The second day of my drive through the south I ate some fresh fruit for breakfast and then hit the road. Kings Mountain had been a good stop. A wonderful way to end a very interesting first day on the road. And I had covered a lot of miles.
As soon as I crossed into South Carolina – the place where the Civil War started and the home to a wide assortment of fairly belligerent bastards – the speed limit dropped to 65 and the price of gas went up. Not a good sign.
After going about twenty miles, they started pitching peaches like there was no tomorrow. I have no idea why. There were billboards everywhere along I-85 heralding great deals on peaches. You’d think they invented the damn things. I figured they were just trying to screw their southern neighbors in Georgia, who, after all, live in the Peach State. And in the bustling metropolis of Gaffney, the town fathers had painted a large water tower bright orange to make it look like a peach. It was not even peach season. But y’all come!
There were long strings of truck convoys blocking the fast lane every ten miles or so and I would suddenly go from 80 mph to 60, waiting for the slow-moving beasts to move over so I could pass. It made what would have been a very pleasant drive a giant pain in the ass.
South Carolina is home to many little wayside colleges in the middle of nowhere – mostly technical and bible colleges – Coker College, Limestone College, Voorhees College, North Greenville College – all leading the golden way to the despicable Bob Jones University in Greenville where they speak with the serpent’s tongue.
South Carolinians sure do like their Jesus. One out of every five billboards praised the word of the lord and promised my salvation. There was one humongous sign that really caught my eye right next to the Tanger Outlet Mall at an interchange near no known town, somewhere south of Ashland, that proclaimed:
WHEN YOU DIE
YOU WILL MEET JESÚS
“That’s good, “ I said to myself, “because he’s got some ‘splaining to do.”
But Jesus couldn’t outgun the baser delights of man.
There were gun stores galore. I’m not sure how that works. Is a gun really an impulse purchase? And can an out-of-state schmo just pull in and buy a loaded weapon? That’s way beyond insane, but there it was. A nice shiny piece just waiting for you to nuzzle as you drive.
Fireworks are also big fun and the folks down in South Carolina obviously like to blow shit up. There were endless cinder block bunkers along the highway, offering two for one sales, like Big Jake's Fireworks Warehouse – the “biggest in the world”. Who actually measures these places?
And a new addition to the roadside attractions were moonshine stores. I tried homemade liquor when I was going to college down at Randolph-Macon in Virginia back in the early 70s, and it tasted like gasoline. I never understood the attraction. But if the billboards were any indication, the stuff was really popular with the tourists these days. I guess that now that they have their own TV show it’s cool. There was a really nice looking establishment just off the interstate called Palmetto Moonshine with a sipping room, but I didn’t stop for a taste.
It always struck me as odd that a bible thumping state like South Carolina could so shamelessly advertise all manner of pornography and wanton sex along its most high-profile roads. It seemed like every interchange was offering a taste of forbidden fruit. There were Adult Superstores and strip joints - “We Bare All! - lining the highway like main street in Gomorrah.
It appeared from my limited view, going 80 mph down an interstate highway, that almost everybody lived in a trailer. There were trailer parks galore. Parks is too kind a word. They resembled backwoods compounds with rusted cars rotting in the overgrown yards and dead animals hanging from the scraggly trees. It was pretty unsettling.
Every little town advertised Motorsports, little red clay circular tracks with rickety stands that no doubt are the social hub of the area on a warm Saturday night. I guess you have to make do when there’s no high school football.
Flea markets were also quite a draw. Vendors lined open tracts of land, hawking secondhand goods while surprisingly large crowds inspected the merchandise. I wondered whether they were locals or tourists.
But what garnered most of my attention while passing through South Carolina were the police. The cops drove around in menacing black Dodge Challengers, with tinted windows, often in packs, rousting motorists by the side of the road, going through their bags and luggage. That would definitely ruin a nice vacation. Thank goodness the WAZE social network always alerted me to their presence before they could spring their trap. It definitely put a brand new spin on the phrase “Southern Hospitality”, though I guess that myth was shattered ages ago.
But it wasn’t all surreal or scary passing through South Carolina. There were numerous lakes and reservoirs that looked quite inviting. But all of them, like the biggest of the bunch, Lake Hartwell, were starved for more water. The water levels were way down, exposing the red clay banks, and forcing the marina operators and waterfront homeowners to build long extension docks to the lake. So, even when there was some rather attractive natural feature, like a shiny man made lake, it was still kind of depressing.
