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I just read a book, written by a college teammate, which brought about an enthusiastic crescendo of respect for some of the most delightful prose that I have connected with in a long while.

You won’t find David Cleghorn’s memoir, “A Birdfeeder’s Journal,” on the New York Times’ best seller list, but it is certainly worthy of that lofty distinction.

David has shocked his old teammates and friends with his first book—not that we did not think him capable.  We just were not aware of his critical talent and august style.  Perhaps, we should have known better.  After all, he is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Henry Grady School of Journalism.  He was well taught.  Subsequently, he toiled in the Atlanta Journal sports department under the irascible but brilliant and evocative Furman Bisher, one of the great sports columnists of our time.  (That tribute has no borders. Bisher was as good as anyone who ever made the keys of a manual typewriter hum to the touch of two masterful forefingers.)

Then there was the sage advice and influence of Jim Minter, who rose to become editor of the AJC.  He was a remarkable and seasoned writer/editor with an unmatched story telling bent, a clever insight into human nature, and the testosterone of a hard-edged middle linebacker of the days when if you didn’t play hurt, you were a pansy to be laughed out of the league.

Out of that seasoned cast on the fourth floor of the old Journal-Constitution building at 10 Forsyth Street came such talented writers as the aforementioned Bisher and Minter—along with this exceptional lineup: 

Lee Walburn, who would later become editor of the Atlanta Magazine; Terry Kay, an award-winning author with many books to his credit, Bill Robinson, who never met a deadline he liked, (however, the Bisher boys still quote his lead about a driver in a NASCAR race, “running flat-out, belly to the ground, chasing a hurrying sundown”) and to the coming of the personal computer age that spawned Lewis Grizzard, a celebrated columnist nationwide.

Now we can add the name of David Cleghorn, whose nickname was “Senator,” given to him by his crusty coach, the legendary Forest Spec Towns who won a gold medal in the Olympic High Hurdles at Berlin in 1936, returning a short time later to do his part to help rid the world of Adolph Hitler.

David, like the rest of us, had the highest regard for our old coach, whose gruffness, probably enhanced by smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes, made us conclude that he got up on the wrong side of the bed many days.

David never got any plush assignments in his short-lived AJC tenure although he was assigned to write sidebars for the Journal as a Georgia student about post-game musings of the colorful Bulldog head coach, Wallace Butts.  He came away from that association with an appreciation for the poignancy of profanity and that the colorful insight, quite graphic, about a player’s unprintable performance and ability cannot be cleared for print in a family newspaper.         

David finished his required Army duty, and upon mustering out of military service, passed on a newspaper career, taking a job with R.C. Smith Publishing Co., where he spent 20 or so years in Dallas when the company was bought out and left him high and dry.

While in Dallas, he joined a ski club, which also affiliated him with white water rafting and ultimately rock climbing which is about as close to the real thing as a lighting bug is to the noonday sun. He realized he had to commit to a risk/reward venture or forget about.  Just saying he would like to climb the Grand Tetons was more than riding up to their apex on a chair lift.

Before you could say north face, this one-time paperboy for the AJC, was amongst the rugged mountaintops of the Rockies, the Direct Exum route, the Matterhorn, the Tetons, Mt. Ranier and many others.

Before he climbed those classic peaks, he skied them. He was happy to be alone on a craggy and dangerous mountain scape.  There has always been versatility in his adventures.  He became exhilarated spending time in places like the Amazon rainforest, volcanoes in Mexico and a journey to Alaska for the Iditarod.  Considering his adventuresome spirit, I am surprised that he did not enter a dogsled team in the celebrated race himself.  However, he did engage in dog sledding, which should come as no surprise.

All the while, intrepid thoughts were germinating in his cranium, which fortunately did not collide with a mountain ridge that interfered with one of his thrilling rappels.

David’s treatise is more than a dairy of his extracurricular outdoor life, but you find him discoursing on a variety of subjects and linking his reflections to his days on campus and his time at the rim of the sports desk at the AJC sports department.

“A birdfeeder’s Journal,” comes from the time he walked on to run the middle distances for Spec Towns in Athens in the late fifties.  He learned right away that when he had one too many beers and a late-night pizza might cause him to lose what went down with such redeeming pleasure the night before would bring about a cackling outburst from his cynical coach.

When you upchuck following the sprinting of a 330-yard practice run, it is degradingly known as, “feeding the birds.”  It caused teammates to jeer, passing motorists to honk their horns in derision, and made the Great Speckled Bird, as we called Towns, when he was out of hearing, to laugh as if he were spending happy hour with Jeff Foxworthy.

In addition to storytelling that would get Faulkner’s approval, he provided photos, which complement the manuscript as bacon does a scrambled egg breakfast.

My view is that Spec would sing his praises.  Moreover, Bisher who threw compliments around like Redwood trees would have offered a hearty toast. Selah!