A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013: I is for Iva, South Carolina

Iva, South Carolina is a little town in Anderson County, South Carolina and was the last place that I wanted to live when David and I got married. He was offered a job for a company in Australia and I was all excited about koala bears and kangaroos for neighbors. What I got was something that my late father-in-law referred to like this: "If God were going to give the world an enema, he'd stick it in Iva."

But, that is where we wound up. The job fell through and we went to work at McClendon's Western Auto, the store that Bruce McClendon, David's daddy, opened in the fall of 1974. Here we were, ten years later, happy to be together and looking forward to our new lives...in the same old place.

In the map below "A" marks where David's family home was located and "B" marks where our first home as man and wife was located. It is also where our "two" became "three" and the first McClendon grandson was on the way.

I have a lot of family history there. My Granny Gunter was living there at this time and had been for eons. My Pressley great-grandparents had lived there for a time as had my great-great-grandmother Maggie Williams. The history was there, but what I wanted at the time was OUT. I didn't want to stay in a small town out in the boonies.

Love makes you do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do and that was the case here. I would have followed David to the ends of the earth back then, and even now after all of these years together. Looking back, Iva wasn't as bad as it seemed when we first realized that it was going to be our first home together. I'd give just about anything to be able to go back there now, to be able to go to Granny's house and have her greet me at her front door, to hear her "y'all come back and see me sometimes" as I get into my car to leave. Or, to hear my late father-in-law call me "Sue-d-lou" and laugh that laugh he had and to hear Grandma McClendon tell stories about how naughty Papa and Uncle Carl were as little boys.

Nah, it wasn't so bad. It actually fit quite well.