With all due respect, I would intentionally exclude Allendale. Restrooms at the Hardees are lackluster at best. 😁
Oh, it did NOT make the list and my mention of it to then fully exclude Allendale and surrounding areas should tell you all you need to know. The bathrooms are one of many “amenities” in the Allendale area that “lack luster”. I sometimes think I literally grew up in the worst town in America!
Some of the highlights:
Allendale was literally the poorest town in SC. Absolutely no job opportunities or viable businesses that provide anything resembling something fun to do.
It was the first school district in SC (which was about 49th/50 states in education at the time) to be TAKEN OVER BY THE STATE because the schools were so poorly run!
The teachers protested said state action as they knew they were all AWFUL teachers and would be promptly fired. The Augusta Chronicle (closest town with a reasonably circulated newspaper) ran a front page article on that protest, the picture of which literally showed a teacher holding a sign that read “We ain’t need no Government intervention”... Please, try to convince me they were being ironic. I always recall my brother (very smart- literally a rocket scientist now) went to his middle school math teacher and asked him for help with ore-algebra as he wanted to take the PSAT early... The teacher told him now because he “DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO DO ALGEBRA”... A MATH TEACHER!?!
Allendale HS (not a big school), was once raided by sled looking for drugs with dogs... Found like 6 people with CRACK COCAINE in their lockers at school! Like enough to SELL... Sled came back the very next day and CAUGHT 15 PEOPLE, apparently they assumed “well they cane yesterday, they won’t come today”! LOL
Our elected Mayor when taking over the office (a PART TIME JOB, paying like $15k at the time), in his first day in office literally asked one of his aids when the previous mayor was moving out of his house. (The previous mayor was wealthy my Allendale standards and had a mansion in the fancy part of town... Dumbass literally thought it was the Mayoral mansion and he got to move in once he won the election!! LMAO)
Same Mayor was told some old stores lining the downtown main street that had been condemned for decades needed to be torn down. He refused, called them historic monuments and said he would get the state to pay to have them restored... Shockingly one of the buildings literally fell down a few months later and blocked two lanes of main street... They got some guys to push the rubble over far enough so it was only blocking one lane for MONTHS until they could scrape up the funds to clean it up proper...
Our Spring Fedtival? The COOTER FEST! Yes. That’s right- COOTER FEST. See we called turtles “cooters” in Alendale (why? God only knows)... It became somewhat famous for a while in the 90s when people started using “cooter” as slang for a certain part of female anatomy.
Perhaps my favorite story though: Some guy was being called to court and charged with a crime that could be rather costly to him (I forget the charge, not paying child support or something), so his big plan to get out of it?- HE BURNT DOWN THE COURT HOUSE! Quite successfully... Like burned it TO THE GROUND. It did not work obviously... He was just also charged with a hist of additional crimes, but it made for a great story!
