Saturday, May 21, 2011

First Federal




For the past couple hours or so I have been thinking about a memory I have of working in South Carolina and that I do not think is a real memory but is a symbolic memory.

I had been called out to repair a malfunctioning ATM that the was in operation by a bank that the company I worked for had a service contract with and my title was Field Engineer.

I got the bank branch, which I can still find on the map, before for the bank employees got there to unlock the branch building doors to let me in and because they were there to take charge of the cash that was in the malfunctioning machine that I was there to repair.

I can still recall sitting out there in the parking lot and as people sometimes drove up to try to use the cash machine and I was sitting there in my car waiting for the bank employees to show up and I can recall hearing a woman in the passengers seat of the car of a bank customer leaving after trying to use the cash machine and she said "He's just sitting there." as they drove past me and out of the parking lot.

That bank branch was on a street named Wade Hampton and that is close to Greenville South Carolina. I looked it up and that street, as well as some other places, is named for Wade Hampton III, who was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. He was also a governor of South Carolina and a United States Senator.

That Wikipedia article goes on to mention his boyhood home was named Millwood and was in Columbia South Carolina but was burned during the war and probably by General Sherman. The ruins were put on the list of historic places in the United States and as best I can tell is that it is located very near the main entrance to the Fort Jackson military base in Columbia South Carolina.

One reason I thought more about all that is because I remember Millwood Lake that is near Ashdown Arkansas. We never did go there very often when I lived near Ashdown and I don't think I even went swimming in that lake until one time I was back there on leave from the United States Navy. My favorite memories of swimming in Arkansas lakes were Lake De Queen and Greeson Lake, with the latter being my favorite but that always seemed to be a long drive.

So anyway, I have found no reference to precisely where Susan Smith was reported to have been carjacked but studying Google Street maps, the best I can tell is the only street light on Highway 49 in Monarch Mill South Carolina is the one next to the Monarch Mill building. The map indicates that is the intersection of Lockhart Avenue-Highway 49 and Monarch Avenue.