Physical State of Matt #25: SOUTH CAROLINA

South Carolina marked the halfway point of this trip. It should have been a thrilling milestone. I should have been beaming with pride. Instead, I was in a funk. The week ended up being my emotional nadir. 

My drive to South Carolina took me the entire length of Florida again, which is much longer than it seems. Despite only going two states up, the drive was nearly 1,600 miles and had to be split up across three days.

Shortly after I crossed into Georgia, I started seeing balls of ice along the side of the road. I was flabbergasted that the arctic blast had dropped so much snow that far south. 

SOUTH CAROLINA

It’s estimated that the first inhabitants of South Carolina arrived between 11 and 12 thousand years ago. By 1600, between 15 and 20 thousand native people from many tribes lived there. There were three primary languages spoken - Siouan, Iroquoian, and Muskogean. 

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to visit the area in 1521. Charles Town, the first permanent English settlement in South Carolina was formed at Albemarle Point on the West bank of the Ashley River. The settlement flourished, was moved across the river, and renamed Charleston in 1783. 

photo credit: World Maps Online

As I wrote in my post on NORTH CAROLINA, South Carolina was split from the Province of Carolina in 1712. Twenty years later, South Carolina split off Georgia, making it the shape we know today. 

South Carolina has a complicated history with race. Its early economy was plantation-based, and relied heavily on slavery. The first recorded slave insurrection in the New World was in 1526 in the colony San Miguel de Gualdape, near modern day Georgetown, SC. By 1740, African slaves made up two-thirds of the population. In 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, and in 1861 the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. 

photo credit: Smithsonian Magazine

In 1868, after the end of the Civil War, newly enfranchised black voters in South Carolina elected the nation’s first majority black state legislature. In 1869 they elected the first African American to serve in the United States House of Representatives, Joseph Rainey. This majority remained in place for nearly ten years, until the end of federal enforcement of Reconstruction. 

photo credit: Zinn Education Project

The 1860s saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in several southern states including South Carolina. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant declared martial law in nine South Carolina counties and sent the military in to quell the Klan. This led to the KKK Trials of 1871 - 1872, which succeeded in tamping down Klan activity, but not for long. Starting in the late 1870’s white Democrats regained power and began implementing Jim Crow laws, driving racial segregation and inequality. 

photo credit: Equal Justice Initiative

One of the five court cases that was consolidated into the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case in 1954, which desegregated schools, came from South Carolina. However white resistance in the state was powerful, and there was systemic violence and intimidation throughout the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60s. Encouragingly, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, South Carolina is not one of the many states with an active KKK chapter today. 

On a more whimsical note, South Carolina was the site of the first commercial tea farm in the colonies and the distinctly southern drink sweet tea originated there. 

photo credit: Southern Living

Morgan Island, better known as Monkey Island, is one of the 68 Beaufort islands along the coast of South Carolina. It is home to about 4,000 rhesus monkeys. The monkeys were moved from a research facility in Puerto Rico in 1979 after an incident where some infected monkeys escaped, causing an viral outbreak among the people. 

The monkeys, who have been tattooed for identification, have the run of the island and it’s prohibited for people other than research teams to go on shore. Local tour groups run boats near the shore so people can watch them from a distance. 

GREENVILLE

Greenville was started in 1768 as a small trading post and grist mill near the Reedy River Falls. Greenville County was established in 1786, and today it's the most populous county in South Carolina with just over half a million people. The town was renamed from Pleasantburg to Greenville in 1831 - I kinda like the name Pleasantburg. I didn’t really have a reason for picking Greenville, I just pulled it off the map.

The 19th century saw Greenville flourish as a textiles manufacturer, and Furman University was established there in 1852. The US textile industry waned in the 1980’s, impacting the local economy, but in 1986 Michelin chose Greenville as its North American headquarters. They remain the third largest employer there today. 

photo credit: L'Aventure Michelin

Greenville is mostly known these days as a college town, with college students making up roughly a quarter of its population. Among the schools located there are Furman University, North Greenville University, Greenville Technical College, and Bob Jones University. 

