Pavilion’s closing makes way for a new kind of Myrtle Beach

MYRTLE BEACH — A riot of neon color bounces off the humid summer evening sky above the Pavilion, this din of overwhelming overstimulation where everyone and everything screams, “Notice me!”

We are moths here: The brightest light wins the aimless affection of our schizophrenic attention span.

The audacious weight guessers within the amusement park and the clack! clack! of air hockey inside the arcade speak a unique dialogue.

Outside the entrance, along the Strip, airbrushes swoosh out a spray of bright pink and baby blue: “I Trashed (blank, blank) Hotel Summer 2006!”

The guy with abs especially sculpted for this weekend revs his lime-green Kawasaki on Ocean Boulevard, a Pied Piper’s song beckoning a young woman to hop on back and cruise the Strip.

For so long, this has been the center of gravity of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina’s cubic zirconia jewel of the vacationing working class.

It’s changing, Myrtle Beach is. Marching forward, perhaps. For better or for worse, depending on our point of view and the history we bring with us.

Owners Burroughs & Chapin will close the Pavilion at the end of September after 58 years of operation. The closing symbolizes Myrtle Beach’s transformation from redneck Riviera into a more diverse and sophisticated vacation destination.

Left in the darkness, in a way, are our children and our children’s children and the children we once were.

Left behind are memories of Myrtle Beach’s only monument to its history, galvanized by roller coasters and summertime flings and funnel cakes and pinball machines and shag dances.

***

Cassandra Graham has made a supply run to her car, with her 2-year-old son, Justin, asleep in her arms. There are two more hours left in this day trip to the Pavilion her family took from their home in Kingstree.

Beginning at age 13, the 38-year-old mother spent her summer afternoons at the Pavilion while waiting on the bus to Kingstree after a day’s work at a motel. “We’d sit down at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and wander around the Pavilion until the bus came,” she says. “It’s just not going to be the same.”

She fills the parking meter and heads back in.

Across Ocean Boulevard on the boardwalk overlooking the beach, Todd Presser rests on a bench with his 10-year-old son, Derek.

They’ve bought the commemorative “Farewell Season” cup. Derek has consumed the Pavilion for the day (or it has consumed him). He comes every day during the week his family vacations here. The sounds of arcade games mix with the ocean breeze in a smooth cocktail of beachiness.

The handles to the wooden, pinball-like baseball games that are a staple of the Pavilion and the arcades that have mimicked it are worn from years of fathers sweating tirelessly to win a prize for their little ones.

The magic number to score a prize is 28 runs, as it has been for decades.

“I used to play those same baseball games he’s playing,” says Presser, 41, who has come from Kentucky to Myrtle Beach from childhood through fatherhood. “That’s why I bring him here now. It’s a landmark for me. This is my childhood.”

A rain shower sets in. The beachgoers wading in the Atlantic bring their wet, rolled-up jeans inland to the Pavilion. This is where they’ve always fled to.

***

“It hurts so bad to see them closing it down,” says Brenda Johnson of Ware Shoals, who took her children to the Pavilion years ago and will take her 2-year-old grandson, Jonathan, one last time this Labor Day. “It’s like losing a part of our family. I looked forward to seeing my grandchildren get to play there.”

Myrtle Beach is not much for history. What little it has had in slightly more than 100 years of existence has been razed and replaced by the bigger and the better ó paving the way for 13 million visitors each year.

The last icon that came close to representing Myrtle Beach ó the Ocean Forest Hotel ó was torn down in 1974. The hotel was the creation of Greenville textile magnate John Woodside, who in 1926 bought miles of beachfront property in a grand design for an upscale Myrtle Beach.

Woodside lost his beachfront land (to current owner of the 11-acre Pavilion, Burroughs & Chapin) and his hotel along with his entire fortune in the 1929 stock market crash.

The textile mills played a crucial role in the development of Myrtle Beach as a blue-collar playground, says Walter Edgar, a South Carolina historian and author.

The mills would shut down for weeks at a time during the summer and workers would head to the beach.

A number of mills bought places for their workers to stay (Spring Mills’ Springmaid Beach resort still exists). And at the center of all this respite for hard manual labor was the Pavilion.

The first Pavilion building ó an annex of Myrtle Beach’s first hotel, the Seaside Inn (now demolished) ó burned in 1920 and was replaced in 1925 by another wooden building, which also burned.

The current Pavilion building ó oceanfront on Ocean Boulevard and Eighth and Ninth avenues north ó was erected in 1948. Its World War II-like, reinforced concrete structure helped it withstand Hurricane Hazel in 1954, when most of Myrtle Beach was destroyed.

The Pavilion building and its music and dance club played an important role in the development of music culture in South Carolina. Generations have danced the shag to beach music at the Magic Attic and later rock ‘n’ roll and hip-hop when it became simply the Attic.

In 1948, Burroughs & Chapin ó still today the owner of thousands of acres of land along Myrtle Beach and the pre-eminent force in shaping the area ó cut a deal with the Husted brothers’ traveling carnival to stay put, and the Pavilion Amusement Park was born.

“Come nighttime, you’d drift down to the Pavilion,” says Joe Chambers, of Pelzer, who recalls how keeping his baby sister while his brothers wandered the Pavilion actually helped him meet more girls.

Later, as a young adult in the early 1970s, he played drums in the Royal Scotsmen Band at the Magic Attic (which back then, he says, seemed to Carolina musicians to be almost as big a deal as playing Madison Square Garden).

“Everybody would get so involved in the rides and having so much fun that it was easy to make a friend,” he says. “Some of those rides like The Scrambler would sling you around, and if you could get a girl on that ride, you could get close to them and have an excuse for it.”

***

No longer.

“Time has sort of passed the Pavilion by,” says Brad Dean, president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. “When the Pavilion opened, Elvis was a teenager and Lucille Ball was a new TV star. Today’s generation looks for more than roller coasters and paddle boats.”

And, Dean says, Myrtle Beach “has grown well beyond its original identity as a redneck Riviera.”

The area around the Pavilion (not necessarily the Pavilion itself) has reached a saturation point of unique ó arguably unsavory ó culture. Beachwear shops carry shirts with silhouettes of strippers and the words “I Support Single Moms,” and the words yelled from those cars cruising the Strip aren’t always wholesome.

Whether that’s part of the kitschy charm or a reason to go somewhere else on vacation is a matter of taste and of debate.

Several stores have closed over the years as sales figures have declined. The Strip is still packed on a summer night, but as Dean says, “many visitors see the downtown as a place to roam but not a place to spend.”

At one point, the Pavilion attracted more than 1 million visitors a year, but began to see marked declines about five years ago, says Tim Ruedy, a Burroughs & Chapin executive.

He wouldn’t share specific numbers for comparison.

More entertainment offerings such as Broadway at the Beach and the upcoming Hard Rock theme park, consumer expectations and changing demographics are responsible for attendance dropping to the point that the Pavilion no longer supports itself financially, Ruedy says.

Burroughs & Chapin hasn’t come up with a final plan for what will happen after the Pavilion is closed, so has yet to share any specifics, Ruedy says. Whatever is developed will attempt to attract year-round business instead of the largely seasonal traffic now.

Buz Plyler, owner of another Myrtle Beach icon, the Gay Dolphin Gift Cove near the Pavilion, says the future of not only his store but the very culture of Myrtle Beach hinges on what Burroughs & Chapin ultimately does.

“There’s no question there’s going to be societal change,” says Plyler, whose family has owned the Gay Dolphin for 61 years. “If the newer place is too much like current developments, it will be too homogenized. People will not think of Myrtle Beach as being different than any other place.”

Burroughs & Chapin’s plans will focus on compatibility and public access, Ruedy says. It will, however, incorporate elements that will attract more high-end tastes, such as fine dining that Ruedy says doesn’t exist now.

