CHARLIE WALKER: If only we could cash in compliments

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take compliments to the bank and cash them? I don’t mean those million-dollar compliments from the 5- and 10-cent store, ones that are as common as butterflies, “That’s a pretty dress you are wearing,” “You’ve lost weight,” “It’s so good to see you.” If you cash these compliments and those like them you hear every day, you could make a down payment on a toothpick.
Compliments: you can’t eat them, you can’t wear them, you can’t put them in the bank and draw interest, but they are music to our ears. If they had calories, some of you would be big as Florence Civic Center. Some compliments are sarcastic, like some of Ole Scrap Iron’s. Her tongue is so sharp I could shave with it. Compliments are free until Obama finds a way to tax them. You don’t have to report compliments to the IRS.

Nothing makes me feel better than a compliment with the exception of Clemson stomping a mud hole in some cow pasture some Saturday afternoon. I’m staring at a compliment on the wall now. It is a column I wrote in The Kingstree News about Peggy and my 50th wedding anniversary. Billy Jenkins and his wife, Sally, framed the column and brought it to Peggy and me for a gift.

Is enjoying a compliment being conceited? Conceit is a strange disease. It makes everybody sick except the person who has it. When we are right, we credit our judgment. When we are wrong, we blame it on bad luck. Even postage stamps are useless when they are stuck on themselves. If the only thing you love stares back at you from a mirror, you must live a miserable life.

I received a note a few weeks ago from Tom Marschel who was publisher of the Morning Blues back when we use to receive the paper at Sandy Bay by carrier pigeon. Now he is president of the Greater Florence Greater Chamber of Commerce. He is helping to keep the “magic” in the magic city. He applied for the job of president of the Sandy Bay Greater Chamber of Commerce. He showed up at the Café Ridiculous wearing a necktie that matched his socks and gave a speech using words with more than three letters. The crowd applauded twice: once when he tried to drink coffee out of a saucer and once when he tried to eat a Moon Pie with a fork. But I’m not here to scandalize his name. Tom paid me a compliment. I took it to The Citizen’s Bank and tried to cash it, but Dorn Smith didn’t have a million dollars because he didn’t keep small change at his banks.

Tom wrote he had managed newspapers in Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas and Philadelphia and “you are the best columnist I ever had the pleasure to read.” I know when the John Wayne of Effingham, Kenney Boone, reads this, he will put Tom Marschel in jail for sniffing the wild wood flower.

Opinions are like belly buttons; everybody has one. Peggy says she would rather read the supermarket ads while my tomcat, the Great Hound T Walker, would rather use my column than the litter box, and in Greeleyville they put my column in the bottom of the bird cage and feed the love birds Ex-Lax. Different strokes for different folks.

Thank you, Tom. Your note did as much for my morale as football.

— Charlie Walker is a local newspaper columnist. He can be reached at P.O. Box 441, Kingstree, SC 29556.