Archive for the ‘historic’ tag
The Desert Inn, 5570 South Kenansville Road, Yeehaw Junction Florida: 22 December 2019 no comments
Fort Jackson Gate, Percival Road: 1980s 9 comments
I've been meaning to get back up in here for several years and see what is still left, but recently I've seen construction trucks going in and out, so I figured I had better go ahead and do it now, before whatever is left is gone..
As you may know, one of the main Fort Jackson gates used to feed directly into Percival Road, not too far west of Decker Boulevard. All the gates were (and probably still are) numbered, and I used to know the number of this gate, but can't now recall it. At any rate, my father was an Army Reserve member and then retiree, so my mother and we minor children had post access as a consequence. We would frequently go to one of the post theater (where they always played the national anthem before the show), or to the PX or library (which actually had a pretty good selection of SF books, many of which were not in the RCPL).
My memory is that at the top of the hill leading from Percival onto Jackson Boulevard and into the Fort, just past the gate to the left was an AFFES convience store, and a bit further down the road on the right was an AFFES fast food hamburger joint.
As some of you may recall, building I-77 took a *really* long time. Some wag wrote a letter to the editor at The State speculating that a troop of Boy Scouts with spoons could do it faster -- but finally it was done, and the new road cut through this entrance, which had by that point been closed for several years in anticipation of the event.
Looking at Google Maps aerial view of the site, apparently taken some while ago, I can see what appears to be a parking lot just before the I-77 barriers. I speculate that the convenience store was there, but it's possible that it was actually in the I-77 roadbed.
Several wars have been fought since this gate was closed, and Fort security is a good bit tighter now. The new gate comes out onto Percival over a bridge across I-77 east of Decker at Boyden Arbor Road, but I believe that access is somewhat restricted, and that the Forest Drive/Strom Thurmond entrance is now the main entrance for general traffic.
Let's take a walk:
Reliable Loan Office, 1304 Assembly Street: February 2016 (moved, sorta) 3 comments
Moe Levy's Reliable Loan Office was sort of a portmanteau operation with the signs promising Gun Shop, Coins Jewelry, Army Surplus & Camping Supplies under the Pawn marquee. In this spot since 1950, they looked poised to close entirely after the main Moe Levy's closed.
In fact, they did close in February 2016 with no definite plans announced as this State story details.
In the event, they found a new space at 1727 Laurel Street, and decided to continue with changes as related here. They are no longer pawnbrokers and will concentrate on the Army surplus side of the business as Moe Levy's Army Store. This State video has pictures of the new location and remarks by the owner which are interesting on their own because people just don't talk like that anymore and I miss it.
Edna's #1, 3609 River Drive: 31 March 2016 32 comments
Well, this is the end of an era. Edna's on River Drive predates me into this world by something over a year, so has been a Columbia institution longer than I've been alive. Of course, it has been an institution in a part of the town we used to think of as far away, so if we ever ate here growing up, it was long enough ago, and infrequently enough that I can't remember it. I'll have to try to remedy that before 31 March.
This kind of walk-up, no inside dining restaurant used to be common. In fact that's the way I recall Bell's and the original Garners Ferry McDonald's. Nowdays it is much less common, though you can still see remnants of the style, now worked around, in Zesto and Dairy Bar. I love the common-sense practicality of the cement blocks shorter customers can stand on to bring them up to window level.
Edna's also had an affiliated located at 2200 Two Notch Road, in a building that is still there, and a third location off Forest Drive, which was razed some years ago.
Here is a nice appreciation of Marie Rose Tyner, who ran the restaurant for many years and passed in the summer of 2015.
Wateree Country Store, US-601 Eastover: 1980s? no comments
Here's an old country store I ran across recently just south of where Bluff Road (SC-48) ends at US-601.
The sign claims it was founded in 1856, which would make it a fairly rare atebellum business still in operation until fairly recently. I think this particular building is much newer than that however -- to me it has kind of a 1920s look. The nearest landark I can find an actuall address for is St. Luke AME Church at 4990 McCords Ferry Road (US-601) which is probably about half a mile south of here.
