Newberry noons

Last Thursday was a perfectly redonkulous day.

You do not want to get me started except I will say, sometimes I want to herd all lawyers and their trusty paralegals onto a great big barge, push it out into the middle of a river full of alligators possessed of both robust appetites and a finely-honed sense of justice, and sink it.

I know it sounds hateful but if you only knew what happened, you'd be on my side.

Because as always, here below the sweet tea line the operative dynamic is often not the heat but the stupidity.

Anyway, according to my now time-honored tradition of driving around in an impromptu and fairly aimless manner, about to expire of the heat if I dare venture from the cool interior of my car, looking for things to take pictures of, I found a few shareworthy scenes in the sleepy southern milieu that is Newberry, South Carolina.

Newberry is known for its eponymous opera house, but I am more inclined to associate it with two restaurants, both of which I love: Steven W's Downtown Bistro ...

... where my favorite dish is the pecan-crusted chicken with blackberry sauce, and Delamater's, where my favorite dish is the Monte Cristo. That would be a triple-decker of ham, turkey, and Swiss cheese, dipped in egg batter, fried golden brown and served with Melba sauce.

What can I say? I'm saucy.

So anyway, I was tooling around sleepy Newberry looking for something you might find interesting, and outside it was getting hotter than firecrackers in a blast furnace ...

... when, on an out-of-the way side street, I encountered a scene that captivated me enough to brave the broiling sun. Mainly I attribute this willingness to my love of anything saturated in Southern, and this certainly was.

The old conveyor was a giant rusty grasshopper, long inert, unused, anachronistic.

I love metal signs and on a dare I might've made off with these except they were high up on the old corrugated metal feed and produce building.

Besides, that would have been stealing and the day before I'd been tempted to steal (from a cemetery, no less ... long story) and had obtained forgiveness from God and I wasn't about to go there again.

Behold.

In fact the whole building, simmering in the tall grass there beside the railroad track, was itself a metal sign.

There was even a metal sign wrapped around the chimney of a nearby shack.

I circled back to the oxidizing angles of the iron grasshopper fading away in quiet dignity.

Just taking up space. Space nobody even cares to use anymore.

I wanted to say, I see you! I can tell how hard you worked and how many folks you helped to feed! You may be forgotten now but today I stopped and I got out and I took your picture and you are still very beautiful whether you know it or not.

But I didn't.

Pictures taken, for a few moments I allowed a silence that was full of sound to be all I heard. I closed my eyes, breathed the sweet scent of warm grass and earth, and listened intently to the song.

The one with a million verses about time as it courses along the rails, bound for where all time goes: through vales of vision, over faraway fields, to be distilled into dreams and laid to rest in hidden places of our hearts. Gone to where it is safe even from itself.

Comments

[Donna (Texas)]

I LOVE these old things! Great Shots! Thank you for braving the heat (I feel it) just for the great photos Girl!!
But what did those darn lawyers and their cohorts do to you??!!! Need me and Bubba 'ta come open a can 'a Whup-a**???
Got your back, sister!!
hughughugs

[Mari]

I love it! This brings me back to my childhood, living on a farm and watching a conveyor like this pull bales of hay up to the loft of the barn. Good memories! Thanks!

[Audrey]

Awesome pictures!

You're so brave. You probably think this post is about you.

[Sue the hobbit]

Well, if you HAD tried to steal those signs, they would have probably burned your fingers, so just as well you didn't.

[Jennifer]

@Donna ... mostly they just don't do their jobs, resulting in me getting up before first light and driving all over creation needlessly. A simple phone call ...

@Mari ... isn't it wonderful? I'm a city slicker but I love all that farmy stuff.

@Audrey ... you've outed me yet again!

@Hobbit ... you are so right. I must be saved from myself daily!

[irene]

Isn't it amazing what we can find beauty in... I'll give you a hand if you ever get all those attorneys and such on that barge. Except I'd like to put a couple of health care workers out there too. Great post Jenny.

[Jennifer]

@Irene ... there'll be room for the healthcare workers! We'll make room. Thanks for your kind words, luv.

[Debbie]

Great pictures as always. I know what you mean about rounding up the lawyers. Can we round up the republican establishment and put them on the barge too? heh

[Donna M.]

First you made me laugh ("here below the sweet tea line the operative dynamic is often not the heat but the stupidity"). And then you touched my heart with your pictures and closing thoughts.

[Jennifer]

@Debbie ... Girl we will get two barges if we have to. Karl Rove can have one all his own!~

@Donna ... that'll work! Thank you for taking the time to read. I know you're busy and it means a lot to me.