CHAPTER TWENTY: GOIN’ THROUGH MY MIND IN CAROLINA

CHAPTER TWENTY: GOIN’ THROUGH MY MIND IN CAROLINA

I can’t believe it’s been 5 days since our last Blog. We haven’t moved an inch, except when the waves knock us about in our slip at Casper’s Marina. We’re still tied up/tied down in Swansboro. There’s an explanation, of course. And it involves the weather partly. You wouldn’t believe the storms we’ve been through in Swansboro. We’ve had lightning, thunder and wind that surrounded us on more than one occasion. The last big thrill was on Tuesday night, when we were the only boat at the marina, all alone, with bolts of lightning shooting down on the waters around us and the wind whipping up the waves. Lordy, it was terrifying for a few minutes. Then the angry god of thunder disappeared as quickly as she arrived, leaving us with a trivial amount of rain.

Another reason for our stationary status is that Art is trying to get some difficult data base building and form creating done for a client, who visited us on Monday with a whole list of honey-do’s. I had just returned from my successful visit with Dr. Shea at the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill, and the client, a go-getter who fixes generators and other equipment all across the country, was talking about work order forms and a dozen other items he needs – yesterday. Art’s brain is almost fried after another day of visualizing and another day of creating the data bases for the forms. Art never thought he’d personally meet this client, having been hired by him when we were still in California. But when we realized we would be traveling up the coast of North Carolina, and this guy lives in North Carolina, well, why not try to meet in person? Oh my aching head – fallout from Art’s fried brain. Everything the client wants done can be done, if you’re a genius. Slow Motion has a resident genius, fortunately. But it all takes time – and a lot of deep, deep concentration and thought.

This means that I disappear for hours, while the genius is at work. Today I rode my borrowed bicycle around Swansboro. It was only 88 degrees, but according to the Weather Station, felt like 100 degrees. I can vouch for that. I didn’t even make it out of the shower room before I started sweating again – that’s a record. Usually, I have at least 5 to 10 minutes of feeling fresh. But not today, oh no. The back of my T shirt was wet before I made it around the corner to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Still, I try to look presentable. I like all the acts of kindness, the free drinks and such from people who apparently feel sorry for me, but I still have a little pride left. I’ve foregone manicures and pedicures, massages and long bubble baths. But dammit, I still use my hair dryer and my curling iron. Art hates the curling iron. True, it’s an irrational response to a small appliance. Today he said that it would be great bait for the local fishes. He has this thing about straight, uncurled hair – goes back to our high school days. Can you believe that we have known each other for fifty years this year? Sure, there was a little hiatus of about 44 years, but the straight hair preference has spanned the decades.

Enough about us. You should meet the folks at Casper’s marina. Mr. Casper, the Man, can do everything but collect money. He’s always offering to help. Today he put a basket on the bike he lent me, so I could put my purchases inside and take them directly to the Post Office to mail them. Susan, his 72 year old wife, never runs out of stories about the people of Swansboro and the worst storms they have ever seen here. And she always ends a conversation with: “If there is anything we can do to help, please let us know.” The young fellow who works with her has picked up the same tag line, and he means it too. He went to her house to get the bikes for us, right after she offered them for Art’s 8 mile journey in search of new lines for the brand new fenders. Sure, that’s another good reason to hunker down at this marina for more than a week – that and the price.

When we’re not getting the royal treatment from the Casper family, we’re leading the life of the mind this week. Art is doing his esoteric computer work and I’m doing New York Times crossword puzzles and exchanging emails with new old friends from Jennings Street, Bethlehem, PA. My mind is the overcrowded storage area for so much trivia embodied in the answers to the Wednesday through Sunday NYT crossword puzzles for June through September, 2007. Jeopardy, here I come! Re-connecting with Jennings Street friends has been so pleasant, and it certainly jogs the memory cells and puts them to work. All I need to do is add a few good novels to my plate, and my mind will be completely sated.

I didn’t know what to expect of North Carolina. Long ago, when I was a poverty lawyer in New Haven Connecticut, I had a client, Annie Mae Maebry, who had lived in Greenville, North Carolina until her three children were removed from her custody. Then she was told to leave the area for a while, and she would have a better chance of seeing them again. So she came to New Haven, but the folks with her kids in North Carolina seemed to have forgotten about her. She asked me to get her kids back. She said that one day she had taken off all her clothes and started running down the road, and that attracted an officer’s attention (she was about 300 pounds). She was put in a mental institution, and her children were removed from her home and placed in foster care. As I recall, she had taken off all her clothes because it was very hot, and then suddenly it started to rain, and she wanted to cool off with the rain. Does that sound crazy to you? Not to me after just two months of humidity.

At any rate, I called the Social Services Department and asked about Annie Mae’s kids, and I was told that a hearing was coming up, which I could attend on her behalf, to ask for the return of her children. I was told it would not be a good idea to bring my client with me back to Greenville; that would just revive the last memory of her running naked. I knew I had to attend the hearing, but I wanted local counsel, so I wouldn’t be home-towned. I did not speak “southern”. I could not pronounce the name of the town right – it’s “Gree-vaul” to Annie May and the people who live there. I got on the phone to a civil rights attorney in Durham, NC, Jerry Paul, and asked for his help. He agreed to be co-counsel and go with me to the hearing. He said getting the kids back would be a “slam dunk”, because North Carolina could not wait to get “three little Black babies” off the welfare rolls. This sounded promising, something positive coming out of racism.

I flew to Durham and Jerry Paul picked me up. Things were looking good, until he mentioned that he had done something to his back – which already hurt from an old football injury. Then he dropped the bomb that he could not do the drive to “Gree-vaul” the next day for the hearing, because the pain was too great. He assured me that all I had to do was show up, and the court would grant my request for the return of Annie Mae's kids -- because I was doing them a favor by removing them from the welfare rolls. In fact, it was an even better deal for NC, because I would remove the kids from the entire State. Let the kids go with the Connecticut Yankee -- and everybody wins! Okay, I believed the acclaimed civil rights attorney about 50%, but in the back of my mind I knew I was a stranger in a strange land, with no local co-counsel and no back up plan. Still, this was probably the only plane trip to North Carolina that New Haven Legal Assistance was going to spring for, and Annie Mae was counting on me.

The next day I drove through the worst rural poverty I had ever seen, shacks without water or electricity, and little kids with tattered rags for clothes. I made it to the courthouse well before the start of the hearing. I introduced myself to the Social Services court worker, who had prepared the report for the judge on the progress of Annie Mae and the current status of her children. She was reserved, but helpful. She thought Annie Mae could get her kids back in about 6 months. She did not mention a desire to send them home with me or an interest in reducing their welfare numbers. Then the judge took the bench. Oh God – I still get nervous thinking about what happened. He asked for appearances, and I stated my name and announced my representation of Annie Mae Maebry. Then, in a totally surprising move, he asked to see my Bar card. I didn’t have a Bar card. I told him that. And, boy, did that make him go ballistic. He said how did he know that I was even a lawyer? I told him my credentials. He said anyone could claim to have those credentials. He was going to need more information and make some calls to find out if I was impersonating a lawyer, and if I was, I could expect some jail time.

Well, that wasn’t exactly the southern hospitality greeting I had expected from the court. Fortunately, someone in Connecticut at the Bar Association vouched for me, to the satisfaction of Judge Cranky. And he took the bench again and said that he would accept that I was a lawyer, but he didn’t have to let me participate in the hearing, because my client wasn’t there. He relented a little, and let me say my piece about Annie Mae’s strong desire to be reunited with her children. He said that the evidence was against reunion, at least for the moment, according to the social worker’s report. I asked to cross examine the social worker on her report to the court. And Judge Cranky went ballistic for the second time: “What? You are trying to shake the credibility of this fine woman, my neighbor, who has lived in this county her entire life?” Home towned. “I don’t care what you ask her, her opinion is good enough for me.” Doubling down on home towning me.

Needless to say, it was a short cross-examination. But the social worker showed an independent streak when the Judge left the bench, after ruling that Annie Mae would not get her kids back for another six months. The social worker actually said she would work with me and Annie Mae to get her kids back to her sooner than that. She told me what we needed to do, and I swear, those children were in Annie Mae’s loving arms within three months of my visit to Gree-Vaul. She had threatened to bake me a sweet potato pie, when we got her kids back, and she carried through on that threat. Yummy. So this was a gastronomical success. But what I really learned from this experience is that you can lose in court and still achieve your objective, if you just keep your eye on the prize. The Judge is against you? Then go around him and work with the other people who have the power to give you what you are seeking. Oh, yeah, I also started carrying some kind of lawyer “Bar card”.

