Clover lies just beyond the North Carolina–South Carolina border, halfway between a dammed-up stretch of the Catawba River, cal ed Lake Wylie, and the Kings Mountain National Park, site of Ryan and Boyd’s Revolutionary War excursion. My friend Anne cal s the town Clo-vay, giving the name a je ne sais quoi panache.

During off-peak traffic hours the trip to Clo-vay takes less than thirty minutes. Unfortunately, every driver registered in either the Palmetto or the Old North State was on the road that morning. Others had joined them from Tennessee and Georgia. And Oklahoma. And Guam. I crept down I-77, alternately sipping my Starbucks and drumming the wheel.

Clover was incorporated in 1887 as a railway stopover, then boomed as a textile center in the early nineteen hundreds. Water seepage from the railroad tanks kept the place damp and carpeted with clover, earning it the name Cloverpatch. Aspiring to a more imposing image, or perhaps wanting to dissociate from the Yokums and the Scraggs, some citizens’ committee later shortened the name to Clover.

The image polishing didn’t help. Though Clover is stil home to a few mil s, and things like brake parts and surgical supplies are cranked out nearby, nothing much happens there. A perusal of chamber of commerce literature suggests that good times are had elsewhere: Lake Wylie, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Carolina beaches, Charlotte Knights basebal games, Carolina Panthers footbal games.

There are a few antebel um homes hiding in the hil s around Clover, but it’s not a place for French country hand towels and stripy umbrel as. Though very Norman Rockwel , the town is strictly blue-col ar, or, more correctly, no-col ar.

By nine-forty I was at the point where US 321 crosses SC 55, the beating heart of downtown Clover. Two-and three-story redbrick buildings lined both blacktops forming the intersection. Predictably, Route 321 was cal ed Main Street along this stretch.

Remembering the Yahoo! map, I went south on 321, then made a left onto Flat Rock Road. Three more rights and I found myself on a dead-end street lined with longleaf pines and scrub oaks. The address Zamzow had given me led to a double-wide on a cement slab eighty yards down at the far end.

A front stoop held two metal lawn chairs, one bare, the other with green floral cushions in place. To the right of the trailer I could see a vegetable garden.

The front yard was fil ed with whirligigs.

A carport hung by suction cups to the trailer’s left end, its interior fil ed with oddly shaped stacks covered with blue plastic sheeting. A stand of shagbark hickories threw shadows across a rusted swing set to the left of the carport.

I pul ed onto the gravel drive, kil ed the engine, and crossed the yard to the front door. Among the whirligigs I recognized Little Bo Peep. Sleepy and Dopey. A mother duck leading four miniature versions of herself.