In the weeks preceding the birth of my son I began traveling with my wife each day to the college at which she teaches so that, in case she went into labor, I would be with her to take her to the hospital. I was no longer employed as a high school teacher and was able to be as flexible and as available as she needed me to be.
Though I spent some of my time on the campus milking the open wireless network and researching genealogy I felt a need to go explore some of the surrounding countryside of Bladen County, where the college is located.
I am a North Carolina native. Six of my direct ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War along with at least six great-grand uncles. My mother's family hails from Aiken County, South Carolina and my father's from Stokes and Surry Counties in North Carolina. Add to my heritage the fact that I am also a far left-leaning liberal, an agnostic-atheist, etc, and you have with me, like with much of the South, a quiet mess of contradictions.
Still, I make no secret of the fact that I have a particular and irrational love for the South, similar perhaps to the way someone might love a stray mutt - a mutt who may howl, scratch itself obscenely, and be rather a nuisance but a mutt who is also comfort and a symbol of home, even a symbol of one's own true self, if thoughts are allowed to wander so far.
In any case, and before I wander too far into the absurd intricacies and fallacies of at once hesitant and strong regional devotion, here are photographs I took as I traveled around Bladen County, North Carolina. These are the scenes which struck me most:
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| Grave of a Confederate veteran at Purdie Methodist Church, Tarheel, NC |
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| Cemetery and playground at Purdie Methodist Church, Tarheel, NC |
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| Abandoned structure, Tarheel, NC |
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| Abandoned home, Tarheel, NC |
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| Vestments, near Dublin, NC |
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| Allen Cemetery, Dublin, NC (love that sand) |
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