Falling, near Timmonsville, S.C.

Leaning tobacco barn outside Timmonsville, S.C.
Leaning tobacco barn outside Timmonsville, S.C.

Charleston architect Steve Coe sent along this picture of an old tobacco barn falling down on S.C. Highway 403 just north of Timmonsville, S.C.

“Every time I drive past, this the building leans just a little bit more,” he writes.  “It’s as if the earth is slowly taking it back.  It represents a time long since passed, but also it reminds me how everything is ‘of the earth.’

“As much as I like the building, I also feel something nostalgic about the piece of farm equipment discarded in front of the barn — how it got there, the last time someone touched it.  Just something interesting about this ‘decay’ that goes on day in, day out as I go about my life.”

In 2010, Timmonsville had 2,315 people.  Ten years later, it had grown by five people.  Per capita income for the town was $11,714 in 2000.  Timmonsville’s poverty rate was 26.6 percent in 2000, much higher than its home county, Florence, which had 19.4 percent poverty in 2010.  Florence, just a few miles away from Timmonsville, is the largest city in the Pee Dee with 37,498 people in 2012.   Florence County had 137,948 people, according to a 2012 estimate.

Copyrighted photo was taken January 2014 by Steve Coe.  All rights reserved.