I have a new outlook on North Carolina forty years later. But they still pronounce it “Gree-Vaul”. And I wonder what the authorities would do today if a large Black woman with kids took her clothes off and ran down the road in a rain storm. Would she be yanked away to a mental hospital? Or do they even have any mental hospitals left in NC? Would they remove her children from her for this one impetuous act? Or do they even have the money for foster care any more? These are the thoughts going through my mind in Carolina tonight. And for all the cases I had and all the goals I achieved as a poverty lawyer in New Haven in the 1970’s, and later in California in the mid-‘70’s, my mind always wanders back to Annie Mae Maebry and her joyous reunion with her three “kees”.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: BREAK ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MAHOGANY, DUDLEY'S

CHAPTER NINETEEN: BREAK ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MAHOGANY, DUDLEY’S 

The bottom line is that you almost invariably get what you pay for. Oh, sometimes you overpay, because of naivete, acquisitiveness, or an irrational “need” to own a particular thing. And if you’re like me, a WASP, God created you so someone would pay retail prices. WASP or not, anyone who is traveling on the Intracoastal Waterway has a limited number of marina choices on any given day. At the high end, you pay $2 per foot per night for your boat, as well as electricity that runs at the high end between $10 and $20. At the off-the-charts high end, there are some marinas that charge more than $2 per foot, even in the off season.

The summertime is the off season, because Great Loopers and Sun Seekers travel down the Atlantic Coast in October, November, or December and travel back up the Coast in February, March, April or May. The ICW is crawling with trawlers, yachts, all manner of boats carrying folks to Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean when it starts to get cold. When it heats up, they can’t wait to get the heck out of humid Florida and back North. The Great Loopers need ten months to do the Loop from Florida up the Atlantic Coast, up the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, down the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico and back to Florida. They plan this 10 month journey, so that they have the best weather each marina has to offer. They definitely aim to be in the Great Lakes in the summer time.

Okay, so knowing that we are taking Slow Motion for our first ICW travel during the off season, we expect to pay less for marinas. The marinas should be desperate for our business, or at least somewhat eager to get it, right? Furthermore, the Great Loopers tell us in their blogs that in the off season we should bargain with marina owners to get better prices. We have Bob’s Book on marinas along the Great Loop. It lists prices, but only one price per marina. There is no high season price and no off season price. There are Boat US discounts of 5% or 10%, but the marinas apparently don’t really care that much about giving a price break in the off season. At least, when they were contacted for Bob’s book, they gave a one size fits all, take it or leave it, price.

 Now, as you know from my prior Blogs, I am not adept at price bargaining. The only bargains I ever “find” are ones that some extremely talented shopping friends stick my nose directly into. You know who you are. So my conversations with marina owners about getting a reduced price for the off season have been very  short: “Do you have a lower price for the off season?” “No.” Or sometimes the answer is “This is not the off season.” Since I have had no success whatsoever in bargaining for lower prices than those advertised, Art and I have started reserving spots at the marinas on the low end of the price scale. And we have quickly learned what that means: showers that are not clean, marina staff that has no experience tying up 50 foot boats, noisy neighbors on the docks outside Slow Motion, no courtesy cars, long, long walks to bathrooms that do not lock, distant grocery stores that require a car rental, non-existent WIFI, unprotected docks – like a Motel 6, only MUCH worse.

We thought we had gone as low as we could go on the “economy” end of marinas, until yesterday. After about 7 hours of traveling on the ICW, dealing with 5 foot depths, running aground (briefly) on a sandbar, waiting for 12 foot vertical height bridges to open on the hour or the half hour, we dragged Slow Motion to Dudley’s – seventy five cents a foot and 0 dollars for electricity. Or, I should say, Slow Motion dragged us to the rickety, fixed, wooden dock at Dudley’s in a 25 mile per hour wind and a wicked current. Fortunately, a grouchy guy and a young lad, Cameron, were at the dilapidated dock to help us. So we only had to fight for about 10 minutes to get Slow Motion tied up precariously. There were no cleats to wrap lines around. There were big old wooden posts in the water, with huge concrete bases, that the lines had to go around. To add another degree of difficulty to the Dudley debacle, we were docking at the lowest tide anyone at Dudley’s had ever seen. Never before in the history of Dudley’s were the concrete bases of the wooden posts exposed (Sure). Slow Motion was about to bang against the concrete, because Grouchy Guy kept telling the Admiral to “back it up”. Our fenders were not positioned to protect Slow Motion, so we had to try to push her away from the dock, against the now 30 mile an hour wind, to fit the fenders between the hull and the posts and concrete bases.

 So that’s what you can get for seventy five cents a foot. Did I mention that we were on the outside of a fixed face dock, exposed all night to the winds and the currents?  And the winds increased through the night. Art got up at 2:30 a.m. to check the fenders, because if they were squished by the wind pushing Slow Motion, or if they were moved from contact with the posts, we would have had major damage to the hull.

Art secured the fenders and then tried to get a little more sleep, as the wind howled and Slow Motion rocked. As morning arose, the winds increased and the water was full of white caps. There was absolutely no way we were going to spend another night at “Dud”ley’s. And we had told them we planned to stay for 4 nights. See what the allure of seventy five cents a foot can do to otherwise safe and sane boat people?

We would have left at 6 a.m., but we had no place to go, and it was frankly pretty rough, given the high winds and the white caps. There is another marina, more expensive than “Dud”ley’s (who isn’t?), and it was really close. They said they had a space for us, as soon as another boat cleared out. We waited, and we waited, and finally around 10:30 a.m. the other boat cleared out. We couldn’t get away from the dilapidated dock of Dudley’s fast enough. But it was just as hard getting away, as it was tying up – in fact, harder, because the weather was worse. The Admiral removed all the ties. The only things protecting Slow Motion were the fenders, which had been really beaten up. The hard part was getting the stern to clear away from the concrete base and the wooden post and dock.

We thought we had escaped, but then I heard a loud popping sound, and something flew near my face. I thought we had lost a fender. As it turned out, upon inspection of Slow Motion at our safer marina, that damned dock at Dudley’s had taken a small piece of our mahogany wood from the stern of the boat. So all day I have been hearing Janis Joplin singing plaintively “Come on, Come on, Take it! Yeah, Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. Break another little piece of my heart now, baby, yeah.” It may just be a little six inch by one inch piece of mahogany that was ripped off, but dammit, Dudley’s, you took a little piece of our sweetheart – “you know you got it, if it makes you feel good.”

I would have channeled Janis and the blues all day, but the people at our new marina, Casper’s, were so friendly and welcoming that the blues melted away. The owner – the owner – of Casper’s helped us tie up, and he knew what he was doing. I was back to bumbling a little, throwing a line to the dock that fell in the water. But Casper, who introduced himself to us as “I’m the man”, was either forgiving or unruffled, or both. Casper’s entire family has taken us in. His wife and daughter run the store, which has more fishing equipment than most West Marine stores and much better prices than Bass Pro, according to Art. His sons helped us dock and gave us the keys to Swansboro, a town I intend to explore tomorrow (especially the shop that says “Ice Cream” on the outside).  They have all commiserated with us about the uncommonly strong winds – which usually occur in March, never in July. And Mr. Casper knew the guy who sold Art his fishing boat many, many years ago. That guy “lived on the edge” and died in a motorcycle accident, Mr. Casper reported.  

I have re-learned a lesson that I learned for the first time when I bought a Capezio shoe look-alike at a lesser price. If it’s cheap, it’s probably cheaply made and, like the Capezio knock offs, it will probably hurt you every time you use it. Bargains, yes. Cheap, no. It was serendipitous to find Casper’s marina, a real bargain, and to save Slow Motion from any further damage at dastardly Dudley’s. One piece of mahogany was already too high a price to pay. Slow Motion deserves better. This is an important lesson, Grasshopper: Avoid “cheap” at all costs. Protect the ones you love.

Two short bits:

1. Sailboaters pulled into Casper’s after we did, and the Admiral helped them tie up. It’s nice not to be the only big boat on the dock. And the captain of the sailboat was very grateful for the help. Boaters generally assist each other. It’s a community that we discover more about at each marina. Sure, there are Adam Henrys in every community, but most of the boat people we meet and most of the marina people we meet give us good advice and help us along our way. The kindness of strangers has never been more apparent nor more appreciated.

2. The local Coast Guard has a new boat toy, which they were showing off in the high winds and choppy waters of Bogue Inlet (where we are). This boat is 100 per cent made in America – two powerful 800 hp engines from Detroit Diesel. It does not have a helm or steering wheel of any kind. It operates with a “joy stick” instead of a helm (steering wheel) and throttle and transmission levers (gas pedal and brake). That means any child of five or older (Patrick, are you ready? How about you, Olivia?) can operate it. They were practicing pulling away from the dock and returning to the dock. The winds had increased to 40 plus miles an hour. We have a few photos. The four Coast Guard crew members were definitely acting like kids who got the neatest present for Christmas – in July. Yes, these are our tax dollars at work. A beautiful boat, and nobody gets hurt.

