SOUTH OF THE BORDER:
The Story Behind the Sombrero
BEFORE YOU READ
IN 1949, businessman Alan Schafer opened South of the Border Beer Depot in Dillon, South Carolina, just south of the North Carolina border. Since then, South of the Border has gone through a number of evolutions and featured multiple bizarre — and sometimes controversial — attractions. From a small beer depot to a roaring business, this story will take you on the wild ride that is South of the Border's history ... one filled with political influence, election fraud and sombreros — lots and lots of sombreros.
AN EXCLUSIVE STORY:
A WHOLE LOT OF BEER
ROBESON COUNTY WAS THIRSTY. The North Carolina area became a dry county in 1949 when it prohibited the sale of alcohol.
Enter, Alan Schafer. A native of the neighboring Dillon County, Schafer saw an opportunity just south of the Robeson County border. He opened a small beer stand named South of the Border Beer Depot in January 1950. The abbreviation "S-O-B" was less a quirky coincidence than a conscious exercise in Schafer's edgy sense of humor, which would guide the business' development for the next 50 years.
1933
Schafer decided to build the stand directly across the border “to place his product at the point most easily accessible to the demand for it,” according to University of South Carolina graduate Laura Koser in her master's thesis “South of the Border: A Landmark in South Carolina Roadside Culture." The decision payed off. The business would rake in $15 million a year ($54 million adjusted for inflation) by the end of the ’70s, according to a 1979 article by The Washington Post, and it would grow to employee roughly 1000 workers by the end of the century.
But the stand wasn’t Schafer’s first experience in beer sales. A journalism student at the University of South Carolina, Schafer cut his senior year short in 1933 in order to return home and help his father run a mercantile store. The Supreme Court passed the 21st Amendment that same year, repealing prohibition.
Schafer proposed they sell the store in favor of creating a beer distribution business. His father, Samuel Schafer, had already found great success in driving beer down from Baltimore to sell at the store.
So, the Schafers sold the store in 1935 and created the Schafer Distributing Company, distributing beer throughout South Carolina and into Georgia. Alan Schafer took sole ownership of the business following his father’s death in 1949. He opened SOB within a year.
As novelty began to die and interest in the beer stand faded, Schafer looked for ways to expand and keep his business relevant.
Workers at South of the Border, (South Caroliniana Library Carolina Studio Photograph Collection)
“He was just good at seeing trends,” Schafer’s grandson and current SOB owner Ryan Schafer said. “He wasn’t just looking at tomorrow. He was looking 5, 10, 15 years down the road.”
ALONG CAME PEDRO
WITHIN FIVE YEARS OF OPENING, South of the Border expanded to include a gift shop, restaurant and gas station as it shifted its focus to middle-class tourists driving down US Highway 301 en route to Florida.
And Schafer doubled down on the Mexican theme to grab their attention.
1961
He sold tacos, a cuisine still relatively foreign to most Americans. He erected billboards from New Jersey to Florida, advertising with fractured English. He employed two Mexican workers, both allegedly referred to as "Pedro," who would become South of the Border's mascot. In time, all of South of the Border's bellhops would come to be referred to as "Pedro."
Henslee Hopkins, better known to Dillon residents as "Cotton," worked as a Pedro in the 1970s. For 65 cents an hour, he wore "a big old hat" and rode around on a bicycle as he showed overnight guests to their rooms. He was 17 at the time.
But the Pedro mascot was a product of the tourists, Ryan Schafer said, and not of his grandfather.
"They're the ones that started calling the Mexican guys Pedro," Ryan Schafer said. "Those guys didn't mind, so I'm sure [Alan Schafer] didn't think there was anything harmful about it."
In a 1979 interview with The Washington Post, Schafer said there was a "power to being Jewish." When accused of
profiting off of harmful Mexican stereotypes, he said he "plays on being Jewish in a small, Southern community."
His identity was a shield.
"The thing that I found in the narrative of Schafer was very much, 'I'm an oppressed minority myself, so therefore these things that I'm, these stereotypes I'm using, they're funny, they're fine, I get license to use them,'" said Nicole King, author of "Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina's Tourism Industry." "He'd play his whitener when he wanted to and use his privilege."
King frequented South of the Border as a child. She grew up about an hour away in Conway, South Carolina, and was drawn to the attraction's "kitschy" aspects. Her perception changed as she matured, inspiring her book in 2009.
