South Carolina - a land of rural decline

I took a road trip after visiting friends in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We followed the main highway through the capitol, then veered southward past Orangeville and Allendale county. Situated downriver from a nuclear installation, Allendale seems frozen in time. Signs of the economic downturn of 2008 are everywhere. Buildings are boarded up, libraries and gas stations closed: loan companies seem to be the main business from Spatanburg all the way through to Allendale. Charleston, on the other hand, is a city which is also frozen in time - not the time of desperation in the depression-era, but rather the pomp and riches of the roaring 20's. Conspicuous consumption and monumental architecture give the city a sexy gleam. Conspicuously absent are markers of the key role Charleston played in the slave trade. At the time I was there, the confederate flag still fluttered outside the state legislature in Columbia.