Library on the Hill

Recently I was assigned to drive this van that was driven for a long time by one of the lady drivers. Needless to say, she "marked" her territory. Well, I screwed up big time last Wednesday when at the end of the day I gassed this van up with regular gas and this van is a diesel vehicle. They had to tow it in to the shop to have it drained. I had been driving a regular gas van for almost a year and I just was not thinking when I pulled up to a regular gas pump. Needless to say, it is going to take a long time to live this one down. The company has been real nice about it and I am still hired.

Another shot of downtown Broad Street taken last Wednesday when it was drizzling all day. Augusta is parched from a long drought and this day was a relief even if only for a day. I am on my way to pick up a client at the newspaper building.

Here is a shot of the fall line (wall of the bowl we live in) and this street is seen going up the wall and it curves out of sight to keep going to the top. We now live just off this street where it starts to climb.

At the top of the hill on the street mentioned above is this impressive building which is a public library.

A picture taken looking across the porch.

This shot and the following pictures were taken inside this library. A real trip to go into this historic building and at the same time be in a library.

You can have a seat in an old rocking chair by the fireplace.

The back of this library is where they have concerts and the back yard is where you bring your chair and enjoy an evening of music and live performances outdoors.

Cats and A Basket

Took this picture this morning when the cats were having their breakfast. If you think this is a lot of cats, well, these are only half the gang!


The bottom of this laundry basket was my worst senior moment. When we moved to our new location, the washing machine was working but not the dryer due to a faulty recepticle. In the meantime, Linda had washed a basket full of clothes and I was going to have them dried at the laundrymat. Linda made it very clear to me that when I put the wet clothes in the dryer, to be sure that nobody see her panties. I told her nobody looks when clothes are being put in the dryers. She insisted please, please, please make sure her panties are not seen. So I took this basket full of wet clothes out to the driveway, sat the basket down behind the van, reached in my pocket to get the key to unlock the back door, found I did not have the key, went back in the house, got the key, got distracted for a few moments and finally went out and got in the van. Backed up into the street, drove down to the next intersection, turned onto the street that heads to the laundrymat, after a few blocks, looked in my rear view mirror and saw a car stopped in the street right behind me with a basket out in front of his car tipped over with clothes spilt out. I stopped, went around to check my back door and saw that it was shut, knew then it was not my basket, went over to the man who was picking up the wet clothes and putting them back in the basket and said to him, is that your basket because I have one just like it in my van. He looked at me and said no that is my basket because it was stuck under the back bumper and he said he tried to get me to stop by blowing his horn for blocks. Needless to say, I was shocked when it dawned on me what really happened. I did not know how I was going to tell Linda that not only were her panties scattered for half of Augusta to see but a man actually handled her panties! When I did tell her, she sort of gave up and said that she was not going to take care of me if I got any worse than that.

A Dozen Pictures

This morning Linda and I went to the General Dollar and Fred's Dollar stores and I took pictures while she drove. We are now living at the foot of the fall line and this picture shows the drive up the side of the fall line into the very rich area of homes. Very beautiful in this area.

Here is one of the houses on the top of the hill, the largest one I have seen thus far.

This is always one of my favorite cross over showing downtown Augusta. Today was overcast, not cool, not warm.

This afternoon, I dropped off a client who lives next door to this old church building. Needless to say, I love to see buildings like this one from the past. Look in the lower left corner and you will see the cemetery which had only three graves.

I thought these rows of cedar trees were unique, once most likely small to start with and more like bushes back when the church was active and made an attractive walkway up to the steps of the church.

The client I dropped off had a rattlesnake in her driveway last week and looking at the surrounding woods would explain how rattlesnakes like this area.

Here is the small cemetery, the middle grave is of the preacher.

Here is where I parked to take pictures. The church on the left of course is active but real small more like Shiloh was when I was a kid.

I saw these four buckets in the air each with a man in it, putting up electric wires. There is always construction going on in Augusta.