Bob Jones University is an evangelical Christian school. The university didn’t admit black students until 1971, and even after they started they had strict rules forbidding interracial dating and marriage. Because of these practices, the IRS revoked their tax exempt status in 1976, retroactive to 1970. The school fought this ruling all the way to the US Supreme Court in 1983 and lost. 

photo credit: Fine Art Storehouse

I arrived at my Airbnb late on Sunday. It was a stately old house that had been split up into four rentals. Mine was on the ground floor. The layout of the space was interesting, with the bedroom located in what must have been a sitting room in the original house. A fireplace on one wall had been bricked up. 

When I awoke in the morning and went to make coffee, I found that, although the house had wonderful high ceilings, the hanging glass lights in the kitchen hung much too low. This made the kitchen mostly unusable for me, so I ate out that week.

As I wrote about in my post DEPRESSED, I did very little that week. The situation at work was reaching peak stress and it consumed most of my headspace that week. I was feeling down and, although it was warmer than it had been, the weather was still pretty miserable. 

I got my tires rotated and finally got my phone fixed at a local Apple store - fourth time’s the charm. It took $500 and five hours, which still boggles my mind. After I dropped it off, I went to find something to eat, but realized I couldn’t look up what restaurants were nearby. I decided to go back to my place and grab my work phone, but I couldn’t look up directions to get back there. Luckily I was able to find my way back on memory, but it really struck me how insanely dependent we are on these devices. 

I explored Greenville’s downtown a few nights while I was there. It looked reminiscent of many college towns. At night, when the shops were all closed, the cops barricaded Main Street to let the students bar crawl and wander through the streets without getting run over. I don’t know whether schools weren’t in session yet, or if everyone had stayed home to avoid the cold weather, but downtown was mostly deserted every night I went out. It looked rather funny with the barricades and police presence but no revelers. 

photo credit: Reader's Digest

I watched the AFC Championship Game between the Chiefs and the Bills at SUSHI GO. The bartender told me all about her side hustle on Etsy crocheting little creatures. She showed me a silly little video she’d posted on TikTok to promote her business. The video had gone viral and got her so many orders that she’d had to crochet nonstop for six months straight. She said she never wanted to do that again. 

I ate a couple of times at SOCIETY Sandwich Bar and Social Club. It was a chill spot with a good vibe and fun menu items like The Animal Burger - double smash beef patties, government cheese, grilled onions, sliced pickles, and werewolf sauce on a King's Hawaiian bun. Messy but so, so good. 

My last day there I explored downtown by foot during the day. One of the city’s icons is the Liberty Clock. The clock was a gift to the city from the Liberty Life Insurance company which was founded in Greenville in 1905.

For a city of its size, Greenville has a ton of public art. Dozens of murals and sculptures grace downtown. One piece that caught my eye was a sculpture of Max Heller, Greenville’s mayor from 1971 to 1979. He immigrated to the US in 1938 after the Nazis invaded his home country of Austria. He had success in the local textile industry and became a community leader. As mayor he oversaw the desegregation of city hall, the founding of the Greenville Transit Authority, and the redevelopment of the downtown area. 

Falls Park on the Reedy River is the most recognizable feature of Greenville. The Reedy River runs right through downtown, following a series of scenic cascades. Grassy public areas and foot paths run along both sides of the river with several bridges crossing at various points. The river was gorgeous however, despite the recent rain, the water was rather low, so the main fall was not as spectacular as it gets at its peak. 

At the top of the Swamp Rabbit Trail along the river is the Medusa Tree, a 70-year-old beech tree that was originally planted in the old Furman University Arboretum. The roots crawl over 20 feet down from the base of its trunk, enveloping the side of the hill.

Finally, I drove a little ways out of town on a recommendation to see BridgeWay Station. The complex’s architecture is modeled after an Italian castle. It contains apartments, several restaurants, some shopping, a gym, etc. Just as I arrived, the sky opened up and started pouring. The whole thing is set up as an outdoor space, so there was little shelter from the rain. I explored for a little while, popping in and out of businesses, getting soaked in the process. 

