Saturday Snapshots: Southern by the grace of God

On my way out of Orangeburg last Thursday, headed home after a long and somewhat trying day of depositions, I spotted this once-magnificent antebellum mansion sitting just yards from the main thoroughfare.

Not exactly Twelve Oaks, but still.

She's being choked by weeds and other jungle-strength overgrowth. She's baking and flaking in the merciless sun. She's crumbling like a stale cookie.

It's depressing.

I decided to memorialize her. As I did, I could envision the splendor of her heyday. It made her inevitable decline all the more poignant.

(Tara's Theme played in my mind the whole time. I know; sappy. I can't help it ... I'm nothing if not a romantic.)

Take a moment to admire her and to consider how unapologetically grand she must have been "back in the day."

Now watch a montage from what is arguably the greatest film ever made in any language, and listen to the spellbinding music!

~Happy Happy Weekend!~

An everyday hero

Prepare to be amazed.

Nellie Smith: a victim of circumstances

I wandered briefly in the First Presbyterian Cemetery in Orangeburg today, and came upon this narrow grave:

I leaned in to get a closer shot of the stone without really reading it. Imagine my dismay when I got home and took the time to examine it more closely:

Our Sunshine

NELLIE, daughter of D.N. & J.R. Smith

Died March 8, 1901 ~ Aged 12 years,

The costly sacrifice of compulsory vaccination. 

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From the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Volume 38, May 17, 1902:

South Carolina: In the report of the health officer of Charleston for 1901 the outbreak of smallpox receives special attention. Before March 6, 1901, there had been but one case in the city (imported in 1900) in several years. After March 6, when the disease again appeared, there were 54 cases -- 9 white and 45 colored -- all traceable to sources outside the city. The disease was for the most part of a mild type, and no death occurred. Active methods, by quarantine, vaccination, etc., were employed to prevent its extension and it was speedily suppressed. In "no instance did it spread," even to occupants in other rooms in the house where it appeared. The work of vaccination, it is noted, "was most thoroughly and efficiently done." At least 30,000 persons, or more than half the population of the city, were vaccinated in a few weeks.

Charleston is 75 miles southeast of Orangeburg. Assuming Nellie lived in Orangeburg where she was buried, apparently the smallpox vaccinations had been given there prior to the 54 cases appearing in Charleston on March 6, 1901. Nellie died on March 8, 1901. I guess the vaccinating was a tad more "thoroughly and efficiently done" than her grieving parents would have wished.

Nellie is memorialized on Find A Grave ... I left a message and you can too! A little weird, but that's okay.

Wordless Wednesday: Heartache times four

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.