35: If the World Needed an Enema...

It's rare that I find a town so deserving of the description 'no redeeming qualities', but Andrews, South Carolina, fits the bill. Looking back, Grants seems like a paradise of dining and entertainment opportunities by comparison.

There's only a single motel half a mile from the centre of town, but I doubt that there's a need for any more. There's no reason except unfortunate accident that would bring visitors to Andrews and I seriously doubt that anyone, having suffered the experience once, would voluntarily repeat the circumstance.

Considering all the aspects of services and fittings that could so easily have been missing given their monopoly on accommodation, this one was almost perfect - even to the degree of having cable TV. It's like an invisible hand had plucked a perfect country motel from somewhere and zapped it straight into Hicktown. Maybe the owners had been bad in a previous life and this was their punishment.

The two main roads, which formed the centre of town where they crossed, possessed an equal number of establishments currently not open for business and ex-business that had not possessed even that status for many years, if the crawling ivy and overgrowth of weeds covering their windows was any indication.

After traversing both roads for half a mile in either direction, the only actual restaurant I could find not covered in several years' worth of ivy and weeds, fell into the category of not open for business. No sign in the window suggested when this might change, so I suppose it's possible that in a few weeks it too may be sprouting vegetation.

Had I wanted to wash laundry, buy automobile parts, clean my truck or attend church -which, if the plethora of religious buildings and billboards was anything to go by, the locals did with great frequency - there were multiple opportunities to do so, but to sit and eat, there was only McDonald's and a miniature Subway occupying space at the back of a gas station, which eventually took my business.

To take up time, I sat in a corner booth in McDonald's to watch the people of various levels of intelligence interact with the staff, all of whom appeared, if their trousers size was any indication, to have been on a McDonald's diet for some time. After an hour I had to go; there's only so much fun I can stand without bursting.

At the far end of town, near the Food Lion grocery shop where I used up another thirty minutes of wasted life perusing the shelves, a third road shot into no man's land. No signs showed where it might go, none faced the other way to advise incoming traffic where they were unfortunate enough to have arrived and nothing controlled the priority of either road. Given that American drivers all think they have priority all the time, the resulting confusion - usually won out by over-sized trucks alternately muscling forward and screeched to a halt two inches later - proved most entertaining.

I could imagine that this would be the Sunday draw for the locals, who might flock to the Y-junction with their decks chairs and a few coolers of Piss-Lite to spend an enjoyable afternoon.

After they've got out of church, of course.