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My hometown’s downtown looks a little like it did when I was a kid.
The basic structure is there. The corner clothing store remains, but the clothes are more avant-garde.
I have a dress cut down to there from this store (nod to Barry Manilow).
The old Belk’s, a three-story deal with polished hardwoods, is now an event center. The old post office – original brass boxes and marble floors still there – is an arts center. The municipal parking lot is now a strollable park with a bandstand and skating rink.
The McCrory’s dime store, where the Friendship Nine sat and refused to move from the lunch counter – it’s partially there. It’s now a restaurant featuring the counter’s red-seated swivel chairs, each man’s name engraved on a plaque.
Farther out, the Greyhound bus station, where a young John Lewis was beaten in 1961, sits, dilapidated, the racist brutality forgotten by most.
The woods where my friend Bryan was murdered are now home to a Presbyterian church.
A special kind of crime develops here. Like the bank robber who got away on a bike.
My mom-in-law said that when her high school played Rock Hill, they knew they were going to have to fight their way to the bus if they won, because in 1950, fighting after a losing game was what we did on the Hill.
This place calls with autumn echoes of a marching band and the crunch of helmet collisions. Known as Football City, USA, it produces more NFL players than any other town in the country. One of those players came back in 2021 and shot and killed six people, including himself. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, from all his years playing this dangerous contact sport.
I love this imperfect town. Love this town, because of its beauty, because of its crazy and despite its vomit-inducing horrors. The way God loves me. Nothing can stop that.
Just like God will – and does – for us.
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