So let’s end this blog on a happy note with a little Creedence Clearwater Revival (Jeremiah was a bullfrog):

“Joy to the world, all the boys and girls now

Joy to the fishies in the deep blue sea

And joy to you and me.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: BACK TO NATURE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: BACK TO NATURE

It’s easy to start leading the “city life” in Charleston, and Isle of Palms is a suburb of Charleston, which has none of the Jewel’s facets. As you may recall from Chapter Seventeen, Isle of Palms Marina offered loud, live, whining, off-key music that penetrated our boat hull until pretty late the night of the July 13. Of course! It was Friday the Thirteenth! We’re lucky that Freddy didn’t make a visit to Slow Motion that night. We couldn’t leave early enough the next morning. We were heading to Georgetown, located at Mile Marker 403 on the Intracoastal Waterway. According to our navigation book, Georgetown is “surrounded by natural beauty.” Yesss. Back to nature at last.

And Georgetown also had the best diesel fuel prices on the Atlantic Coast on July 14, so we bought 365 gallons of diesel and made the dockmaster very, very happy. The marina staff at Georgetown consisted of a grisly old salt and a bunch of newbies, who had been working at the marina for a few weeks. That explains why they tied the bow line so tight that we couldn’t bring the stern into the dock. After 3 requests to loosen the bow line, they got it right, sort of. The Admiral was admirably patient, but he gave me a dressing down on how I had to be more assertive with marina helpers and tell them what to do, not wait for them to screw up. Duly noted. Assertiveness is a trait that I exploited for years as a prosecutor. It should serve me well on the waterways. It’s just a bit hard being assertive, when I myself have about 6 weeks of navigation and docking experience. However, bluffing is another useful talent I developed as a prosecutor. Watch out, the next group of marina personnel!

There is a lot of natural beauty on the way to and from Georgetown, which is located along the Waccamaw River. The ICW north of Georgetown is described as the most beautiful part of the entire waterway. I haven’t seen the entire waterway, but I can personally vouch for the natural beauty along the Waccamaw River. As Art and I explored this area, we were both gobsmacked by the greenness of the cypress trees, which grow in the water, or darn close to it. We must have taken more than 100 cypress tree photos. But don’t worry, we’re sharing “just” 10 or 20 with you. There were so many hues of green in each photo. We didn’t do the real thing justice, but if you tried to do a watercolor of the trees and grasses and plants in this area, you would need about 300 different shades of green. And save a special shade of green for the alligator we came across. There is only one photo for you to see, alas, because we were watching this prehistoric creature chomping down on something very chewy and/or very bony for at least 20 seconds, as we slowly crawled by. The Admiral even pulled a U-ee in the middle of the ICW to go back and try to get more photos, without chasing the gator away. None of our photos shows the powerful jaws at work; trust me, you felt sorry for whatever was in that gator’s mouth.

We were in Georgetown on Saturday night, July 14. We had complained to the Georgetown dockmaster about the noise at the Isle of Palms. He told us that there was a restaurant with live music just above the dock, but he swore that he never hears the music when he is on the part of the dock where we had tied up. Well, he must be deaf. Another night of bad singing, but this time a throbbing bass was thrown in. How can any part of American tolerate such performances as entertainment. Sure, the girlfriends and mothers and fathers have to go to the restaurant to listen to their relatives, but after that – what ever happened to songs with melodies and words that meant something? Uh oh, this is old fogie talk, isn’t it? Still, we had the Beatles, the Stones, the Monkees – I see your point. Every generation is entitled to mediocre music – you get what you deserve – but please, please don’t play it near a marina at night when tired boat people are trying to sleep.

Georgetown was quiet at 6:50 a.m., and the water was like a mirror, when we pulled away from the dock. We couldn’t wait to travel through more natural beauty. And for most of the day, we were not disappointed. Seriously, the Waccamaw River offers up so many photo ops. My camera is still recovering. It certainly lifted our spirits that the temperature was 70 degrees, when we left. This is the lowest temp we have experienced for weeks and weeks. What a burst of energy you can get from a non-humid 70 degree dawn! We knew it was going to be a long day on the ICW, and we knew we would meet a large number of Sunday boaters, all speed crazy and many drunk. But as we left Georgetown, that seemed to be very distant, as we looked forward to The Color Green. We were not disappointed for many miles of trees and grasses. We did not see another gator, but we saw a turtle on a log. And we saw lots of shore birds again, as well as the ubiquitous pelicans. At times it was like we were the only boat on the entire Intracoastal Waterway.

Our reverie was rudely interrupted by the first Sunday jet skiers with rooster tails coming out of the back of the skis. Those of you who have used jet skis. What is the attraction? The speed? We have not seen any jet skiers moving slowly through the water, taking in the natural beauty around them. That would be a weird sight indeed. What we see are jet skiers riding 2 or 3 on a ski, jet skiers standing up, jet skiers kneeling on the ski – all tearing around in big bunches, never alone – crossing each other’s wake again and again and again, flying directly in front of Slow Motion, doing “water wheelies” repeatedly and causing big wakes. It’s seasonal, we hope, and perhaps September will be quiet, once most of the jet skiers are in school again. But right now, if you want a definition of anarchy, watch a squadron of jet skiers flying haphazardly across the Intracoastal Waterway – no rules, no responsibility, no consideration, no concern for safety. You get the point.

Our next marina after bucolic Georgetown was at bustling Myrtle Beach, a beach that is 15 miles long and has over 100 hotels. Can anyone remember Atlantic City in its heyday? We thought we would be away from the action by staying at a marina in the Intracoastal Waterway called Barefoot Marina Resort. This Marina promised a swimming pool, and an Enterprise office nearby, so I could get a car to make my Monday Labcorp visit. I had also called the Barefoot Landing Marina, which is at the exact same mile marker as the Barefoot Marina. The biggest different between the two is that the Landing does not have a pool, but it does have “more than 120 shops” and the House of Blues. That marina is basically a dock along one side of the waterway, with a few boats lined up one behind the other. The Barefoot Marina, where we stayed, offered not only the pool, but some lovely showers – and a restaurant with live music that ended at 7 p.m., per their signs. What is it about marinas and dockside restaurants with live music? They’re no more compatible than Sonny and Cher ever were. And speaking of out of tune, mediocre singers….

The pool – very large, 3 feet deep for the most part, very refreshing, and very, very crowded. There are three high rise condos that feed bodies into this pool, especially on a Sunday. Still, I enjoyed my brief time in one small part of Enorma – pool. And I experienced another random act of kindness. I was sooo thirsty, and I was told that waitpersons from the nearby restaurant took drink orders at the pool. I spotted one and asked for a slushie type drink – she had pina colada, mmm. I asked her how much, and she said $5.50. I had brought $5.00, thinking that no drink would cost more than that. I showed her my $5.00, and she said that would be enough. I don’t know what nerve I’m hitting – did I look pitiful, remind her of her aunt, god forbid her grandmother, or just have a pleasant demeanor? Anyway, that pina colada slushie (no alcohol) was delicious. So I stopped by the restaurant to see what else they had. It was basically a sports bar with lots of TVs and loud music. But I looked at a menu, and it listed clam strips, the Admiral’s favorite dining out dish.

I went back to Slow Motion and told him he could get clam strips at this restaurant, which had all the elements of his personal hell – loud noise, TVs everywhere, and people getting drunk. However, the allure of clam strips got him inside the door. We sat down and received our menus – yikes! Each of our menus had any reference to every clam dish blacked out with a magic marker – freshly blacked out! Holy shellfish, Admiral, what are we going to do? He paused, then yelled over the music that he could have oysters instead. So we stayed and sort of enjoyed our meals (branching out from burgers, I had a French Dip). And lo and behold, at 7 p.m., half the TVs turned to 60 Minutes. I don’t think the volume was up. I don’t think one person was watching (the words were printed on the screen). But this is the first time since entering the South that I have seen a non-Fox TV news show in any public place. All the marinas have had Fox TV, every single one. Not that there’s anything wrong with Fox TV, but everyone can benefit from a little diversity now and then. A steady diet of MSNBC can drive you crazy too. PBS or NPR – it would take longer to be dragged off to the loony bin.

We repaired to Slow Motion from the restaurant, prepared for a quiet evening and a good night’s sleep. But no! For some bizarre reason, the Barefoot Landing Marina started putting on an extravagant fireworks display at about 9 p.m. And it went on forever. We watched, because we were afraid the falling flares could hit Slow Motion. And the fireworks kept going higher and branching out wider and wider. Then the chorus of oohs and aahs from the Enorma-pool and the three huge condos on our side of the ICW kept getting louder. And there was applause, thundering applause to match the thunder of the fireworks displays. You had to be there. No, I did not take any photos. First of all, I was stunned. Secondly, I thought the fireworks would end as I ran to get a camera. Thirdly, I really didn’t want photos of fireworks, no matter how spectacular. Okay, they finally ended with a major Christmas red white and green theme, and by 10 p.m. it was pretty quiet. Plus, the jet skiers were all in bed too. At least there is a time limit on the rental of these abominations, I mean recreational playthings.

