Bacon Ridge

November 23, 2020

The week of waiting began with the biopsy: the drive in predawn darkness to the hospital on the far side of town, the hike down long corridors to radiology, the usual prep work. The doc looked into the holding pen—what I call it—introduced himself, and ducked out. Then 30 minutes of sedation, an hour of recovery, and out of there, a bandage on the small hole in my chest. Seemed like old times.

We weren’t happy, mid-week, to see a local news report that Greenville County leads the state in new covid cases. Everywhere, businesses have posted signs either requiring or requesting people wear masks. And everywhere they stroll in without them. That’s one notion of personal freedom: put others at risk. But I recall it took a while for the mask habit to catch on in Virginia. So things take longer to sink in down here.

That’s unfair, maybe. But there it is. We’re finding that “upstate” South Carolina has its quirks. Our daughter Marie, always alert for new adventures in nature, last Saturday led us with the grandkids to the Pacolate Nature Preserve, a quiet stretch of woods somewhere between the east outskirts of Spartanburg and the swollen, sullen Pacolet River. The trail wound maybe a mile to the steep riverbank then ended abruptly. The brown rapids thundered by feet from the slippery, mud-coated trail. Although it was Saturday, we saw not another soul. Scratch that—in some underbrush I spotted a rusted iron cross engraved: “Jesse Gates, August 22, 1973-July 18, 2018.” A memorial, or a grave? So no hikers, but maybe one soul. Why was it there? I thought of James Dickey’s “Deliverance.” Except the river in the 1972 film looked cleaner.

Anyway, back in Greenville we’re staying positive. We drove the six miles from our apartment, rented for six months, over to Paris Mountain State Park, a pretty place crisscrossed with hiking trails, and bought the state park pass, half price for seniors. Although the next morning was cold, I went back and ran a few miles, trying to preserve the ritual I followed for many years, when we lived midway between Prince William and Fountainhead parks. Those trails became second nature. Here, I’m a newbie. The chill seemed sharper, more penetrating here than I recall in Virginia. But then I’m another winter older.

We’ve walked the attractive, upbeat downtown, set off beautifully by tall elms and maples, sidling away from the unmasked crowds, and driven around nearby neighborhoods, gawking at homes for sale. The hard core still show their Trump signs and banners, although definitely fewer than last week. Meanwhile, the pandemic hammers the state. The appointed Trump-to-the-bone governor, McMaster, pitches the “personal responsibility” mantra, scrounging for the redneck vote, I guess. Plenty of ‘em around here, even in church, maybe especially in church. 

These three Sundays we’ve been to St. Mary’s, the traditional parish downtown. Mass is in the church and an auditorium, where the chairs are well-spaced, almost everyone wears masks. But with covid still spreading, we’ll watch the live-stream at home.

With the “immune-suppressed” millstone around our necks, we’ve holed up in the apartment the past few days. I moved into our first house in April 1978, we got married in August. So the strictures of apartment living: paying rent, calling a maintenance guy, watching our noise, all are new. The place is wedged at the intersection of two four-lane thoroughfares. We got lucky, though, our cubbyhole is buffered from traffic noise by thick woods. We’ve squeezed the contents of a five-bedroom house into this two-bedroom apartment by using the second bedroom as our storage unit. The spare furniture and the rest of the stuff we couldn’t part with are stacked in boxes, nearly ceiling-high. Sometimes we open the door and peek in, wondering where it all came from.

So we’ve been three weeks here at Beacon Ridge apartments, a unit of PRG Real Estate, which is headquartered in Miami. (Why do I keep calling it “Bacon Ridge? My younger grandson likes it.) It’s really not all that cozy, the electric heat is less efficient and more expensive than gas, which we enjoyed all those years in Woodbridge. I like not having to have to walk the length of the house to find a tool or a book. The tools and books I kept are buried in the box room.

We appreciate the pluses. We hear no next-door neighbors partying and yelling at their kids, no teenagers drag-racing up the street. We don’t miss the lines of parked cars of renters crowding the street or the odd collections of furniture and yard tools accumulating on neighbors’ porches.

Yet I miss knowing every inch of our old home. We miss the little Salvadoran girls who lived next door running over and yelling “hi!” and the crowd of kids, who moved in recently, biking and skateboarding up and down the block. They were giving the neighborhood some life, the way we did when we moved in with our kids all those years ago.

Here at Beacon Ridge we seldom see anyone. I’ve spotted a few people hurrying to their cars, heading to work, I guess. Occasionally, someone is out getting his or her ration of fresh air. Plenty of parking spaces are vacant; the institution—er, complex—may not be fully rented. Most of the time the place is silent. The maintenance guy, Josh, scoots around in his golf cart. The first week we were here the manager, her face fully masked, ran out to shoo my grandsons away from the pool area. With good reason, I’m sure.

We’re in an apartment complex ghetto, bounded by Haywood Pointe Apartments to the north (I wonder why the “e?”) and Caledon Court Apartments to the west; close to the interstate and downtown, and close to the kids out in the burbs. We’re ten minutes from the Cancer Center. We’re in a practical place, where we need to be. We’ve got a wood-burning fireplace, but no frills, you can tell from the beige walls and carpet. Everything works, except the refrigerator, which seems to freeze everything. Josh has been by to look at it. We’ll call him again. We’ve got six months.