I'm going to write fast. I've started this entry twice, misplaced it once and lost it the second time. So...

Paula and Jerry Goldman !! At the soda fountain in Strom's Drug Store on Main Street in downtown McCormick, South Carolina. An original soda fountain. Everybody probably couldn't sit down together there once, but today is today.

That's marble, oak, stained glass...

A family owned drug store still. Jerry told me Strom's still sells on credit, on trust, on being known among ourselves.

And this is an old slave cemetery Paula and other of her neighbors discovered in a little piece of remaining wood near their home. Adjoining a golf course. There are two headstones in this resting place of sixty odd burials. The small stones you can see, these are the markers of lives. No names. No dates of beginnings to ends. No stories told to the future. Except small stones and the indentation of each grave. Paula and others cleared away the fallen trees, they planted flowers beside the head of each grave.

This photo speaks for itself. Paula told me the most thriving business in the African American community over the past decades has been this funeral home. And its owners have been community benefactors. Their children have gone on to good things. That's love.

I read at three adult events, and met with three groups of middle school children in the public school. The community of people "retiring" to McCormick has increased the tax base such to create a series of truly needed new school buildings, a new library - and there is a completely volunteer staffed bookstore on the main street, with 100% donated books, and I learned of the creation of the Children's Home in McCormick, and the arts building where we had lunch...

Students and me! I took some nice photos, but one of the teachers told me not to post any identifying the kids. Jerry sent this...

From the Friends of the Library lunch in The MACK Artisans Building...

and from one of the readings organized for me...

and as if the McCormick people haven't done enough, Paula accompanied me part of the way out of town, stopping in Willington, where Sara Covin Juenquest and others are preserving the history and architecture of another Southern town...

Cyrus McCormick never set foot in McCormick, so I learned from Robert Bentley, but his widow did. And if there's one building I'd covet to live in, it's the Dorn Mill, an old cotton gin along the railroad line. Bob Bentley, a newspaper man, told me of the only Jewish woman he remembers in McCormick from the old days. Mrs. Drucker owned the dress store on Main Street. Bob's mom--I think it was Bob's mom--used to introduce her at community functions as, "This is Mrs. Drucker, a good Christian woman of the Jewish faith." Bob is at bobbent@simpledsl.com

So thank you ! For the unforgettable experience of McCormick, South Carolina. My welcome was warm. The reception of What Else But Home was as good as I could imagine.

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