The company likely will preserve elements of the Pavilion’s culture and history ó like the amusement park’s 1912 vintage carousel and its German-made organ that first appeared at the World Expo in Paris in 1900.

“Iconic elements are a part of the thinking,” he says, “and I am certain in one way, shape or form that Burroughs & Chapin will make sure those elements are included. It’s always easy to say that you could do another high-rise and fill it out, but is that really what’s important to the development of the city of Myrtle Beach? I don’t think so.”

***

The carousel spins and the Frog Hopper lady blows her whistle.

A boy uses his 25 Skee-Ball tickets for a tiny parachute man.

A steady bass line from the bombastic car sound systems cruising the Strip underpins it all.

The rain has stopped. The water droplets create a thousand neon prisms

Each bids its farewell.

At Cowboy Church, every happy trail leads to God

“Round ’em up!” is the call, and with that everyone knows it’s time to take a load off and get some Jesus.

“It’s great to be in the Lord’s house.”

A canopy of cowboy hats nods in approval.

“AY-men.”

The bug zappers in the Lord’s house are silent tonight (it’s cool out, so the horse flies are a no-show), but the chapel — the cedar-paneled Tack Store Restaurant inside the enclosed arena at the Circle M Ranch in Pelzer — is humming with believers.

This is the Happy Trails Cowboy Church, where boots keep time with a country/gospel show, the dogs meander in and out, and the saved are baptized in horse troughs.

“Cowboy Up & Come Worship With Us,” the handout reads, and it lets us know in no uncertain terms that even the city slickers are, like, sooo welcome here.

Follow the roadside placards planted in the dirt. No fancy church signs with “Exposure to the Son may prevent burning” or “It’s hard to stumble when you’re on your knees.” Just “Cowboy Church” and an arrow to point the way.

Here, the handshakes are firm but the stiff upper lips are a little more relaxed. Cowgirls rub their cowboys’ leathery tanned necks. The Word takes the edge off.

The arena is dark and the dirt is settled; chairs that seat 2,800 are stacked a story high; the horses are in their stables. We’re gathered here tonight, outsiders embracing their outsiderness and inviting others to be outsiders, too.

Here you go: a free, green “Equestrian Edition” New Testament to take home. Get up for some coffee and homemade brownies and pound cake if the mood strikes. We’re not passing a plate around, but if you’d drop some bills into the silver feed buckets by the door, we’d be much obliged.

And keep them hats on, unless it’s time to pray.

***

“I’m one of these, I can’t sang unless I can wiggle my toes,” Sarah Harper tells the small crowd as she slips off her shoes before she and her husband, Tommy, start to ministerin’ with song.

They’re from Fair Play, asked to come tonight to share their voices and stories and get people ready for the sermon that lasts longer than it was promised to last.

Tommy explains how he was saved in 1991. He wasn’t a very likeable guy, and he was never much for crying. But salvation led him to tears, and it didn’t feel so bad.

Still, it’s easier to sing than cry.

“This song here sums it up pretty good,” he says. “I hope it blesses you.”

The hats nod back and forth. Knees rise up and down and boot soles tapping the lacquered brick floor sound suitably like horseshoes clopping on pavement.

***

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

As the Good Book tells it, Peter and his brother Andrew were the fishermen. They left their trade by the Sea of Galilee and followed Jesus.

Today, the cowboys are doing their part the American way, roping in the faithful and the wayward instead of calves.

Happy Trails has about 30 members and part-members, and all told about 70 different people have walked past the dirt-filled arena and into the Happy Trails Cowboy Church.

Services are on Tuesday nights because so many of those in the equestrian culture work and compete on the weekends.

The church has already had three “salvations,” says Candace Kuykendall, a Happy Trails founder, in the month-and-a-half since they’ve opened their doors and propped a cement block to keep them open.

Another will be baptized soon.

Pinned on Candace’s shirt is a red bandanna folded into the shape of a rose (red bandanas identify the people who can answer questions; the men’s hang out of their back pockets).

She explains how attendance is growing slowly but steadily as word gets around. How they’re close to hiring a permanent pastor. How they always hope to get just enough to pay the band — and how they always seem to.

The church has grown out of programs offered at other churches for horse enthusiasts and professionals. Happy Trails is its own — it’s a church as churches are — evangelical and interdenominational with roots in the Baptist faith.

Nationwide, there are more than 400 cowboy churches, most of them out West and concentrated in Texas. Happy Trails is the first cowboy church in South Carolina.

Floyd Tidsworth, president of South Carolina Equestrian Ministries and a church founder, points to the words of the Apostle Paul and his call “to become all things to all men” to reach as many as possible.

“The message, we can’t adjust this,” he says. “The method, we can.”

Loren Hodgens and Sheila Rogers are both trail riders. They’ve been coming since Happy Trails opened.

Neither had been to church in years. For them, this is church.

“I remember church and running through the pews as a kid,” says Sheila, 49, “but when I got up a little older, I started listening to some of the members talking about what Jane did yesterday and what John did the day before. The main thing is to be able to come and be us and worship God.”

Sheila and Loren finish each other’s sentences, even if they are separated by a generation.

“Yeah, be us,” says Loren, 19. “Not have to put hose on, not have to put a dress on, in uncomfortable shoes, sitting in a pew for however many hours. We’re here from the heart. We’re not here for appearance or our neighbors to see us and say, ‘Oh, they’re Christianly people.’”

Don Snyder marries the two churchgoing experiences, here at Happy Trails and at his Fountain Inn hitching post, Pleasant Grove Baptist.

In the cowboy church, you can be a member or a “partner.” Being a partner (or is it “pardna”?) allows you to keep your membership at a primary church.

The 47-year-old rancher grew up on the Ohio plains, surrounded by cornstalks and miles away from his nearest neighbor. He learned how to ride at age 7. He remembers tying his fishing pole and his baseball glove and bat to the saddle and taking off for a spell.

“Your nearest friend was five miles away,” he says. “We didn’t ride a bike on gravel roads. We rode a horse. That’s how we lived. Going back to those places, they still live like that.”

Here, at Happy Trails, away from the homeowners associations and the lights of neon marquees, the cowboy life is alive.

Don has come straight from his ranch in Fountain Inn, in black cowboy hat and jeans, after “literally feeding my steers and horses before I got into the car to leave.”

Come, all ye faithful. Smudged and ingenuous.

“Our people,” Candace says, “they may have their Sunday clothes and it’s a starched pair of jeans. If they come in dirty, we don’t care.”

***

The music has ended.

Pastor Phil Bryson — visiting from Beaver Dam Baptist Church in Laurens — steps up in his big buckled jeans and pulls off his hat to pray before preaching about forgiveness.

The kids — four of them fresh out of the dirt “playin’ dead” — are headed out to “Kids Corral” with Candace, where they will paint suncatchers to learn the lesson of “letting Jesus’ light shine through.”

Pastor Phil promises the sermon will be short even if it won’t be.

“Don’t you like to get dirty?” he asks. Hats nod. “I do. I like to get out there with my bushhog and mess around. When God forgives, God forgets. All that dirt just goes down the drain.”

Never mind the mixed metaphor (“dirt” is “sin” and the listeners have said they like getting dirty), the message is well-received.

Pastor Phil preaches. And preaches. Hats turn up from their Bibles, nod, then look back down. Everyone is here looking for the righteous trail.

Outside in the arena, the children — Mikalah Smith, 8; Madisyn Kuykendall, 5; Dakota Bogle, 9, and his little brother Jacob, 3 — have finished their suncatchers and are learning their own lessons in forgiveness.

They’re getting restless, the night is winding down, and the paint has flowed a little too freely.

“Maaaadisyn wiped paaaaint on my shiiiirt,” Mikalah says.

“Was it an accident, Madisyn?” Candace asks.

“Yes.”

“Apologize.”

“I’m soooorry.”

Mikalah flashes displeasure.