An exhibit at South of the Border labeled "Africana"
South Caroliniana Library Carolina Studio Photograph Collection)
"I really still can't believe it's still here, especially in the context of Donald Trump's America, in this real insidious way," King said. "We were taking down these Confederate monuments, right? In South of the Border, because it's funny and kitschy and campy, somehow it gets this pass ... It's so racist. It's a huge problem."
Ryan Schafer said he has "never had a Mexican or Spanish complaint." Rather, the complaints "always" come from "white, middle-class Republicans that can somehow support Donald Trump and his policies." Pedro has not been a big issue so far, he said, and he only receives a couple of complaints a year, always by email.
"They don't want to waste money on a stamp," Ryan Schafer said. "We get more complaints that the chips and salsa aren't free at the restaurant."
Cecilia Marquez, a history professor at Duke University focused on Latinx studies, and Jorge Camacho, a Spanish and Latin American studies professor at the University of South Carolina, both describe SOB as playing up harmful stereotypes such as the "lazy, crafty Mexican," with Pedro often depicted sleeping or lounging. Camacho said SOB reduces Mexicans to caricatures.
"I think that it represents some of the worst tropes that we have about Latinos," said Marquez, who explores the attraction's relationship with racial identity in her article "Becoming Pedro: "Playing Mexican" at South of the Border." “They’re represented in ways that are degrading, that are dehumanizing, that are anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant, anti-Latino."
In 1993 the Mexican Embassy wrote to Alan Schafer, telling him the portrayal of Mexicans on his billboards was offensive. He subsequently began phasing out broken English from his billboards in favor of more generic signage and jokes, but only after writing back that his business was responsible for $1.5 million in Mexican imports each year.
Footage from the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collection (MIRC) of the Confederateland Commemoration
Pedro and Mexican stereotypes are not the only instance of alleged cultural appropriation in South of the Border's 70-year history. As Alan Schafer traveled, he created limited-time exhibits with items from the country or region he visited, according to Koser (although Ryan Schafer said his grandfather likely bought the items off of peddlers in the US).
In 1961, Schafer opened the limited-time attraction Confederateland, USA in time for the civil war centennial.
King wrote in her book that Confederateland maintained "an ironic distance in an attempt to present the Civil War as (inoffensive) modern entertainment. Furthermore, Confederateland, USA smoothed over regional hostilities using Schafer's own brand of humor: the politically incorrect spoof."
The attraction featured authentic Civil War cannons and the remains of the Pee Dee, a Confederate gunboat that was sunk during the war. It also featured Pedro's Plantation, where tourists picked cotton for fun — an addition Ryan Schafer said came at visitors' request.
"People from up north have never seen a cotton field or tobacco, so they were always amazed," Ryan Schafer said. "They'd go out there and want to pick their own cotton."
While its history may be riddled with questionable stereotypes, King said there might still be a place for the attraction in a modern America, controversies and all.
"You could do it in a way to put in a museum, contextualize it, think about the moment that Alan Schafer was born. You could do it in a certain way, not like whitewashing the history of South of the Border. I think it could be really good as a teaching tool," King said.
1969
THE POWER
OF POLITICS
"EVERYTHING HE DID was some sense of power," King said. "I don't know if he's a bad person or a good person. He's probably both, like most people are, but what drove him was power."
Alan Schafer was a powerful figure in South Carolina politics, and it was evident in almost everything he did. In fact, the South Carolina Democratic Party held regular meetings at South of the Border, according to Koser's master's thesis.
That political involvement would come back to hurt him later in life, when Schafer went to prison for election fraud — but that comes later.
Perhaps Schafer's greatest political achievement was his handling of the routing of Interstate 95. Ask anyone in Dillon County and they'll tell you the same thing: The reason I-95 cuts through Dillon, and more specifically South of the Border, is because Alan Schafer made it so.
“He wasn’t a dummy by no means," Dillon resident Bill Coward Jr. said. "I don’t know if there’s any truth in it, but everybody around said that 95 was supposed to go through Marlboro County, and Mr. Schafer got them to bring it by his place back in the day, so he was a powerful man.”
Alan Schafer wrote to various public officials between 1969 and 1972, trying and succeeding in getting a uniquely-designed interchange built at South of the Border.
