Southern Ruin: A Photo Post

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:

Grave of a Confederate veteran at Purdie Methodist Church, Tarheel, NC

Cemetery and playground at Purdie Methodist Church, Tarheel, NC

Abandoned structure, Tarheel, NC

Abandoned home, Tarheel, NC

Vestments, near Dublin, NC

Allen Cemetery, Dublin, NC (love that sand)