Small Town Cycles
On a little day trip with Momma and my Aunt, they told stories of how life used to be in this now abandoned town. seventy years later, we saw a glimmer of hope in the late afternoon sunshine.
Over lunch, red rice, sweet potatoes, and pork chops, I notice their nails. Almond-shaped, sleek, and detailed. I’d call my Aunts nails, ‘Elizabeth Arden Pink’. Momma’s more red, with a few imperfections probably from pruning her muscadine vines.
“I need to pick up this porkchop bone,” Momma says. We’re in a working-class diner surrounded by dusty men in safety vests and steel-toe boots. Both ladies, look around just to be sure this breach of manners will not be noticed and my Aunt says “Well just do it. Nobody in this place will care.”
Nails nor manners tell the whole story. These ladies grew up with less, a whole lot less, than any of these hardworking men around us. They grew up in a time before social security, medicare or any sort of society’s safety nets. They grew up with a widowed mother who had very little help or security.
All day, on our little road trip, I’d noticed contrasts. I was working, Momma and my Aunt came along for fun. As I met with a garden design client, they settled in on a glass patio of a post-modern, multi-million dollar concrete house. They sat on day glo, injection molded plastic chair that may be right off the cover of a 1966’s Architectural Digest.
When we strolled through a charming downtown, Victorian-era garden, they called names of spring flowers.
When our car was towed and we hiked through chain link fenced gravel parking lot that had been a red dot store but was now an impound lot, they didn’t skip a beat.
“We’ve been a long way haven’t we Gloria?” my Aunt is commenting on the day. But I think of their life trip. Of their stories of playing under the house where their family rented a room. Playing under the house. Catching doodlebugs. Playing under the house, and catching doodle bugs bring joyful smiles to them.
“Gloria remember you and your friend would pick blackberries and sell them to Miss Rumel for fifteen cents?" Momma chimes in, delighted, "She’d buy any thing we brought her, a bucketful or a handful. She never married but she cooked for all her relatives. But then we’d take our coins and buy a pint of vanilla ice cream and a pack of grape Kool -id and mix it together? We called it a Purple Cow!”
They tell stories in the car all the way home. As we pulled into sleepy little Brunson at 5 pm. “When’s the last time Brunson was alive, with people on the streets? I asked. “Oh Golly, maybe 1950?” Momma says, “but it wasn’t like Charleston, not people out on the street relaxing or anything, except Mr. Kinard who sold bags of parched peanuts, and we were little afraid of him because he had hunched back.”
My Aunt corrects her, “But outside the hamburger joint sometimes there were people. I always wanted to go in there so bad. I decided one day, I’d figure out a way to afford to go into places.” Later I googled it, a burger would have been a dime. They didn’t have that dime.
As we pulled into Bruson, their hometown, I slammed on the brakes. Across the railroad tracks, at the end, of what used to be a row of empty storefronts, sat two women at a cafe table. Afternoon noon sun made their white wine sparkle. Above them, signs listed ‘Specialty Cheese’ ‘Breads’ ‘Bakery’. “Who’s that?” I asked. It was such a lovely scene that I wanted to get out and take photographs. "Oh," my Aunt said, “That’s the German Bakery, they make breads and cheese. It’s a big operation but mostly they deliver to restaurants on Hilton Head. Every once in a while they must make lunch or something and you’ll see people out there.
The first time since 1950. The first time in seventy years that there's been a visible sign of prosperity. I think about the two little girls who might be growing up here now. Maybe poor, maybe without much hope of getting away from this downtrodden town. Maybe they’ll see these ladies and wonder what specialty cheese tastes like and what it’s like to sit in the sun and enjoy a glass of wine. Maybe in seventy years, they’ll tell their nephew who’s driving them around the busy town how it used to be back in the old days when there was nothing to do here. Maybe they’ll even talk about ancient history and some really bored folks who made up songs about doodlebugs.”