The Healing Springs of Blackville

We welcome tips from readers about interesting places to visit. A faithful reader gave us the idea to visit Healing Springs in Blackville, SC. This, we are told, is a "Lourdes for automobiles", but we saw mostly human stock partaking of the waters. Just on instinct we feel that it might not be what you want in your radiator, battery or even in the windshield washer.

Highway 78 took us up through Branchville, Bamberg, Denmark and into the Not-Yet-Ready -for-Gentrification, Blackville, SC. The first thing noticed was that everything was closed and on a Saturday, too. We almost ran out of gas looking for a station and once found, we had to sniff the pump to make sure that it was gasoline. It is not trying to be the new Atlanta.

We flagged down a puzzled police officer who seemed to search of the words to tell us that it was for him to stop us and not the reverse. His directions took us quickly there. We fully expected the waters to be running out of a marble edifice or at least some sort of shrine to be in place, some icons of faith: Lee on Traveler, King on the Mountain Top, Biblical figures cast in stone, but all we saw is what you see in the photo: a pipe in the ground with constantly flowing water. How unceremonious and graceless it was and looking more like an ode to plumbers than anything spiritual.

We found small clusters of people drawing water into containers of various volumes. Some took the water almost reverentially, but a few went nervously for the water looking up frequently as if taking undeserved spoils. All worked quietly. At eight pounds to the gallon even free water requires some effort.

To the side of this area we found a sign declaring this to be " God's Acre ", consecrated ground after all and dedicated exclusively to this purpose. It declared this land to be free of any earthly consequence and off limits to the pandering of mortal schemers. We wondered whether this might be a message that not all fonts of faith are in the classic cathedral form.

The initial impression is that the waters from these flowing artesian wells are for the remediation of physical ills, but implicit in the dedication is the proposition that they are for spiritual healing as well. We bottled up a pint of the water to haul off to a lab for analysis. We expect to know a bit more about the chemical nature of the water shortly, but as to the spiritual assets we will have to leave that to the individual chemists of faith who understand such things each in their own way.