A southern town Cheraw

---

I have always considered myself a southern belle. When people make the quizzical comment you are from the south? Or I would never have known or you don’t have an accent I get kind of offended. I love the South. I am very southern. I grew up on a large piece of property where we had a garden and a big house. I have lots of brothers and sisters. I eat fried chicken and say y’all on occasion. There are so many stereotypes that emerge about growing up in a southern state that come from watching to many movies such as Gone with the Wind or Sweet Home Alabama. The charm of growing up southern is the myriad of small towns that make up the southern mystic. I discovered this fact while on one of my favorite drives to Cheraw South Carolina. Cheraw is a small town full of history where probably nothing happens but the ordinary lives of the people living there.

Hwy one is the greatest drive. I especially like it in the fall as the leaves are changing it might not be as grand as the Blue Ridge parkway but its beautiful. It’s a straight lonely road that passes through Bethune, Society Hill, and Pineville. If you sneeze will miss the towns. I love driving through all the tiny towns where all that is advertised is the pine straw festival and deer corn. People should visit small towns more often they have a hidden culture that rewarding when you stop to see it.



Cheraw



Cheraw sits and the head of Pee Dee making it bustling city when first established. Before the civil war both the largest cotton market between Georgetown and Wilmington and the largest bank in South Carolina outside of Charleston were located here. During the Civil war Sherman camped there but did not burn it leaving many of the historic building still standing. The city lost its prominence as cotton became less of a king and the bigger cities of Charleston and Columbia emerged as banking and other commercial hotspots.

Cheraw has a very popular jazz festival, which I have put on my calendar to attend. Cheraw was home to Dizzy Gillespie who was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody n' You", "Salt Peanuts", and "A Night in Tunisia" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the Swing music popular at the time. Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award , the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader and in 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.

---

Comments

[Grandmama]

to a southern belle
Trisha, I like your detailed observations. Now I have to find those towns on the map! Grandmama