Down South Down South

The world has but one Fountain Inn, and I spent 2 days there.

The Fountain Inn Museum Society and South Carolina Center for the Humanities had me up to speak about the back roads of South Carolina. I did so at the Peden House, circa 1895, the beautiful home of Gabriel and Laura Jenkins.

The day before I spoke, Peggy and Don Nickson provided me quarters in their cozy backyard cottage.

Caroline Smith Sherman, author of Images of America: Fountain Inn, showed me around that afternoon.

That evening Gary and Suzanne Long took me to dinner at Cucina 100, a fine Italian restaurant.

The next day Caroline and her brother Buzzy gave me a morning tour of Fairview Presbyterian Church, 1786, a beautiful church with a graveyard where it’s easy to linger among the stones. The view from the church is fair indeed.

Near the church I spotted old stone steps leading nowhere, an upping block ladies and gents used to step into carriages and stagecoaches.

Steve Cox showed me around the museum, noting that Fountain Inn has some unique connections such as Robert Quillen, an American journalist and humorist. In 1934 Hollywood types visited Quillen. They needed a prototype for a Will Rogers film, Life Begins at 40. Rogers played a small-town newspaper editor. (Near the Robert Quillen Office and Library’s reflecting pool you’ll find Quillen’s “Monument to Eve.”)

Another connection, Peg Leg Bates, born Clayton Bates, came into the world October 11, 1907. By 1912 he was dancing on Fountain Inn’s streets for pocket change. In 1919 he lost part of his left leg in a cotton gin accident. An uncle upon returning from World War I made Clayton his first peg leg.

By the time he was fifteen, Bates was entering amateur talent shows. By 1928, Bates was dancing on Broadway. He was the second African-American to perform at Radio City Music Hall. He appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” 22 times, more than any other entertainer, and this writer recalls seeing him dance. The man could cut a rug.

At the museum I saw Peg Leg’s exhibit, railroad memorabilia, Indian artifacts, and some of Quillen’s manuscripts. Later, Al Futrell and Ron Urso took me to an old gristmill, a rare Upstate example of nineteenth century gristmills. The men want to restore the old mill to its former glory. It would make a fine place to gather as people did until the mill shut down in the 1950s.

Should you visit the mill you’ll note large rock supports on Big Durbin Creek. That’s where an old covered bridge sat. Stand quietly and listen. Shoals purl their soothing sound of water running over rocks and a cascading millrace brings to mind waterfalls.

Rocks, water, and wood. An old waterwheel. A magnificent old church, a peg-legged dancer and a columnist who erected a monument to Eve. Good people and a fine town. Fountain Inn is that and more, but what about that name that doesn’t exist anywhere else?

Well, an old inn with a gushing fountain stood near the old stagecoach road. The stagecoach drivers called the stop “Fountain Inn” and it stuck. When the town drew up its charter December 24, 1886, it took its name from the inn and fountain.