“She said, ‘Sorry,’” Candace tells her. “That’s when you have to forgive, right? Can you put a smile on your face for me?”

And she does.

“OK, now finish that up and play in the dirt here where I can see you.”

And they do.

Inside, the hats nod.

"We'd like to welcome everyone who skipped work today," the announcer wisecracks over the public-address system.The waggish voice echoes through the West End Field stands and off the Big Green Monster in left field, cutting right to the heart of what this day is all about.It's a day smack in the middle of the week, smack in the middle of the downtown lunchtime scurry.

BACK HOME

The door knocker doesn't make a sound, with the wooden stakes of two small American flags wedged between it and the front door. But the note taped above is blunt proof that the Williams family must know if anyone comes calling.

"Home of Marine L. Cpl. Daniel T. Williams
Son of Mr/Mrs Dan/Micki Williams
In Emergency — if we are not at home
Please Call us Immediately"

Each of their cell phone numbers follows.

Dan and Micki Williams have no delusions about why they hang that note on the door: If their son, Danny, dies in Iraq, solemn men in military uniforms will come to their front door to tell them first, face to face. They might be at work or the beach, or visiting family in their native Pennsylvania … or simply shopping at the grocery store.

Inside the Williamses' Eastside townhome is a juxaposition of hope and fear, of the comfort of symbolism and a willingness to accept stark reality.

The couple's study is a tribute to their beloved Pittsburgh Steelers; beneath a framed picture of the old Three Rivers Stadium, a stuffed bear in a Steelers jersey has a trademark Terrible Towel draped over each arm.

The shrine to far-less-anxious times is also where the computer burns the midnight oil.

It's almost always online, so that both parents can check regularly to see if Danny is trying to contact them through instant messaging — and so that Micki, every day, can visit a Web page that chronicles each American casualty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Marine bandana tied around the neck of a bulldog statue near the fireplace. The disproportionate number of pictures of one child over his siblings. The yellow "Support Our Troops" pin that Mom has worn so much she can no longer keep it glued together.

This is the home of thousands of mothers and fathers, of spouses and anyone else who sits powerless to control the safety of those they can't possibly imagine living without.

This is the home of those who read the newspaper and know there's a real possibility that the next story headlined "Four U.S. soldiers killed by roadside bomb" could be a report about their soldier.

"Right now, if I could take his place … what parent wouldn't?" Dan says. "Every parent is doing what we're doing right now. We're not doing anything special; we're just subjected to it."

Like so many other parents, Dan and Micki want nothing more than to have their youngest son back, healthy and safe from stray bullets and suicide bombers.

If only he wanted to stay home.

His story

Like the stories of so many soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Danny's is one of duty and survival, trying at once to win and to avoid the same fate as the more than 2,000 who have been killed in action.

The true, unembellished story is that he is no iconic Sgt. Stryker in "Sands of Iwo Jima," nor is he a disillusioned Capt. Willard in "Apocalypse Now."

He is, instead, Dan and Micki say, a single, 24-year-old, somewhat unpredictable youngest child of three in a family with little military legacy. He was a self-absorbed young man who ambled through boarding school and college with little purpose before he found the discipline of the Marines.

Danny floated through Drexel University on an academic scholarship to study information technology, a scholarship that his parents say he won less because he worked to have good grades than because he always scored exceptionally well on achievement tests.

After leaving Drexel for Penn State, Danny dropped out of college for good.

He found what he needed, though. In February 2003, he joined the Marines, just at the time former Secretary of State Colin Powell was trying to convince the United Nations that forces should invade Iraq.

Dan says his son was no ideologue. He simply always enjoyed doing what few else were doing and wanted to find discipline that seemed so elusive, even when he attended the regimented, all-boys Kiski prep school in Pennsylvania.

Danny was snowboarding when everyone was skiing, his dad says. He was joining the Marines when a full-scale war was about to erupt.

Danny always needed more special attention from his parents than his siblings, says his sister, Jenna McDermed, who is only 18 months older than Danny and is now serving a medical school internship in Miami.

Not only was he the baby, Jenna says, but growing up "he was the wild spirit of our family." Danny would be known to cut out on vacation as a young adult and not tell anyone.

Jenna says she finds it ironic that now that he's answered his parents' prayers and has become responsible, that responsibility is causing more worry than ever before.

"They always worried about Dan more than anyone," she says. "He's always been the one they've kind of had to look out for. In a way, he's still kind of doing the wild thing, but how can you say he's not doing the right thing?"

Danny's job description (which his parents can't divulge for security reasons) creates an environment in which the family knows little about where he is and what he's doing. It was a job description they originally thought would keep him in the United States.

Instead, Danny was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, and in March 2004 he requested assignment to Iraq. His military superiors told him that he was needed more in Okinawa, but Danny insisted, his parents say.

After a short homecoming — during which he revealed a scar on his rear end caused by shrapnel from a roadside bomb — Danny requested a second tour of duty in Iraq.

Dan and Micki are sure that if Danny is able to make it home by October as planned, it will only be temporary. He's sure to volunteer to go back again.

And they'll have to wait.

Again.

The photo

"Up to a dozen die as 2-front battle tests coalition troops" was the sub-headline that shared the front page of the April 7, 2004, edition of USA Today — along with a memorial for the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide, the University of Connecticut's national championship in women's basketball, and a man in Minnesota whose neighbors opposed his plans to open a tire-burning plant.

Plastered across the page was a photograph — which appeared in news publications nationwide in the days to follow– of soldiers crouched in battle in Fallujah.

One soldier among them was standing. Micki was shocked to see it as she logged on to AOL. It was Danny.
It's one of countless pictures spread throughout the Williams household.

Dan and Micki shuffle through the old ones: the infant Danny being spoon-fed; Danny wearing a collared shirt under a sweater at age 4, looking like a little man; Danny at age 8, wearing an engineer's cap and sitting on a horse with his dad in New Mexico; Danny, with a frightened look in his eyes, as he first began to wrestle in high school; then another wrestling picture (with a sticky note attached reading "THE WINNER!") a few years later as his arm is raised in victory.

"You'll go for a month and not hear a thing," Micki says. "Whenever I see him, I tell him, 'Danny, it's like you're reborn.'"

Any child is to his parents more than what he is today: He is what he has been and what his parents always hoped he would be.

The Williamses are proud of what their son has become, but it leaves them living each day without a guide for how to deal with the dread of having a child fighting in a war.

The hope of what would be is a particular burden for Dan and Micki to bear, says the couple's oldest son, Chris Cava, 37, who lives in Atlanta and like his dad is an engineer and a father.

Chris says he knows his parents are struggling with the past, that perhaps they feel they are responsible for their son being in harm's way.

"It's almost like Danny has something to prove to everybody," Chris says. "All those years, the people who said that he wouldn't amount to anything. I think that's what's hardest on my parents."

No politicking

The Williamses moved to Greenville in January from a small steel town near Pittsburgh for Dan's job. The people they speak to here — mostly acquaintances — about having a son in Iraq are quick to learn that the couple isn't comfortable talking about the politics of war while their son is in danger.

Micki stays connected.

She watches cable news tirelessly. She knows the body count from week to week (Chris says he turns the news off when he visits, and his mom will turn it on in the bedroom and turn the volume down).

Daily she visits a Web site, "Honor the Fallen," that keeps track of the most recent casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a short biography and picture of each soldier.

She helps sew "comfort quilts" for families who have lost loved ones in war, and she's hooking up with an Upstate discussion group, Blue Star Mothers of America, to share and seek comfort from others who are dealing with the same worries.

Dan tries to stay disconnected, except for the pictures of his son and a voice mail message he saves on his cell phone. Dan missed the call when Danny phoned from Kuwait last March to tell him he was 45 minutes away from heading into Iraq. The message, in its placid brevity, is reminiscent of a teenager checking in past his curfew.