By Georgia the hardwoods were starting to bloom. And I even noticed the occasional native white shadblow that mimic those godawful Bradford pear trees that I had so liked back up in North Carolina,
And then came the south’s biggest metropolis, Atlanta. The traffic jam started thirty miles from the city. I decided to stay on I-85 and go right right through the heart of the beast, rather than take the beltway around town, because Atlanta is actually a pretty cool city. I hadn't been there in many years and the new high rise skyscrapers in the city core were quite breathtaking. A testament to new money. But the traffic was like D.C. and I crawled along at a snail's pace. It was good for the visuals but a bit stressful with all the stopping and starting as we crawled by the the heart of Dixie. The most disheartening thing about Atlanta is that it is spreading south to Macon, like Salt Lake City is engulfing Ogden, Provo and Orem. Prosperity has no end – like cancer.
My destination was Macon, Georgia. Specifically, the “Big House”. This was the grand,Tudor-style house that the Allman Brothers lived in with their wives and little kids in the early 70s, at about the time they were just catching fire. It is now a free museum located in a very nice neighborhood of stately homes. The museum showcases furniture, photos, guitars, clothes and all sorts of memorabilia from their wild and woolly past.
The Allman Brothers were my favorite band when the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Who were tearing up the music world, and for my money, “Whipping Post” is still the finest piece of music ever created. I was lucky enough to see them perform several times before Duane and Berry Oakley crashed their choppers at the same intersection in Macon and died within months of one another. So sad.
Whipping Post
I met them after a show down in Richmond in the notorious “Fan District” in 1971, and they were scary good. A wall of blues. And they came on like crazed bikers, which is essentially what they all were. In those days they would get up in the morning and drink some magic mushroom ice tea that was always in the fridge, jam the afternoon away drinking whiskey, pop some black beauties so they were wired for the show, and then crash in the wee hours of the morning with more liquor and a few seconals or tuinols. Such a lifestyle was, of course, unsustainable. But the Brothers were like a force of nature. And while I would not want to denigrate the talent of the Allman Brothers Band that rose from the ashes of Duane’s death, nothing was ever the same after the loss of their lead guitarist. It was like Little Feat after Lowell George passed away.
I highly recommend the “Big House” if you are traveling through Macon. And the town itself is really quite attractive and inviting. Macon was once a hub of commerce and has some really nice historic sandstone buildings. And there’s a very nice Arts and Dining district.
I ate a ridiculously cheap and yummy dinner at a nearly empty Thai restaurant on the main drag called Sangs.
After dinner I crossed the street and checked out the Hummingbird Bar in a Byzantine-arched, red sandstone building. As soon as I walked inside I was blown away by the smoke. Everybody was smoking. When was the last time you went into a bar where they allowed you to smoke? I was stunned … and amused. So, I bellied up to the bar and started a conversation with a very friendly lady bartender. It was Happy Hour and they were offering $1 Pabst Blue Ribbons. I ordered one, and then a couple more, just taking in the weird scene.
When my beer came, I said, “I can’t remember the last time I was in a place that served PBR’s and let you smoke.”
The bartender chuckled. “Yeah, you don’t see that combination too much any more.”
“How do you get away with the smoking?” I asked.
“We are strictly a bar. We don’t serve any food. If you don’t do food in Georgia, then you can let the patrons smoke.”
Things are different in the south, for sure.
I had been alerted at the Big House to a free screening of a new documentary at the historic Douglass Theater nearby and I walked over to the show around seven and snagged a seat. The theater was like one of those old ornate vaudeville places and it was filled with old hippies and black blues musicians – an interesting mix indeed.
The movie was called “Sidemen - The Long Road To Glory” and it told an amazing story about three blues masters – Hubert Sumlin on guitar, Willie Big Eyes” Smith on drums, and Pinetop Perkins on piano – all of whom got lost in the wake of their well-known band leaders Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. It was a fascinating and sad tale that I, who considers himself a music aficionado, had never heard. And it brought tears to my eyes several times. All three giants recently died in their 90s within a few months of one another.
As I walked back to my motel, I began to notice that Macon seemed to have more apparently homeless black people than I have ever seen any place in America. At every intersection they were aimlessly jaywalking across the street in a chaotic dance, carrying their possessions in black garbage bags. It was like they had emptied the local asylum.
The cable in my motel offered 18 religious channels and ads for The Casket Store, but the next morning there was a local news story about an annual event that takes place in Macon every spring called “Sleep Out For The Homeless”. Local pastors and advocates camp out in a school yard to highlight the terrible issue of homelessness.
As I drifted off to sleep that night, a line from Jim Morrison’s “American Prayer” kept running through my head.
“Death makes angels of us all,
And gives us wings,
Where we had shoulders,
Smooth as raven’s claws.”
Road Log
Left Kings Mountain, Georgia at 10AM and arrived at Macon, Georgia at 2PM.
300 miles
