, Billy Deal, Sandra Johnson and many more. I haven’t read everyone else’s entries yet, but I think I have a good idea why people from “off” feel comfortable in our home state, once they get used to the differences.

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(Sponsored by Roper St. Francis Healthcare)

I log in on my laptop and the friendly face of Marjorie Avent appears in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. She’s smiling. I know her. She was a chaplain at Roper St. Francis Healthcare for almost five years. She’s laughed. She’s cried. She’s looked death in the eye, held its hand, felt it let go.

She needed to do something else with her Furman University education, her seminary training, her need to help people before it was too late.

She came to me for two reasons. One, because I write about things. Two, because I am a cancer patient.

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My thumb is not green. It doesn’t take cosmic control over my body this time of year, drag me out of the house, make me wrestle with water hoses, dig holes, then bury genetically generated plants up to their neck in fake dirt.

And yet, I’m married to someone exactly like that.

Bonnie’s agrarian instincts run deep and bloom about this time every year when the air is thick with pollen and insects infest every square inch of earth that isn’t properly spread with a complex chemical compound with a cute name guaranteed to kill it.

My aversion to yard work goes back to my childhood where all things liked and disliked cling to us like beggar’s lice on our blue jeans after running through an unattended field. I was only a lad when my older brother pulled the Tom Sawyer “whitewash this fence” trick on me with the family lawn mower.

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As a recovering news reporter, I still interview everybody I meet. And I mean everybody.

Sit beside me on a plane to Atlanta and I will know your entire history by the time we take off. Where you’re going, who you married, how many children you have, who you work for, and why. Once the wheels are up, I’ll know when you got divorced, how many times, and why, even if you don’t.

It all begins innocently enough. My first question is, “Hi, what’s your name?”

Then I ask, “Where’re you from?” That’s where it gets interesting.

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(Sponsored by Roper St. Francis Healthcare)

It was a scene right out of a Hollywood movie – an entire family gathered in the waiting room when suddenly a lullaby came wafting through the public address system for all to hear, and cheer.

The sound of music at Mt. Pleasant Hospital meant another baby had been delivered, and no one could have been prouder than members of the Salley family who travelled from Clemson and Columbia to celebrate the moment.

Right after the lullaby ended, the new father, Rotie Salley, appeared and announced to the group that Catherine had just delivered a baby girl named Emily Ann Salley, and that mother and daughter were doing just fine.

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Given the choice, men will pee outside even if there is a perfectly good bathroom within reach. Let me repeat that: Given the opportunity, a man thinks nothing of peeing in his own backyard, your backyard, behind the bleachers, beside the car, around a bush, alongside a tree and almost anywhere on a golf course.

This actually comes as a shock to some women who don’t want to admit the man they married is really a Neanderthal. But there are ageless instincts involved here, so watch your step.

I live in a regular neighborhood, but have the luxury of complete privacy in my backyard. So if I’m on the dock listening to music or talking with a pal about the mysteries of life, I never have to worry about where the bathroom is. The world is my urinal.

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All I want to do is watch the damn news. There was a time when that simple endeavor involved getting up from my seat, walking to the television set, switching the channel, making sure the rabbit ears were twisted in the right direction, and voila, Huntley and Brinkley appeared without much ado.

That, of course, was long ago and far away when television was free. The signal sailed through the atmosphere from tower to tower and magically found your house, like Santa Clause on a stormy night, delivering news that was as surprising as anything you might unwrap on Christmas morn.

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I am fortunate that I get to do a lot of book signings. When you’re a minor-league author of fiction you take every opportunity to get your work in the hands of those

who might actually read it.

So far, I’ve published three novels: “Swallow Savannah,” “Sister Santee,” and “Salkehatchie Soup.” I also have a collection of columns titled, “Baptized in Sweet Tea.”

In the past few weeks I’ve done book signings at a car dealership (Morris Nissan), a grocery store (Piggly Wiggly), on the street (Second Sunday on King Street), a

book store in Camden (Books on Broad), and will soon do one on the deck of a cruise ship.

Because the book business is in such transition these days, authors like me look for any venue that puts us before the public. Therefore, you never know who’s going to walk up and what they’re going to ask.

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