Dan doesn't sleep much. His wife regularly finds him sitting on the living room couch in the dark. His nighttime is his son's daytime.

At work, he says, panic will inexplicably wash over him. He doesn't know if his son is in danger, or, for that matter, playing football in the sand with comrades.

Micki wonders if she's too connected; Dan sometimes is concerned that he's not connected enough.

In the end, along with their love and worry and pride for their son, they share a disquieting emotion beyond fear and doubt.

Guilt.

Guilt over the relief they feel when they see the reports and learn that their son isn't among the soldiers killed today, relief that he isn't another Internet picture that makes Micki "feel like I'm just clicking on this kid."

"At first you're relieved," Dan says. "You get that 30 seconds of relief, then comes that time of knowing what a family must be going through."

As much as they might worry about whether they are connected too much or too little, this journey of uncertainty has formed a powerful kinship — not just between the couple but with the families they've never met who must walk the same path.

Those who love what they fear to lose.

Those who fear the knock on the door.

"When our son wasn't in the war, they were just numbers," Dan says. "You feel guilty even saying that. Now, no matter where he is, even when he comes back, that has changed."

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies/
And here on Earth come emulating flies

- "Fireflies in the Garden," Robert Frost

We see them flash in the warm Carolina twilight, shining light on the impermanence of a season and igniting the child within us that longs for summer to last forever.

They speak a silent language – a language of survival and procreation, to each other and to us – just above finely manicured suburban lawns and misty pastures at the edge of the woods.

Their demure discourse embodies the essence of the summer evenings we are fortunate to share with them.

Elegant. Amorous. Fleeting.

They glow with blithe abandon in their search for as many summer flings as their short lives allow, with little concern for whatever predator might be on the their luminescent tails – a spider stalking on a web or an infatuated 5-year-old anxiously fumbling with a Mason jar.

Ecstasy is their birthright, their purpose. And their light is the beacon to it.

Fireflies. Lightning bugs. Hotaru.

The luminous nymphs of summer.

They have served as the muses of the ancients and contemporaries and those in between, from east of Kansas to South America to Europe to India to Japan to Indonesia.

They provide a link between parent and child; between generations, unbreakable as long as nature runs its course.

Firefly lights/
Even the frog's mouth gapes

- Kobayashi Issa, 18th century Japanese Haiku master.

Crystal Stewart saw her first firefly when she was 9. She had come from California to visit her grandmother in South Carolina during the summer. There are no fireflies in the American West. Scientists aren't sure why.

"Of all the summers of my childhood, I remember that one," says the 31-year-old mother of three, who for more than 20 years now has lived here, where lightning bugs can, when the time is right, flash in a virtual galaxy of light. "The thick grass, walking barefoot in the grass, the fireflies flashing all over it at sundown. I remember that like it was yesterday."

It was yesterday. And every summer yesterday that passes near the solstice, when fireflies emerge from the ground, flash in an exotic dance to attract a mate and die a mere few weeks after.

"What do you do with the fireflies?" Crystal asks her 3-year-old son, Colby.

He casts a wide smile and quickly clasps his hands together: "I catch 'em!"

"It's a sign that summer is here," Crystal says. "I'm sure my kids will be chasing fireflies with their kids, too."

And so it goes.

Fireflies are as ubiquitous as iced tea here in the South, where "lightning bug" is the preferred terminology (why else would we venture into the humid summer evening and brave the vampiric mosquitoes?).

Fireflies are an ageless wonder that crosses oceans, time and culture.

In England, fireflies are known as glow worms (likely referring to females, the only ones who flash, yet don't have wings like males).

The creatures surely inspired Shakespeare as he envisioned his fairies in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

"And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes/To have my love to bed and to arise," the nymph queen instructs her mystic servants.

Fireflies permeate poems and prose through the ages – particularly in Japanese art in the form of haikus, novels and music, says Yoshiki Chikuma, assistant professor of Japanese studies at the College of Charleston.

School graduation ceremonies in Japan are often performed to the song "Hotaru no Hikari," which means "fireflies' light." Cities often celebrate with firefly festivals.

"Japanese people appreciate things that signify the brevity of life," Chikuma says, "perhaps because they have been surrounded by natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons for generations. Japanese people find beauty in fireflies because their life is short, but when they are alive they are so beautiful."

The past is beautiful/
Like the darkness between the fireflies

- Mason Jennings, contemporary folk musician

Among the mysteries of fireflies is a constant: The magic can't be bottled.

Heidi Mathis has lived in South Carolina all 33 years of her life. She remembers as a little girl playing kickball as the summer sun slowly gave way to shadows.

Then, they would begin to emerge one here, another one there.

The children in the neighborhood would watch them dip and flash, leaving a residual streak of light. Fireflies are lumbering creatures. In the twilight, they are easily caught.

The patience of a child to passively admire never lasts long.

Into the jar they would go, carefully as their tiny legs tickled the fingers and left the slightest sticky residue. The hope was that, all together under the glass, they would somehow unite in a dazzling display, perhaps light the room with a friendly glow at bedtime.

But they didn't. And they don't. Only against the canvas of darkness, only in the pursuit of a purpose, do they truly enchant us.

Once in the jar, Heidi says, "They were just bugs, then."

Let my love, like sunlight, surround you/
And yet give you illumined freedom

- "Fireflies," Rabindranath Tagore, late-20th century Indian poet

Even to biologists dedicated to the calculated analysis of the world's insects, fireflies stand out as more than "just bugs." They fascinate in a unique way, one that melds the deliberate scientific method and the pursuit of the ethereal.

Amazingly, the energy a firefly creates in its bioluminescent rear end is almost completely transformed into light, whereas a light bulb wastes 90 percent of its energy as heat, says Eric Benson, a Clemson University entomologist.

If we could find a way to produce cold energy like a firefly, Benson says, we'd have made a grand breakthrough.

Benson understands the folklore of fireflies – that, much like how life once seemed simpler and slower, there once seemed to be more fireflies.

The reality is, though, there are more fireflies to be seen this year in South Carolina (home to as many as 30 species) than we've seen in awhile. The wet weather of spring likely played a part in a marked swell of firefly activity, he says.

"There always seem to be good years and bad years," Benson says. "This is a pretty good year. People say they don't see as many, but I don't know if people try as hard."

There is much to see, if we leave our air-conditioned dens to look closely.

Sara Lewis, one of America's leading firefly researchers, describes the subject of her lifelong passion as "perfectly magical."

The sole purpose of an adult firefly – actually, Lewis says, it's a form of beetle of which there are more than 100 known species in the United States and more than 2,000 worldwide – is to reproduce.

During adulthood, which lasts only a few weeks, some species don't even bother eating.

The sexes find each other in a symbiotic dance of bioluminescence, a function believed to be the product of a delicate chemical reaction between an enzyme, luciferin, and oxygen.

While pulse patterns aren't fully understood, Lewis says, in one particular species males with longer pulses are believed to be more capable of providing a female with a nutrient that will help to better develop her eggs.

Lewis and her colleagues at Tufts University in Massachusettes are currently studying the flash patterns of other species to see if this is a constant, or possibly a trick employed to con a female into romance by mimicking the flashes of competitors of other species who are considered more virile.

During the mating process, females perch on low-lying vegetation awaiting the signal of any number of males. The males, she says, take flight as dusk sets in, hovering three to six feet above the ground advertising their availability with a flash pattern of one, two or several short light pulses.

Females respond with a single pulse. The flashing continues until a male finds his mate, often attracting other males in the process.

As hunters, we can observe the flash patterns of fireflies and mimic them with a small penlight to attract a male or woo a female into flashing her approval.

While adults are conspicuous, most of a firefly's life is spent underground.

In North America, Lewis says, they can spend anywhere from a few months to as long as three years in the ground as larvae, depending on how cold the climate, before they emerge in the summer.

