“We also have a twice-a-month farmer’s market on Main Street.”
By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist
I enjoyed reading Seth Taylor’s July 29th article “South Carolina is booming, but the Pee Dee is shrinking” which reports on data from the S.C. Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office. The office estimates that the number of people living in the Pee Dee could shrink by 17 percent by 2042. The most provocative projection is that some counties could lose nearly a third of their populations.
I read with some concern, since I’ve lived in Marion since 1993. My wife and I raised our children here, and we expect to live the rest of our lives here. However, although I’m not a demographer, I have reason for optimism.
First, as Taylor reminds us later in the article, “It’s difficult to make projections for next year, let alone the next 20.” Second, I have anecdotal evidence that there are countertrends at work that may well cause the Pee Dee to grow.
As I mentioned in one of my recent columns, my neighborhood, which had been almost completely white since its development decades ago, has seen a welcome addition of black families in the last five years. Our society’s evolution toward equality may make a tangible economic difference for rural counties. Blacks (who make up 56% of Marion County’s population) can now live wherever they want in the Pee Dee with no expectation of hostility. The era of redlining and white flight are over. There is no reason to migrate to Atlanta or Detroit to feel welcomed and respected.
Taylor quotes Joette Dukes, the executive director of the Pee Dee Council of Governments, who describes the “defeatism” and “apathy” that can occur when rural areas lose population. Per Dukes bio, she has over 30 years’ experience with PDCOG, so she knows of what she speaks. She laments the lack of jobs which force some young people to move even if they would prefer to stay. But she makes one claim with which I disagree. Taylor quotes her as saying that some young people are leaving the rural Pee Dee to look for “a home they can actually afford.”
I think that, in reality, housing prices are a big draw for rural S.C. counties. When I encounter folks looking to buy a home in Marion, my standard response is, “Buy on Wednesday – It’s BOGO for homes in Marion County on Wednesdays.”
My three closest new neighbors are transplants from out of state (two of three from the Northeast) who had no connection to Marion but moved here in part because of the low cost of housing and lower property taxes. I have another new friend who moved from Iowa. He is a digital manager who can work from anywhere and moved to Marion after seeing an affordable home on the web.
My intuition is that we will see more of these types of newcomers in the future: retirees from the North who are tired of the cold and the traffic; and younger, digital workers who are drawn to the natural beauty and amicability that small towns afford.
In addition, our proximity to Myrtle Beach will inevitably result in some spillover. Both of my northern neighbors started their home searches at the beach but concluded it was too crowded and expensive.
Schools are a top consideration for native parents deciding to stay or transplants weighing whether to relocate here. It is true that rural Pee Dee schools don’t look great on paper. But both of my children went to Marion’s public schools from kindergarten through high school and received a solid education. They both attended college on academic scholarship and are both physicians. Since America’s public school covenant is that every child deserves an education, schools in poor areas encounter many students that don’t enter school ready to learn and don’t have enough parental support. Those students are reflected in schools’ data averages. But in every public school there is a cadre of students who are prepared and motivated and teachers who know how to teach them.
My children also benefitted from attending rural public school in some unexpected ways. For example, although they were handicapped by my genes (short and slow), they were both able to play varsity soccer as starters all four years of high school, which would not have been possible at a larger, urban school.
Taylor’s article serves as a warning worth heeding. His opening descriptions “Boarded-up buildings on Main Street… fewer people in the pews on Sunday” are realities. But after the devastating twin losses of tobacco and textiles in the ’90s and ’00s, Marion has rebounded. Main Street will never look the way it did in the ’50s with a department store, a furniture store, a Western Auto, and a movie theatre. But several businesses have opened over the past few years in previously empty storefronts, including a marvelous coffee shop called the Groundout, owned by a beloved local family. We also have a twice-a-month farmer’s market on Main Street. It happens in a space left by a restaurant that burned. The creation of a public green space called the Marion Commons in response to that devastating fire is symbolic of how small towns can revive themselves.
