Down South Down South

Monday, June 25, was brutally hot and humid.

Not the best day for going afield, but that was the plan. Ten women and I set out beneath a searing sun to explore western South Carolina. All would go well except for one little thing.

The Chicks That Click are serious about photography. Not long after I presented the stories and images in South Carolina Country Roads, Carol Grady asked me to lead the group on an expedition.

We convened at the Park and Ride at Exit 5 off I-20. Cherrie arrived driving a black Ford Transit van, and we loaded our gear and piled in. Down Highway 25 we went.

Our first stop? The Edge-field Square. The women fanned out photographing buildings, especially the side-by-side Carolina Moon Distillery and Edgefield Baptist Association. They turned their cameras on Strom Thurmond’s statue, the Courthouse, and Confederate monuments as well.

As we departed Edgefield proper we stopped at a kiln near the intersection of Highways 430 and 25. The Dr. Arthur and Esther Goldberg Groundhog Kiln, built in 2011, carries on the local pottery tradition.

We headed down Highway 25 anew and Pam Cook told us we had just passed the old Chain Gang Camp.

We turned around, parked, and checked it out. We waded through Queen Anne’s lace and knee-high grass to photograph the main building, built in the 1930s with granite commandeered from the old Edgefield jail.

An old butcher knife lay in a window crisscrossed with rust-speckled bars. An austere metal cot in a room with cracked green plaster must have accommodated some exhausted souls. As for the building itself, its step-like facade dredged up some way station in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Next stop: Price’s Grist Mill. Chicks set about photographing the power shaft that transferred falling water’s energy from the Stevens Creek millrace. Several chicks photographed a table made from an old millstone and an old tractor shrouded in vines.

As we made ready to leave, a lawman pulled in. After some friendly talk, we headed into McCormick for lunch at Michelle’s. Upon leaving we spotted the friendly lawman again, and I told him were heading to Badwell Cemetery if he wanted to join us. He laughed but declined.

Badwell Cemetery is beautiful; the French Huguenot Petigru/Pettigrew family rests here. Old stones and graves prove photogenic; the chicks clicked. Later we went into Mt. Carmel, what seems a ghost town. One sight captured a lot of clicks: a hymn board hanging from a collapsing church’s wall.

On our way back, we visited the French Huguenot Memorial, Strom Thurmond’s grave, and made a daring but uneventful drive through Murphy Village.

I tip my hat to Cherrie Alexander, Holly Bartley, Pamela Cook, Nancy Bufford Daigrepont, Vickie Delrie, Carol Ratliff Elliott, Billie Ellis, Carol Grady, Judy Herron Holmes, and Diana Rees. These intrepid women are adventurers.

They photographed people, places, and things. They survived the heat and never once complained. But what about that little problem we had? Well, among the things we encountered were chiggers.

Chiggers work in secrecy and it wasn’t until a day or so later that problems surfaced. I believe we picked them up in the high grasses of the old chain gang camp.

We came, we saw, we photographed. Said Chick Billie Ellis, “Wonderful time had by all. A little heat, and a lot of chiggers can’t stop the chicks. Count me in again.”

Count me in too but next trip I’ll pack along a chigger repellent, an old home remedy or some proven spray. We’re itching to have another adventure, but the chiggers won’t be joining us next time.