4.18.07: Drive to Livingston
Weather: Cloudy, rainy AM; clear and warmer PM, high 70s
Mileage: Drive to Livingston
Following Josh’s advice, we took off with Shana and Nathan (Coleman Center’s directors) for a truck ride to Livingston to get a much needed county road map. Our USGS map is missing some critical information. This jaunt offered the perfect opportunity for lunch at the famous Touch of Home Bakery. The former Hardee’s building (complete with brilliant orange plastic benches), was transformed into a locally renowned bakery/cafeteria run by Mennonite women. Wednesday is ‘catfish day’ at the Touch of Home: for about five bucks you get two pieces of spicy-corn batter encrusted fried catfish, a few luscious hush puppies, a pool of gooey baked beans and some of the best slaw (coleslaw) we have ever sampled. Even the tartar sauce (homemade) was incredible. After all of that food, we still had to taste one of their sweets: we choose a chocolate crumple cookie that was pure heaven.
After lunch, we visited the courthouse to get our county road map. The brick 1902 Romanesque-inspired courthouse had a beautiful courtroom upstairs, with a freshly restored coffered ceiling, gold painted relief panels and an attractive dais for the judge.
Livingston boasts the one movie screen in the county: the theatre is a small operation housed behind a t-shirt store. We probably won’t make it to a screening since we are not planning to ride our bike past dark…
Later that afternoon, we sat down in the Opera House store to a poetry reading by Doug Kiker. He recited a selection of his humorous locally colorful limericks and poems he wrote based on his life of “growin’ up in the country”. Doug’s family scraped out a living on a small pig, chicken and cow farm about 15 miles outside of town.
Doug and his wife Kaye spun tales of York and the area, about its railroad and farm roots. We entered their private flat, a maze of intimate rooms, none of which were constructed at right angles. We first passed Doug’s cozy book-lined study, the site of his literary creations, and his old man collection, a tidy illuminated case containing dozens of ceramic figurines.
The rest of the afternoon we were enthralled and appalled by Kaye’s environmental activism slide show. She chronicled her being drawn into and leading a decades-long process of investigating, exposing, publicizing and protesting toxic waste dumping in Sumter County.
To understand the impact of the ChemWaste plant in Emelle, read Greenpeace’s detailed chronology. After all of her work, Kaye strongly believes in the potency of grass-roots activism: if you want change, you have to do something about it. In the 1988, she was called by the White House: Reagan bestowed her with a Volunteer Action Award in honor of all of her efforts.
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