Going Back to Charleston

I’m going back to Charleston, where I belong…. I want peace. I want to see if somewhere if there is something left in life with charm and grace. ….
--Rhett Butler, Gone With the Wind

He then asks Scarlett if she knows what he’s talking about, and she says “no I only know that I love you,” to which he responds, “that is your misfortune.” That’s some cold blooded stuff right there. I know she spent their entire time together throwing herself at that Streisand (Ashley Wilkes), but its not like Rhett didn’t have his flaws. Belle Watling? Really? I never understood why Rhett left Scarlett. Hadn’t she just figured out that Ashley was just another mama’s boy, and that for all his shortcomings, she really loved Rhett? Surely she’d have shut down the princess act and caused far less trouble thereafter. Plus, its not like going off to Charleston was going to shut down the USS Scarlett. If she was troublesome before, imagine her stalking Rhett up to Charleston. Scarlett seemed to have a way of always getting exactly what she wanted, no matter how high the body count. That guy and his pet rabbit would really have needed to watch his ass. I wouldn’t rely on a temporary restraining order. Women. Boy, I tell you. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

Ok, I was going to write about my 24 hours in Charleston. Somehow I got sidetracked. Again.

When you think of the “Old South,” many things come to mind, some good, some bad. Unquestionably, Charleston comes to mind, a veritable symbol of and living monument to the genteel Southern past. One sees the Confederate flag flown on many homes, yet Charleston’s past dates to well before the Civil War (or the "War Between the States” as the old timers called it in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Wossamatta U. episode). Yet, Charleston is very much a living city, home to two universities and a regional port. Its noticeably larger than Savannah, and is a regional commerce center.

In Savannah, I began the day by again frequenting the Goose Feathers Café. Today the Paula Deeniacs were nowhere to be found. A curious mix of AARP couples and SCAD students filled the Café instead. A place for children of all ages, as it were. After breakfast I beat it out of town, eager to hit the road. I left Savannah with satisfaction. I saw the whole town and got to experience a taste of the relaxed and elegant Southern vibe (without the freaky, inbred, running moonshine, giving your kids weird names aspects thereof). Savannah encapsulizes the Old South’s fading beauty and elegance but without the grime and weirdness that often go with it. Like a non-crazy Blanche DuBois.

The morning drive to Charleston was somewhat arduous, with nearly all of it on US 17. No superhighways on this trip. Similar to the long, solitary stretch of US 190 from about DeRidder to Livonia, US 17 cuts through creeks, dense forest, and kudzu-choked swamps as it heads to Charleston from IH-95. The Spanish moss-draped oaks that have been ever present these last few days have given way to palmettos and swamp, an odd kind of morning haze, and a kind of Rodrigue-painting darkness as I drive seemingly back in time to Charleston.

Have I written about how all these tourists towns have the tourist part of town and then the real life ordinary people part of town? Seems to ring a bell. Santa Fe, New Orleans, San Francisco, Galveston, San Antonio, Washington, DC…they all have the relatively smallish part of town they’re known for, and where a few people actually live and work. All the ordinary folks like you and me (well, more you than me) live in the much bigger surrounding areas, which look exactly like everywhere else. Charleston is no exception. When you get out of the woods (“you’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark, you’re out of the night….step into the sun, step into the light”), well, when you get into the Charleston city limits after the forest line, it immediately clears up into a bright sunlight bathed with Piggly-Wigglies, WalMarts, and this pretty good barbecue place where I stopped for lunch (Bessinger’s). By “barbecue,” Southerners generally mean a watery, vinegary, pork product that tastes a little like a dry, grilled hot dog. Or spam with tomato sauce. Or an old man's socks. And that was the case at Bessinger’s, right down to the smiling pig face flag flying in front. You know, nothing says you love something more than flying a flag in its honor. Or sending in commandos. Like a football team, or a country, or religion. Bessinger’s was pretty good though, offering a brisket plate and some real, non-vinegar sauce. But the only semi-decent barbecue outside the state of Texas I’ve ever encountered is VooDoo BBQ, in New Orleans, of all places.

Like other historic towns, Charleston is basically a historical district made up of preserved older homes, surrounded by the “real” town where most of the people live and work. Charleston is no exception.

