drove south just because I felt I should move on. The map showed more towns: Comfort, Beulaville, Chinquapin. Either I failed to find the towns or they were clusters of shut-up buildings. I drove on through rising fields, many given to strawberries. No longer was I in the coastal South but coming now into the so-called Deep South. The sun, glaring, began to set, and I couldn’t find a place to suit me.
Finally, at Wallace, I gave up. I had two towns to choose from: a long, bright stretch of hurry-up food and one-stop convenience stores on U.S. 117, or the old town of brick and stone buildings closed for the night. I parked along the railroad tracks, across from the vacant depot. I’d been looking forward to a conversation in a cafe or tavern, but the cafes weren’t open and there were no taverns. It was the first of several Southern evenings when I couldn’t quench a thirst with anything but a sugar drink or sit for conversation at any place other than the softserve stand.
In a parking lot, six boys squatted about a Harley-Davidson and talked as they passed a can of beer. But for the outward trappings, they might have been Bedouins around the evening campfire. I asked one wearing a BORN TO RAISE HELL T-shirt what there was to do on Friday night. “Here?” Everybody laughed. “You got yourself a choice. You can watch the electric buglight at DQ. That’s one. Or you can hustle up a sixpack and cruise the strip. That’s two. And three is your left hand, a boy’s best friend.”
“Maybe there’s a tent revival or something like that.”
“Hey! How do you revive the dead?”
I went back to my little bus, washed the strawberry fields off me, ate a sandwich of something, opened a can of beer I’d brought from the last wet county, and looked through the windshield. Cars and trucks drove by. Some were noisy. Some were not. Sometimes a beercan flew out a car window. Once somebody shouted from a pickup. A dog peed on a mailbox.
I wished for a corner tavern with neon and a wooden bar, but I would have settled for a concrete block beerjoint. I grumbled at a hypocrisy that encouraged people to drink in the back ends of pickups. I wanted to go into the churches and hard cuss the congregations as if they were gourd seeds.
14
H AD Stephen Foster not changed his mind, the Pee Dee River would be much better known today than it is. The first version of his famous song about Southern homesickness began, “Way down upon the Pee Dee River, far, far away.” In a morning of wrong moves, I crossed the Pee Dee and almost missed seeing it.
Since daylight I’d been hunting a good three- or four-calendar cafe. Nothing in Tomahawk or White Lake. Elizabethtown, no. I crossed the Cape Fear River, looked in Lumberton, and found nothing right. Then I overshot a turn and got pulled onto I-95. Truck diesel spouts blowing black, the throttle-guts slammed past me as if I were powered by caged gerbils; campers hauling speedboats rushed into Saturday, and so did stationwagons with windows piled full of beachballs, cardboard boxes, and babies.
I escaped the damnation at the Dillon exit and found South Carolina 34, a smooth road built up high out of the low wetlands. The country lay quiet again except for the wind slipping over the roof and mixing with birdsong. The people of the Pee Dee valley waved from their aluminum chairs in the back ends of pickups, and I smelled cattle rather than carbon monoxide. Driving once more instead of being driven. But I was still hungry.
Then Darlington, a town of portico and pediment, iron fences, big trees, and an old courthouse square that looked as though renovated by a German buzz bomb. But on the west side of the square stood the Deluxe Cafe. The times had left it be. The front window said AIR CONDITIONED in icy letters, above the door was neon, and inside hung an insurance agency calendar and another for an auto parts store. Also on the walls were the Gettysburg Address, Declaration of Independence,
Finally, at Wallace, I gave up. I had two towns to choose from: a long, bright stretch of hurry-up food and one-stop convenience stores on U.S. 117, or the old town of brick and stone buildings closed for the night. I parked along the railroad tracks, across from the vacant depot. I’d been looking forward to a conversation in a cafe or tavern, but the cafes weren’t open and there were no taverns. It was the first of several Southern evenings when I couldn’t quench a thirst with anything but a sugar drink or sit for conversation at any place other than the softserve stand.
In a parking lot, six boys squatted about a Harley-Davidson and talked as they passed a can of beer. But for the outward trappings, they might have been Bedouins around the evening campfire. I asked one wearing a BORN TO RAISE HELL T-shirt what there was to do on Friday night. “Here?” Everybody laughed. “You got yourself a choice. You can watch the electric buglight at DQ. That’s one. Or you can hustle up a sixpack and cruise the strip. That’s two. And three is your left hand, a boy’s best friend.”
“Maybe there’s a tent revival or something like that.”
“Hey! How do you revive the dead?”
I went back to my little bus, washed the strawberry fields off me, ate a sandwich of something, opened a can of beer I’d brought from the last wet county, and looked through the windshield. Cars and trucks drove by. Some were noisy. Some were not. Sometimes a beercan flew out a car window. Once somebody shouted from a pickup. A dog peed on a mailbox.
I wished for a corner tavern with neon and a wooden bar, but I would have settled for a concrete block beerjoint. I grumbled at a hypocrisy that encouraged people to drink in the back ends of pickups. I wanted to go into the churches and hard cuss the congregations as if they were gourd seeds.
14
H AD Stephen Foster not changed his mind, the Pee Dee River would be much better known today than it is. The first version of his famous song about Southern homesickness began, “Way down upon the Pee Dee River, far, far away.” In a morning of wrong moves, I crossed the Pee Dee and almost missed seeing it.
Since daylight I’d been hunting a good three- or four-calendar cafe. Nothing in Tomahawk or White Lake. Elizabethtown, no. I crossed the Cape Fear River, looked in Lumberton, and found nothing right. Then I overshot a turn and got pulled onto I-95. Truck diesel spouts blowing black, the throttle-guts slammed past me as if I were powered by caged gerbils; campers hauling speedboats rushed into Saturday, and so did stationwagons with windows piled full of beachballs, cardboard boxes, and babies.
I escaped the damnation at the Dillon exit and found South Carolina 34, a smooth road built up high out of the low wetlands. The country lay quiet again except for the wind slipping over the roof and mixing with birdsong. The people of the Pee Dee valley waved from their aluminum chairs in the back ends of pickups, and I smelled cattle rather than carbon monoxide. Driving once more instead of being driven. But I was still hungry.
Then Darlington, a town of portico and pediment, iron fences, big trees, and an old courthouse square that looked as though renovated by a German buzz bomb. But on the west side of the square stood the Deluxe Cafe. The times had left it be. The front window said AIR CONDITIONED in icy letters, above the door was neon, and inside hung an insurance agency calendar and another for an auto parts store. Also on the walls were the Gettysburg Address, Declaration of Independence,
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