More Southern Travel Observations

  I had never seen a cotton field before my first journey south a couple years ago, and was surprised to see the hay like bales scattered over the landscape. Cotton is still big business, as is lumber, and pine trees are clear cut by the millions, then replanted like corn. The south has thousands of abandoned, rotting buildings, including old gas stations, houses, stores, motels and other structures. In one town I counted six  abandoned motels in various stages of decay, and can only speculate that whatever economic boom had led to their construction no longer existed. I do not know why so many buildings are left to rot, but possibly the relative poverty of the south means that people simply abandon them when life gets tough and either lack of insurance or lack of new buyers means they sit empty for decades. Another very common feature in the south is churches; there are thousands of them, from small school house type buildings to million dollar mega churches. Regardless of the economy, religion is important in the south so the churches always seem to have priority; the photo illustrates a typical middle of the road congregation. Finally, a peculiar driving habit of southerners- four out of ten of them anyway-is a hesitancy to pass slower vehicles. As I drove the van along two lane roads, which are often straight and flat for miles, sometimes I would either be at the posted speed limit or as much as 10mph below it, and a car would approach rapidly from behind-obviously traveling ten to twenty mph faster than me. That car would pull in and tailgate one or two lengths behind, then stay there for miles-despite many opportunities of  open road to pass. There seems to be a hesitancy-an intimidation maybe-for some drivers to pass, and they would rather drive much slower than make the effort.