Charles Walston

A veteran of Florida and Georgia journalism and a renowned roadhouse musician, Charles Walston is now a speechwriter in Washington.
Number of posts: 2
Email address: cwalston@nea.org

Posts by Charles Walston:

I still like the Bear, but …

by Charles Walston | 11, Add your Comment | Dec 2 09

The phone rang and I picked up. A lady with a voice like honey said, “Hold for Coach Bryant.” It was October 1979 and I was working as a cub sports writer at the Evening Independent, the afternoon rag in my hometown of St. Pete, Florida. I had been assigned to write an advance on the football game between the winless Florida Gators and the Alabama Crimson Tide. It was a fool’s errand, but I wasn’t about to play the chump. I put in a call to the Alabama athletic department and told a student assistant I needed to talk to Bear ...

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Lessons in the mud

by Charles Walston | 12, Add your Comment | Nov 24 09

Forty years ago I woke up in the mud at a Rolling Stones concert. It was in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Dec. 1, 1969, on the final day of the West Palm Beach Pop Festival. Rain had fallen for three days straight and temperatures dropped into the 40s, which is nut-numbing cold by Florida standards. The site was a dragstrip halfway out to Lake Okeechobee, and kids were burning old tires to keep warm, hoping that the thick black smoke wasn’t as toxic as it looked. The usual arsenal of south Florida remedies proved useless against the bitter elements, ...