I don’t know if Gracie actually knows what a metaphor is, but less than 100 paces into our Chester walk, she gave me one. When I brought Tucker and Gracie to work last week to take care of our Chester walk, we left from my work parking lot, hung a right and started to head up the hill. We only made it as far as the Chester County War Memorial Building, when Gracie trotted into the grass, paused and assumed the familiar “I’m fixin’ to poop” semi-hunch position. So she was about to literally take a dump on Chester, like so many others have figuratively done over the years. Chester sometimes serves as a sort of circus freak tent for some folks and even people who live here are fond of saying “only in 29706.” There is plenty of drama, lots of conflict and endless unnecessary acrimony. As I write this, two elected officials are not currently serving in office, with one barred from doing so by a judge and the other suspended by the governor. There is a state investigation currently ongoing into another official, the city recently went two years without a finance director and one year with an administrator and as a result got an audit that basically said “yeah…we can’t do anything with this.” For the fourth time since I’ve been here, a move is afoot to change the form of government. Almost no entity gets along with any other and there are some vocal folks who will oppose almost literally anything, including large industries promising jobs and enhanced tax base because “there will be trucks…think of all those trucks.” I’ve sat in five-hour council meetings where people argued over the merits of shooting squirrels in the city limits and a duly-elected official once offered up the line “There is no gratification when you flush the toilet at 1:30 in the morning and everybody else's sewage comes up in the house…I don’t want s*** in my house.” Fistfights have broken out in meetings too. Then there are just genuine oddities like the time my brother-in-law came here for a blues concert. “When we got out of the car, some guy was coming at us with a stick.” “OK…was it a guy with big teeth? Carrying, like, a tree branch? Or a guy in a hat with a sort of walking stick?” “It was a walking stick.” “Oh, he’s cool. I’ve had to remove the other one from our parking lot for scaring customers.” But you know what…I’m not going to follow Gracie’s lead here. For one thing, a long poop analogy is lazy and gross (though I’ve certainly gone that route before) but I’m also not going to bash the place I’ve lived or worked for most of my life, the place I went to school and the place where my mom still lives and owns a business, especially when most every place deals with similar stuff. I'm sure, like most people, I hated where I was when I was high school age and was certain the grass was greener on the other side, but I came back and restarted my career here and have stayed. I’m here most every day and I see a lot more good and positive than bad and weird. There are genuinely great people in Chester, just for starters. The place has character and characters. Richburg is absolutely booming, taking advantage of ample rail, an interstate and a major highway that run through it to attract industries. Great Falls will soon be taking advantage of its vast natural resources and beauty with the opening of whitewater recreation. Even Lando is taking advantage of its proximity to water and available land with a large scale housing development. Candidly, things aren’t going as well in the city. As I walked Tucker and Gracie through the downtown business district near lunchtime on a Thursday, we passed exactly one person. That is a troubling lack of foot traffic and overall energy. As many of the storefronts we passed were empty as were occupied and the city faces a lot of the same problems I mentioned previously in my Saluda entry. If you really pay attention, though, there are things that can maybe be taken advantage of. First off is the hill upon which the city sits. Until we met, my Spartanburg born and raised wife had never been to Chester. On her first visit she saw the quaint city hall, monument park, the view down the hill on Gadsden and the abundance of antebellum homes and was floored by how pretty it all was. After I cleaned up Gracie’s mess, we walked past the old courthouse, with its double-set of granite stairs, arches and column. We stopped for a picture in front of the old Civil War-era Confederate Parrott Field Rifle, which was one of four such weapons unearthed on the grounds of Calvary Baptist Church back in 1986. We then made our way to the top of the hill for a quick stop by the Aaron Burr Rock. For those unfamiliar, Burr was the youngest Colonel in George Washington’s army. He was the vice-president under Thomas Jefferson and would very likely have been president…right up until he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. At that point his legacy was tarnished and he ended up a funny punchline in a “Got Milk” ad. Burr was arrested many years later on charges of treason after he allegedly tried to purchase some land from Spain and create a new government. He was arrested in the Mississippi territory and was bound for Richmond, Virginia for a trial. The six soldiers that accompanied him on that trip wanted to avoid coastal areas and large cities (such that there were many in 1807) where Burr was known and still loved and decided to go “through the country” just like I did in Fairfield later in the day with limited success. They were passing through what was then called “Chesterville” when Burr flung himself off his horse and ran. He didn’t try to run away so much as he ran toward a large rock, which he climbed and stood on. “I’m Aaron Burr, under military arrest, and claim the protection of the civil authorities,” he is alleged to have shouted. The response to his decidedly old-world plea for help stirred a reaction from the passersby in Chesterville…and that reaction was “Nah, we’re good” and he was quickly recaptured. The party’s travels ended for the day in what is now Lewis Turnout. The officer in charge of transporting Burr saw his captive “in a flood of tears” that night as he slept on a bench. Tears born of indifference and rejection suffered in Chesterville. Are you happy Chester? YOU MADE AARON BURR CRY!!!! The rock and the bench he slept on can both still be seen locally. As big a phenomenon as “Hamilton” became a few years ago, I’m surprised that rock and bench didn’t draw some traffic. Tucker, Gracie and I walked up and down the hill, hit every little side alley and finally hit my mom’s office for a quick visit. She’s an animal lover and thankfully none of her cats were in the immediate vicinity when we came in. I actually didn’t announce our arrival. We came in quietly and I let Tucker be the first to walk around the corner to where my mom’s desk is, so he was the first thing she saw. A lady that works for her came up and marveled at what a big boy Tucker is, how he is “all guy,” absolutely sops up attention like a biscuit in gravy and is pretty well obedient when I tell him to “sit” or “stay.” She thought Gracie was cute and noted her habit of not really wanting to sit still for very long or being cooperative when it comes to picture-taking (it must’ve taken 20 tries to get us all lined up and looking in the same direction for a shot my mom wanted to put on Facebook). We left after visiting a bit and headed back to my office so the dogs could rest up for a second walk later in the day. Going back to the office gave me another eyeful of the downtown I work in. I got a reminder that Chester does have aesthetics and history on its side. Things that can maybe be taken advantage of at some point. Definitely nothing to dump on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |