WELCOME TO GUMMOLAND! (WALHALLA, SOUTH CAROLINA)

We stumbled into the Twinkie-munching town of Walhalla, South Carolina while searching for roadside attractions in the area. The Osama Bin Muffler Man in nearby Seneca had been replaced by a muffler family. That was disappointing. Walhalla is near Clemson, the conservative football school, but is otherwise in the middle of nowhere on the Georgia/South Carolina border. Our first stop was an antique market that appeared to be open later than it should be. “There’s a big redneck, who really is red, sitting outside,” I commented. The store was actually closed and some sort of auction was about to begin. It was an auction of weird metal things. Gazing at the portly, overall-wearing crowd, I assumed these items had something to do with farms. I had seen them before at a swap meet, but had not inquired what they were. We were a bit out of place in this environment and my wife wouldn’t let me use the bathroom because she was afraid of the amiable, thick-accented country folk milling about. So, we skipped out without ever finding out what them metal things were.

Muffler Family (Seneca, S.C)

I insisted that we walk around Walhalla’s main street, which was fairly lively for late in a weekday when most of the stores were closed. There was the redneck store that featured a confederate flag bikini in the window. Hidden Treasures looked like an amazing junk store with Slim Jims and old stuffed animals in the window display. It was hard to imagine what sort of treasures this store could possibly contain. Another place that had been closed down had a nutty rendering of a very gay-looking sailor/pirate painted on the glass door. It was all that remained of this mysterious store. What had been sold there (parrots, nautical junk, submarine sandwiches)?

Confederate Redneck Store (Walhalla, S.C.)

Hidden Treasures (Walhalla, S.C)

Walhalla has a unique split store (don’t know if there’s a proper term for places that are laundromat/pool halls or bookstore/ice cream stands). This one is a barren salon for hair or nails containing basically a chair and a sink and in the front of the store they sell the front bumpers of cars with headlights. It must be a couple that owns this store. He sells the bumper things and she does the hair or whatever.

There are some Latinos living in Walhalla (how did they ever find Walhalla?), such as the owners of the salon/car bumper store, but much of the town is pasty albino white of the sort you find in certain far-flung corners of the Appalachians. I’m not sure if I can recommend going there, as it’s pretty much out of the way of everything, but I would go back for sure. Though, I’m really not able to do justice to this town’s dead-raccoon-in-the-middle-of-Main-Street, tobacco-spittin’, odor-intensive ambience.