LIKE THE REST OF ME…

I headed south for the week, and I must say, it was a great vacation.

Staying on the Island of Edisto Beach, just south of Charleston, South Carolina and north of Savannah, Georgia was an ideal location to be away from the crowds. Living on the Island with its for the most part untouched privacy we found a culture that just doesn’t exist up here in the North.

The Island is about an hour away from Charleston, and most of it back-roads, with some interesting things to see. One of them is the people, who for some reason obey the traffic laws, day or night and stay within the prescribed speed limit!  You can get into and out of a lane without running a risk that the other guy won’t let you do it, and there is very little passing. Unlike New York or Philadelphia, no one flips the bird at anyone else.

But it is the Island where there is beach that allows one to savor the setting of the sun that is strange since it is on the East Coast. But the island is such that there are beaches that face west and the western sky.

The restaurants are not your fancy-dancy places, just places to eat and if it is not Sunday, a drink. We went to the Jungle Shack at the tip of the island for dinner, and discovered there are Blue Laws, and I now know why they are called ‘blue laws’, because that is how I felt when they told me about it.

Our ‘home’ was a beautiful 2-bedroom, 2 full baths apartment with full kitchen, dining room and living room, a wrap around porch and garage overlooking an incredible view of a golf course and waterfront.

After dinner at sunset, we sat out on the porch and drank wine and toasted the solitude and joy of being away from it all. I took advantage of a Jacuzzi and afterward a little dessert from a local bakery in Charleston. It was living large!

Driving the back roads we did a little counting one day. TLW (The Little Woman) counted 24 churches in a span of 29 miles! The South and particularly South Carolina are known for their old time religion of mostly AME and Baptist churches, sometimes almost next door to each other.

There is some cultural shock for an old boy from Brooklyn, NY, for instance shrimp and grits and these little hush puppies made of corn bread that they leave out on the table before dinner.

They also have some humor to share, for instance the thirty foot pole that had a mailbox on the top with the sign: “AIR MAIL” along the road to Charleston!

Being this was my first experience in the land of cotton, South Carolina, I expected different. I’ve spent a good amount of time in North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, but not South Carolina and Georgia. I expected Rebel flags and fried chicken, and saw neither! Instead they seem patriotic and friendly, asking: “where y’all from?” in a casual laid back manor and a smile on their face.  The biggest shock was not the Spanish moss that isn’t Spanish or moss, but the palm trees! There are many palm trees and the state flag has a palmetto palm tree on it. Charleston is a lot like Los Angeles in that so many people are transplanted from other states but their palm trees came by naturally, unlike LA where they were imported.

Tomorrow we go back to Charleston and the old times there will not be forgotten.