introduction to "americana"

i'm sitting in the den with my parents... we talked about my extremely up-in-the-air future, now we're half-way through "office space." ah the joy of semi-adulthood...

i drove from columbia today with the windows down and my new favorite cds playing one after the other. but it wasn't just any 'ole drive home. i never got on the interstate. it was a beautiful day and i took 21 from cayce to beaufort...

at first, i was content just to hang my hand out the window and smile at this conspiracy of fun. then i started passing fresh tobacco fields, cotton fields turned lavender as i sped by in my car, and old farmhouses once loved, now forgotten - but never forgetting.

i stopped at 4-way blinking lights, one gas station on one corner, one town off in the distance. i passed neighbors catching up and children in yards, a girl with a puppy and brothers playing football. and i smiled and thought about growing up here and there.

i made a short detour in orangeburg - accidentally of course - and got myself back on course. in branchville i passed kiosks on the side of the road for elephant ears and cheap leather purses, families bouncing from one to another and laughing. looked like the kind of weekend family fun that small towns are so famous for. the kind of fun that's only fun when you realize it's hilarious. or when you have a 5-year old.

i started thinking about being 5 and riding bikes with a friend down the dirt road... and i realized i was in beaufort already. i looked up from the road at a new billboard for a new development and saw a name i'd known almost my whole life. pinckney. the plantation where i had swung from tire swings, ridden ponies, hunted tree frogs, eaten oysters out of the river. and i knew it would be gone. chopped up into neat quarter-acre, million dollar lots with wading birds looking fake and beautiful by the water's edge. housing built up quickly and cheaply with work crews working at 5 am sawing and shouting inaudible quips.

i decided to go to the dock - before i went home - so i passed my parents' house carefully and continued on... past the neat quarter-acre lots and the empty work trucks and saw-horses. i parked my car around the gravel circle and slowly made my way down the dock and the ramp, all the way to the end of the floating dock. i avoided some guano and sat down on the end with my legs folded under me... i looked out where the water meets the spartina and corn island before the broad river and i cried... for my childhood and the children who might not get one or know one. i stuck my hands in the water rushing under the dock, flowing into habersham creek with a vengance known only in a few east coast locales.

and i went home.