Call me in 2042. I’m hoping to still be living in a thriving, growing Marion.
A version of this column appeared in the September 18th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.
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Well, this one strikes close to home. Or at least, close to home for about half my family tree over the last couple of centuries. All of my mother’s predecessors in the last, oh, six generations had lived in Marion County.
Both of her parents (and probably half the white folks in the county) were descended from a man named John “Cut-Face” Brown. (Yep, they were third cousins once removed — which is not all that close for folks in rural areas back in the day.) As you might guess, I worked that name into the comment just so I could share the nickname. I have no idea how he got that. Probably a scar from some boring cause, but I like to imagine it’s in connection with being a rip-roaring, hard-fighting frontiersman along the lines of Mike Fink or Jim Bowie or such.
Cut-Face was born in Columbus County, North Carolina, in 1760. I don’t know when he migrated to what would become Marion County, but he died there in 1804. He was descended from a man named John A. Browne, who was born in 1647 in Ingatestone, England, and died in Isle of Wight, Virginia. A number of lines on my tree follow that path — England, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina.
Anyway, Cut-Face (last time I’ll say it, promise) was my great-great-great-great grandfather. Or rather, one of the many holding that title on my tree.
So I’m gonna go ahead and claim seniority over you there, as a Marion Countian. Or whatever we call ourselves.
I never lived there, though, so you’ve got me beat on that. I passed through it a lot, having a lot of kin in the vicinity. And when I was growing up, we NEVER went to the beach from Bennettsville without stopping at my great-grandmother’s house for lunch. Or as I suppose we called it, dinner. My uncle who still lives in my grandparents’ house in Bennettsville says he was in college, and traveling with friends instead of family, before he learned that it was possible to get to the Grand Strand in less than four hours.
I should probably wrap up, but since you mention Main Street businesses, I’ll share a colorized photo of my great-grandfather and associates posing in front of his funeral home, which had once been a furniture store. (In the family, it was generally referred to as “the store.”)
I may have shared this before. Anyway, “Papa Pace” is the tall, mustachioed man standing on the curb and holding his hat in his right hand.
I was going to continue with a long discourse on the decline of small towns in the Pee Dee and elsewhere in South Carolina, with notable exceptions — Darla Moore has done some wonderful things for her hometown Lake City in recent years — but I’m trying to learn to rein myself in these days, and not ramble on so…
But I think I will write a subsequent post on a small treasure I found on YouTube a year or so ago — a movie short shot in Bennettsville right after the war (WWII, that is) and probably shown in theaters all across this part of the country.
It’s something this one production company did in small towns all over the country during that period. Fairly lengthy for a “short,” it’s very much in a Chamber of Commerce vein, showcasing businesses in town. Lots and lots of businesses that don’t exist today. My mother saw quite a few people she knew, including her next-door neighbor, and her own big brother, running through lay-up drills as a member of the school basketball team.
Coming soon to a screen near you…
Marion … a microcosm of the global trend:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/age-depopulation-surviving-world-gone-gray-nicholas-eberstadt?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=Israel%E2%80%99s%20Paradox%20of%20Defeat&utm_content=20241011&utm_term=EWZZZ003ZX
According to SC department of education school report cards, despite spending $1500 more per student in 2023 than Lexington one, these are the results of state testing:
SC Ready English Language Arts and Mathematics
English Language Arts (Reading and Writing) – Percent Met or Exceeding
Lexington County School District One58.8% (7308 / 12433)
58.8%
Details
Marion County School District26.9% (438 / 1630)
26.9%
Details
Mathematics – Percent Met or Exceeding
Lexington County School District One46.2% (5747 / 12433)
46.2%
Marion County School District12.8% (209 / 1630)
12.7%
Those are abysmal results and any parent who would choose to save money on housing to put their kids into that failing district is penny wise and pound foolish.
7/8 students are not academically prepared in math. No, spending more money won’t fix it. There’s no evidence that it helps