Long Haul - Day 34 (9/19/21) Georgetown, SC to Mt. Pleasant, SC 80.3 miles

Today was a long riding day for us. Some days we can basically choose where we want to stay, today was not one of those days. There were literally no motels between Georgetown and Charleston. So we went for broke and rode the distance. I knew this morning we would be hitting the mid to upper 70s but this was a bit more than I expected. As the day passed I figured we might hit the 80 mile mark and as we entered the parking lot of the motel, we hit it and there we were. The day went well, we actually made good time, we we’re on pretty good roads most of the time and with a few exceptions had minimal traffic. Obviously we are tired but we will have at least several days off as there is a rain system moving through. I am not sure but I think it might be part of the tropical storm that had been moving east from Louisiana. The scenery today was rather boring, I mean after several miles of pine trees you’ve sort of seen them all. We probably had 20 miles of pine trees today. It was pleasant and peaceful but after a while it was all the same.

Last evening after I posted, we walked to the historical district of Georgetown. Dana said come on, let’s walk down there, we have been sitting on our butts all day and we need some exercise. I agreed with the first part of the statement but not the last part. We walked about a mile there, ate dinner and walked back. The district was quaint, lots of shops, restaurants, bars, a coffee shop, and a water front/river walk. It was a very comfortable place to visit and eat. As we sat at the coffee shop drinking coffee and eating a danish I began reflecting over the past number of days. Recently I finished a book about an African female slave that was promised freedom on her 18th birthday. The setting was in the mid 1850s in the Deep South. Her freedom was not granted to her (of course it wasn’t) and she ended up as the “yellow wife” of the Robert Lumkin the jailer at The Devils Half Acre in Richmond Va. As we left a coffee shop in Richmond and were heading south, we passed a sign that said “The Site of Lumpkins Jail - The Devils Half Acre”. That sign and story has been swirling in my head ever since. The very site of tremendous evil has been since cleared and “cleaned up”. Now it’s simply a sign and a memorial. It looked innocent enough. Had I not read the story, I would never have noticed the sign. Because I did, I am nearly haunted by the story of the yellow wife. As I sat in the cleaned up and sanitized historic district of GeorgeTown, I was also haunted by the evil perpetrated upon an innocent race of African people. Since Richmond, we have ridden through the countryside of North and South Carolina and seen lots of cotton and tobacco fields. When I was a kid I used to imagine what Indiana used to look like 200-300 years ago. I imagined the native Americas riding their horses through the woods, hunting deer and setting up camp. These past days I have seen the cotton fields and visualized the African slaves bent over trying to pick as much cotton as possible to avoid the vicious whip of the plantation‘s master. The evil imposed upon an innocent people for the benefit and pleasure of a supposed “superior” race. It is as evil as evil can be. As I sat at the coffee shop I was haunted by the comfort I was experiencing because of the “sanitizing“ of our past. I was tempted to forget, but I was unable to get rid of the “what if I had been born in North Carolina in 1850?“ Would I have been an evil white slave owner? Would I have been an abolitionist? Would I have become part of the Underground Railroad? Would I have done neither, but instead sanitized it all and pretended it never happened, or it wasn’t happening. As we rode past the forests today, I wondered how many slaves hid in that very forest escaping to the north. Would I have been their ally or their enemy. These questions scare the crap out of me. My view of myself has also been sanitized by my own personal history. I don’t want to believe it but with a different personal history I could have been someone else and that’s what scares the crap out of me.