Once a female is done mating, she will lay eggs in moist soil or moss. The eggs glow, it is believed, to warn predators that a victim isn't likely to sit well in the stomach.

In fact, many species of firefly release a noxious chemical when they are in distress; in one particular species, a femme fatale will mimic the pulse of another species to attract and eat a male to gain the chemical she lacks, for her own use.

After about two weeks, the eggs hatch and tiny larvae emerge and dig underground, eating mostly earthworms, snails and slugs. When the time is right, when the air is alive, they take flight.

Their light guides their passion and inspires ours.

We shine with them.

When the credits roll today, it will end a two-decade journey that captivated millions

Upon us, the end of an era is.

The end of Obi-Wan Kenobis and Darth Vaders sparring with plastic lightsabers as they camp outside the cineplex to secure the premium theater spot — 10 rows back and seven seats to the middle.

The end of Lando Calrissian Burger King glasses and cutting UPC codes off boxes of Crispix to earn the free R2D2 cereal bowl in the mail.

The end of a generation's worth of anticipation after anticipation.

For faithful believers, both young and old, the mere mention of "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" is a point of both anxious excitement and gloomy finality.

The very moment the operatic music crescendoes to its climax and the distinctive faded-blue text reading "Directed by George Lucas" appears in the closing credits, even a supreme knowledge of The Force couldn't change reality: the promise of a new, unexplored "Star Wars" experience will be no more.

"It's so sad to me, because I feel like that was an important part of growing up," says Jeanean Bartley, who remembers her first "Star Wars" experience as a seventh-grader in 1977, when the first film was released. "You could always look forward to the next one, and that's not going to happen anymore."

As the end of a cultural touchstone creeps upon us like the shroud of the Dark Side, we reflect on our childhoods — and those of our children who today cut out their own UPC codes.

The promise of "Star Wars" is that we grown-up children might tap into timeless myth and enjoy perpetual youth.

For those of us who remember 1983 and watching through little eyes as Darth Vader triumphantly throws the evil Emperor into the abyss in "Star Wars: Episode Six — Return of the Jedi," we can only wonder if our excitement at seeing the man behind the mask will be the same as seeing how he put the mask on.

After all, that's what "Revenge of the Sith" is all about — a glimpse of how your father became who he is.

We swore 20 years ago that by the year 2005 someone would have figured out how to make a real lightsaber instead of the kind you make by turning on a flashlight in a cloud of smoke billowing from the grill.

We didn't always pick up the Darth Vader cereal and check the carb count; like our children today, we once poured the sweetened oats into a bowl and picked out Droid marshmallows.

We once summed up a lightsaber duel as simply "cool" — and that was far more insightful than, say, "a modern interpretation of the elegant swordsmanship of the samurai, in keeping with the various mythical and historical archetypes George Lucas drew from to ensure his vast universe resonated."

Like "Star Wars" disciples — both young and old — we acted out innumerable prequels and sequels with action figures nightly on the living room carpet.

"This is one of those things that has spanned an entire generation," says Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University pop culture expert. "It stretches over, in some cases, people's entire memories. When something like that has been part of one's life for so long, when it goes away, there is a sense of loss — and not one to be made fun of."

The first English-language movie Jerry Zayas saw was "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope," when he was a 5-year-old in his native Puerto Rico in 1977.

He could neither understand the words of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo nor yet read the Spanish subtitles. But the 33-year-old Easley father says the story, so visual and so epic, transcended language.

Shortly after "Return of the Jedi" left theaters, Zayas says he read a quote by Lucas that the creator/producer/director intended to someday translate onto the big screen the three previous stories he had written of how once-virtuous Jedi warrior Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.

The promise of a new "Star Wars" experience was always just over the horizon where the two suns of Tatooine set. After today, those suns set for good.

"I've been waiting about 25 years to see this movie," says Zayas, who by his own admission has "brainwashed" his 5-year-old son, Nathan, into the Jedi Order. "When it cuts to the credits, my first thought will be, 'When will the wife and kids let me come back?' Once it goes off the screen and I've seen it plenty, from now on it's DVD. Depressing."

And the sense of loss isn't just for those who have lived 20-some-odd years with the assurance of a new "Star Wars" adventure. Ten-year-old Austin Teel finds himself playing the roles of characters, both old and new, with full knowledge that there will be no more new movies.

"When I heard it was the last 'Star Wars' movie that was coming out, I was a little disappointed," says Teel, a Camperdown Academy fifth-grader. "I'm just glad that they're going to do this one. Something is better than nothing."

Nothing is what Dale Hathaway is afraid of.

He is a member of the 501st Carolina Garrison of Storm Troopers. He knew from the moment he saw the opening scene of "Star Wars" in 1977 that he wanted to be one of those homogenous foot soldiers dressed in white armor, who both shoot inprecisely at the good guys on the big screen and show up at movie theaters to bring a bit of fantasy into reality.

He worries what will become of his comrades in arms after today and as the movie slowly fizzles away with the summer heat. "What are we going to do?" the 37-year-old Mauldin father of four says. "Are we going to be doomed to doing birthday parties?"

(A small consolation: The faithful who attended the "Star Wars" convention in Indianapolis last month learned from The Creator himself that two television series based on the saga are in the works and that he intends to re-release to the big screen all six episodes in 3-D).

Hathaway will be in uniform today — as he is for conventions and charity events — at Hollywood 20 with his fellow role players. He does it, in part, so the kids of today can experience the human spectacle of a new release just as those before them.

Hathaway has marveled at his two sons, 7-year-old James and 16-year-old Allen, as they have grown into "Star Wars" in their own ways. Longtime followers who remember the camp and technical jerry-rigging of the originals tend to see the prequels as overwrought, he says, but children of his sons' generation tell a different story.

One thing is certain: A grown-up child of the 1980s will dress as a storm trooper outside the theater for three days before he sees the movie Saturday.

"The adults, I'm sure you'll see some of them laughing and smiling when the show's over with," he says, "but I'm sure you're going to also see some of them shed a tear: 'This is the end. I've seen them all.'"

And so ends an era.

THE DAY AFTER

Star wars fans' Sith sense creates force to be reckoned with

Crowd forms early to be first to see final installment

Darth Vader and his red lightsaber retreat in fear as the imposing figure of an Imperial Storm Trooper reaches out his hand.

Quite a turn on convention, it is: The sinister masked villain cowering at the sight of the foot soldier he typically commands with the fear that even the most-trivial of mistakes could lead to the infamous death by "force choke."

Of course, this Vader is 3 feet tall, so forgive him if the sight of a full-size Storm Trooper extending an invitation to mug for a picture is unsettling. In the eyes of a 4-year-old evil Sith lord — real name Brent Webb — this spectacle outside the Hollywood 20 theater for the midnight premiere of "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" is all too real.

Imperial Trooper TK 27-12 — who when he's not slaying rebel scum is 37-year-old John Talbert of Taylors — explains the reactions he gets whenever he marches around in his menacing white evil empire-issued uniform.

"The more of a fan they are, the more apprehensive they are," TK 27-12 says, as he surveys the crowd at Wednesday evening's pre-"Sith" extravanganza.

The Storm Troopers, the Darth Vaders and the Boba Fetts camping out in line and comparing costumes are all playing roles in what has been a cultural tradition for 28 years, when the first "Star Wars" blasted onto movie screens in 1977.

It is a rite of passage in American pop culture, one shared by both young and old as the "Star Wars" saga comes full circle with the revelation of how once-virtuous Anakin Skywalker became the masked Darth Vader.

Brent and his 6-year-old brother, Ryker (playing the role of a young Obi-Wan Kenobi), are the subject of countless inquiring point-and-shoot cameras tonight. It must have something to do with the fact that their fierce plastic lightsaber duels spirits grown-up children back to a time before they had grown up.

