I spent lot of time from 1984 till 1991 traipsing about Dear Old Dixie with the photographers Roger Manley and Guy Mendes. Our mission was to find, as Guy put it, out people way out We did just that, and fought lot of kudzu, ate lot of terrible barbecue, and incurred the displeasure of numerous bubbas who did not like the way we dressed or talked. (Bubbas would be the objects of Christian pity, if they weren't such genuinely mean assholes.) The result was Walks to the Paradise Garden, subtitled Outsiders in the South. Pieces of the book have appeared in Conjunctions (issues 12 and 21), ARTVU: Contemporary Southern Visual Arts (Spring 1991), and Modern Painters (London: Summer 1996). - J.W. If you go way down into southeast South Carolina, to the Springtown Community, in the environs of town called Walterboro, you might happen across rural route once lived on by an aged black man known as Jolly Joshua Samuel (1895-1984). He sounds wonderful. He founded an entity called the Young People World Fare Organization. The centerpiece of this entity was to be Can City. By the time Roger Manley and I got there in 1985 it had, essentially, disappeared. However, Roger had seen it once before the tornado wiped it out. Let's first devote few words to Southeast South Carolina. If, by some weird chance, you ever are unfortunate enough to venture off 1-95, you will see horrid part of the world, as blasted as Namibia must be. Nearly all the old motels and commercial buildings have been torched for insurance money. Even Eastern Kentucky doesn't look so wretched. It is black country and these people appear to have as much chance in the world as the Iraqis in our recent high-tech adventure in ivy-league butt-kicking. Enter this visionary gentleman, J. J. Samuel. He had some divine notion that by collecting three cents from this one and 85 cents from that one, he could establish tiny bit of social justice, a beginning for colored leadership all around the world. He aimed to raise $150,000 to help abjectly poor people, young people, destitute farmers, very sick people. It didn't happen because there was no way it could happen. Still, he told Tom Stanley, the printer, how the inspiration came: I had dream in 1942. I dreamt that there was man coming in the air driving something sideways. And I said that thing's gonna land right here. And it went right between the house and the tree there. And there was man with hat on just like this here. I said good morning. He said good morning. I said there's something I've got to ask you. I don't believe I ever saw something like that coming flying sideways in the air. He said no you didn't, Josh. I said how'd you know my name. He said now, I know all about you. I was sent to you, he said. And this is barn load of goods sent to you from way off to give to the poor and needy, but don't you sell thing. So I stood there and didn't say thing, and then I woke up and I didn't have anything. Many years later he began to build Can City. It was constructed from thousands of quart-sized oil cans he collected from nearby truck stop. It ran for about 200 yards along the side of the highway across from the house of Mr. Samuel. In its heyday it was enclosed by wall of cans standing eight feet high. There was central structure intended to be barbecue stand, the place for social gatherings. According to what Jolly Joshua Samuel told Tom Stanley, on either side of the central structure there were decorative patterns of oil cans emerging from the soil, as well as bunting in primary colors hung in the pine trees along the road. Eventually he ran out of cans, so he decided to plant tin-can farm with can trees and can crops all in cultivated rows covering several acres. Mr. Samuel confided to Roger, Man, that field really produces! He was under the illusion that he was growing them, but, if so, it was only by indirect means. …