Charlotte Observer Sun, Apr. 14, 2002 RUBY, S.C. - 40 acres filled with love and sorrow RUBY, S.C. -- Thomas McBride still dreams of his grandparents' lantern-lit homestead in Chesterfield County and how he would walk a honeysuckle-laden path for a bucket of the sweetest spring water that's ever crossed his lips. He also remembers cotton fields stretching to the horizon and long rows filled with his kinfolk dragging bags of the white fluff equal to their own body weight. For three generations, McBride's ancestors worked these fields about 50 miles southeast of Charlotte, first as slaves and later as sharecroppers. McBride recalls elders pointing out lynching trees in the half-light of a summer evening and a county road that blacks were forbidden to cross after sundown. McBride's memories are primarily from summer vacations in the late 1940s and '50s when he would come back and visit his S.C. relatives. It's been a half-century since McBride last walked his grandparents' path to retrieve the holy water of his homeland; still, his thirst has never abated for this haunted landscape. McBride, a 65-year-old Denver businessman, is one of the fortunate ones able to come full circle in this life -- both geographically and in his heart. He and his wife, Dorothy, recently completed a transcontinental quest by purchasing 40 acres of the former 1,000-acre plantation where his ancestors started working more than a century ago. The McBrides are likely to remain living in Colorado, where their four grown children reside. He's not sure what to do with his $50,000 S.C. property: perhaps a creekside park named in honor of his grandparents, Daisy and Marshall McBride. Or maybe a small manufacturing plant to bring jobs to this ghost town that peaked just after World War II. For the rest of the story, go to http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/3060856.htm