The boys' father, Brooks Webb, has brought them out to Hollywood 20 not to see the movie (the only one of the six episode epic rated PG-13), but to drink in what will be the final, uncharted "Star Wars" experience.

Webb, 35, remembers seeing the original "Star Wars" seven times as a child with his brother, Chad, who also camped out with him for the premiere of 1999's "Episode I — The Phantom Menace."

"It is the end of era, because you could always look forward to the next one," says Webb, of Greer. "I joked with someone recently who suggested that I buy life insurance. I said, 'I hope I don't need it before the last 'Star Wars' comes out.'"

Made it alive, he did.

A theme of anxious anticipation mixed with mild melancholy is present here in The Line, where faithful followers jockey for the coveted middle seat inside the theater.

Steven Neitz and his buddy Bryan Hutchinson are first in line, camping out since 2:30 p.m., not necessarily to secure the best seat, but to sit down, drink sodas, wipe their mouths with "Star Wars" napkins and talk about the end of an era.

The only rule: Neitz, 26, a voracious consumer of online "Star Wars" information that reveals key plot twists in "Revenge of the Sith," cannot talk with his comrades about the spoilers bouncing around his brain.

Neitz and Hutchinson have done the hard work. Neitz's fiancee, Bethe Kitchen, has arrived late and deftly cut in line (albeit well before the line stretched into the Greenville Mall parking lot). Kitchen — whose toes are painted with the Imperial insignia on one foot and the Rebel insignia on the other — has bittersweet feelings about the movie she is about to see.

"It's always been something to look forward to, but at the same time it's really great to see George Lucas' vision complete," says the 35-year-old Kitchen, who points out her goose bumps at the mere mention of her first seeing the original "Star Wars" as a 7-year-old.

Perhaps the most-steadfast "Star Wars" disciple today is Geoff Mitchell, who has been in line since 10 a.m. at the new Camelot Cinema at McAlister Square.

A 12-pack of Dr. Pepper rests under his portable chair, and his black "Revenge of the Sith" T-shirt is OK in the balmy mid-May breeze.

The 23-year-old Furman student has spent 14 hours outside the theater today (in reward for his dedication, ownership has allowed him to tour the new, digital-screen theater and reserve his seat).

What more momentous occasion to skip class?

"Just waiting in line is part of the experience," Mitchell says. "The energy in the line is just really cool. I didn't have anything to do today, and I skipped school because I'm graduating anyway."

Mitchell's friend, Michael Freeman, had meant to join his fellow true believer in the morning. The decision was tough (this is the last "Star Wars" after all), but he attended to his prior engagement and made it to the campout at 3 p.m.

"What can I say?" Freeman said. "I had a job interview."

Divers have found Attakulla Lodge largely intact in lake's cold waters

A young couple's rented kayak cuts a subtle wake across the calm, emerald waters of Lake Jocassee.

Beneath the leisurely paddling of their oars a pastoral Atlantis rests in an endless sleep.

Debbie Fletcher knows what ghosts haunt the desolate bottom.

As tiny waves wash spring pollen onto the Devil's Fork boat ramp, tears well in her eyes at the thought of what ceased to be more than three decades ago, a casualty of hydroelectricity.

Looking over the water toward the kayakers destined for Double Springs, she can almost see where the Whitewater River once carved Jocassee Valley, a community that provided sustenance for farmers yet to join the Industrial Revolution and, years later, refuge for town and city folk escaping the summer melt.

The Whitewater converged like fingers on a hand with four sibling streams that are lost, now nothing more than an unseen source of pristine reservoir providing scenic mountain recreation and power for progress.Today, Fletcher has found a measure of peace with her loss, 32 years after Duke Power dammed the valley's rivers to create the Jocassee Hydroelectric Station. Her comfort resides far below the shimmering waters that give way to pitch black night and stirred powdered soil.It is a relic standing three stories high, preserved by the perpetually frigid temperatures of the deep, defying time's merciless erosion of the valley's history.

That first minivan comes loaded – with the realities of parenthood

Once upon a time, we were cool. Or at least we thought we were.

This is before we learned the names of all four Teletubbies, before juice stains became a fashion accessory, before PG-13 seemed soooo risque.

Slowly, we rode the gradual decline of cool. And then, abruptly, the ride stopped, crashing into a sudden, late 20s/early 30s austere reality.

"Honey, I'm sorry, but we need a minivan."

A what?

"I had to convince my husband to get this," says Angie McCullough, 30, who is trying to shoehorn a stroller into her Chrysler Town & Country with her two sons and her friend's two daughters. "When we got married, he said he would never drive one of these things. Well, that changed."

Ahh, the dreaded "M" word, the modern-day equivalent of the lusterless "station wagon."

What was so foreign a concept when we were romanticizing about our children on our honeymoon is now staring at us, grill to grill.

We are now forced to answer difficult questions:

How did it come to this? When did my parents get to be the ones to drive a convertible and not me? Am I even qualified to judge whether it's cool to call things "cool" anymore?

No matter how you spin it, how they advertise it, how a couple with young children tries to reach back into their parents' pop culture nostalgia to a time when a VW bus was groovy, man … minivans are about as stylish as going bald.

If you hear a whistle, that most certainly is not an admirer calling at you, because you are either a.) conspicuously domesticated or b.) driving your parents' minivan.

The car companies are beginning to avoid the "M" word the way restaurants do the "E coli" word. For one, General Motors has announced it's changing the names of its minivans to "crossover sport vans," whatever that's supposed to mean.

Anything to make the inevitable easier to swallow.

Counseling, with purchase

When answering a couple's question about the minivan, Paul McCleod often finds himself in the position of being a sort of "you're-getting-older-but-it's-OK" advisor.

McCleod is the new-car manager at Crown Nissan on Laurens Road, where, if you're looking for space for your kids, you're looking either at the Quest minivan or the hulking Armada SUV.

If you have a ballooning family, the only way to avoid a minivan sentence is to either accept cramped quarters or invest in the largest — and most expensive — of the SUVs.

McCleod says he hears the term "soccer mom" regularly when showing potential buyers the Quest, which along with other newer models of minivans has made an effort to bring a stylish look to the line, with rounder, sportier edges and even add-ons like rear spoilers.

"The biggest thing I hear from parents is, 'I don't want a minivan because I don't want people to think I'm a soccer mom,'" he says.

Then comes the needle dose of reality.

"Of course," he says, "my answer is, 'It doesn't matter what you drive or what you look like. When you pull up to the Wal-Mart, open the door and your five kids get out, they're going to know you're a soccer mom.'"

The label "soccer mom" was first assigned to the young mothers in the 1990s who could swing a presidential election. But somewhere along the way it took on a life of its own, becoming a synonym for unfashionable that seems to go hand in hand with the minivan.

The fear of stereotyping — motivated a great deal by how automobiles are marketed toward age groups and lifestyles – is central to the decision of whether to buy a minivan, McCleod says.

SUV vs. the minivan

It comes down in large part to personality, and what you buy might say a lot about how you are accepting your changing life role.

In his 2002 manifesto on SUVs, "High and Mighty: The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way," author Keith Bradsher pointed out how automakers study the differences between minivan and SUV buyers.

In interviews with market research analysts at major automakers, Bradsher found that, overall, minivan owners are more comfortable with being married and being parents.

At just more than 1 million sold each year, minivans seem to be OK with plenty of drivers. The genre has even seen a resurgence in the first five months of this year after three years of steadily declining sales.

Minivan sales jumped 7.2 percent from January through May compared with a year ago, according to industry researcher Autodata. That's still behind overall SUV sales, which grew 9.3 percent, but well ahead of the 3.2 percent sales growth for the auto industry as a whole.

Jamie Dagenais and her husband, who drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee, had always told themselves that they would just "drive a big enough SUV" because of the stigma attached to minivans.

But now that their two girls, ages 3 and 1, are starting to take up more space and now that gas prices are higher, she's leaning toward buying a minivan.

