Good bye house!!Connie, Betsy and I took off from North Augusta about ten last Thursday for a tour of all the small "ridge" towns between Augusta and Columbia...well it felt like all of them:> THe ridge is an area of various prosperous peach farms...lots of peach stands and huge old houses....there is alot of money in that ball of gold:>
At our friend Rachels insistence we went to Johnston to JUNKERS PARADISE aka FLEA MARKET HEAVEN
This incredible store full of estate sale leftovers run by Bill Engels...its right on the main drag of Johnston...full of well anything that might be in a house...Right now he is getting FOUR tractor trailer loads of estate sale stuff every week...piles it on the sidewalks...new old - prices were great and they were 50% off...i got an old cane back rocker for $20 and some old suitcases, $2 for a 1950s polaroid camera, $3 for a new lamp...well a new old lamp? Had to buy a new shade but the price was right and it came with a three way lightbulb that WORKED!!
I made Connie Buy this bed because it will be perfect in her turn of the century Queen Anne style house
....after much sweating and digging thru Bills three or four stores full till the gills with great old furniture and a huge warehouse...we went to eat down the street at a buffet style restaurant...the food was awesome...fresh corn and tomatoes, squash cooked to perfection...and the best fried chicken strips...and we drank ALOT of tea and ice water ....THen we were on down the highway to Ward home of our lovely friend Rachel Watson and on to Ridgeville where we visited with Mr. BF Johnson in his country store....a font of trivia...Did you know that the water on one side of the road thru ridgeville drains to the edisto river and on the other side it drains into Lake Murray...I mean WHO KNEW?:> His old store was full of daily necessities like Bubble Yum and antique zippers and all kinds of old sewing notions...I had been looking for a watering can but the cheapest i could find one here was for $10...he had one for $3.98 SOLD:>
This old store was very intriguing...but not open...darn it...
An old Victorian falling to ruin in Ridgeville...so sad to see these old houses in this condition...this one is still saveable...After taking several pictures of Ridgeville we were off to Saluda via Batesburg...dont ask...we dont know how we got there...
THis house in Saluda was all decorated up for the fourth of july....
I dont know what this building used to be but now its a Gym...pretty place for a gym isnt it?
when we got to we called Rachel at work to see if there were any neat places to see in Saluda and she gave us a commission to see how much a birdhouse would cost in one of the stores downtown...it was the neatest store...using antiques to display all kinds of neat little hmmm well my son would call them junk (aka mom put that in the garage sale!! what do you need it for???:>) but you know we all LOVE our stuff...After checking the prices on the birdhouses...$89! OUCH Betsy said we needed to go back to Bills for a fixer upper...we told Rachel she was going to have to take out a mortgage for that birdhouse!:>
The place was jam packed with birdhouses....
This is the cadillac model!
She used alot of doors as backdrops for displays...
This is ladder of an old ladder back chair painted and screwed to the wall for a towel rack..we really wanted to go back to bills and get a chair to do this with...there was a small childs chair there that would have been perfect...
The second store was across the street...full of primitives ...but had some great dolls...did i say we LOVE dolls:> it was just jam packed full of stuff ....the dolls were mostly primitive but very whimsical too...very simple faces....using old fabrics or new old fabrics, and pieces of wood for wings...like scroll work and gingerbread trims...
SOme of the houses in Trenton. alot of Victorians..Connie wants to draw them...so i had to take pictures...
Alot of the houses had these tiny little houses next to them...does anyone know what they were for??? Connie said maybe its where they kept the dead till they were buried??
The churches of Trenton...for a small small hmm town??? it has alot of lovely churches...
and of course the baptist church is the biggest...no surprise there?!:>
The Baptist cemetary...
6 comments:
I wish I had been a mouse in your pocket for this trip - it looks like so much fun. And I can see I would have come back with a car stuffed full of , well, STUFF!
So, how much DID you come home with? :D Looks like a very fun trip, packed with interesting, quirky places.
Thanks for the comment today. I enjoyed reading your profile and I majored in "Home Economics" back when. Later, my husband at the time, 6'8", had trouble finding "fashionable" clothes. In the 70's I made polyester leisure suits and flowered polyester shirts. Oh, my, they are in some landfill somewhere not deteriorating yet! Now I've given up the sewing arts for the painting arts, yet I have all the supplies from both..sequins and watercolor, spools of thread and sable brushes. ns
Oh my gosh... It looks like a step back in time... What a great time you must have had... Some of the houses had little houses by them? Maybe they were rich people and that was the playhouse for the children?
In any event, thanks so much for sharing your experience...
Karin
This was fun to see, since I am familiar with these areas. Have family in Saluda, Edgefield, Trentonm Johnston. A lot of those stores made me feel I'd walked into my stepg'mom's house. She has fussy stuff EVERYWHERE, but has been going to Europe once a year, so most of her "country" look has been replaced with truly - well I can't deny it's pretty, but there's just TOO much. Our family has been "in" the peach business forever, it seems, money, but hard work.
Oh and I used to live in Abbeville in a house very like that one. Miss it sometimes, the porches and big octagon shaped rooms.
Thanks for sharing these!
~Ashleigh
What a trip! Oh, to have gone with you. YOur friend and I would be drawing those old Victorians together. I've always wanted a big Victorian. I need to drive south a visit your state.
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