the brain: bpgisme's photo blog

no longer updating this section

I have quit using this as a photo gallery... I'm keeping these up for archival reasons for a while.... If you want to see more photos please go to my art gallery specifically the photography gallery. It's just too difficult to put things up in several sections... Makes my brain hurt! :)

Posted by Bonnie Gardiner at 6:27 PM
Edited on: Friday, January 07, 2005 6:27 PM
Categories:

Killing time while Max was in therapy

These are kind of mixed up, but there are a couple of pictures of Max that Marjorie took, some pictures of the sky and water in Southport, NC late this afternoon, some trees in Southport, a marina in Southport, and the vacant Roses, Wilsons and Kerr Drug store buildings in Southport.

In case you are wondering about the vacant buildings, the Roses store was in business for years and years but finally gave up the ghost in 1998 I think. It used to be the only place to get things that you couldn't get in a grocery store around here. Of course, what killed it, besides mismanagement and employee theft, was Walmart moving in just a few blocks away. My ex-husband briefly worked at the Roses. He was accused of stealing by the very manager who was actually caught stealing later. Ironic. Hmmm.... Our car was once repossessed right in that parking lot.

Depressing memories there, really.

BUT! Now that it's vacant and decaying it's kind of cool. It represents that dark time in my life that thankfully is far, far away now.

Next door to Roses, I have been told, there was a small restaurant. As long as I have lived out here in Brunswick county it seemed to be vacant and being used to store stuff. (I moved out here in 1989.) Now it looks as if the roof has caved in.

On the other side of the restaurant was a Wilsons grocery store. It died long before Roses and may have also contributed to the death of the store. I don't really remember why Wilsons kicked the bucket. Seems like they were bought out first by Hannaford and eventually Lowes Food and moved to a new location closer to Oak Island.

In any case, all three places were vacant for some time, and then a few years ago Kerr Drug which was directly in front of Roses built a new store next door to the old one. They even recycled the windows out of the old building. It's truly bizarre, but there's this empty shell, with windows gone and a glass door still there and it's been completely gutted. It's a masonry hull just rotting there and growing over, right next door to the shiny new Kerr Drugs building.

So, here's the photos. The building with no windows is the old Kerr Drugs.