We had so much fun the first night at Myrtle Beach that we stayed two nights – no, that wasn’t the reason. We usually plan to stay Sunday and Monday night at the same marina, so I can get my Lab work done on Monday. Myrtle Beach met our needs for a car and a lab – on the trip South, we will surely find another place. That’s not to say we didn’t do some good at the marina at Myrtle Beach. We did a pump out and we filled our fresh water tanks. We also found a WalMart Supercenter. If any of you know the Admiral, you know this is cause for joy – Snoopy-like dancing around in circles joy. I was willing to go in order to look for a dehumidifier for our cabin, which is beginning to, shall we say, smell. We headed to WalMart and an hour later we left with 53 items – not including a dehumidifier – mostly fresh fruit and vegetables, and things like laundry detergent, hangers, and did I mention, potato chips, cheese crackers, Jack Daniels pulled BBQ beef? Tonight we enjoyed the fruits of our WalMart spree – fresh corn on the cob, potato salad, cole slaw, and the aforementioned pulled BBQ beef. It made the mind-numbing, eyes-glazing over, dizzying experience of walking/running up and down dozens of aisles almost – almost – worth it.

Adios, Myrtle Beach – we returned to our boat people ways and headed north today, July 17, to Southport, North Carolina. Another day, another state. This part of the ICW offered its own dangers. Most of this part is called “The Ditch”, and the first part of “The Ditch” was dug out of hard rock. The bottom is still hard rock, and there are hard rocks on the banks, as well as hard rocks in the waterway that are not always visible. It’s one thing to kick up a little silt, it’s yet another to crack a propeller on hard rock. The Admiral had his work cut out for him. He stayed true to the center of the channel, and we avoided all hard rocks. I don’t think I mentioned that the water changed color in the Waccamaw River, from green to “tea”, or brown. This “tea” stains Slow Motion, so we’ll have to take a lemon juice break to get rid of the stain. Fortunately, the water became green again before we reached our destination, so some of the “tea” color is already off.

There we were, minding our own business, remarking on how close we had come to the ocean, noticing that the ocean was turbulent today, cursing the Tuesday jet skiers who were out in regiments, marveling at the development along the banks, with new houses scrunched together on narrow lots – and out of the blue, namely out of the FLASHING BLUE came a  Sheriff’s boat beside us. What? Can you be “pulled over” on a waterway? What exactly is the “shoulder”? Are you supposed to run aground as quickly as possible? Or throw down an anchor in the middle of the waterway? Where is Emily Post when you really need her? What is the etiquette of yielding to a Sheriff’s flashing blue light from their little patrol boat, when you’re trying to keep under control a 20 ton behemoth?

And then it occurred to me that it had to be a mistake. We had dumped the marijuana in Georgetown – just kidding! I asked Art if they meant business, and he said they had just offered to accompany us to the marina, where we were spending the night. I thought, how courteous, a police escort, just like Charlie Sheen, to our destination. North Carolina was looking up to me as the most hospitable of all the southern states. So we made it to the marina with the flashing blue lights escort in about five minutes. And then a very friendly dock helper greeted us. I practiced my new found assertiveness – tie us up with the stern line first! And he went along with whatever I said, although he probably had about 50 years of maritime experience on me. This assertiveness stuff worked great. But I digress – our “friends”, the deputy sheriffs were suddenly approaching Slow Motion, and the head deputy asked if they could board.

Uh oh. Then the next thing the head deputy asked for was all of the boat documents. Double uh oh. And then at least 4, perhaps 5, deputies boarded Slow Motion, filling our salon to the gills. They took Arthur down with a choke hold, pulled my hands behind my back and cuffed me, then asked if there was anyone else on the boat. Shaken, but unbowed, I assertively asked for a copy of a search warrant. One of the deputies stuffed a rag in my mouth. It went downhill from there. They tore apart all the cabins, found my needles and syringes – aha! – and we were convicted on the spot.

Are you buying into this? I’m sorry, I can’t go on casting aspersions on the Sheriff’s Department of Brunswick County, North Carolina. They were all fine gentlemen, who looked at all our boat documents, asked about the syringes, stayed a few minutes to enjoy the air conditioning on the boat, then wished us well on our travels north. They were good guys, not storm troopers. It must have been a slow day in Brunswick County for 4 deputies to be in one little patrol boat, and for them to decide to pull over the slowest boat on the ICW to board and search. I took a couple photos of them and their boat, because, as I told them, this was the most exciting thing to have happened to us all day. And who would believe that we were boarded by law enforcement, if we didn’t have some proof? I told Art it was his scruffy, unshaven face that attracted their attention. He disagreed, but tonight he is clean shaven. That was quite an adrenalin rush – whatever tomorrow brings, we hope it is full of shades of green and devoid of flashing blue lights.

Mo' Waccamaw

Waccamaw River, Mostly

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A DAY OF REFLECTION UPON LEAVING “THE JEWEL”

I’ve just reread Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen. I’m blessed with readers who are engaged enough in the content to note my mistakes and kind enough to offer corrections in a most gentle manner. So let’s get started: It’s Thomas Heyward, Jr. of Beaufort, South Carolina, (not William Heyward, Jr.) who signed the Declaration of Independence. And I really tied myself up in the definition of “knots”, which are a measure of speed, not distance. Knots are like miles per hour. Actually, I am told, a knot is a nautical mile per hour, or 1.15 statute miles per hour. And a nautical mile is the distance of 1 minute of latitude. A knot is speed, not distance. This is my new mantra, until I get it right.  One nautical mile equals about 1.15 statute miles. So if we are going 7 knots, we are going about 8 miles per hour. And about the “toilets” on Slow Motion, I will henceforth refer to them as “heads” or “loos”. Those are the three most egregious errors which have been pointed out in the last two chapters. Help me find others. This is sort of like finding Waldo. Really, it can be fun. And anyone who finds a mistake and corrects it will get recognition in the preface to both the book and movie versions.  

We left Charleston this morning around 10 a.m. to travel a mere 14 miles to our next marina at Isle of Palms. This short jaunt was not without its perilous moments, as we observed a small, very small, boat aground on a sandy shoal right next to the ICW channel. Our own depth recorder measured shallow areas of 4 feet, 5 feet, off and on, most of the way. So just when you think you’re going to have a nice, easy, short, worry-free jaunt, the ICW rears up and bites you in the stern. The dreaded “shallows” threaten you if you deviate from the channel. But sometimes, the channel becomes shallower than the water outside the channel, and our electronic navigator does not carry that information. Trust in the Admiral in these moments; he searches for the deep water and usually finds it within seconds of getting a “4” on our screen. He would be a great dowser too, I bet.

The photos that accompany this Blog are coming. Promise. It’s a slow process of emailing them from the camera roll to my email, then from the email to the computer. And the Blog photo editor, namely the Admiral, has been too busy cleaning out the bilge – that’s a very big yuck! I wish that none of you ever has to pump out bilge water, unless you are in a NASA suit (charcoal or black) and fully masked and gloved. Afterwards, you have to go to a sterilization chamber – sorry, no more kids either. But sex is still okay – if you wash yourself really, really well and get rid of the stench before entering the bedroom. This is horrible – so sorry. But, as you can tell, not everything about boating is romantic, or even remotely desirable. Pump out day is a red letter day, when for a few hours after pump out, you feel that a maid has just cleaned all your bathrooms, and you can use them again or even invite guests to stay overnight again.

On to a much more enlightening subject, and one you can read immediately before, during or immediately after a meal. Yesterday, as Art was still working on his computer programming gig for Pennsylvania rates, I roamed the streets of Charleston – not aimlessly. I headed straight for Rainbow Row and took a zillion photos. Why, I don’t know, but these few Georgian style homes of various colors are very attractive, especially in the early morning sun and shade. I kept thinking of the photos of the “rainbow streets” in San Francisco, with perhaps ten times as many brightly painted houses right next to each other. But Charleston was first, and there’s no getting around the grace of the Georgian architecture. Plus, the temps were in the 70’s, with a breeze, something I haven’t experienced since hitting Florida in early May. We had to pay for that “normal” weather the day before, as you may recall from my description of the thunder and lightning storm in Chapter Sixteen. That made the relief from the heat especially delightful. I knew I was going to enjoy my traipsing around Charleston that morning. After Rainbow Row, I walked out to the Waterfront Park, which has a number of distinctive fountains. Two little girls were sloshing around in one of them (photo please). And there are four-bench talking areas, so a book club could meet out there with everyone facing each other, and all but one bench of clubbers gazing out upon the Cooper River. Shade – did I mention that this entire area is very shady? Mmm, hard place to leave yesterday morning.

