Love Where You Live

On a sunny February Thursday, Rod McCants is spending his lunch break painstakingly painting letters on a boarded-up Main Street window. When it's finished, the message will encourage everyone who notices it to "Love Where You Live."

Rod, who works at Jenkinson, Jarrett & Kellahan and is a member of the Main Street, Kingstree committee, wants Kingstree residents to think about what they love about living here. He's recruited school children and library patrons to draw pictures of what they like best about their home town. He'll post the resulting artwork inside the glass display window next to the one on which he's painting his message.

Rod McCants concentrates on painting the letter "L" on a boarded-up window.

Photo by Linda Brown

"I think anything we can work on together helps bring us together as a community, " Rod says. "And when we start thinking about what we love about our town, we can then think about how to make those things better and then how to go about getting some of the things we'd like to see here that we don't have now."

Soon, he's joined by his friend, Jay Swicord, who begins filling in a block of the background behind the letters with bright green paint. Eventually, the background will glow with blocks of many colors.

Jay Swicord adds green paint that will be part of a colorful background for the message.

In the not too distant past, the windows Rod and Jay are working on held merchandise displays for Marcus Department Store. How many can remember when Marcus, Cato's, C. Tucker's, Belk's and Silverman's all sold clothing on the north side of East Main Street in Kingstree, and all their display windows were filled with colorful examples of their seasonal merchandise?

Main Street in Kingstree in 1969 was a bustling thoroughfare.

Kingstree High School, Garnet & Black, 1969

Displays in store windows didn't catch on in Kingstree until 1901 when Gagg, Oliver & Co., located in a building on the southwestern corner of Mill and Academy streets put up an Easter display that was the first of its kind here. Later that year, Louis Jacobs wreathed the display window of his Academy Street store in black crepe to mourn the assassination of President William McKinley. William H. Carr, who managed the Kingstree Hardware Company, also on Academy Street, began to use regular window displays to draw business to his store. In 1904, shortly after the store's opening, he built a five-foot, solid-steel replica of a battleship, which was displayed in the window. In 1909, J.B. Alsbrook designed, built and displayed in the hardware's store's window both a late-model airship and later a model automobile constructed of hardware items available for sale in the store. This innovation is window displays was in keeping with Kingstree Hardware's slogan: We lead, others follow.

The ad Gagg, Oliver & Co. was running in The County Record in April 1901.

Kingstree Hardware Co.'s ad in The County Record, November 1909.

It's not reasonable to imagine that five clothing stores will ever again exist on one block of Main Street, but it is possible for Main Street to flourish again with a mix of shops and businesses geared toward meeting the needs of Kingstree's residents in the 21st century. We need, however, to remember that this won't happen overnight. Lasting change usually comes incrementally with each new development building on those that have come before.

Bringing new life to our downtown also means that community members must devote time and attention to making it happen. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty because whether you're planting flowers or a dream, they won't blossom unless they're planted in fertile soil and then cultivated over time. We don't just live in places; we also make them.

Volunteers already get their hands dirty in keeping Main Street planters filled with blooms.

Photo by Linda Brown

It's really not hard to love where you live. It can be as easy as picking up that piece of litter you see on the sidewalk, volunteering to help with a project like painting a colorful reminder on a boarded-up window, or even finding out what steps you need to take to start your own small business. One thing you can do this week–tomorrow even–is attend one of the public meetings Main Street, South Carolina, is hosting at Town Hall. The morning meeting is from 8-9:30, with the afternoon session from 5:30-7. 

So on this Valentine's Day, as you shower your loved ones with hearts and flowers, remember also to think of ways to give a little love to the downtown heart of our community. Love where you live!

UPDATE: After last week's post, my old friend and former classmate, Joe McKnight, directed me to an 1857 news article in the Lancaster Ledger, written by someone who had stopped in Kingstree while on a trip to Charleston. He was shown the site of the old King's Tree and told that it had died prematurely because during the American Revolution those who opposed the King took target practice on the tree. So many rifle balls were buried in the tree's fibers that it rotted from within. 

And on Guy Lombardo's performance at the Pre-Harvest Ball, my friend and former co-worker, Marcy Benton, tells me that her grandparents, Willie Sena and Cliff Moore, attended the dance. Her grandmother always told the story, adding that Kingstree had one of the worst rain storms she could ever remember that evening.

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