Linda W. Brown – Page 10 – Building a better South

December 10, 2013December 10, 2013

Tumbling down, Indiantown, S.C.

Vines reclaim old store, Indiantown, S.C.

It must be the week of vines. Earlier this week, we posted a South Carolina photo by Linda W. Brown of a bushy tobacco barn in Clarendon County. Now she turns her lens on her home county, Williamsburg County, where she found vines eating up an old rural grocery store.

“I believe this old grocery store was known as Owens’ Grocery,” Linda wrote in October. “It’s on S.C. Highway 261 between Kingstree and Hemingway in the Indiantown community. It’s been closed for many years, although the woman who ran the store died just last week.

“Now, it seems to be a dumping ground for people’s trash. This was also taken on January 26 of this this year. Winter is the only time you can actually see any of the building. During the summer the vines completely cover it.”

Just under 34,000 people live in Williamsburg County, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.

About two-thirds of county residents are black, with almost all of those remaining being white. Only 2 percent of those in the county are of Hispanic descent. Some 32.8 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Of the county’s 1,921 firms, 36.5 percent are black-owned — a percentage that is three times South Carolina’s average.

December 8, 2013December 8, 2013

Bushy roof, Clarendon County, S.C.

Retired editor Linda W. Brown of Kingstree, S.C., snapped a photo of this old tobacco barn with a bushy roof along S.C. Highway 261 just outside Manning in Clarendon County. “It doesn’t show in the picture,” she writes, “but there is a fairly new fiberglass basketball goal right in front of the old tobacco barn. Changing times, changing lives.”

Clarendon County, split in half by Interstate 95, had almost 21 percent of residents living in poverty, according to the 2010 Census.

Quick facts about Clarendon County from the U.S. Census

November 10, 2013November 17, 2013

Single silo, Clarendon County, S.C.

From what photographer and retired editor Linda W. Brown of Kingstree can tell, the area around Davis Station in rural Clarendon County used by be dairy country, “but the broken-down silos show that that is now a thing of the past.”

Clarendon County, split in half by Interstate 95, had almost 21 percent of residents living in poverty, according to the 2010 Census.

Quick facts about Clarendon County from the U.S. Census

November 8, 2013November 16, 2014

Autumn barn, Williamsburg County, S.C.

13.1108.barn — Autumn barn, Williamsburg County, S.C. Photo by Linda W. Brown.

Not only does the autumn sunlight dance warm shades and shadows on this old barn off McIntosh Road in Williamsburg County, S.C., but it highlights how the barn is in the autumn of its days, according to retired editor Linda W. Brown.

Such pastoral scenes dot the landscape of the Southern Crescent to reflect two realities — the relaxed beauty of the area and the slow decay of infrastructure that once powered the rural South.

November 6, 2013November 17, 2013

Sign, Cedar Swamp, S.C.

It’s hard to go far in rural Williamsburg County, S.C., without encountering a “Jesus Loves You” or “Trust Jesus” sign such as this one taken in September 2010 in the Cedar Swamp community.

Retired editor Linda W. Brown tells us the story behind these signs: “They were the work of the late Jimmie Stephenson, who was a sign painter by profession, but had a Bible Study and maybe a small regular congregation, as well.”

October 27, 2013November 17, 2013

Tenant house, near Workman, S.C.

Tenant house in cotton field, Williamsburg County, S.C.

Roll-roofing-sided tenant houses, like this one, used to be a common sight in Williamsburg County. But they’re rare these days, says retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown of Kingstree, S.C.

“I liked the cotton field in the foreground with the tenant house behind it as a reminder that we aren’t all that far removed from the days of the sharecropper. You can’t really see it, but way in the background is an old tobacco barn.”

October 9, 2013

Falling house, Williamsburg County, S.C.

This old house in the Mouzon community of Williamsburg County, S.C., is a study of contrasts. On one hand, it’s falling down. But look more closely — somebody appears to have put in new footings to prop it up.

Retired editor Linda W. Brown of nearby Kingstree, S.C., notes that unless something is done soon, it will fall down. “There are more than a few of these in Williamsburg County,” she observed. “I’m wondering if it was moved to this property as there are no steps in sight.”

September 9, 2013

Empty grocery, Greeleyville, S.C.

Retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown remembers when Greeleyville, S.C., had a busy IGA grocery store. When it closed, a Super G Foods opened in the same location. Now, that store closed and the parking lot appears to be just a place where big rigs get parked at night and on the weekend.

And so Greeleyville has become a food desert — a place lacking in consumer choices for food, much like the store we profiled earlier this year in Allendale, S.C. Without a full-service store, Greeleyville residents have less healthy and fewer close options (think convenience store) and have to drive at least 12 miles to Kingstree to shop at a full-service grocery store.

Greeleyville, population 438, is in southwestern Williamsburg County. Just under 34,000 people live in the county, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.

September 3, 2013September 3, 2013

Tobacco barn, near Lake City, S.C.

You don’t have to drive too far in the rural Southern tobacco belt to find an old tobacco barn like this one in the middle of a field west of Lake City, S.C.

As photographer Linda W. Brown notes, “It’s interesting to see these old barns that once, at this time of year, would have been surrounded by ripening tobacco and now are not. ‘Forlorn’ is a good adjective to describe it.”

Tobacco once ruled farming in many parts of the Carolinas, Virginia and Kentucky because it was a high-price cash crop. But the production and sale of tobacco in the South has changed dramatically over the last 30 years in the South. Tobacco auctions, quotas and government price supports dominated prior to 2004 when reforms eliminated government intervention into the market and allowed growers to produce as much as they wanted [Learn more]. These days, auctions are rare — with only one in South Carolina according to this story — and growers enter into direct contracts with buyers.

Lake City, which recently started an annual arts festival to inject new life into its community, is in the Pee Dee’s Florence County near Interstate 95 in northeast South Carolina. One in five people in Lake City, population 6,715, is white, while some 77.5 percent of residents are black. The city’s poverty rate is more than 32 percent, according to the U.S. Census. The high poverty rate is a testament to Lake City’s rural nature since its home county, supported by the regional city of Florence, has a 19.4 percent poverty rate.

September 1, 2013August 26, 2013

Main Street, Greeleyville, S.C.

Once upon a time, Main Street in Greeleyville, S.C., was a thriving place, but shops have closed along Main Street, leaving a lot of it abandoned. Businesses that open now often locate on U.S. Highway 521, the three-lane main road through town.

“Several stores on Main Street that are beginning to deteriorate as can be seen in the missing bricks at the top of the store on the right of the photo,” former newspaper editor Linda W. Brown writes. “I think many downtowns are not only losing businesses to the big box stores but to the nearest U.S. highway.”

It’s much the same in small rural towns like Greeleyville, population 438, in southwestern Williamsburg County. Just under 34,000 people live in the county, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.