Ryan Schafer confirmed the theory, although there aren't any physical documents to prove it. The intersection of US 301 and I-95 was originally planned for Marlboro County, about 20 miles away, he said.
What is known through a series of letters between Alan Schafer, the governors of North and South Carolina and various other government officials from the late '60s and early '70s is that Schafer had a heavy hand in the design of the interchange at South of the Border. Schafer was upset the highway department was designing the intersection in a way that Schafer saw as a complete disregard for his business, instead profiting other smaller motels in the area.
Alan Schafer studied different types of interchanges within a 100-mile radius of South of the Border. Here were the final two models for the interchange at the border. (Thomas Cooper LIbrary Political Collections)
"We can make this the best known tourist facility East of the Mississippi. But we can not do it unless we get at least EQUAL treatment to what other, far smaller operations are getting -- and have received in North Carolina, Virginia and in many other Southern States," Schafer wrote in a May 20, 1968, letter addressed to South Carolina Gov. Robert McNair.
Schafer traveled to various interchanges along I-95, photographed them, studied them and hired a contractor to analyze how the intersections benefited local businesses, which he then compared with his own. The state highway departments had already started construction on an intersection design that Schafer did not agree with.
1972
Over the course of a few years, Schafer used his political influence and money to halt construction on the original interchange design and craft one himself, as detailed in the letters. He even offered to front a large sum of money for the intersection at South of the Border. The intersection was completed in Schafer's design in 1972 and still exists today.
This sense of power that drove Schafer in his glory days was evident in almost all aspects of Schafer's professional life, and its legacy still lingers today. In Schafer's large office, which his grandson now inhabits, knick knacks from around the world litter the shelves. Large stained glass double doors with handles imported from Africa separate him from the rest of his office staff.
Just aside from his desk at the center of the room is a large conference room table, with oddly shaped, intricately designed legs. The piece is an early work by artist Paul Evans, and Schafer's grandson said it could sell for more than $100,000 today.
He said he has no intention of selling it.
Ryan Schafer's (formerly Alan Schafer's) office. The table in the foreground is reportedly worth over $100,000. A toy train is suspended above the room.
Less than a decade after the I-95 struggle, Schafer's political dealings would come back to haunt him.
FROM POLITICS TO PRISON
SCHAFER PLED GUILTY in 1981 to 3 counts of voter fraud during the 1980 Democratic Primary. He was ultimately charged with 16 counts of conspiracy and mail fraud, fined $12,000 and sentenced to 42 months in federal prison at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
“They would let you vote how you wanted to, but they would count ‘em how they wanted to,” Dillon resident Bill Coward Jr. said. “If you was in with the right people, then things would happen for you.”
Schafer was the county Democratic Party chairman, a position he’d held for more than 16 years at the time of his indictment. His involvement in the scandal stemmed from his relationships with the candidates for sheriff: incumbent Roy Lee and his opponent Greg Rogers. A friend of Lee, Schafer went toe-to-toe with Rogers to ensure his candidate won.
Put another way: “They got involved in a pissing contest,” Ryan Schafer said.
Absentee voting was a major point of contention during the race. Black votes accounted for 85% of all absentee votes cast after Dillon loosened absentee voting laws, which received pushback from white voters. Rogers ran his campaign for sheriff in opposition to absentee voting.
Rogers began "mailing in false, fictitious and duplicate" absentee applications that Schafer, as Dillon County Democratic chairman, would have to sift through, according to Schafer. There is no evidence supporting these claims.
"So, fanned by the Rednecks and the Local Press, who saw additional power flowing to blacks through liberal use of the Absentee Vote, a campaign began to create the belief that the Absentee Vote was an illegal vote," Schafer wrote in a letter published in the Dillon Herald in 1982. "So, clearly, it became a political race between Greg Rogers, the darling of the local Press and the lily-whites, and the ABSENTEE BOX, ABSENTEE being a code word for Black Voters."
According to the April 29, 1982, edition of the Dillon Herald, Schafer registered more Black voters in his precinct than were registered in any other in South Carolina. This made him a "pariah," in his words, and led to harassment by the KKK. Though King attributed this political move to a power grab — to control the Black vote is to control a large population of decision makers — Schafer said he had a different motive.
