The Ceiling Squardron of Abbeville, SC

The Ceiling Squadron

The Ceiling Squadron of Abbeville begins here…

So there I am, in the center of Abbeville, South Carolina. I am trying to get my bearings for the Genius Music Festival II. It is the re-start of the Festival that had occurred earlier in the year in 96, SC. I had no idea that day I would discover Ceiling Squadron of Abbeville.

Wandering around this impossibly beautiful, picture-perfect remnant of the Civil Wars’ Old South is an experience. The houses in all their Antebellum glory were intoxicating.

I found the small gazebo in the center of town. I waited for my contacts to come by as agreed. The grass, the trees, and the perfectly manicured lawns were a mesmerizing hue-circus of green. All kinds of green, and all shades of greeg.

I sat on a bench next to a big Statue of a Confederate Soldier. This was a nod to Abbevilles’ many Sons who served on the Confederate side of that tragic conflict.

Civil War, WW II

The Civil War began and ended in Abbeville. It ending when Andrew Jackson retreated here and declared the Confederacy finished.

Finally met up with Fred Engler, our sound technician from the previous year. We were going to shoot a video of a few new songs and one or two older ones.

Fred and his assistant, I and a load of gear, went across the park and into a tall, very thin building.  Two floors up, in the 2nd-floor space, we arrived and were going to shoot this video. Fred and his team were so efficient and professional, it took almost no time at all for them to get things set up.

Which gave me 30 minutes or so to wander around the floor we were on. It was long, 2 car-lengths or so wide, and sloping away from the front windows. Everything was helter-skelter about the space, especially where we had set up. The clutter got thicker into the far back end of the building. A little darker down towards the back.

Long Ago But Not Too Far Away

Someone had spent years making hundreds of models of WW II Fighters and Bombers, with care and precision they had applied decals, and painted them accurately and carefully hung them about 12″ below the ceiling with clear fishing line.

The floor was filled with old boxes, some restaurant gear, a bicycle. There were some plywood sheets leaning against the far wall. I slowly made my way to the back of the floor, where there was a big window at the far end. It looked out over the parking lot and the trash bins in the alley. Not much to look at.

Fred shouted that he was ready to record, and as I turned to head back to the front of the building, I happened to glance up at the ceiling, about 20 feet above me.

Ceiling Squadron of Abbeville!

Someone had spent years making hundreds of models of WW II Fighters and Bombers, they had applied decals with care and precision, and painted them accurately. Then they were carefully hung about 12″ below the ceiling with clear fishing line.

The models were beautiful and stretched almost the entire length of the building. Who did this? Who made this atmospheric armada?

There was not clue anywhere. But from the dust, they had been hanging here a long time.

It was Breathtaking!

Boeing B 29 Superfortress, The B 24 Liberator, B 17 Flying Fortress and so many more like the US and RAF fighters and a few of the German fighters, too.

Boeing B 29 Superfortress, The B 24 Liberator, B 17 Flying Fortress and so many more like the plus the fighters and a few of the German fighters, too.

This was so unexpected, so beautiful and so completely lost to outside eyes, I had to document and share this remarkable discovery.

This was so unexpected, so beautiful and so completely lost to outside eyes, I had to document and share this remarkable discovery.

The Ceiling Squadron of Abbeville, SC