Title: My "Town"
Fandom: Original/Real Life
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: N/A
Rating: WS
Summary: A look around my "town" in 11 WorkSafe photographs.
Disclaimer: The photos are mine, for all the good that does...



(NOTE: My apologies. I wanted to include the actual pictures, but I can't figure out how to get them to work from Google Photos. The links are SUPPOSED to work, though. Please let me know if they don't...)





There used to be a MAJOR curve in the highway that caused a very many wrecks. The curve has since been redone and made a lot safer, but there still stands a pocket where the old post office still stands behind all the bushes and everything. I'm going to cry the day they eventually tear this place down.

Old Post Office

Back when it was active, none of us had actual addresses. The streets were not named, and hardly anyone had a mailbox at their house. Instead, we'd all walk down to the old post office and chat with the sweet, old mail lady, Ruby Lee Baggett, to get our mail. And we were all "General Delivery" during those days.

And yes, sadly, I am convinced that they will eventually tear it down, just as they have been, in the last few weeks, removing the railroad that my Daddy, God rest his soul, loved so very much.

Railroad Tracks to the Left and Right

Remember that huge curve I mentioned before, the one that caused so many wrecks? My Uncle Clyde, my Mother's half brother, used to live just pass the tracks in an old shed. One night, a oil truck missed the turn, jumped the tracks, and took out his house. Thankfully, my Uncle was dead and long gone at the time. Since then, it's overgrown to where you can't really see anything.

Uncle Clyde's

I should have gone down and gotten a picture of Aunt Lois' old house, that had once been a general store, but I wasn't feeling it that day. I still get in my feelings every time I think of the history of this place, and how it's all going to be lost.

Still passing Uncle Clyde's place, you can see the local Baptist church coming up, and the land before that which is a strong testament of just how my family's history is getting destroyed in this place. The empty lot in front of the church was my Grandparents' home, but they've torn down all the buildings and made it into a parking lot for the church.

Grandparents' and the Church

My Great Aunts were founding members of the church, and my Daddy was the best Sunday school teacher my Great Aunt Georgia, best woman I've ever known and will ever know, ever had in her 90+ years of living -- she said this many a time, not I. Yet my husband and I don't even feel welcome there because of, shall we say, "local politics".

Grandparents' and the Church Again, a little closer

The following is honestly what hurts the most -- my childhood home, the only home I really knew after moving back to Range at the tender age of 4 and not leaving until '04, after Ivan wrecked the house.

Childhood Home

There is no way it can be saved... To convince myself otherwise, as I once tried to do, would be to just harm myself further.

Yard

You can see a little bit of why I call it a swamp land here, but not much given that it hadn't rained in several days. And again, the church looms ever bright in visage.

My family was once so strong in that church that when J and I were going, I couldn't even sing in the choir without hearing the voices of my Daddy, my Great Uncle Joe, and my Great Aunt Georgia. And those weren't the only ones, just the only ones I was blood kin to. I have known so many people in that church, and we've lost them all, mostly to death, over the years.

The last Preacher before the current one was the only Preacher who even came whenever my Daddy was dying. Everyone has their flaws, but he did not cheat on his wife. His wife, our cousin, wasn't exactly the most stable person, mentally speaking, but Bobby cried on my Aunt Georgia's shoulder many a time. As I write this, I'm actually remembering that, even if she did try to fight for his place in the church, she ultimately failed. Not only did he lose his place, after Carolyn killed herself, in the church, but he also was run out of town -- by people who aren't even native to the area.

The same people where the lead woman has become the Preacher up the road a bit at a Holiness church, and whose husband sent his grown son into OUR yard to attack my husband and prompt him to fight. Jordan kicked his butt, but that's beside the point...

This was where he stayed for a while, right next door to us on a land he'd bought for taxes after the lady who lived there my entire childhood passed away in a nursing home. She might not have been the kindest, and my Grandfather, my Mother's father, might have often said that he (this is going to be a bit vulgar) hated her guts for packing her shit, but it's yet another death/life/soul for which I seem to be in a constant state of mourning.

My fellow historian buffs will like this one. It's the old smokehouse, the only building left standing on that property.

Further reminders of the past in the old trailer that was destroyed when someone tried to move it out while my Mother/abuser was recovering from that shot (I still have mixed feelings, wondering if she actually did it to herself or not, as she claims). They rammed it into the light pole and never could get it out, but did a number trying to do so.

And I'm going to close with this, our mess of a little storgae house we're trying to turn into a real house. I used to HATE the idea of living in a storage house, but you know, I've gotten to looking at some of the newer trailers and some of the old houses, like my childhood home, and it doesn't seem like we're that much worse than those buildings. They seem to be made of nothing stronger or more durable, just bigger, and J and I don't really need all that much room.

I lied. Here's the last picture: even the surrounding woods look sad.