In 1970 a former employee tried to have Schafer, his secretary and his wife murdered and robbed. Sheriff Lee saved their lives.
"My reasons were clear to me — my gratitude to Sheriff Lee for saving my life and the two ladies — my fight against the idea of one man controlling the County as his own property — my hope that the one black man ever elected to any office in Dillon County would be able to hold on to his seat," Schafer wrote.
After 18 months of investigation by the Justice Department in what the New York Times called “the largest voting fraud investigation ever conducted in the Southeast,” Schafer, Lee and 28 others were indicted for violating federal election laws. Schafer was released a year into his 42-month sentence.
"I do not condone what I did. I am deeply ashamed for myself; for my family; for the Democratic Party and for the many friends I feel I have let down. My transgressions were not for personal profit nor for political power nor political gain," Schafer wrote. "It will never happen again, although I will always, as long as God gives me strength, fight for the poor, the underprivileged, and against the concentration of power in any man."
Rogers declined our request for comment.
"It will never
happen again."
- Alan Schafer
A newspaper clipping from The State newspaper reads "Grand Jury Indicts Alan Schafer." Various newspapers from the time would highlight Schafer's arrest.
A collumn from The State newspaper, Schafer wrote a detailed description of the events leading to his arrest.
Colorful headlines like this one from The State and two more below demonstrate the attention Schafer got after being indicted.
After only a year behind bars, Alan Schafer would be released from prison.
THE DEATH OF AN ICON
2001
THE MILLIONAIRE, MAVERICK AND MAN BEHIND IT ALL, Alan Schafer died on July 19, 2001, after a long-fought battle with leukemia. He was 87.
He spent the decades leading up to his death continuing to expand and renovate SOB: He redid the motel office, built casinos and opened the Pura Vida and Myrtle Beach gift shops, among other projects. In his final years he focused his energy especially on fighting the state over the Supreme Court of South Carolina's decision to outlaw video poker, which was a draw for tourists and a large source of employment at SOB.
In 50 years, Schafer had created one of the most iconic and profitable roadside attractions in the world. The website roadsideamerica.com said his business was worth more than $40 million at the time of his death.
And he died regarded as a beloved and generous figure in his community, as illustrated by the many character witnesses who spoke to his impact at the time of his trial, solidifying his legacy as that of a complex individual.
"We did not know, ever, in our growing up together any distinction of race," Gloria Blackwell, a Black woman and childhood friend of Schafer's, said during her testimony.
He also began the Schafer Foundation, which continues to give back to the community today, donating more than $150,000 in contributions, gifts and grants in 2018, the latest year made publicly available by the IRS. Now led by Ryan Schafer, the foundation gives to various organizations in the community including school libraries, fire departments, rescue squads and churches.
An early picture of Alan Schafer in his office at South of the Border. Schafer grew the business until his death in 2001.
Schafer's death had a huge impact on the local community. The local newspaper, the Dillon Herald, took out a full page to commemorate his life and accomplishments in his time at the border. Even today, people from all around Dillon County are familiar with his name and legacy.
Schafer was called a "man of vision" and an "architect of his own tale and fortune." A Jewish man himself, he was respected and loved by the community for employing minority groups in the area, particularly African Americans.
THE BORDER TODAY
After his death, Schafer's family would divvy up the business amongst themselves. Patty Campbell, Alan's wife, would run the business for a few years after. It would ultimately be up to Alan's grandson, Ryan, to take care of the business for the long run.
"That last year, a lot of decisions, she's like, 'You need to decide because it's gonna be you, not me," Ryan Schafer said. "It kind of became apparent none of the other grandchildren really had any interest, or the ones that did maybe didn't have the ability."
Even as a child, Ryan Schafer always knew his grandfather wanted him to one day takeover the business. But, he said, that doesn't necessarily mean that's what he wanted for himself.
Alan Schafer rarely stopped in Dillon. He went straight to work in the morning and straight home in the evening. His grandson operates in much the same way.
“He told me my whole life — and he's right — ‘If you depend on the people of Dillon for a living, you'll go broke,’” Ryan Schafer said. “They just won’t support anything. They're too worried about somebody else getting ahead, and it drives them crazy.”