I liked Greenville. I’m sure that under different circumstances I would have really enjoyed it, but my mood was as cold and gray as the weather. 

PORTLAND

I needed to go back to Portland to get all of my cold weather gear out of storage in the basement of what used to be my home, and is now my former partner’s. I found the best deal on a roundtrip flight out of Columbus, OH. 

I planned my route to take me through Asheville, North Carolina. Two of the people I worked with on "Hollis and Rae" were from Asheville. They had such nice things to say about it, I'd always wanted to visit. I had been planning on going there for my North Carolina stop, but they'd suffered terrible floods four months prior, getting clobbered by Hurricane Helene. I didn't know what state the city would be in. I was pleased to find it bustling. Demolition and construction sites were in every corner of the city, but it seemed to have bounced back really well.

I stopped the first night in Lexington, Kentucky, getting a hotel at the edge of town. Lexington is a college town, and that night the University of Kentucky basketball team had a big grudge match. I took an Uber downtown to check out the game day scene. The game ended shortly after I got there, thousands of people in blue & white pouring into the streets. The mood was somber after a tough loss.

I grabbed a seat at a packed bar near the stadium. As the alcohol flowed, the sting of the loss wore off and the place started getting rowdy. I tried calling an Uber. Nothing. Then a Lyft. Nothing again. I should have anticipated that the rideshare capacity of the city was no match for the basketball crowd. It was cold out, but I didn’t feel like waiting goddess knows how long for a car. I gave up and walked the 40 minutes back to my hotel very briskly. At one point on the walk I did a double take, thinking I had suddenly been teleported to Romania. 

The next night I was in Columbus, Ohio. Staying there again reminded me what a miserable city it is. Just awful. 

okay, this isn't Columbus, it's somewhere in rural North Carolina

My time in Portland was good. I visited old haunts there and across the river in Vancouver. I caught up with friends and regaled them with stories from my travels. The Portland Winter Light Festival was happening downtown. One of the main attractions was a giant fire breathing dragon by the river. 

I procrastinated visiting the old house, but I went there on my last day in town. The dogs tackled me when I opened the door. It sent a stab through my heart to see them again, but I loved it too. Very bittersweet. 

I dug through my storage room in the basement, finding my huge winter coat, snow pants, thermal long johns, and everything else I’d need for my next state. I packed away some books I’d already read and other dead weight I’d been dragging around. Then I sat in the living room with the dogs and caught up with my former partner. 

I am eternally grateful that we have been able to navigate this process as civilly as we have, and I have to give her most of the credit. She has every reason to be furious and hate me. But she isn’t, and she doesn’t. 

After a while, she dropped the dreaded words I knew I'd hear eventually “So, I saw your blog”. I drew my breath in sharply. “And I read one of your posts”. Looking down at my feet, knowing the answer to the question before I asked it, I said “Which one?” “Divorced” she replied. Of course. “And?” I asked.

My mind was racing. I was afraid that, despite my best attempts to be honest and kind, I had hurt her feelings or overshared. I braced for her answer. “It was good. And I agreed with pretty much everything in it.” Huge exhale. 

We talked about it for a while then she asked me if I still felt guilty about ending the marriage and about the sudden way in which I did it. I nodded. “Don’t” she said, “I understand why you did it that way. You’re forgiven.” 

I stared at her in amazement, then managed a quiet “Thank you.” I hadn’t expected to hear this from her - ever. Her words rolled around in my head that evening after I left the house. It was like she had given me permission to forgive myself. That guilt was a burden I had been carrying around with me and I hadn’t even realized it. It took some time, but I feel lighter now having finally shed it. 

The following day I flew back to Ohio and started the drive to New York. I had a date with The Finca in Costa Rica, and I was really looking forward to it.  

I returned two weeks later, tanned and refreshed. My spirits were high and I was excited - I was about to drive to Alaska.

Yes, and…

Matt