I want to acknowledge the opening of this episode. I had ChatGPT write me a little scripted intro — a few lines about Greenville being one of the South’s best-kept secrets, progress with a southern accent, something about a pretty waterfall. I filmed it. It’s in there. I am not, as it turns out, great with scripted on-camera material. Frank already knows this. Frank is thinking it right now.

We’re moving on.

The Drone That Didn’t Fly

I came to Reedy River Falls with every intention of getting drone footage. I had FAA approval — got it instantly, had a screenshot and everything, up to 100 feet. The problem is the controller reads the airspace as Class C or D and won’t let you take off without the approval loaded directly into it, which requires an internet connection the controller doesn’t have. My phone has Wi-Fi. The controller doesn’t care. I’ve been working around this issue for months and missing flights because of it, and I’m going to figure it out before the next trip because this is getting embarrassing.

I packed the drone up, stood there for a minute, and then my word of the year showed up right on cue.

Shift.

Walter and Lynn

I had barely pivoted when Walter walked over and asked if I flew the drone there often. I told him the short version of why I couldn’t, and we started talking. Thirty minutes later I was still standing there.

Walter has lived in this area most of his life, with a stretch in Daytona where he ran a concession business on the beach. He and Lynn — who has what I’d describe as a vagabond heart, kindred spirit energy — gave me the real version of Greenville. The bridge I was standing on used to be a four-lane road for traffic. This whole corridor was mill country — water-powered businesses running along the river. What’s here now is a product of deliberate redesign, with the gentrification and displacement that tends to follow. Beautiful, genuinely, and complicated, depending on where you stood before the money arrived.

I gave them both cards before we parted ways. I saw Walter again crossing the bridge a little later and we picked the conversation back up where we’d left it. Lynn and I talked about the importance of connection — how much more you understand that the older you get, how it turns out to be most of what actually matters. I should have had the camera rolling. I keep saying that. I mean it every time.

What I’ll remember about Reedy River Falls isn’t the drone flight I didn’t take. It’s Walter and Lynn.

The Bells and the Fulsomes

At 10 a.m. the bells rang — a tower of them, right there in the park, doing what bells do on the hour. I’d heard them the night before from the hotel room and couldn’t figure out what the sound was. Now I knew.

Something about the bells sent me back to a memory I hadn’t visited in a while. Our neighbors when I was a kid — Thelma and Nelson Fulsome. They seemed ancient to me then. They were probably around the age I am now. I used to love sitting on their patio and just listening to them talk. Stories, mostly. Sometimes they helped me with homework or extra credit projects. They were a wealth of knowledge about everything, and I was a kid who didn’t know enough yet to know how rare that was.

I talked to my sister Lori on the phone the day before, and I told her what I keep circling back to on this trip: I’m grateful — genuinely, specifically grateful — that I not only have the time this year, but decided to use it. Not just to see places, but to grow a little. To sit still long enough to have conversations I wasn’t expecting. That feels like something.

Artist Row and the Photographer

After Walter and Lynn I wandered down to what they call Artist Row — a stretch of studio spaces and small galleries along the river. I’d grabbed some cards the night before, but by the time I was back in the morning everything was closed. I stopped in front of a photographer’s space — Chris Bruner Photography — and stood there long enough to know I’d want to come back and actually talk to him. What makes a working artist choose a place like this, build something in it, stay? That’s the conversation I keep wanting to have and keep arriving too early or too late for.

A little further along, another couple stopped me — curious about the Osmo. We talked for another half hour. Some of the nicest people I’ve met anywhere on this whole year have been in Greenville, South Carolina. I got their names. I immediately forgot them. It happens.

Could I Live Here

The Hampton Inn put me right in the middle of everything, which was the point. Across the footbridge, the Bohemian Lodge — dinner there the night before, restaurant called Between the Trees upstairs, bar called Spirit and Bower on the lower level with tables overlooking the park. I would have photographed the food but there were people at the bar and I would’ve looked like an idiot.

Walking out of town, I kept asking myself the question I ask in most places that stop me: could I live here? Greenville has about 70,000 people — half the size of West Palm Beach. Close to the mountains. Closer to New York than I am now. Great restaurants, a walkable downtown, a waterfall as the centerpiece. Everybody I talked to had nothing but good things to say about the place.

The honest answer: if the summers weren’t as humid, and if it snowed here and had a real fall — I’d probably already be looking at apartments. Specifically, I’d want to be near a town like this rather than in it. A little room, a little quiet, close enough to get to the waterfall on a Sunday morning.

I don’t know where I’m landing yet. But the list keeps getting longer.

Driving Out

Last drive down Main Street before the interstate. Older two-story buildings with shops and coffee and restaurants at street level, lofts above, every space filled and occupied. The trees along the brick intersection at Court and Main — bare branches in January — I kept thinking about what that corner looks like in October. I’d go back just for that.

I drove out to jazz. Dirty windshield and all.

Next episode: last day in South Carolina, and probably a season wrap-up before whatever comes next.