2021
Schafer’s relationship with Dillon is a tenuous one, if a relationship exists at all. He stays out of community affairs, and they stay out of his, he said. The Dillon County Democratic Party that his grandfather once led has become “a joke,” and not entirely unlike his grandfather 40 years earlier, he opposed the current sheriff at the time of the 2020 election. The cops never show up around South of the Border anyway.
“Unless they’re trying to screw a cashier or something, you never see them,” Ryan Schafer said at the time, though he has since noted an improvement in the relationship after a new sheriff took office in January.
In the years since Alan Schafer died, community members say the glimmer around the roadside attraction has dulled.
Bill Coward Jr. is about as involved in Dillon as one can be. He owns a car wash, a laundromat and multiple convenience stores. He worked as a cook at South of the Border’s Hot Tamale restaurant back when he was in high school, a common gig for students at the time.
Huge gift shops are filled with South of the Border merchandise, but crowds have been shrinking. Schafer blames the current lack of business on seasonality and the pandemic.
It was “a real thriving business” when he worked there, he said. Today, less so.
“Never met Ryan, never talked to Ryan. I don’t know if I would know him if he walked through the door, but I’m just saying the looks of things, it don’t look like it did when his granddaddy had it,” Coward said.
South of the Border employs an estimated 250 people today, according to Ryan Schafer, and up to 350 in the summer. This is a fraction of what it once was.
"It's changed a lot since [Alan Schafer] passed," Hopkins, the former "Pedro," said. "He was constantly rebuilding, tearing down, rebuilding more stuff, adding rides and stuff like that, and attractions and stuff for the tourists, which their sons really ain't been that very active at that. They more or less just go with what they've got left."
But business has actually been steadily increasing since 2009, Ryan Schafer said, by about 5% a year. While motel and restaurant sales have declined since his grandfather's time — due in large part to increased competition — sales for fireworks, gift shop souvenirs and gasoline are up. And contrary to popular opinion around Dillon, SOB rakes in between $35 and $40 million in gross income each year.
"I can't fix ignorance," Ryan Schafer said. "People are just — like I said, they're crazy."
He hasn’t stopped working to improve the attraction, either. He estimates yearly expenses exceed $3 million between liability insurance, lighting bills, taxes and repairs. After Hurricane Matthew struck in 2016, he sunk $1.8 million into repairs only for another flood to hit 2 years later.
The 200-foot sombrero observation tower has had issues ever since the flood, putting it out of order for nearly a year in 2020. Schafer plans to to have it operating by June 1, but not before spending $270,000 in repairs.
Schafer has also invested in new attractions like a facility for motocross, an activity he enjoys with his son, and reptile lagoon, which houses dozens of species of animals and is branded as the "largest indoor reptile exhibit in the US." He said SOB is next looking to get out of the restaurant business by leasing to existing franchises like Applebees or Outback.
“We run two of the restaurants, and they’re 5% of the business and 90% of the headache,” Schafer said.
As for Pedro, Schafer said he is aware of the concerns that might make Mexican visitors uncomfortable, which is why he has continued to move away from signage featuring the mascot lounging. He expects Pedro will be gone from "almost all of the billboards" by the end of 2022.
While he said he hasn't yet been approached with a complaint from a Mexican customer, he would apologize if the situation ever arose.
"But I mean, you know, am I supposed to get offended with places that have something anti-semitic towards Jewish people?"
MEET THE WRITERS
Nick Sullivan
Nick Sullivan is a multimedia journalism student at the University of South Carolina who is drawn to the connections created through solid reporting. He has served in a handful of positions at his student paper, The Daily Gamecock, including managing editor through the challenges of 2020. He has past newsroom experience from his hometown paper Cincinnati CityBeat, and when his second internship was canceled due to the pandemic, he compensated by starting his own newspaper: The Strange Times, a hyper-local effort at bringing positivity and a hint of normalcy to his community.
Ward Jolles
Ward Jolles is a broadcast journalist and storyteller from Orangeburg, South Carolina. He has worked at WACH FOX 57 as a digital content producer since October 2020 and a weekend reporter since January 2021. Jolles worked as news director at both Student Gamecock Television and WUSC-FM, where he won 8 awards in broadcasting. Jolles also interned at Seacrest Studios in Charlotte, Homeless No More in Columbia and conducted meteorological research for NASA. A lover of all things news, Jolles enjoys listening to NPR and watching local and cable news. You can check out some of his work at wardjolles.com.