This may well be my last column as a regular Sunday occupant of a prominent place on the T&D's editorial page. It's not a sad one since I'm doing it myself and can't resist playing word games with the title. "Last rites" as in a farewell religious ceremony or "Last Writes" as in the finality of the writing. Get it? Get it?

Someday I'm going to die! Hell, I'm 93 and any insurance man will tell you that, chances are, it will occur sometime in the next 20 or so years. They even have actuarial tables to prove it. But I'm going to keep on plugging away at this electric typewriter. And you keep on reading, please.

As a matter of fact, I have two columns done to submit to Lee Harter, The T&D's editor -- one frivolous and one about me when I was 9 years old. Ancient history, you might say.

I was talking to a black preacher some years ago and told him I had a long article in next Sunday's paper. He said he looked forward to reading it and I said I thought it was noncontroversial, to which he rejoined, "I never thought I'd live to see the day!"

Everything I write appears in print, on occasion in the Wall Street Journal. I have it preserved between plastic in six big books. There are themes. Optimism. "The power of positive thinking." Some readers don't like that. It can be irritating if its brainless or groundless.

I love to write articles built around pictures and rail against folks who walk through life with blinders on. I can be frivolous, bordering on silly. And deadly serious about all the evil out there that could lead to the demise of the world we know. I can concentrate on culture and have wandered the world seeking it.

My mantra in my writing is to get those who might read me to say, "What is that s.o.b. going to write about next?" Things happen to me and my memory is accurate. I can't think of a personal enemy anywhere. I've outlived all the bastards.

I'm of the school that endorses the great quote from Samuel Johnson: "If you keep on learning, you'll never know an empty day" or a boring day.

I plow right into the subject so many people tiptoe around, race relations. In Orangeburgh, they're improving daily even as I sit here thinking about 'em. People of different colors or religions or traditions or histories or sexes should be striving to adjust and understand. If there's life on other planets, is it more or less tolerant?

I dispense scie.jpgic and medical information. Did you know all that stuff spinning around inside the rings of Saturn is lost airline luggage?

I love quotations and when I fill a page, people tell me they pin them up on the wall.

I don't gossip. I've never mentioned Bill Clinton's extra-curricular sex life, but when I wrote a full-page article about the man's inability to tell the truth about

anything

. I stirred up a controversy that lasted on the printed page for six weeks, pro and con. It was great fun.

I hope I haven't painted myself as some kind of great old man. I've enjoyed writing about personal embarrassments and foolish mistakes.

Writing is good for you. Just open up a vein and let fly.

As for the Times and Democrat, we're so lucky it's here. I'm not fawning. It's full of splendid writing. It fulfills all the hopes and dreams a community could ask of its newspaper.

As for me, I may write more infrequently and longer and if I'm too repetitive in my dotage, write the editor. It's a free country.

And, I'LL BE SEEING YOU IN ALL THE OLD FAMILIAR PLACES THAT THIS HEART OF MINE EMBRACES ALL DAY THROUGH.

Attorney Austin Cunningham has been the president of five business companies and in 1988 was named Outstanding Elder Citizen of the Year for South Carolina.

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