I've got some down time, which is just wonderful. I'm here in Wallace, South Carolina, with family friends.
On my way here I stopped at a Christian bookstore in North Carolina. The place was reported to be the home of a Creationist museum.
You know, for the most part, people are nice. That's why I spend a few dollars and buy expensive fudge from them whenever I can--that said, I am pretty sure that their anti-diluvian/oldest rock in the world, was dug up in their back yard, dusted off and put on display behind a glass case.
Their case with "all the credible evidence for evolution" I'm assuming was supposed to be empty, but they had put a plastic snake in their coiled up around an apple. I think they were trying to make a point with it, so I let it slide until I ran into their overly large wall of, not so antique can-openers... I'm not kidding. I really am not sure how can-openers play a part in Christianity, or the creation of the world for that matter, but it was there. Like I said, I'm pretty sure some of the can-openers were bran new, recently picked up at the local grocer. They had little strings hanging off of them giving the year and make of each one. I'm not sure that any of them were older then ten years!
To be fair, there were old tools displayed all around. Some of them actually looked to be antiques. Most of them were levels. I only remember levels so much because they kept appearing in clumps of ten or so throughout the museum randomly. Then, once I got to a wall of beanie babies, I was beginning to think that my mom should make a museum out of her garage! Love you ma:)
There were taxidermy animals, and other odd things saturating the entirety of the place with only the occasional biblical allusion. I saw a photo of the Lunar Lander and upon my wary reading of why they had the picture there, I was relieved to see that they weren't also denying the Moon landing. But rather, they were citing "evidences" found on the moon to suggest that it, along with the earth, were only several thousand years old as opposed to many billions.
All in all, I'd definitely say that it was--interesting? But surely, it was, what's the word... interesting? Yes, I'm going with that word. It was interesting.
I'm sorry to say, Wright Brothers, that I will look back on North Carolina and remember, not you, but... well, you know what? I'll still remember you because my brain is still having a difficult time processing that place. So, even though I didn't visit them, North Carolina still equals Wright Brothers. I'm very ok with that.
Once I left that odd place I went straight to, perhaps an odder place, Clio, South Carolina, my childhood home. Before I go on--just, wow. I tell you, I've driven through some sketchy places on my trip so far but Clio, I think takes the cake. It does so because it's not only ghetto, and it's not only dirty south, but it's also prime zombie apocalypse country. It tops the charts on all three of those scales. There should be an "avoid roads you might not make it down alive" option on Google maps.
Seriously, I ended up on a dirt road of which I nearly got stuck. It was raining and the road was getting mucky. I almost spun out into the ditch when the road dipped down suddenly into a slosh pit. That would not have been good. There was a sign I passed that said "end of city improvement area." I'm not exactly sure why they'd need to specify that, especially since it didn't appear to differentiate or divide any areas. There was a house falling down on one side of the sign, and another house on the other side of it with a tree growing through the roof. Both of which had mail being delivered to their newish looking mailboxes.
It was the carcass of some unidentifiable beast being preyed upon in the middle of my muddy road by other sorts of living fowl, that finally tipped my hat that I should have probably found another road to drive down. But there was a problem. And it wasn't so much that I couldn't easily turn around on this specific road, but it was that there were no other nearby roads until I came out onto Hebron Dunbar Road, the one that my house sits on. I was too far in to go back.
I had been planning on asking the current residents if I could walk around the property once I got there but, well, let's just say that I quickly changed my mind upon seeing the condition of my house. It was a glorious sight at first, conjuring all sorts of childhood memories but upon closer inspection I realized that I wasn't too excited to see who might be behind those broken windows, that collapsing porch, and the token ferociously lazy slightly decrepit hound trying its best to bark. And even then I may have tried but I really felt like I should leave it alone. You'd think that these sorts of houses would be abandoned. They aren't. I snapped some pictures and left.
I'm going to say goodnight here even though I actually wrote quite a lot more to this post. The rest is nothing too pertinent to the travel log though. I am just particularly low right now and I began to rant. I just need to sleep. Goodnight.