There comes a time, the 30-year-old mother says, when reality catches up with you.

"I don't think I mind so much now," she says. "I'm not getting any second looks getting out of the car now anyway, so it doesn't matter if I get out of a minivan or a sports car."

Coming to terms

If you choose to drive a minivan, fellow owners will tell you the best thing to do is simply accept that you have, indeed, become a minivan driver. And that's not so bad.

No, really.

"Whatever my sisters say about my minivan, I don't care," says Joan Land, 28, who has become accustomed to the ribbing that goes along with driving her 2002 Ford Windstar.

The Land clan used to drive around in a 1996 Chevy Impala before switching to the Windstar. Land says she looked at SUVs, but they either sucked too much gas and rode like trucks or weren't really any roomier than a car.

Like so many others, she doesn't have to drive a minivan, but she does because it just makes too much sense not to.

Land says she thinks it comes down to personality and a willingness to accept a new phase of life. She can't quite understand why her sisters insist on cramming their kids into a car.

"I've never cared what anybody thinks," she says. "What I drive doesn't make me. I care more about how comfortable my kids are."

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. For minivan drivers, there is the solace that you won't have to drive one forever. Call it a reason to look forward to turning 40.

Joey Bearden, fleet manager for Benson Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep in Greer, says he's seen the cycle firsthand, both with customers who come to the lot and with his wife.

Now that his kids are grown, Bearden says his wife has completed her minivan years and is now driving a sporty, convertible Chrysler Sebring.

But, he says, the cycle is not yet over. With a new grandchild in the mix, Bearden says they are now looking to trade the Sebring for a sedan.

"It's a continuing, changing thing in life," he says.

Such is the way of the minivan.

Your vessel on that self-sacrificial journey to and from the land of uncool.

Life at the speedway is a world of its own

A mere fence is all that stands between the rubber-smudged oval track and the modern-day Roman spectators sitting atop their parked chariots, eating boiled peanuts and drinking Natural Light. Here on the other side of the fence, removed from the gladiatorial battleground of speeding metal, are the bulldozed fringes of the Greenville-Pickens Speedway backstretch.

A middle-aged woman with teased hair rolls up crooning Kid Rock, adding forceful inflection to make sure everyone around her knows that she "saw your picture today/sat down and cried todaaaaay-hey-ay-ay-yah."

Will she head to the grandstands? Or will she cast her lot on the backstretch, where others might be more willing to join in her song?To immerse yourself in the more-carnal aspects of the speedway, you must drive your stake into the hallowed ground of the backstretch, where, Parker says, nothing is really weird because … everything is a little weird.

It's here that everything is wrapped in a warm, familial sense of appropriateness, a consensus that this is the way things are done.The burnt rubber and the burnt hot dogs; the walking advertisements for Tide detergent in the guise of NASCAR gear; the looming sign with a No. 3 that serves as a monument to racing's ultimate martyr.Amid the roar and thunder, there is a place for everyone, and 'most everyone has been coming since God knows when.

Mark Price and his son, Graham, have been coming to the speedway for four years now. Graham is 4.

Graham is wearing his oversized headphones over his Dale Jarrett hat and his ears. It takes just enough edge off the intrusive shriek of mechanical muscle.His dad explains the procedures for handling a pre-schooler whose interest in cars lapping a track for hours has waned. In the van is a DVD player, where Graham will often fall asleep watching "Looney Toons."

"He likes SpongeBob Squarepants," Mark says, "but I don't have that on DVD."Graham lifts his headphones with a scowl."No, Dad, I like 88; that's Dale Jarrett's number," he says with a cherubic lisp and a "what-are-you-thinkin'?" inflection.

+ The boiled peanut shells they've strewn — like they always do — onto the red-dirt ground around the truck.

+ The proliferation of shining-new Thermos cooler/grills bought especially for Opening Night.+ The smiley face etched with lime green and fluorescent pink sidewalk chalk along a walkway, drawn in a tamer hour, before the roar and the smell of hot rubber took over.Scott is a roofer by trade, so his 1979 powder/primer blue Ford truck is fixed with a metal frame above the truck bed to carry any manner of roofing paraphernalia.

Inside the oval — "in the action," as race fan Mike Doyle calls it — a collision is an intimate, visceral experience.

He's in the oval tonight, but Doyle knows the real show is on the other side of the fence. His finger points to the backstretch, where the roof dwellers hold onto their seat cushions for a truly satisfying crash."It's fun to watch the people up on the hill when there's a wreck," he says. "They go crazy, crowd the fence and hoot and holler."Up on that hill, from the truck bed of her boyfriend's 1980 Toyota — raised six feet off the ground on a virile foundation of 44-inch boggers and 11-inch suspension — Brittany Page is a connoisseur of every spectacle, both metal and human.

In art, determined teen, dedicated teacher find a world without limits 

The classroom is abuzz with a creative energy that is here but not here, as artists absent from this world, lost into their own, hunch over their work.

As so often he is, Ryan Crum is the exception in this senior advanced-placement art class at Easley High School.

He, too, is lost in another universe.

But his gaze is forward, his mouth occupied with the task of grasping a paint brush and stroking it back and forth on the canvas with dexterity surgeons would envy.

It is his only way.

Without the use of any part of his body save for the limited motion of his head, Crum, a 17-year-old quadriplegic, must improvise to have any chance of pursuing his love of art.

The love he had before he was paralyzed in a hunting accident three years ago.

His determination has brought him not only personal fulfillment, but a legitimacy as an artist that he had never before experienced.

Ryan has defied convention.

He has redefined the bounds of how art is taught for the teacher doggedly committed to enabling his student's unique exploration.

And he has inspired the peers around him who are reminded, despite the blithe invincibility of teens, how vulnerable they are.

Ryan not only creates art. He him-self is a work of living art in the way that true art defines human life — the imperfection, the defiance against expectation, the daring, the suffering.

"I got one piece, man, ahhhh … it looks so great," he says in a muted country drawl that speaks to his calm, reflective demeanor.

His assessment of his work, by all accounts, holds true in comparison to the work of more-mobile and even professional artists (he's recently sold one of his original pieces for $5,000).

Nowhere is Ryan's struggle manifested in his art more than in an abstract landscape he aptly named "No Boundaries."

Its visual beauty is magnified by the depth of its context.

In the foreground is a quilted riot of colors, meant in physical terms to be the understory of an open pasture, with Appalachian foothills in the distance.

Ryan not only loves nature, he's obsessed with it.

In his painting, in between the chaos of pigments and the calm of the mountain range beyond, is a line of fence posts.

As he pondered how to add in the fence, Ryan says the meaning of his painting began to find its center.

There is no fence, only the posts, the symbols of the boundaries that could exist, but don't through his unique perspective.

He likes the original, poster-sized version better than the portrait-sized prints. Somehow, Ryan says, the prints hem in the vastness of what he intends for his creation.

An end and a beginning

Dec. 27, 2000.

Ryan recites this date almost robotically, as he would if a DMV clerk were asking his birthdate. In a way, it is — the day he ended one life and began another.

Ryan, then a 14-year-old Easley High freshman, his father, Roger, and a cousin had taken the Wednesday after Christmas to travel just across the Laurens County line into Newberry County for a deer hunt.

Ryan's older brother had piqued his interest in hunting. It seemed to mesh with Ryan's love for the outdoors, though he and his dad weren't terribly experienced at it.

Wearing the orange safety vest required while deer hunting, Ryan split from the group.

About 70 yards away, through thick brush and briars, Ryan's cousin saw movement and fired a shotgun blast.

It was Ryan. A single buckshot pellet pierced through the left side of his neck. His father carried his youngest son 200 yards to his vehicle and got him to Self Memorial Hospital in Greenwood in time to save his life.

The next day Ryan was moved to Greenville Memorial Hospital, and two weeks later, he was transferred to Atlanta's Shepherd Center, a physical therapy clinic that treats catastrophic injuries.