I don't know when the place closed, but it is now surrounded by a fence so clearly there has been no customer access for a while.
Bluestein's Wholesale Dry Goods, 933 Gervais Street: April 2014 7 comments
The date was, I think, 1983, at about this time of year, and pretty much everything was right with the world. The Carter years were over, I was at USC and had, after a bit of flailing around, found something I liked and was was good at that I figured I could spend the forseeable future doing. It was springtime and I was taking a fun elective, "Introduction to Cinema", or some such course title.
I can't now recall the professor's name, but he was quite entertaining and well versed in the material. I remember in particular one of his theories, probably not 100% serious, that people in the first few decades of the 20th century lived their lives much more dramatically than we do now. This would explain, he said, why silent movies look so over-acted to us, but yet when he went back to the original period newspaper reviews of the features, he invariably found praise for the naturalness of the performances. At any rate, we screened many of those silent classics as well as more modern flicks into the French New Wave period and beyond. The kicker for the course was that for the final project, we would split into groups and make our own short films.
Well, as it happened, one of my Computer Science friends was in the course with me, so we formed a group of two for the project. I had, from somewhere, a Super-8 camera with an attached flood, so we were good on the technical side -- all we needed was an idea and script.
Now, one of the films we had screened was Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. I don't know what I would think of it now, but at the time, I believe we both thought it a bit pretentious, and more importantly, a good subject for parody (which could only be helped by the fact that everybody in the audience would have seen the film recently too). I recall very few of the details, but the key fact is that a robed avatar of DEATH was going around taking lives with visual metaphor of a candle going out. We figured that with modern medical technology and life support, HIS job might be a bit less easy. We kicked it around a bit and figured we could get a usable 10 minutes from the idea easily.
Since I had the camera, and there were only two of us, it was obvious that my friend was going to have to be DEATH. It was a bit of a problem that she didn't look at all spooky or dangerous, but she had some ideas for that. Now, she was from North Augusta, so I have no idea how she knew more about this piece of Columbiana than I did (other than I rarely paid attention to anything outside of a book in those days), but she walked us down to the Vista (which was not called that at the time) and into Bluestein's Dry Goods. I had only a vague idea what a "dry goods" store was and certainly would not have automatically included sheets in that category, but she easily found a good sized, inexpensive sheet, and we were out the door. Next we stopped at the grocery for some black Rit dye, and mixing that up in my mother's washer (I have no idea how the next load of clothes came out), we dyed the sheet black.
Wound in black sheets, and with a bit of white makeup, my friend was a perfect DEATH. Next we made some cardboard signs saying "Life Support", and got some trick birthday candles. We put the signs up over the end of hall double doors in LeConte College (the CSCI building at the time), and our tracking shots had DEATH wafting through the corridors of that building and through the doors into the "Life Support" ward. At that point, the idea is that we would cut to the trick candles, and that everytime DEATH would snuff one out, it would re-light. Finally, he would be so frustrated he would break the 7th Seal (on a bottle of Seagrams 7..) We planned the shoot for well after hours (there was no building security in those days) and everything went perfectly without a soul present to ask what in the world we were doing. We got enough footage that we figured we were golden and wrapped up.
Next, I had the film developed, and it was time to edit the movie together. At that point I was suddenly stricken with pollen season allergies like never before and never since. It was non-stop sneezing, and my eyes were watering so badly I literally could not see to use the Moviola. In the end, my friend had to take it and set it up in the downstairs computer remote in the (as we called it at the time, Physical Sciences building) and she edited the movie together completely on her own during her late night shifts as the computer operator there. She did a great job of it, and the film was a hit with the class, we got good grades and moved on to the next semester. As far as I know, she still has the reel somewhere, but I'm sure it's better in memory that it would be watching it again now...
And that's my Bluestein's story!
Columbia South Carolina, 34.0008° N 81.0353° W: 12 February 2014 (temporary) 2 comments
Well, it's not 1973, and it's not 1979 (for one thing I have power!), but it is one for the record books.
