A "SHE SAID, SHE SAID" STORY (Cheri)

At first, I was frustrated.

My friend Leslie had told me of the small-town pharmacy and general store that her grandfather had run in Westminster, South Carolina and her memories of visiting there as a child, and that the store was memorialized in a museum just a couple doors down from where the pharmacy still operates.

Mark and I were less than an hour away - if you took the freeway - but we hadn't factored in the museum's short hours, the effect of Hurricane Helene's devastation on local roads, and our general pokey approach to back-road travel.  We arrived late in the day; definitely after the 2:30 closing time.

I sent Leslie a picture of the blue "Moon's" sign above, on a pole.  Above you see me waving in front of one of the two buildings.

Leslie posted a lovely memory that the picture sparked.  Here's part of it:

For many years, my grandfather, Samuel Moon, owned Moon’s Drugstore.
Later his son (my uncle) and then his granddaughter (my cousin) owned it.
Although it’s no longer in the family, the name lives on (although the
old Rexall sign was replaced by the current, and cuter, sign.

My mother (1930-2000), used to tell some fascinating stories of her childhood
in a small southern town in the very tip of northwestern S.C.,
many centered around “Daddy’s drugstore.” For example,
the town was so small that behind the stores on main street, there were empty lots.
The mountain folks would come into town Saturdays with their horse- and
mule-drawn wagons filled with goods like freshly picked apples and pies to sell.
After the farmers’ market, they’d prepare to camp out, cooking their supper over wood fires. (Even if they could have afforded restaurants, there weren’t any in Westminster then.)
On Sundays, they all went to church, ate lunch,
and then headed back up into the Appalachian Mountains.

I was so glad that we had gotten there!  Here are a couple of pictures of that block of the very small town, and the inside of a barber shop:

We will definitely come back to see the General Store Museum, which is absolutely packed full of old products!

(You can tell how late in the day it was, as sundown was shining through back door of the store.  I could only get ratty pictures, by pressing my phone against the front window.)

There are some very nice, newer murals in town, memorializing blue grass musicians and veterans:

We will definitely try to see more of the Oconee Mural Trail.  If you read the credits above, you see that the artists even offer mural-painting lessons and camps!

I was really impressed with how well the artist was able to integrate the veterans mural with the park in 3D fashion:

The town really reminded me of Sutter and Yuba Counties in Northern California, where I grew up.  I tried to figure out exactly why, and I finally realized it was the quiet, the space, the types of trees, and the proximity to water.  I grew up surrounded up by flooded rice fields and duck-hunting fields (not to mention hundreds of acres of orchards and produce fields).

This is the view across the street from the stores you've seen on Main Street:

My hometown was a little larger, but I thought of the towns of Sutter and Meredian, California.

More from Leslie's memories:

By the time Mom was a teenager, her father had put in a soda fountain,
which proved very popular with the town’s teenage population.
The girls would go order Cokes, then sit and flirt with boys, who loved to hang out and read the latest comic books while they flirted with the girls.
This greatly annoyed my grandfather because after reading through the comics,
the guys would stick them back on the shelves,
often a little worse for the wear, and never pay a cent.

My favorite stories were of my grandfather compounding medicines and
stitching up bad cuts, especially for poorer whites and black folks,
since druggists charged less than doctors. The interesting part is that
my grandfather never went to college. I guess he learned it from practice
and from his brother-in-law, who actually started the pharmacy back in 1901.
And a century ago, the FDA wasn’t sending agents around
to check pharmacists’ licenses.

Here are a couple of pictures from the local - and very impressive - sporting goods store, Barrett Trading Company:

Finally, something funny from the Barrett Trading Company window,

a piece of artistry that Mark found and I would like to have,

and a marker for a quilt-block trail, which I also have yet to follow: