A few moments later, the air fell silent. Over Sumter National Forest, the engine sputtered. Eric and Keith huddled together to keep warm. Hart piled his Cessna 170 with Christmas presents, and he and Becky their sons, Eric and Keith and their two dogs took off to South Carolina. Hart sprays it with Raid every year to keep the bugs away, to keep it around a little longer. “I think he’s worked over nine lives,” Becky says.Īnd in the general store, Hart hung a ham. “I run out of money in the first aisle and start writing checks.”Įventually, all the sawing and hammering and roofing took its toll. “People go to flea markets and say they can’t find anything,” Hart says. Rope beds, nursing chairs, dolls made of corn husks - its all there. She hunted with Hart on Sundays at antiques shows for furniture that matched the time period of each cabin. And today, when you peer into the cabins, you can still see blue crayon marks along the edges of the logs.īecky stepped in to help, too.
When he had the logs and the tin and nails on his land, he stitched everything back together. He took photos of every wall and corner to be sure he put them back together properly. He walked around the cabins and marked the logs with numbers and letters. On weekends and evenings, he traveled around the county to move buildings to his property. Once Hart moved the first cabin to his land, his phone began ringing. Sometimes, he got so angry at the snake, he jerked him from the box, paddled to shore, swung the snake by the tail, and whipped it against the tree. The snakes had already devoured the eggs. A few times a month, he paddled up to the boxes and wrestled black snakes out of the nests. He built lakes and made boxes, so wood ducks could lay their eggs safely. In the ’60s, Hart bought his 200 acres just outside the city limits to use as a wildlife preserve. They had two boys, and Hart built his reputation as a caring doctor in Hickory. He studied chemistry and biology at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and went on to medical school.Īlong the way, he met Becky. “If you had good grades, you could go out all weekend in town,” he says. So his dad sent him to a military academy, and he learned discipline. But early on, it didn’t seem like Hart would follow their paths. His grandfather and father were both doctors. He scrubs himself with a surgery brush and washes his hands with Clorox. When he gets home, he’s so dirty from nailing and sawing and mowing, that his wife, Becky, makes him undress outside. He buys his clothes from flea markets because he destroys them with chain saws and mucks them up so quickly. His favorite time is daylight savings time, so he can work even longer. He works at the village every day from daylight to dusk. He’s a man of medium build, medium height, and big ambition. And the people go to work, ginning cotton, making brooms, spinning clay.Īnd for a day, there is life in his village. So once a year, every fourth Saturday in October, Hart invites about 200 artisans and craftsmen he knows to Hart Square. “The love of restoring stuff - it’s almost like resuscitating a person,” he says. We go to great lengths to preserve our lifeless bodies. After others die, we take their organs, so we can live just a little longer. We have cleanses, lotions, and potions for it. He’s a doctor, after all.Įveryone eventually tries to cheat death. Everyone knew Hart would take better care of their old cabins than they could. And once he had the cabins, he had to decorate them with original furniture.Īfter a while, Hart started spotting cabins around the county from his airplane. A friend thought his cabin would look good on Hart’s land, so he sold it to Hart for $100.
Each structure represents a part of this village he calls Hart Square.
He’s stuffed the cabins with beds, chairs, food, dresses, shoes, brooms, medicine. He’s gathered these 92 buildings from the surrounding counties and moved them to this 200-acre haven. The man who helps us cheat death, the man who keeps going and going and going until he feels that heart beat once more.īob Hart has been going and going for more than 40 years now on this land. Who did this? Sustaining life, and cabins A ghost town from the 1800s, right here in the hills of Hickory. Print shop.Ī village preserved in its entirety. Scores of logs stacked on top of each other. Rows and lines of them zigzagging across the land like an Etch A Sketch drawing. The 2017 Hart Square Village Festival will take place on October 28, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the October 2012 issue of Our State.
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