Where a retired judge “holds court” today

Once in a while you can find a retired South Carolina judge passing the time inside a West Union store.  It’s not a stretch to find Alex Macaulay catching up with friends at Neville Hardware because it’s just around the block from where the Macaulay family made their home.  Yesterday afternoon was a chance for this reporter to chat with Judge Macaulay about old times.  The two of us met 50 years ago when Macaulay was an assistant South Carolina attorney general whose workload included the Golden Corner of South Carolina.  Although Macaulay’s father was a South Union native, the Oconee County of the early 1970s was a place that Alex Macaulay knew little about.  That all changed when his boss, Attorney General Dan McLeod, directed a young Macaulay to carry out an order of injunction to prevent a Walhalla property owner from carrying out a threat to shoot the local highway engineer.  The property owner objected to the state crossing her fence as part of the design to convert SC 28, then a two-lane highway between Seneca and Walhalla, into four lanes.  Fortunately, the dispute resolved without the property owner carrying out her threat, and motorists began to enjoy a four-lane highway connecting the county’s two largest municipalities.