Category: Florida

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Closed barber shop, Fairfax, S.C.

Steward's Barber Shop, Fairfax, S.C.
Steward’s Barber Shop, Fairfax, S.C.

As we took a photo of a closed barber shop along U.S. Highway 321 in Fairfax, S.C., you could see a drug deal going on in broad daylight across the street at an intersection.

Fairfax, in rural Allendale County, lost about a third of its population by 2010, which it had 2,025 people compared to 3,206 people in 2000, according to Census figures in Wikipedia.   Per capita income was $8,940.  About 38 percent of the people in the town, which had about two times as many adult males as females, lived in poverty.

Rural Allendale County in South Carolina’s southwest corner as one of the Crescent’s highest poverty rates — more than 40 percent of people live below the federal poverty level. The median household income is about $23,000 a year — half of South Carolina’s average and well below the nation’s $50,000 average.

Copyrighted photo by Andy Brack, Oct. 1, 2014.  All rights reserved.

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Empty bank, Dublin, Ga.

Old First National Bank, Dublin, Ga.
Old First National Bank, Dublin, Ga.

Look closely at the top of the six-story brick building on South Jefferson Street in Dublin, Ga., and you can barely make out the words “Citizens and Southern Bank.”

The now-empty building, built around 1910 (“MCMX”), has boards on some windows; others are open without glass.  The bank, apparently the tallest building between Macon and Savannah, started out as the First National Bank, according to the letters carved over the front door.  By the time the bank was built, Dublin had emerged from obscurity after the Civil War into one of the largest cities in Georgia, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Other interesting facts about Dublin:

  • Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his first public speech at the First African Baptist Church in Dublin when he was 14.  You can seek King celebrated in the right side of the picture as part of the town’s Black History Month observation.
  • Baseball manager Earl Weaver, who ended up in the Hall of Fame, once was a player-manager for the Dublin Orioles, a Class D minor league team in the city.
  • During World War II, Dublin was home to a prisoner-of-war camp of captured Germans and Italians.

Dublin (population 16,201) is the county seat for Laurens County.  Some 23.6 percent of residents of Laurens County (population 48,434) live in poverty.

Photo taken Feb. 16, 2014 by Andy Brack.  All rights reserved.