Abandoned places are fading brick-and-mortar memories

I see them on the back roads and wonder about the days they were once full of laughter and people inside making memories - abandoned houses, old stores, the places where people once gathered. 

I wonder what happened and why they were left to crumble over time. All those memories, left to the wind. It is so sad and beautiful at the same time. Still standing, abandoned and alone, after all these years. 

I once walked through an abandon nursing home just outside of Edgefield, SC. I imagined what it was like before the stillness. Families visiting loved ones, celebrating holidays and birthdays, meals in the cafeteria with residents laughing and playing games. 

This was also a place where people worked, where they provided for their families. Now it’s empty. The windows have been broken, and graffiti is on the walls. Once a warm caring place, now it’s just kind of spooky. 

On a backroad in Aiken County there is an old service station/community store. One gas pump is left standing, and the old building still stands proud and beautiful. 

I imagine a few elderly fellows sitting on old wooden Coca-Cola crates and talking about the peach crops or politics and maybe even telling an exaggerated story or two. 

Inside, everyone knew each other. Behind the counter was the proprietor with a small notebook full of IOUs. Once a week, on payday, customers would come in and pay their bill and start all over again with a tank of gas going on the books, and maybe a few groceries. The cycle of retail and the circle of life in a small rural community, wrapped in a single clapboard building.  

There is a tract of land, once the site of a small diner on Highlands Highway in Walhalla, South Carolina, that is special to me. This was my mom and dad’s restaurant for many years. This was my first job, as a 13-year-old curb hop, waiting for customers to pull up and blow their horn for service. I’d take their order and, 10 minutes later, deliver it to their car. I learned many life lessons in that small diner. 

Gentry’s Drive-In was torn down years ago, but that piece of land still holds many memories. 

We had a cast of characters who would eat with us regularly. One was Red McConnell, a local guy, who drove a station wagon with the word “Fireworks” on the side. Yes, he sold explosives out of his car.  

The local DJs from the AM radio station were regulars as well, and as I look back, my broadcasting career started there. My first job in radio was at that station, WGOG, in Walhalla, just a few miles from the diner. 

To this day, people ask me for the recipe for Gentry’s Drive-In chili and I still make it a few times a year. 

I feel the energy of Gentry’s when I drive by that small piece of land, and I usually pull over and take it in. I can still hear my mom’s favorite country singer blaring out of that old Wurlitzer jukebox. Punch in E3: Charley Pride’s “Burgers and Fries.” 

And it was burgers and fries and cherry pies/ 
In a world we used to know 

Charley Pride