The crest-fallen one-room church and her little cemetery
On Friday past I was heading south on 601 in the early afternoon with my windows down, listening to my beloved local public radio, when I passed the odor of two dead hogs who were barely off the hardtop. One black carcass was quite large and mangled, and also surrounded by mangled car parts! I turned around and pulled off the road to take photos for my husband, Tommy. Wild hogs…They cause such damage wherever they go as they root around through the earth for their food. What smell caused them to want to cross that crazy hard surface, and just feet from one another?
Finishing that documentation, I turned back to Sandy the Prairie Dancer, my trusty steed, to continue heading down the road. But to my surprise, in a wooded area straight ahead of my parked car I saw a derelict that I had never noticed before in years of trips down that country road. Fortunately, I left home early that day for my weekend meeting, just hoping for some interesting reason to pull over, and boy did I get it.
Yellow demolition notices were in force before a crest-fallen one-room church and her little cemetery. Upon inspection, I saw the notices spanned a year and were from Richland County. I took note of their importance, as my friends at the county’s Conservation Commission have been cataloging abandoned cemeteries throughout the county. Surely they are aware of this one.
I then went into the little building and gingerly wandered around the long wooden pews, photographing items and stories that littered the floor among pieces of ceiling and wall. A small bird nest was in the simple podium—likely a wren. “A Glorious Church” hymn and an awkwardly worded “Tither’s” envelope, a receipt from a Christian store in Orangeburg for envelopes (other “Tithes” envelopes?), artificial flowers, restless children’s word jumbles, Calvin Lemore’s Bible, and lots and lots of lessons and literature were strewn like time under my feet. As I wandered, eyes downcast, I saw in a shaft of sunlight on the floor what I assumed was the fervent shadows of flies—so omnipresent was the smell of death—not from the church itself, but from the hogs and also two deer out there on the road. I stood still and took a video of the movement at my feet, then followed the transition from floor to sunlit window, and lo! Life! Hard at work, Honeybees were busy with their lives, dancing in and out of cracks in the outer sunlit wall, the embodiment of industry and concentrated joy. I must go outside and see. I collected some faded funeral home fans (I love them) and some Canada Goose and Turkey Vulture feathers (no nest—there should have been one in this space), and left the shadows.
Outside in the forgotten cemetery, other stories were exposed. Some old stones had lettering that was so crudely set that my camera, unbeknownst to me until just now, could not find focus on it, so I’ll have to go back. (Or were they ghosts?) I felt for Wife Flossie G. Johnson, who will have to be content with her little metal marker. I wonder if the WWI soldier got to enjoy his final Taps somehow in 1960? (My own father heard his in the Minnesota snow by cassette tape in 2001.) There were about 12 headstones scattered through the dry weeds, scrub pines, and tattered litter of bereft flowers. Some were very old, and some fairly new. I wonder what will happen to them upon the threatened demolition?
Hoping to go back someday to document those other stones, I turned and drove on to meet my friends for our planning meeting about our very difficult-to-discern future in environmental education.
So… I just wanted to share with you my hour’s adventure.
Please scuse my grammar, and just be there in that sacred place with me. I wanted to share those moments with you.
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