RICH SHARE, NC | MARCH 25, 2010 - The towns along here, on Rt 285, shadowing 95 through the countryside, are small, stubborn affairs, more memory and dream than present. We see nearly as many greyed out, falling down houses as living ones.
But maybe that's just us. The ruins being abandoned, left standing, that they're left undisturbed, collapse in slow motion, unpilfered from, unsalvaged, left for the vines to run through and swallow before the metal roofs settle to the ground - we haven't lived in these self-contained, so naked, agrarian economies. A palatial house dies achingly slow next to a house that carries on, sheltering new vehicles under its porticos.
I didn't know, growing up, the young man in mirrored sunglasses sitting on his porch in a rocking chair mid-day, or the guy at the auto garage, also sitting, in a metal chair in the afternoon, everything done, since day before last.
The tractor in the field, some anyway, are gargantuan now. The sun glances off the windows of the enclosure, no human visible, the brown wind lifts from the wheels.
There are so few people in the landscape here, visible briefly then gone again. The entire day, I saw three kids only. Two girls running in front of a sunny mobile home. And a boy in front of a corner store in a three-building downtown, mechanically whacking a long light branch to the ground in front of him, as he walked, head down, maybe watching dust unsettled.
We stopped here in Rich Share, hungry, wanting to stretch our legs a little, hit the gas station restroom. It's peanut country. I found a bag of local peanuts for 99 cents. "BeST Roasted in the Shell Peanuts." They were from down the road, in Roxobel. Tasty. Meat and shell whole.
Contemporary second-hand, Rich Share, NC.
Note the chiminea at center between the urns.
what a different world you're living in right now. it's fascinating to read. also, did you know that peanuts are legumes and not nuts? weird huh?
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