I GOT LOST IN CHAPIN!

I had a couple of errands to run in the Harbison-St. Andrews area today, and the quickest way to get there is to use the Interstate.

Except it’s been a few months since I’ve had to use the Chapin Exit area to get on and off the Interstate, and the highway department moved the east-bound entrance ramp. That required making a circle through some back roads to get back on the main drag and to the correct entrance ramp.

Maybe I should be going to the Interstate via Little Mountain. . . .

Anyway, that got me to thinking about this small town where I grew up. The streets weren’t named with official street names, unless you count such monikers as the Old Lexington Highway, Highway 76, Road 48, etc., as street names. Those roads don’t have those titles anymore–Columbia Avenue, Broad River Road, Hilton Road. . . . Fancy.

There are other changes as well. Chapin High School has expanded from two main buildings to at least three now. From a one-A school in the 1970’s, it is now a AAAA school (and maybe growing); from the district’s “red-headed step child” to one of the flagship schools. Joe Chapman’s service station has been a garden/seed store, a fancy fastfood restaurant, and now a Chinese take-out restaurant. S &S gas station has been torn down for years. That’s where I could fill up my granddaddy’s light blue Mercury Montego, get the oil checked, windshield washed, and tires checked without getting out of the car. Oh, I filled up the tank with a five dollar bill and got back change! The S & S moved down the road a piece, but now, it, too, is closed.

The Red and White grocery store is no more. First, Winn Dixie, then BiLo replaced it–and moved a couple of times. Food Lion moved in, and so did Publix.

I remember when the 7/11 opened across the road from the old Chapin School. On piano lesson days, I would drive that Montego to get a cherry-cola Icee. After a robbery and murder, it closed, but in a few years, it became the Chapin Station (family restaurant) and now Zorba’s. Downtown Chapin has changed as well. The dime store has closed, and Judy Jarrett has her ArtCan studio there. The cloth shop is gone, so is the general store. The old Ellet Brothers building is home to a bar and several other shops.

And there are two traffice lights, one replacing the flashing yellow light at the intersection where Joe Chapman had his gas station.

It’s no wonder that I got lost this morning. My home town has changed so much in the last fifty years. I suppose it’s inevitable that change happens, but I miss the old Chapin where there were no traffic jams, no traffic lights; where there were full-service gas stations and people you grew up with (and who could tell you your family history and somehow claim kin with some five or six generations ago). The hometown feeling is not there as it once was.

Yet, I can drive two or three miles away to get into “the country”–acres of land covered in trees, though not planted for hay or corn like it used to be. The pastures that once held small herds of cows are grown up. So even though the town itself is changing, the area around it remains the same. I hope it stays that way.