Last year on our inaugural AB1 trip, the city that surprised us the most was Memphis. We had a wonderful time there exploring the city. This year, the city that has leaped to the top of our list (so far) has it all: scenery, architecture, history, tuna casserole recipes … OK, maybe not that last one. And it just happens to be this week’s blog subject:
Charleston, South Carolina (pause for “oohing” and “aahing”).
In our opinion, Charleston is a lot like New Orleans, only cleaner … much cleaner. Last year readers of "Conde Nast Traveler" magazine (47,000 of them with nothing better to do) voted Charleston the top tourist town in the U.S. This year, they went one better: their readers voted Charleston the top tourist destination ... IN THE WORLD! Number two was Capetown, South Africa, and in third place was Florence, Italy. A surprise fourth place finisher was Parsippany, New Jersey.
Charleston hosts four-million visitors a year, yet hardly one of them bothers to turn the lights off when they leave. The city’s heritage is closely guarded by an ordinance which states that nothing older than 75 years may be torn down. I guess the guys on my senior softball team can feel secure there.
A trend we’ve noticed this year in almost every place we’ve visited is that they all now have "ghost" tours. Everybody has ghosts. My question is, “Where have all those ghosts been for lo these many years? Now that they're getting some publicity, they're coming out of the woodwork ... so to speak. Charleston even has a “boat ghost tour” to show you how spooky the
Charleston Harbor is. What’s next? City landfill ghost tours?
It was a short trip from Savannah to Charleston. We quickly set up camp and then made our way to our usual Sunday-dinner-out-after-landing-pizza-place; this time it was one of our favorite semi-chain places, Grimaldi’s. Our usual, a small Caesar Salad (extra anchovies—no gagging, please) split in two and a medium pizza, is always more than enough for the two of us.
Monday was Memorial Day. Diedre spent the holiday (although, really, isn’t every day spent in the RV a “holiday”?) by going into town to first get a mani-pedi and then by taking a “Charleston Cooks” cooking class. She learned “low country” cooking which included the hands-on making of pulled-pork with red cabbage, corn casserole, and barbecued shrimp. The class was a major success except for the small fact that these are all things that are on my diabetic “no-fly” list. Looks like it’s asparagus with light mayo again for dinner.
The tremendous walking tour of Charleston was quite lengthy as virtually the entire old-town down by the harbor consists of nothing but historically-registered buildings, so we again divided the tour into two parts: we used Broad Street as the dividing line, taking the S.N.O.B. (Slightly North of Broad) Walking Tour on Tuesday and left the S.O.B. (South of Broad) Tour for Thursday.
We began the SNOB tour with a walk through the city’s venerable Old City Market. Although we’re pretty much done buying anything that isn’t edible, I did admire both a special T-shirt (reading “You Mess with Me, You Mess with the Whole Trailer Park”) and an unusual book titled 101 Things to Do with Grits. My favorite was #67: “Repair sidewalk cracks.”
We learned of another difference this city similar to New Orleans has from the Big Easy when we walked into our first candy store. Just as in N’Orleans, Charlestonians also make that delicious yet insidious destroyer of diets, the praline. Only here, they more normally call them “PRAY-leens,” not the preferred New Orleans’ pronunciation, “ PRAW-leens.”
Highlights of the day’s walking exercise program were:
1) a visit to the multi-hued “Rainbow Row” series of houses. Unlike our Terravita neighborhood where every house looks pretty much the same, these ones were indeed a “rainbow” of houses.
2) a stop at “Cabbage Row,” a gray, three-story former tenement which had a “Catfish Row” sign out front. In 1924, DuBose Heyward wrote his novel, “Porgy,” using this tenement as a model. The book, of course, became the source material for the legendary Broadway musical, Porgy and Bess. For Diedre, this was like the Mother Ship calling her home.
3) a quick walk-through of the John Rutledge House. This place was pretty neat. Rutledge was an actual signer of the constitution. His majestic house was built in 1763. Now restored as a B&B, the owners have kept the upstairs ballroom just as it was 251 years ago and have no problem with street urchins such as us coming in and wandering through the place.
4) A stop for lunch to end the day’s half-tour at 82 Queen Street, a restaurant located in a restored, late 1600's house. The history there was just oozing out of every crevice.
On Wednesday, Diedre needed her “history break,” so while “we were on a BREAK!” (for you Friends afficionadoes), she relaxed at her hair appointment while I, ever the glutton for more history punishment, made my way across town to the Karpeles Manuscript Museum. This was especially exciting for me. My favorite writers of all time include Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and any staff writer for Saturday Night Live. Well, at the KMM, they had a temporary exhibition featuring two dozen hand written letters and a few manuscript draft pages by Mark Twain. To be that close, maybe inches away from the great man’s actual hand-written prose, well, it must be the same feeling you get whenever you’re notified of a new edition of this man’s furshlugginer blog.
That night we were off to attend our 6th baseball game during our first two months on the road.
Pure torture or total joy?
You, dear reader, be the judge.
The Charleston River Dogs play their games at the lovely and tres’ moderne Joe Riley Park. Tonight we were taking on the dreaded Greenville Drive, our arch rival in the always tough Southern Division of the Class A South Atlantic League, also known as "The Sally League," so named, I guess, after Charlie Brown's sister. At game time, Charleston 's record was one win better than the Drive, giving the local boys sole possession of 3rd place. It’s funny; just a week earlier, we were cheering against the River Dogs in Savannah, but as the home team tonight, we were now morally obligated to cheer for the home team from Charleston, even though they were also a hated New York Yankee’s minor league affiliate. Politics and baseball make for strange bedfellows.