It took Ryan two months to recover enough to simply breathe, speak and move his head, his mother, Tana Crum, says.

While he was still on a ventilator, hospital staff asked him what he was interested in. He told them art.

An integral part of paralysis therapy is engaging patients in hobbies they love to get them on track.

Without a love for something, patients in Ryan's position can get sicker because of a lack of exercise and depression, both of which weaken the immune system, says Susan Skolnic, manager of therapeutic recreation at the Shepherd Center.

Some never come around, Skolnic says; others take to adjusting to their new life almost immediately.

At the Shepherd Center, Roger watched an older man who was also paralyzed fail to get off a respirator. He had lost the will to. He feared his son might suffer the same apathy of spirit.

"I didn't know how he would react," says Roger, 53, a tool and die maker for textile accessories manufacturer Steel Heddle in Greenville. "Some people just draw back into a shell."

But immediately it was clear that Ryan was not ready to draw into any shell. Rather, he wanted to draw on an experience he had dabbled with before. Really, he just wanted to draw.

"I did art, but I didn't take it as seriously," Ryan now says.

It was tough going at first. He was on a ventilator, and his neck had yet to gain the strength necessary to perform even the smallest of tasks.

He was determined.

Breaking new ground

Ryan returned to Easley High and the 1,500-student body his sophomore year — after getting credit for his schooling at the Shepherd Center — unsure of where his path would lead.

The Pickens County school district assigned him a permanent adult "shadow," Sissy Galloway, to help him through school.

He soon met Russell Jewell, his art teacher. By the end of his junior year, Ryan had qualified for Dr. Jewell's advanced-placement art class, a class difficult enough to warrant college credit.

As the weight of such responsibility — teaching a quadriplegic artist at an advanced level — weighed on Jewell's shoulders, he spent the past summer preparing, unsure of what he could possibly do.

Jewell brainstormed. He researched on the Internet. Nothing he found would guide him as to how a paralyzed artist could grow as an artist, rather than as a patient merely using art as therapy.

There was no map to be found. That's when Jewell decided he would figure it out for himself.

On the Google search engine, he typed in "superman." He found the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and an opportunity to secure a grant for a new art curriculum, with Ryan at its center.

He asked for $800. He got $1,500.

Jewell's classroom is a study in the right-brained artist stereotype, reflecting his personality: somewhat disorganized yet purposeful. All around are signs of a work in progress that is his curriculum for Ryan.

A few strands of crude twine from the ceiling hold up a sheet of foam insulation on which the teacher mounted a hanging drill for Ryan to carve out a piece of Styrofoam.

He mounted an old record turntable sideways and attached a canvas for Ryan to paint with a blow pen. Masking tape holds together much of the invention.

Jewell even set up a paint gun for Ryan to shoot at a canvas, readdressing in a constructive way, he says, Ryan's hunting accident and his general interest in hunting.

And Ryan's art isn't just confined to what he can do with his mouth. Jewell set up a device that attaches to Ryan's wheelchair and allows him to use a paint roller with back and forth motion.

When the device initially proved too light, he tied on a weight.

In 21 years of teaching art, Jewell says he has never been more challenged to find new ways of expression.

"He comes along, and it's looking at art a whole new way," Jewell says.

And so, in that way, Ryan exists in a universe where imagination runs free, without legs, even if that universe is confined to a classroom.

The painting has helped strengthen his neck, but more than that, he says, it provides a release he can't find in anything else. It calms the nerves that often wreak havoc on his body.

"Whenever I'm doing art, it physically relaxes me," he says. "It helps me with my nerve pain."

When painting, Ryan is free. His imagination is limitless, emancipated from his body.

Like Ryan, Jewell says he is free, to invent, to learn, to push past the boundaries that Ryan has already broken through.

"I'm not sure where we're going," Jewell says. "I'm not sure if we're breaking new ground. We're just seeing where we go."

No boundaries

Everything in Ryan's life almost always finds its way to one central idea and love — nature — not only in his landscapes, but in his limited time for activities.

Ryan attends physical therapy after school. It takes him considerable time to get dressed, to eat, to get from class to class. Whenever he gets free time, his mind always wanders back to nature.

Months after the accident, Ryan and his dad were invited by a church friend to attend a hunt, one purpose being to face the past and put it behind them.

Roger agreed to go, but he says he refused to take a gun.

However, Ryan insisted that his father take a gun. It was a hunt after all. So he did. It was Ryan strengthening not only himself but others.

It's also the only time Roger has been hunting since his son's accident.

After relief from the immediate fear over whether his son would live or die, Roger says he has learned to appreciate how his son has handled life since Dec. 27, 2000.

Underneath his gentle, resolved spirit, the burden of a teen living in a bodily prison peeks through.

"It's something you never get used to," Ryan says.

He holds on to the hope, the slim but possible medical odds, that he can one day walk again.

In the meantime, Ryan is slowly and steadily re-integrating his previous life into his current one.

A few weeks ago, he went on a hunt with a group that takes others with similar disabilities. On his next such hunt, he plans to mount a gun that he can fire with his mouth.

His wheelchair, adorned with a brown-based camouflage book bag, has become multipurpose like an SUV, except that he actually uses his vehicle in the wild.

"I take it off-road," he says. "I don't know if you're supposed to, but I do anyway."

Ryan still enjoys his bass boat, and he's planning to take up fishing again with the aid of a special rod.

In his boat, strapped into a five-point harness, he feels the freedom of the breeze in his face, the openness of the water. As he relates this, he would surely stretch out his arms if he could.

His sense of freedom is infectious.

"He is one of the most positive things we have going in this school," says Easley High assistant principal Danny Merck. "We see him leave early for class, he's always got a smile on his face."

When the faculty first saw one of Ryan's paintings, Merck says "everybody wanted it." There is something in the art that speaks to the soul, that calms the ills of a world caught up in achievement.

"At a time when accountability and the stress is getting to the teachers, we just look at those pictures," Merck says.

Ryan's determination and calm acceptance of the cards he has been dealt acts as a spark to everyone around him.

Brittany Morgan, 17, a classmate who has been friends with Ryan since their freshman year, says she remembers a completely different person before the accident.

A more average, typical teenager by those narrowly defined high school standards.

"This has made him one of the most extraordinary people I know," says Morgan, who plans to study biology at the University of South Carolina and minor in art. "He's almost got a completely different outlook on life. He's the center, the core of this class."

Ryan's work and dedication have been a boon to the Easley High art department.

A Greenville mortgage firm that annually buys student artwork has purchased one of Ryan's pieces, "Field of Flowers," for $5,000.

Half of the proceeds will go to the art curriculum, a blessing that Jewell says comes in a time of need as ongoing budget cuts gut programs.

But such things are ancillary to what Ryan provides in spirit, Morgan says.

Even without the context of his life, absent the knowledge of the deep place his work emanates from, Morgan says she believes, like others, that his art stands on its own merits visually.

Like Ryan, she considers herself an artist with expressionistic leanings, an interpreter, one foot in the abstract and the other kept in the real world only out of necessity.

Art is where the two meet on equal grounds, and Ryan, she says, passively teaches her and others around him the hard-fought lessons of life so often overlooked by teens.

"Most of us right now feel like we're invincible," Morgan says.

Ryan is long past accepting that falsity so ingrained into teen life. His father says Ryan "understands his limitations."

Some things are not meant to be. Ryan had long wanted to be a game warden after he graduated from high school. That no longer is practical, he says.

He wants to go to college, but doesn't know which one or what he would study. He's earning a college credit in his class, but he's not sure he could afford to go to college if he wanted to.

The real world is one of limbo, a state of inertia that spreads through every aspect of his life.

Except for one. A world of art where there are no wheelchairs.

Where there are no fences and no boundaries. "In art," he says, "you can just go anywhere."