But I went back to East Bay, with the intention of going to the City Market again – it’s addictive – and the Post Office again – it’s not. Since the Post Office does not open until 11:30 a.m., I had plenty of time, nearly two hours to explore AND go to the City Market. Nephew Dwight had told me about S.N.O.B., a restaurant he likes called Slightly North of Broad. I knew it was not far, but wanted to lunch there to recover from the Post Office frustrations. This was a delicious moment – lots of time and Charleston waiting to be discovered. The area I was in was full of art galleries and little shops that did not cry out “Chain Store”. I decided these small businesses could have the present I would send to Barbara to celebrate her 70^th in August. Suddenly, my visits became purposeful and altruistic at the same time. I looked around the gallery that specialized in “lowcountry” art – lovely, but no bells going off. I went to Graffito and looked at all the jewelry, but jewelry’s so personal. Then I saw the Artists Guild Gallery for local Charleston artists – be still my heart. I walked inside and Linda and Andrea, two of the artists greeted me. As I walked through the rooms, I didn’t hear the bells until I approached the art works of Addelle Sanders. I have never seen anything like what she does. She uses different, rich fabrics to form “dolls”, and then she frames them – either one doll in a frame, or many dolls with the same theme in a frame. It’s really cool. You have to see her work.

So an Addelle Sanders original is on its way to California. Happy Birthday, Barbara! What did I learn about Addelle Sanders? Andrea filled me in. Addelle lived in New York most of her life, but moved to Charleston about 4 years ago to care for her 90 year old mother, who is still alive and doing well. She joined the Artists Guild when she moved, and she has become a good friend of Andrea. Moving right along to Andrea. After arranging for the shipment of Addelle’s work, Andrea started telling me about her family history. She is a native South Carolinian, whose family has been in Charleston for generations. Here’s where it gets interesting. She has traced her family back to “Betsy”, her great, great, great grandmother (there may be a 4^th great), who was about 20 years old, when she went on to a ship that had tied up in a harbor in Africa (most likely what  is now Sierra Leone). She went on to this ship to sell something to the sailors. The captain, who was French, had a 20 year old son, who took an immediate liking to Betsy, so he kidnapped her. Oh yes, father and son were slave traders. I bet you saw this coming. In the courtship tradition of the time, the European slave trader enslaved the African woman he loved and took her to Charleston. They set up a household and had four children. The Frenchman insisted that all four kids be freed men and women, but never freed Betsy from slavery. However, he wrote in his will, which is in the South Carolina book of wills, that none of his children could sell Betsy as a slave to another owner. How thoughtful! Andrea says that, according to the memoirs of the descendants of Betsy, while Betsy remained a slave in the outside world, she ruled at home.

Andrea mesmerized me with her family story, and I should have taken notes. She says that many Charleston natives are a mixture of African and European DNA. One of her ancestors had his/her DNA analyzed, and it indicated he was African and about 10 different European groups, including France, Spain, Norway. She has at least one relative in Norway. And through the internet, she has located relatives all over the world, many of whom are in correspondence with her or have visited Charleston. Andrea’s mother, who is 86, still lives in her family home on Sullivan’s Island (the very same that I mentioned before, where most slaves were brought from Africa). Her mother tells her she doesn’t know why “you young people are so interested in your past history”. Her mother lives for the present and has no curiosity about distant relatives. Andrea has received all kinds of responses to her contacts of family members from different branches of the family. She refers to her “white relatives”, most of whom have been very friendly, but at least one has expressed total disbelief that he would have any Black relative anywhere. As Andrea points out, that’s totally unrealistic if your lineage is Southern – everybody in the South has mixed blood, not just Black and White, but also Native American.

Sitting next to me, as I was enthralled by Andrea’s tale of discovery, was the other local artist, Linda. She was very quiet. And when Andrea had to take a breath, Linda explained why. She was adopted, and since she was 27 years old (she’s in her 50’s or 60’s now), she has been the “head” of her family. The adoption was private – maybe not even legal. A lawyer arranged to give her as an infant to her adoptive parents. There may not even be records of the adoption. Here’s the thing – Linda has never tried to explore her roots. She does not care. She is red haired with green eyes. Her adoptive parents were dark haired with brown eyes. People assume Linda is Irish. She doesn’t know, and at this point, she doesn’t care. She has her own children, who are now grown, and they have not asked any questions either. What a stark contrast to Andrea’s quest for her family’s roots! You have to wonder why Linda doesn’t at least want to know about her biological family’s history of disease, if any. But she’s fatalistic. She says she can have her entire family sit around one small table at dinner time and that’s fine with her. She is not interested in a DNA analysis or in delving into adoption records, if any exist.

Charleston, thank you for introducing me to Andrea and Linda. Some day I may be able to afford one of their art works. In the meantime, I have their stories to share.

Okay, that felt good, buying a present for a friend. So I thought, “Why not get more presents for more friends?” That would make my return to the City Market even more rewarding. As I headed in the direction of the Market, I saw the S.N.O.B. sign. It was too early to eat. Besides, I had discovered a bakery, which had one cinnamon roll with icing left. Needing the energy to carry on, I had to stop there about 10:30. S.N.O.B. was going to have to wait until 1 p.m. As I spied the East Bay end of City Market, I also saw a large, columned building – the Customs House (photo please). If you want some history on it, check it out on the internet. I’ve got gift buying to do. City Market was a hard nut to crack yesterday. I strolled through every building looking for South Carolina products. The sweet grass basket weavers were there, and I couldn’t resist getting some more sweet grass woven roses. Other than that, my eyes glazed over at the sight of German doilies and tons of stuff made in China. Until, until I came upon a very modest stall with a lovely young African American woman, who actually made the goods she sold. She and her mother are Geechee, and they stand behind their products – for life. So she made me very happy, and I hope she makes Brenda and Olivia, my California neighbors, very happy with her mother/daughter handiwork.

Next stop the Post Office – no bulk mailer in front of me today, so I got in and out in 15 minutes. And then I was getting hungry. Back to S.N.O.B. Rather than put me at a “table for one”, the waitperson led me to the back of the restaurant, where there is a semi-circle of chairs at a long table, directly in front of the working kitchen. There are boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables that prevent you from reaching out and touching a chef. But you can pretty much see what they’re preparing and watch the platters fly out of there. If you are ever in Charleston, and if you are ever at S.N.O.B., go there for lunch and order chicken gumbo. My Lord, that was all killer, no filler – chicken galore, fresh okra, fresh sausage, just enough broth to spread the flavors evenly. And with the soup, fresh squares of corn bread. I don’t know what anyone else ordered that day at this restaurant, but they really missed out if their orders did not include chicken gumbo.

Art called, so I left gumbo heaven and headed back to the boat. We were expecting another storm. Oh, the Southern climate in the summertime. Just when you think it’s getting bearable, the storm clouds appear again. And I had to do the laundry – our sheets start smelling after about 4 humid days and nights. Just one night I would like to sleep through the night without turning my pillow case all wet. You may remember the constant state of my hair – wet, stringy, matted. I get a reprieve for about the first fifteen minutes after I shower. But put on the hat for sun protection and it’s back to the Phyllis Diller look or the fresh from the pool look. After countless treks to and from the laundry room, which is beyond the ¼ mile Megadock, I can tell you the thunderstorm would have been greatly appreciated. No cooperation – just brutal sunlight.

So that was Charleston. One more story. The fellow who took 50 minutes to pick me up in the rain after the Ft. Sumter adventure – Robert – was near our boat yesterday morning. I greeted him like an old friend. He looked at me with absolutely no recognition. He had not only driven me back to the marina, but had also driven me and Art to CVS to get my medicine and waited for us and then drove us a second time back to the marina. All the time he was chatty about living with his mother and being so grateful for the torrential downpour, because he would not have to water his mother’s flowers. I thought perhaps Robert was “slow”, but I didn’t realize he had no memory.  After not recognizing me near Slow Motion, he ended up driving me to Charleston (Rainbow Row) about 15 minutes later. I called him “Robert”, and he still made no sign of recognition. So I dropped it – maybe he just wanted to forget driving the courtesy van through the flood the day before. Or maybe he got chewed out for taking me on a personal errand. No matter. A different marina worker picked me up in Charleston after S.N.O.B. The courtesy van started backfiring. At first, the driver thought they might be gunshots, but the backfiring followed us back to the marina. The driver said “Damn the guy who drove the van this morning. He didn’t say anything about this problem.” I said “You mean Robert?” The driver said “Yeah, he’s an idiot.” I asked “Is he slow?” The driver said “No, he’s an idiot.” I asked if perhaps Robert was on loan from a sheltered workshop, and the driver said “Look, he went to college. He’s a college graduate, but he’s just an idiot!” So much for trying to gild the lily.