Two days earlier we had missed an epic River Dog event: R’Dogger Mike Ford, a PRINCETON gradiate no less, had hit four home runs in one game. This is hardly ever done anywhere north of slow-pitch softball, so we were extra excited to see Mike and the possibility of him going yard (baseball-speak for hitting a home run) a few times tonight. Sadly, he did not … go yard, that is.
We secured our usual minor league tickets in the first row behind the home team dugout. And bonus upon bonus, this was “Senior Night,” so as card-carrying AARP members who don't look anything at all like real seniors, we each received a free hot dog, bag of chips, and a soft drink. What a deal! Actually, you were supposed to be 65+ to cash in on this offer, and we’re only 64 and 63. Thank goodness one of us has the balls to lie about our ages, and I’m not talking about me.
More fun at the park included congenial mascot “Charlie the River-dog” as well as the conces-sions stand offering the first ever seen (at least by me) “beer shakes” (Guinness and ice cream) and then topping themselves with “spiked BEER-shakes” (add Kahlua to the mix).
Boy, Guinness, ice cream, and liquor … what’s next? Crack-popcorn?
On our way to our seats, a guy walked by whose T-shirt lettering horrified Diedre. I had to explain to my delicate flower that the University of South Carolina’s team mascot was the “gamecock,” so it was perfectly permissible for any South Carolina boob to walk around with a shirt that simply read “COCKS!” She seemed to accept this.
Poor Charleston! After losing a heart-breaker in the 8th inning last week to the Sand Gnats of Savannah, now tonight they were held to just three hits. And even though one of those fortunate hits was a grand slam by new catcher de Oleo (Yes, that's really his name) to give the Dogs a 5-2 lead, their lack of hitting eventually caught up (down?) with them as the Drive scored three in the 6th and two in the 7th to take the game 7-5 and dropped our record of support for home teams to 4-2. We're doubly sorry we won't be at Joe Riley Park on July 19 when they have a bobble-head give-away. For whatever reason, the featured icon that night is former Indians and White Sox team owner Bill Veeck. And it's called a "bobble-LEG" giveaway because Bill Veeck indeed had only one leg. So there's your sensitivity-training-gone-horribly-awry for you.
Thursday we resumed part 2 of our walking tour with the S.O.B. (South of Broad) section. A tour of The Dock Street Theatre was our prime objective to accomplish that day. If we were unsuccessful, the secretary would disavow any knowledge of our mission.
The Dock was the first building in the colonies designed solely for theatre; it was launched in 1736 with a performance of The Odd Couple. Boy, that thing's been around forever. We theatre-geeks were especially excited at the thought of checking out our American theatre roots here.
Most unfortunately, it was going to be almost impossible to get into the theatre this week, because we were there during their massive 17-day “Spoleto Festival,” a city-wide and venue-grabbing celebration of the arts. There were shows going on there all day, every day. Informed of this fact by a plucky volunteer, I immediately hung my head and began looking for a place to relapse into a sugar-induced coma. Luckily, wife Diedre is never so easily defeated. She soon charmed “Steven,” a fellow who worked there and seemed to be the man to talk to. Before we knew it, he proceeded to give us a behind-the-scenes tour even while a show was going on. It was great! And, like I always say, “It’s not who you know, it’s WHO you know” … or something like that.
The day carried on in a blur of historical architecture, colorful mansions (Diedre was especially taken with a “pretty in pink” one), lovely park-gardens, and eccentric taverns.
My favorite was “The Blind Tiger Pub,” probably not only because I was born in the year of the tiger, but also that my cat, Casey, at times thinks he IS a tiger. I love how this place got its name: back in the early 1800’s, the local governor decided there should be no sales of liquor. So our feisty little pub put up a sign that read: “Come See the Blind Tiger! Admission Charged! Free Liquor!” Of course, there was no blind tiger, but this fairly transparent way around the law seemed to work. And so, that became the name of the pub. Cool!
Friday was one of the most exciting days of my history-loving life. We would actually spend a part of the day on the exact spot that I’ve read about my whole life, that being the very location where on April 9, 1861, the Civil war started. I am, of course, speaking about Fort Sumter.
On that fateful day 153 years ago at 4:10 a.m. (EST I think), the opening shots of the Civil War were fired. Now, a lot of people don’t know this little known fact about the origins of the Civil War: although Fort Sumter is on an island in South Carolina, back then it belonged to the Union. That fact miffed the South Carolinians, but the straw that broke the camel’s back and actually started the Civil War was that the previous summer, the Union had borrowed the South’s lawn mower to do a little touch up, but then neglected to ever return it. That really pissed off the South.
True story!
38 hours after the first bomb was launched, the Union gave up the Fort. It was then held for almost four years including the 20 months of bombardment by the North at the end of 1864. Only when the Republic’s General Sherman did his Tasmanian devil thing across Georgia and then set his sights on South Carolina did the South abandon the fort, that date being Feb 17, 1865. Side note to history: the lawn mower in question was never returned.
Returning to the RV park after our exhausting boat trip to Fort Sumter, we stopped at our new fave chain restaurant, The Mellow Mushroom. While we were enjoying a shrimp and chicken pizza with bleu cheese, it began to rain … and it rained … and it rained … etc., etc.
(To be continued … in Atlanta)