Something I see nearly everyday is this old black gentleman pushing this grocery cart filled with whatever he can find to take to the nearby recycling center. I have a bag full of cans that I have been wanting to give him but can never see him when I am in my pickup. He is just outside of my mirror in the lot to pick up a can.

Here is a daily thing I do on my job, putting gas in the county van before we park it for the day. Sometimes I wonder how do they manage budget wise when the gas averages around $50 a day to take just a hand full of people total back and forth across the county.

In the county van, there is this big mirror over my head that I can see all the passengers and see that they have their seat belts on before I can drive on. I tilted the mirror down and got this shot of me in the driver's seat. I really do not normally look that gloomy.

street walker

Picture is out of focus but here is a young street walker that I have seen frequently in our area. I see these ladies everyday while driving on my job. Have seen them just coming out of motel rooms with their male clients just driving off in his car and the ladies get back on the sidewalks. Have seen cars drive up to them, hand them something or they hand them something through the windows, and then they are off again strutting their stuff. It is so obvious what they are doing because of the way they walk, making so much movement with their bodies but gaining very little in going forward. And showing as much skin as possible is another giveaway.

Around Augusta

Recently I went to work early, it was real foggy that morning before the sun came up and I saw this out at the shack where we pick up our vans, a spot light behind this pine tree.

This is the little shack off Tobacco Road where we pick up our schedules and van for the day.

Inside the shack is the time clock and my time card is sitting there ready to be punched at 6:45AM. Since the rest of the drivers are ladies, the shack has all these little feminine touches as you can see in the window.

One more view of the light behind the pine trees. This is the office building across the driveway from the shack for the county public vehicles, dump trucks, back hoes, etc.

This is a man I see frequently riding his bike all over the place and he wears this white outfit that looks like a bird. His arms has fringes like wings and he has a hood over his head. He is not all there upstairs for sure.

One morning the back screen door was crowed with our cats intensely staring at the squirrels down on the ground eating pecans. Duecy was so hyperred to get closer he was up the screen door.

This is Xavie, one of my mentally challenged riders who I pick up every day to take home and he is an adorable person, carrying the American Flag wherever he goes. When he was a teenager, he was involved in a bad train automobile accident that paralyzed his whole half side including brain damage.

On my way to pick up a client at the downtown newspaper building I was waiting at a stop light and took this picture of a tourist taking a picture.

Yesterday Linda and I went shopping at Walmart and as we were leaving I took a picture of this elderly couple who rides their bikes to Walmart and have seen them before on the streets of North Augusta, SC. They are apparently Amish judging the way they dress and their mode of transportation.



This is a shot from SC as we were going home from Walmart and you see Augusta in the distance. The colors of Autumn has begun here.

As we were going home from Walmart, I got this shot of the back of the Sacred Heart Cultural Community Center that once was an active church.

Got a shot of these bicyclists on Broad Street. They are about to go over the Augusta Canal bridge as we are. The water level is above the street level.

Another old vintage car of years gone by.

As we got closer to our new home location, I got a shot of the old street we lived on. We lived in one of the mill houses on the left down a ways.

This is the street we live on now, quite a welcomed difference! You can also see a touch of Autumn on the left. The second vehicle parked on the left is my pickup.

Pitchers fer ya

At the end of the day, I took the van to the gas station to fill up and this 1964 Volkwagon pulled up! 43 years old!

I stop frequently at this location next to a nursing retirement home to go on the porch to get me a coke. I saw my van sitting out there and thought it would make a pretty picture.

Here is a place on the highway out in the rural part of the county that always excites me to this day.

Following the picture above this one becomes this long steady decline that many times I put my pickup in neutral and it feels like it goes a half a mile with no acceleration on my part.

I am reminded that our dad was in the logging business and the big paper mill is down the road for a few miles. Needless to point out, the climb in the road ahead is another part that I never get tire of seeing and driving on.
This is one of the neighborhoods that I pick up a lady and this view to me is awesome.

Early in the mornings, the cats gather at the back door to see the squirrels on the ground and up the pecan trees.

The second cat from the right is Lucy, the one we took in at one day old and she had grown like a weed.