Tonight as I write this Blog, we are ensconced at the Isle of Palm marina, with live music from mediocre talent wafting down to the dock. This marina took 14 miles off of our travel to Georgetown marina tomorrow, so we don’t a hellishly long day in the ICW. I stocked up on noodles for a few days at less than exorbitant prices. And the shower had about 5 hooks to hang things – and soap (a first!) – and two separate faucets, one hot and one cold. No bath tub yet, but things are looking up. Note to self: Bob’s Marina book lists the cost at $1.50 per foot at this marina, but the dock personnel insisted they charge $2.00 per foot in June, July and August, because they’re a “resort.” They have one parasailing boat and a few jet skis. That must be the definition of a “resort.” Charleston, I can see $2.00 per foot, not Isle of Palms, especially with loud noise coming from the dockside restaurant till late in the night. I knew something would be screwed up on Friday the 13^th, and this marina obliged my superstition. Oh, what’s that? It’s the sound of another live mediocre musician blasting out from the restaurant. And a loud cheer just went up. It’s going to be a long night. Hope it is calm, serene and quiet wherever you are tonight.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE “JEWEL” HAS MANY FACETS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE “JEWEL” HAS MANY FACETS

We were told by Cleo in Beaufort, South Carolina that Beaufort is the “small jewel” in between the “big jewels” of Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina. We arrived in the more northerly Big Jewel, Charleston, on Sunday, July 8. We planned to spend three full days here to explore and to allow Art to get some computer programming done. Today, our first full day, we rented a car to go to the places that are too far for us to walk. We drove down the nostalgia lane of live oaks on the way to Art’s summer family paradise, Kiawah Island. I can only imagine what his daughters must have been thinking, as they entered this exotic Southern terrain. This has to be one of the best roads in the country to lead you to a vacation, away from the ordinary and routine lives of school and work. Having a house on the beach, bikes to ride all over the island, fresh seafood – what an idyllic moment in time. I remember that our family went to the Jersey Shore, at Seaside Heights and Manasquan, and those vacations were also incredibly different from anything we did in “real life”. First of all, our father was with us, not at his 7 day a week job as Bethlehem Steel. Secondly, we had bamboo fishing poles and fished off a dock. Thirdly, we walked on the “boardwalk” and went on amusement park rides at Asbury Park. And we all got sunburned, only to pay years later with repeated M.O.H.S. surgeries on our sunburned faces.

This adventure with Slow Motion brings back those childhood vacations in sharp relief. When we weren’t going to the shore, we were driving to different states in order to visit their state capitals. We made the pilgrimage to Washington D. C. one year to visit our nation’s capital. Oh, the Capitol steps! The sheer number was daunting, but with little girl legs, the work getting up and down them was not something I had expected to do on a vacation. What a difference sixty years make. Now when I get the chance to visit a lighthouse, I test myself by climbing up the 200 plus stairs, and back down, and what a sense of accomplishment I feel! I think I’ll take on the Capitol steps again, later this summer when we dock near Washington D.C. But here at this moment, we are in the Big Jewel of South Carolina, and it has plenty of steps. Just to get off the Megadock, where Slow Motion is tied up, we have to walk nearly a third of a mile. There were steps all over Fort Moultrie, which we visited in the heat (90’s) of the day -- up to an observation tower, down to the command station. There were steps at the Charleston Museum, where we saw the first ever submarine (an exact likeness of it), the Hunley. The Hunley itself had been sunk during the Civil War, but it was not found until 1995. Now it’s in the U.S. Government’s clutches, apparently at an unknown location. No steps at the Magnolia Plantation, but it was way, way too hot to walk around, or even to ride in the open air tram, sweating from head to toe, while touring gator swamps and gardens.

We ended our first day in the Big Jewel having fresh seafood at the Charleston Crabhouse, right down on the water, the Intracoastal Waterway in fact. I must have spent a good half hour tearing the meat out of one blue crab. Art said that any Marylander would have eaten the meat of three crabs in the time it took me to get the food out of the body of one crab. Thank God I had only ordered two, or I would still be there trying to suck the last tiny piece of meat out of a skinny crab leg. The taste of this crab meat was exquisite, not tainted by bay seasoning or any seasoning for that matter. The fresh crab was preceded by the most succulent shrimp (with bay seasoning) I have ever had. Art indulged in oysters and scallops. The waitperson was unobtrusive, but incredibly efficient in bringing more napkins when needed and filling my non-sweet iced tea glass again and again. YELP! I just wrote a restaurant review while merely trying to share a little bit of our satisfying dining experience with you.

Get this – we stopped at the downtown Post Office at about 4 p.m. to pick up the mail that our neighbor, Olivia sent to us express. And there are big signs inside that say that the “lobby” is only open between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Is this really the way to stay in business – to limit access to your daily services to customers in the South who much prefer the cool, cool hours between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. over the wretched heat of the day? I love the U.S. Postal Service and all their really neat stamps (except the ones that say “Love”), but they’re really testing my loyalty with worse than banker’s hours.

Since the Post Office was on Broad Street, and since I recently read Conroy’s South of Broad Street, I suggested we drive south of Broad to look at all the old southern mansions. My God, that’s a different world. And I wonder how many times they have had to renovate the first floors after hurricanes and floods. Today they looked impenetrable, every bit the match for wind and rain. South of Broad goes out to the Battery. The river was really rough today, full of whitecaps, some of which jumped the seawall. I don’t really get it, why you would build such a lavish residence in a storm zone. Can they get insurance? If not, are they so rich it doesn’t matter how much it costs to rebuild? Or are they just nuts? Conroy would probably opt for door number three: the craziness of the landed gentry of the  South.

The Big Jewel was definitely tarnished by its history of slave trading. For the five year period between 1770 and 1775, thousands upon thousands of West Africans, stolen from their homelands, were brought in chains to Sullivan’s Island. It served as the “Ellis Island” for many African American families. Fort Moultrie was practically on the same soil as the slave trading industry on Sullivan’s Island, but the 400 soldiers at Ft. Moultrie were too busy repelling the 9 British ships and 2500 troops that came into the Charleston Harbor in 1776 to turn their attention to the cruelties visited upon the South Carolina slaves. And according to the accounts I have read, at Ft. Moultrie and in the Charleston Museum, the slavery of Africans contributed immensely to the prosperity of South Carolina. It was the slaves who knew how to grow rice and showed the plantation owners that it could be a lucrative crop. It was indeed the most lucrative crop in South Carolina for years. So what cost economic prosperity? Forcing a whole race of people to work for nothing, treating them like chattel, or even worse, beating them, separating family members willy nilly – this was certainly conduct unbefitting the folks who polished the Jewel of the South.

When you’re in Charleston, the juxtaposition of its physical beauty with its ugly past of slavery is sometimes overwhelming. I see why it’s called the “Jewel”. So many parts of the city and the rivers that run on both sides of it just shine like radiant diamonds. This city caters to tourists more than any of the other cities we have visited to date. It offers day trips to Ft. Sumter, to plantations, to the City Market, through the mansions of South of Broad, through the museums on the Museum Mile on Meeting Street, to Patriots Point, to the Carolina Polo and Carriage Company, and on and on. There is a festival every month. March has three festivals. This is a vibrant place, and everywhere you turn, people want to help you get to know more about Charleston. That is, about Charleston today, without slavery, and about Charleston’s great history despite slavery. I just can’t get past the “despite slavery” part of the equation. It’s like saying Germany is the Jewel of Europe, despite the Holocaust. Tomorrow I get to see more facets of this Jewel called Charleston, and I promise I’ll keep an open mind.

So I went to Ft. Sumter today and learned a lot more about the Civil War and Charleston’s “way of life” before it. Take for example, Henry Laurens, a “wealthy lowcountry merchant, planter and slave trader.” Oh yes, this is the way you want the first line of your biography to read, isn’t it? He arranged to drag Africans against their will from Sierra Leone to Charleston. And oh, by the way, he helped after the Revolution to establish our democracy and served as the President of the Second Continental Congress. His life wasn’t all money and glory, based on the stolen lives of others. He suffered too, when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London after being captured at sea by the British. His slave trading partner bailed him out. And ultimately, his freedom was traded for the freedom of Lord Cornwallis, the very one who surrendered at Yorktown. So Laurens was no small potatoes. The last line in his brief bio at Ft. Sumter read: “Deeply religious, Laurens eventually abandoned his role in the Atlantic slave trade, but not his role as a slave owner.” Oh my. I know, I know, Jefferson owned and impregnated slaves, and look how great he was. Never as great as someone who did not own slaves, in my opinion. He was certainly one (small) evolutionary step above the slave traders. But back to this “deeply religious” conversion from slave trader to slave owner – pretty shallow, actually, and not very much in line with the Golden Rule.

I turned to Abraham Lincoln for some words of wisdom, and this is what is attributed to him as a Congressman in 1848: “Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, – a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.” This kind of idealism sounds like Arab Spring stuff, and it would seem to be directed at any oppressive dictatorship, maybe any oppressive government, no matter what its configuration – even an oppressive representative democracy. Oops, not so fast Southern secessionists, Lincoln certainly wasn’t thinking of you, when he said these words. Or was he? After all, he said that a house divided cannot stand – either the US of A was going to be all slavery or no slavery. And y’ all in the South chose all slavery all the time. So what’s a slave state to do – exercise its “sacred right” to rise up and shake off the “union” government and form the Confederate States of America, right? Abe, I think you stuck your big foot in your oratorical mouth.