Come to think of it, another way it's unlike those two is that I have absolutely no urge to go outside and play.
UPDATE 13 February 8:30 -- And now it's snowing again..
TELEVAC 86000 / CENTAURI-68000, South Carolina State Fair: 2012 38 comments
Once upon a time, computers were magical devices, "Electronic Brains", spoken of with tinges of awe and fear. See for instance the classic Hepburn / Tracy movie Desk Set. Nobody, in their day-to-day lives would expect to see a computer, and few people had any idea what they actually looked like. Everybody was sure, however, that they involved lots of blinking lights (and tape drives moving forever back and forth).
That first actually wasn't far from the truth. Early computers did have many lights, often signifying bits in various registers and program counters. They also had toggle switches (like the much missed computer in the old Columbia Science Museum) for setting all those bits.
The illuminated front panels of early computers loomed large enough in techie culture that you often found variations of the following sign posted in a computer room:
and the portmanteau word blinkenlights permanently entered the hacker lexicon.
So people were interested, a bit awed and a bit scared by the idea of computers, and had only a very general idea of what they could do and how they looked. Thus: The TELEVAC 86000.
This amiable faux computer has been making the rounds for as long as I can remember, which is to say, at least since 1965 or so, and probably prior to that. Every year, it would set up shop in the Steel Building or the Ruff Building and dazzle the passers by. How could you possibly doubt a handwriting analysis from the TELEVAC 86000? IT'S A COMPUTER! IT'S SCIENCE! IT HAS BLINKING LIGHTS!
While we never did spring for the analysis when my parents took us to the fair back in the day, I have the feeling that at the time, this wonder of technology dispensed pre-printed cards dissecting your penmanship -- certainly there were no portable printers available for such a travelling roadshow.
As the years went on, the TELEVAC did add a printer, and astrological predictions as well as handwriting analysis, but the basic blinkenlights front panel stayed fundamentally unaltered, even through the name change to the less antique sounding CENTAURI-68000.
By the time I actually dropped $3.00 in 2012, the whole concept was not too credible. Whereas in 1965, nobody had seen a computer, much less had a computer, and the blinkenlights represented (to this 5 year old anyway) the apex of science, by 2012 most everybody (including lots of the 5 year olds) had a computer, and everybody knew what one looked like.
Sad to say, the TELEVAC / CENTAURI did not make an appearance at the 2013 State Fair, and I'm afraid it is the end of an era.
Fire, Front Street Georgetown: 25 September 2013 2 comments
This is about the only good news to come out of Georgetown in the last few days.
I have been in a number of these businesses, and they are right in the heart of the downtown boardwalk.
The State has the initial story and several followups, including the Governor's visit.
SEAYCRAFT Boats / Diamond's Liquor Store, 3132 Two Notch: 1950s / Late 2010s no comments
Facebook is a weird animal. I get a lot of hits from there, but unlike a normal website, I can't check to see what people are saying when they link here becuase you have to be a facebook member to access almost anything. Likewise there's a lot of content on Facebook that's probably interesting to ColumbiaClosings readers, but in general it is not accessible outside of Facebook and never gets indexed by google. The exception is that for some reason or another, content often leaks out of foreign language Facebook subsidiaries.
A case in point is this posting which leaked through the Korean site:
Pat Seay Garvin다음 장소에 게시Georgetown Wooden Boat Show (Georgetown, SC)
2010년 10월 10일 오후 2:22 ·Looking for any old SEAYCRAFT wooden boats made at 3132 Two Notch Rd. in Columbia, SC in the 50's. My uncle Tom Seay owned a boat shop and made several models of wooden powerboats. My father worked for him when I was little, and I remember those boats well. Would love to see an original still alive.
It's an unlikely little storefront for a boatwright, but I suppose they may have had the whole building at the time, and probably a back lot.
Long after that, during the era when the other part of the building was Mr. B's, 3132 was
Diamond's Liquor Store.
UPDATE 9 March 2020 -- Now, very colorfully, Sam's Tobacco & Vape:
