Diary from a Small Town by Bridget Huckabee

Badin 2010

Introduction: Having a Good Think

After supper yesterday I made a round of the garden. The roses are in full bloom and the lavender will soon follow. The little maple I planted in the front garden is growing fast. As a gardener I assume longevity so although I’m in my seventies I refuse to consider that I may not live to see it mature.

Back in the house I poured a glass of red wine, and picked up my diary intending to browse through some of the entries. On the screened porch it was still warm, but the heat of the day was gone. I lit candles in the hurricane lamps and settled in the old wicker rocker. The cats stretched out on the cool tiled floor, ears alert to every mysterious stirring in the garden.

A feeling of tranquility enveloped me as I took in the familiar sights and sounds around me. In the trees along Boyden Street, sparrows were preparing for the night, squabbling over territorial rights. The homeward bound traffic had slowed, a few golfers drove their silent carts up the hill to the clubhouse, and a group of village boys who had been playing basketball in the schoolyard gathered their shirts and wandered off into the lanes and alleys across the way. 

I opened the diary, but it was too dark to read so I let the book rest in my lap. Moving gently in the rocker, I found myself as my mother would have said, having a good think. Sixteen years ago, after I lost everything and came, unwillingly, to live in Badin, I never dreamed that the town and its people would become dear to me. The row houses in the village are still a mix of slum and quaintness as they were when I moved here in the spring of 1994. My row house, the end unit of four, is a little shabbier, the carpet faded, the couch rump-sprung, and here on the porch the rocker creaks as loudly as my bones. But I am at home.

I closed the book and placed it on the wicker table. I had kept this diary for many years before I moved here, nothing regular, just random entries when the spirit moved. I took up the habit again when I came to Badin, but this time there was a difference. The entries from these last years tell the story of a personal journey that became irrevocably interwoven with the story of a small town.

February 1994

I did not chose to live in Badin. I came here because it had the cheapest property in Stanly County, and I had just enough money to buy and make habitable the run-down two-story end unit in a row of four in this predominantly working-class village.

My new home is known locally as an apartment although in more up-scale communities it would be called a townhouse. When I first looked at 28 Kirk Place I only saw one thing that appealed to me: the view from the front windows. The unit is on the edge of town and faces the rolling hills and woods of the local golf course. Beyond stretches Valley Drive, one of the prettiest scenic routes in the county.

The next-door neighbor had bought the unit to fix up, but little had been done. Downstairs there were three electric baseboard heaters, one of which worked. Upstairs was unheated and, of course, there was no air-conditioning.

I met the former owner, Mr. Jeffery, and asked how he managed in the winter months.

“Used to get right cold,” he said.          

There were three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, but the third bedroom led off the second one and appeared, when I checked the outside, to be located over my neighbor’s dining room. Apparently a previous owner, needing space, had bought this room from next-door. In negotiating for the house, I got a lower price by selling it back to my neighbor.

“Mother will be glad to get her bedroom back,” he said.

September 1994

The First Annual Best of Badin Festival was planned for the third Saturday in September. I was asked to help with the art show. Since my job was Cultural Director at Pfeiffer College and I had a craft business, I was assumed to be an expert on art. I wasn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter.

            The idea for a festival had started early that year when Bill Speight and David Summerlin, two Alcoa retirees, had gone to town manager John Yates and said, “We need to promote this town to outsiders. Let’s put on a festival.”

            The week before the big event, banners were hung above the streets. The day before, stage and bleachers were set up. In the evening, vendors arrived and set their booths in place. There was an air of great expectation throughout the community.

            Sometime in the early morning hours of the big day it started to rain. By daylight it was a hard steady downpour. By noon the vendors packed up and left. The few rides never opened. A handful of soggy visitors crowded into the town hall conference room ostensibly to look at the art, but in fact to get out of the rain. A few more, trailing raincoats and dripping umbrellas, crowded into the Masonic Lodge to look at David Summerlin’s display of Badin and Stanly County memorabilia. Everyone else went home.

            David, in remarkably good spirits, said, “We’ll try it again next year.”

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