Of course, at his first inauguration on March 4, 1861, President Lincoln was whistling a different tune (and it wasn’t “Dixie”). He said: “Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people.” Interesting choice of phrase, “free people”, for a guy who campaigned on the platform that slave states would retain slavery, but slavery would not expand into any non-slave states or into any new territories, like Kansas or Missouri. So when he was campaigning against Senator Douglas, Abe said he was willing to accept the fact that a lot of people in the country were not free, and willing to let their state governments keep them subjugated. But when he became President, he apparently wanted everyone to be free. The 1857 Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court holding that slaves were property, not people, clearly had not impressed Lincoln. And Abe had the majority in the Northern population to bring freedom to all the people in the minority slave states.

This is where the Ft. Sumter guide enters the picture. He said the North was fighting for liberty and the South was fighting to “preserve their way of life.” He must have used this last phrase more than 20 times in a 10 minute synopsis of the issues that led to the Civil War – the first shots having been fired at Ft. Sumter by Confederate troops on April 12, 1861. It sounds so pastoral: “preserve their way of life.” Like the balls and cotillions we saw in Gone with the Wind? Or like kidnapping people on another continent and dragging them to your country to force them to do whatever work you demanded of them? Slavery should not be called a “way of life.” It is a scourge, a cruel imprisonment way beyond anything ever done at Guantanamo. It is the exact opposite of freedom. It is dehumanizing, certainly to a person forced to be a slave, but also to the “slave owner”. This must be one of the reasons when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America, he saw only death in the future of the states that had seceded. And, as many of you know, South Carolina was the very first state to secede. I read that around this time, 7 of the 10 wealthiest people in American lived in South Carolina. They most certainly wanted to “preserve” the “way of life” that made them so wealthy – in land and slaves. For them, secession was the only way to keep their wealth. Their wealth, not their “way of life.” And thousands of not wealthy, very young Confederate soldiers from South Carolina gave their lives to allow the slave owners to remain wealthy.

On the way to Ft. Sumter the sky became charcoal, and it appeared like a midday thunderstorm was going to strike, while we rode the tour boat to the remains of the fort. Well, it was definitely a storm that hit the fort when we arrived, but not any normal midday thunderstorm. It had a slew of lightning bolts zapping land and sea from many directions and lots of rolling thunder. Art called while I was huddled with a group in the museum at Ft. Sumter, avoiding electrification, and reported that there were 83 mile an hour winds back at the marina. A sailboat owner had an anemometer which measured the prodigious winds. I called the Marina to ask for the courtesy van, told Tess that I was out on the water, and she said: “Omigod, did you get hit by the “spout”? Unbeknownst to me a “spout” (water tornado) had torn across the harbor, as we were returning to the Ft. Sumter tour boat marina. Art kept me posted on flying fenders at the marina, and I called for the courtesy van again. Turns out the driver, Robert, had chosen to drive upon the most flooded, clogged streets of downtown Charleston, and a trip of 5 minutes took him 50 minutes to show up. We worked on an alternate route to return to the marina, and, except for one flooded road, with a disabled vehicle in the middle of it, we made it back in 5 minutes or so.

Now, safely back at the marina, I took some photos of the fishermen (haven’t seen a fisherwoman) preparing their bait – ballyhoo and mullet – for their 5 a.m. departure to the Gulf Stream to catch the biggest billfish – marlin, sailfish—tomorrow. There’s a $20,000 prize. But the cost of one of these fishing boats, and the fuel costs, and the cost of the fishing gear – astronomical. So they must do it for the love of fishing. Art noted that our megadock is currently weighed down by the excess of testosterone – yes, Art noted this – up and down both sides of this ¼ mile long dock. Mmm, love the smell of testosterone in the morning – at 5 a.m.

We’re enjoying Charleston, even though Art has put in 10 hours of computer programming today, and I am the “party of one” on all the tours. He’s been here many times before, but this is my very first time. Hope my diatribes against slavery are not off-putting. I know I haven’t injected much humor into this Blog. But stick around. We’re bound to come across something that tickles your funny bone, and I will faithfully report it. Till then, we shall overcome.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - SLOWING DOWN IN BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – SLOWING DOWN IN BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA

We had planned to cruise from the slow pace of Isle of Hope, Georgia to the more rapid pace of happenin’ Hilton Head, South Carolina on Friday July 6. As we studied the location of the marina in Hilton Head vis a vis the activities in Hilton Head (bike riding, beachcombing), we realized that we were going to need a car to take us anywhere on Hilton Head Island. Otherwise, we would stay at the marina (at a rather steep price) and see nothing of Hilton Head except the swimming pool at the marina. Since part of our goal is to actually visit the places where we dock, we re-evaluated and decided to skip Hilton Head on our way north. Instead, we went straight to another slow-paced town, Beaufort, South Carolina. That’s Byoo- fort.

We had the chance to look at Hilton Head from the ICW, and much of Hilton Head came to us, in the form of parasailors, jet skiers, water skiers, flying speedboats. And this was Friday – imagine the traffic on Saturday! Hilton Head looks like a huge Club Med. It just so happens to have beautiful beaches and dunes and miles of bike trails. (But isn’t that the formula for successful Club Meds? Those things and tequila or rum, I guess.) I’m not a golfer, nor is the Admiral, so no critique of the famous golf courses is forthcoming. I’d still like to see it, if someone could please turn the volume down a little on all the motorized boats and vehicles racing all over the waters and sands of Hilton Head.

We did not descend into Hell (see prior blog) on our excursion to the Downtown Marina of Beaufort. We had a long day ahead of us, going from Mile 590 to Mile 536 – 54 miles are a lot for us in one day. So we departed at 8:20 am expecting to arrive in Beaufort around 4 pm at the earliest. But the currents were kind and we arrived and docked at the Downtown Marina of Beaufort at 3 p.m. We left Isle of Hope and there was no wind – It was hot as Hades. It was still hot at 3 pm in Beaufort, but there was a wind and there were very strong currents. The wind was blowing toward the dock, so it was an aid to us in docking Slow Motion. We had good help at the marina, although Michael was smoking a cigarette while tying our lines. That was another reminder that this is the South – land of tobacco.

What was the ICW like on the way to Beaufort? There were a lot of sounds – the Calibogue Sound was big and deep. There had been a shoaling problems at Fields Cut hear Daufuskie Landing, but that was recently dredged. Before that, we went through Walls Cut on the way to the Wright River, and we had no problem. Both Cuts were described in one of those scary yellow highlighted paragraphs in our navigation book. When I see yellow, I read very carefully, and I tell the Admiral what the book says is dangerous about the area. He’s already researched our route the night before. But once we’re on the waterway, we keep exchanging information as we look at the charts. And boy, are the currents tricky in this area. Sometimes you have currents coming in and going out at the same time, so the two currents slap together, high fiving like old buddies. And we get slowed down.

We were warned that we could go right past the Downtown Marina of Beaufort if the current was strong that afternoon. We had had a similar problem at Isle of Hope, so we had a little bit of experience under our belts. It’s amazing how one or two lines can help bring this 20 ton boat into the dock, thanks to the great steering of the Admiral and marina staff on the dock. I help out by throwing the lines directly to them, rather than dropping them in the water, and I put the fenders down before we dock, so that Slow Motion does not rub its beautiful fiberglass finish up against a strip of hard rubber on the edge of a wooden dock. It’s a team effort, and we’re getting better as a team.

We did not go past the Downtown Marina – we docked without a hitch. And I ran for the showers, although I was totally wet from perspiration. I wanted a different kind of wetness, lukewarm water, and a chance to shampoo my hair, which gets matted, wet and stringy during every day we travel. Art compares my hair, not unfavorably, to the hair of Phyllis Diller. If you know that reference, you’re “of a certain age.” As we head north, the showers are getting better and better, for the most part – clean, lots of warm and hot water, lots of hooks for clothing –still no bathtub for me and my bubble bath. But we cleaned out our bathtub on Slow Motion, and but for the fact it is about 3 feet long, it looks pretty inviting to me.

After the shower, I explored a little bit of Beaufort, in search of the perfect smoothie or milk shake. The downtown area is filled with little shops and art galleries, plus a few restaurants. I was about to give up in my search for the refreshing beverage, when I turned a corner and saw Kooky Mooky’s advertising what I wanted. I literally ran to the door – it was about 4 p.m. – and the place was closed! Technical difficulties! So I started heading back to one of the restaurants, hoping there was a milk shake on the menu. This time I took the brick walkway by the river, and I found the restaurant Plum. I told the bartender I needed a refreshing drink, and she offered sweet iced tea or nonsweet. I opted for nonsweet. She left the bar and returned with a tall cup with lots of ice and iced tea. I asked the price, and she said, “just take it.” I ran out of there sipping my free iced tea, feeling like I had won the Lottery. Then I realized how pitiful I must have looked, but no matter. The iced tea hit the spot.

