Yesterday I was driving along through some backwoods nowhere place in rural South Carolina. I honestly couldn’t even tell you the name of the town. I was trying to outrun a storm, a silly proposition in my old slow van.
I passed a building for sale. Decrepit but decorated with a hand painted sign that said ‘Paradise Club’. I stopped to photograph it. I’m not so into ruin porn these days (click the link to read my thoughts on that subject) but this one was hard to resist. The blatant contradiction. Paradise Lost club? Har har.
There’s a yellow shopping cart parked out front. It’s full of detritus. An aged pile of pages held closed by a piece of asphalt in the space where a toddler or a carton of blueberries might have been placed once upon a time. I walk up, point my camera at it and a voice calls out from behind me.
“Are you disabled?”
No I think to myself, curious and a little bored but not disabled.
“Just looking around,” I say to the bent old man who I find behind me.
He’s wearing a red t-shirt that’s unintentionally short, a crop top really. Wire frame glasses, a lanyard with a plastic card on it, a little lavender container of what might be pepper spray clipped to the belt that holds up his baggy chinos. He squints even though it’s not sunny out. He spits when he talks and stands a little too close. It’s kind of disturbing but his words are clear and very interesting.
Turns out he’s a big fan of history, he starts rattling on about the greedy woman who owns the Paradise Club and tells me she’s asking for too much money. Says some people are so rich and they find it’s never enough. They cling to their wealth and worship it like a God.
He starts spouting facts and dates of historic events. Tells me the Columbine massacre happened on Hitler’s birthday 110 years after he was born. I ask where he’s from. He tells me about the first guy to win the Medal of Honor in Vietnam who’s from Saugerties where he grew up.
I’m a little unnerved but also a little intrigued. This guy could probably be the subject of a film. Marwencol all over again. A savant in the broke down backwater. How did he end up here?
I’m politely backing away from both the effluence and the weirdness. He’s following. He leans on the van and continues talking. Asks no questions about it, doesn’t even seem to notice it. I kind of love that. The van is low hanging fruit and he won’t pick it.
I can see the storm clouds behind him getting closer, the horizon is the color of bruised skin. I tell him I better get on with it. He tells me that today is the anniversary of Hitler’s suicide and that the Nazis fought for eight more days after he died. With that he connects the dots as to why he started talking about school shootings in the first place. I’m floored.
I say goodbye, he says sorry for taking up so much time. I tell him it was a pleasure to talk. That’s the truth.
His name is Bob. I fact check him with Google as a I drive away. He’s spot on. Hitler did kill himself on April 30. Columbine did happen in 1999. Roger Hugh Charles Donlon was the first to win the Medal of Honor in Vietnam and he is from Saugerties.
What the fuck…
I wish I would have taken his picture, but I was a little scared.
I did take a cowardly shot through the back window of the van as he walked away. At least I know he’s not a ghost, or was he?
