One of the benefits of driving off the Interstate is finding treasures like this: a modest house with deep overhangs and a screened porch that has sheltered families for nearly 100 years. Its calmness is good enough to bottle. I found it recently in Lake City, a town of about 6500 people in piedmont South Carolina.
Driving through Lake City, you would scarcely expect to find a gentle house resting on a hillside. Highway 52 cuts through the town, leaving a swath of turquoise filling stations, rusty strip malls, and parking lots where weeds die in the cracks.
Yet in 1925 this was a town of magnificent brick houses, lush gardens, splendid fountains, and the largest green bean market in America. Here farmers drove wagonloads of cotton and tobacco to the railhead, rich men came from England to build a tobacco factory, and ministers built splendid brick churches to explain the purpose of life.
Today the gardens are choked with weeds and the fountains are dry. The tobacco factory lies empty and the beans are gone. A sign on Highway 52 says “Trust Jesus.” You could do a lot worse than to get off the big road, drive through a place like Lake City, and discover a house on a hillside like this one. A whole lot worse.
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