Just a word of caution: Stay away from marina stores for the most part, except the one on Jekyll Island, where they charged me 85 cents for the most delicious Fat Boy ice cream sandwich. Anywhere else, at a marina store, an inferior ice cream sandwich is going to cost you between $1.40 and $1.80. It was $1.40 at Beaufort, AND the lady admonished me to leave the store immediately to eat it. No food allowed in the store, not even what they sold. This is so funny, since their store was an ice box, and the ice cream would have never melted inside it.  But as soon as I hit the outside, the ice cream flowed. Still, it hit the spot. This lady also asked me if I had gotten the iced tea at the marina store – I mean, really, they had no iced tea. Was she really going to charge me for something she knew she didn’t sell?

Now for the really, really good part of our visit to Beaufort. I have a friend in California, Kalah Bumba. She had given me the contact information for her brother, Dee, and his wife, Cleo, who have lived in Beaufort for 30 years – transplanted Yankees from Chicago. I called them and we arranged to have breakfast on Saturday. They took us to the café where “all of Beaufort has breakfast.” Dee had Cajun shrimp and grits. Art had a spinach and Swiss omelet, and now wishes he had ordered that instead. I had a plate with one scrambled egg dwarfed by the plain grits that covered ¾ of the plate. These grits tasted like farina. It’s okay, but pretty tasteless. Meanwhile, Dee was enjoying grits with garlic, onions, peppers, sausage and shrimp. He had learned a lot about dining in the South in his 30 years there.

After breakfast Cleo showed us the Bay Trading  Company building, where their friends had opened a book store, which sadly is no longer open. Cleo had worked there. And all the famous authors from the Lowcountry (the name for this area of South Carolina) would come and do book signings, like Conroy and Cromwell. With their royalties alone, couldn’t they amuse themselves and treat the rest of us to the pleasure of a non-chain bookstore by subsidizing one in Beaufort? Couldn’t they? Do book stores really have to make profits, when successful authors foot the bill? Just asking.

Cleo told me that Beaufort was steeped in history, and the leaders of Beaufort had played a key role in seceding from the Union. I walked around town after our breakfast together, trying to learn more about historic Beaufort. I came across St. Helena’s Church, which the British had used to stable their horses during the Revolutionary War. There are British officers buried in the church cemetery with Union Jack flags next to their headstones. There are also Revolutionary soldiers buried here, with the American flag of the 13 colonies next to them. And there are confederate soldiers buried with the confederate flag next to them. I’m not sure about any Union soldiers, but probably a few made it into this welcoming place.

I also came across the Congregation Beth Israel temple on a side street, a demure white wooden chapel with a sign announcing its presence. I do not know its history, but it confirmed my visual assessment of Beaufort as a having a very diverse population. This is the first town in the South where Blacks and Whites appeared to be well integrated and acknowledge each other’s presence. Cleo told me a story about how when she first arrived to live in Beaufort, she was rushing down the main street, as Yankees are wont to do, and an older Black gentleman just put up his hands and said “Slow down! There’s no reason to ever be moving that fast!” And she slowed down and has enjoyed the slower pace ever since.

So I slowed down and stopped to read all the bronze plaques that described the history of Beaufort from 1530 to the present day. I didn’t know that the Spanish had been here, and the Huguenots as well. Sir Francis Drake made a mess of things for a while in this area, but ultimately the British settled in. And Beaufort became a thriving part of the colony of South Carolina. There was no attempt at a utopian society. Slavery was big here from very early on. There was an entire dock operated by the major slave trader – still hard to grasp the notion of treating another human being as property. But of course, as a woman, I realize that was the lot of women and children for many, many centuries, and laws treating us as property were still on the books in the 20^th century. Our right to vote isn’t even one hundred years old yet.

Beaufort sent its own native son, William Heyward Jr. to the Continental Congress, and he signed the Declaration of Independence (all MEN are created equal). But, of course, as we know, that did not include the folks that had been forced into slavery. And Beaufort had their share of dead confederate soldiers fighting to keep people enslaved. Oh, yes, there were other reasons why South Carolina seceded, not just slavery, but slavery cannot be overlooked.

Very close to the historical plaques I heard a young Black man do what sounded like an original rap. He sounded angry, then anguished. I drew near. And he used some profanity (that’s how I was sure it was rap), then he started rapping about someone named Samantha, who made him very frustrated, but there was an O Henry twist to his tale: he rapped that maybe he was Samantha. There was an audience of about 10 people sitting on a cement wall listening to him. It brought me back to the present. The audience was mixed race, and they were captivated by a Black teenager who was apparently having a huge identity crisis. Beaufort is historic, but Beaufort is up to the minute modern too. I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture of Blacks and Whites living in total harmony in Beaufort, but, dang, from my foreigner’s superficial view, they do seem to get along. Probably the churches are still segregated, as everywhere else. Still, it’s nice to be some place where society is ostensibly not drawn along lines of color. 

We left this “Little Jewel” of Beaufort to head for the “Big Jewel” of Charleston early on Sunday morning. I mean 7 a.m. We were going to break the 70 mile barrier, so this required lots of preparation by the Admiral. He studied all the tide charts and wrote down a whole page of when the currents would be against us and when the currents would be with us, depending on when we hit certain mile markers. There were some cuts with shallow water to be aware of on the way, but nothing billed as dangerous as the Little Mud River. I know this will surprise you, but we are getting about 1 and ½ miles per gallon of diesel fuel. That’s correct. We are aiming for 3 miles per gallon, which would be a personal best for Slow Motion. So the Admiral tries to keep the engine at a certain level to maximize our fuel efficiency (if that’s what you can call 3 miles per gallon). In trying to keep the engine from working hard, we have to keep our speeds down. When we keep our speeds down, we move very slowly – that’s why we’re Slow Motion. But if we have favorable currents going our way, we can pick up several knots. That’s right – a maritime term thrown into the discussion. This “knot” thing is pretty complicated. Art explains a “knot” as one minute of latitude. Is your head swimming yet? Mine is. And a “knot” is also 1.15 miles. Knots are used in nautical calculations because they are equal to one minute in latitude. So it’s a good thing to increase your “knots” – more minutes of latitude= greater speed. Asleep yet? Just read this before you go to bed – guaranteed as effective as Nyquil.

Luckily we had the currents with us much of the way to Charleston today, Sunday July 8. And we arrived at 3 p.m. This was our first experience with a bunch of “Sunday drivers” out on the waterways between the suburbs of Charleston and the Charleston City Marina. What a mess! There are people in power boats pulling little kids in giant inner tubes or floats at high rates of speed. What if the rope breaks? The kids could go flying over and hit our boat or someone else’s boat. There are young boys out with their 12 packs. There is the show-off water skier jumping the wake right in front of us. And there is that whole school of power boaters who subscribe to the mythical doctrine that the bigger the wake, the bigger the – you fill in the blank. We had some lovely peace and quiet going through some cuts with marshes on both sides. But the Sunday boat traffic disturbed that serenity.

One strange episode along the way. Somewhere we picked up a few trailing sea gulls. They were following us, flying over our wake. I thought perhaps we were churning up something edible for them, but Art said they were waiting for a handout from me. They had mistaken us for a fishing boat and mistaken me for someone who is likely to feed the birds. I went down to the sun deck to take some photos, as a few sea gulls had increased to a few dozen. Then suddenly a huge pterodactyl came swooping into the group of gulls and landed on the water waiting for a handout. Actually, it was an opportunistic pelican. I got some photos, but stopped taking pix, as every time I held up the camera, the gulls and the pelican looked ready to come aboard and grab it out of my hand. It’s green, you see, and could be mistaken for bird food, I suppose. Those gulls were persistent and didn’t leave us alone until we got to the land of crazy boat drivers. They don’t abide that craziness either.

Charleston City Marina has a megadock. That is, it has a floating concrete dock which is 1500 feet long (more than 1/4 mile). There are megaboats along this dock (our neighboring boat from the island of Bebe Rebozo appears to have a paid crew of six and three 100 amp power cables leading from the dock), and then there is Slow Motion, which has one 50 amp cable. We got an inside position this time. Last night we were on the outside (riverside) of the dock in Beaufort and we rocked a lot (also, those damned sheepshead seemed to have followed us from Jekyll Island). So we got our wish, and there was a guy on the dock ready to help us tie up. What can I say? The Admiral did admirably again – this time against both a strong current and a strong wind blowing off the dock (the worst kind). After securing the fenders and the lines, I headed for the showers – only a quarter mile away in withering heat. And tomorrow we get to explore Charleston. Hope the sheepshead haven’t followed us from Beaufort. When the last sound you hear before falling asleep is a gnawing sound on the bottom of your boat, it leads to bizarre dreams. In one, I was trying to get away from a tiger, which had the ability to make wooden doors rubbery and crawl under them. I won’t even tell you about the really crazy ones. And so to bed.