Charleston, like Galveston and New Orleans, initially developed as port and commercial towns, supporting the southern agricultural base. Crops were shipped downriver to Charleston and shipped to the world. Banking and insurance houses quickly followed, to support the resulting financial transactions. Charleston at one point was the fifth largest city in the United States. Charleston is laid out at the tip of a peninsula between the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers. Just off the peninsula is historic Fort Sumter, site of the first shots in the Civil War. (Who led the bombardment? One Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, New Orleans native, and before Huey P. Long, the most famous of all New Orleanians). Hey! I've been to that dude's house on Chartres Street in the French Quarter. The historic district is much larger than Savannah, or even the slowly evaporating New Orleans Garden District. The Market Street (Old City Market) area, very near the old Customs House, is the center of the District. Surrounding the market are hundreds of carefully preserved, magnificent antebellum homes of the Georgian, Federal, and Victorian style. Nearly all had two-story, and even three-story porches. Most were jammed in next to one another leaving almost no room for a yard to speak of. Most are oddly oriented, such that the porch faces to the side, rather than the street. This creates the strange effect of walking down the street and seeing the sides of houses. The government buildings get in on the act too, with many, such as the Customs House, City Hall, and Court House in the Federal or Doric Revival styles.

My hotel, the Planter’s Inn, is located right in the thick of the Market. It’s a really beautiful old inn, with period furniture and a suitably genteel lobby and sitting area (stocked with complementary orange spice iced tea and sherry at all times). All the staff gives tremendous service, and at a level one would normally find only in much more expensive big city hotels. The room was a little larger than I expected, with a four poster bed on which was located a teddy bear (kind of a theme for this particular establishment).

After I arrived at the hotel, I spent most of the afternoon on foot, exploring the historic district. I marveled at the number of well-preserved homes, no doubt the result of careful and oppressive zoning regulations designed to keep out modern box houses. Thank the Lord. Nothing’s worse than a historical neighborhood with home after home of one style, with a totally jarring 1970s post-modern box house every eight or nine houses. Well, lots of things are worse than that, actually, but for present purposes, nothing is worse than that. The presence of so many Federal and Georgian style houses seem to indicate that Sherman must not have torched the city.

Some of the architectural gems include:
• Rainbow Row, a collection of about nine or 10 Federal style commercial buildings from the 18th century, each painted in a different pastel shade.
• Battery Row, numerous Italianate and Victorian Homes at the very tip of the Peninsula near the White Point Gardens park and along the eastern shore;
• The US Customs House (which was lit pink at night for breast cancer awareness);
• The Federal-style Nathanial Russell House; and
• The magnificent, French revival Wentworth Mansion (the kind of place you spend your wedding night, if it’s the 1950s).

I was taken aback by the French influence here. Many houses resembled some of the older homes I’ve seen throughout Louisiana. Apparently a lot of French settled here after the American Revolution, and built houses accordingly.

Sadly, many of these historic homes are for sale. “Sadly,” in that it seems the recession has caught up with Charleston, but take that with a grain of salt because I saw a lot of Mercedes and BMWs parked in those driveways, and the houses appeared to be in immaculate condition. I took a couple of flyers from the signs, and was shocked at asking prices in the $300-400,000 range. For two and sometimes three story houses (albeit without much of a yard or garage). That strikes me as a pretty low price. On the other hand, I would imagine you incur a lot of home maintenance cost on some of these houses, particularly so close to the ocean. I am not tempted to move to Charleston.

Nonetheless, the historic district streets are amazing. Every block is full of simply breathtaking old homes in fantastic condition. I want to photograph them all (and if you go on my flickr site, you’ll see I pretty much did). I easily spent the whole afternoon just wandering up and down the streets. Which I guess made me a streetwalker. Which is still a step up from “lawyer.” But “that’s just real estate,” of course.

Towards the river (actually, at White Point Garden Park, at the confluence of the two rivers), lots of people were walking and running along the smallish seawall, or playing games in the park. A small group of Citadel students (“cadets”) ran by, and they looked very impressive. They wore school-issued workout gear, had on garish reflector vests, and had little if any hair. On the other hand, these kids were in outstanding shape; no pizza and beer guts there. They also had a really sharp look about them, exuding confidence and competence. I realize that’s just a surface impression, but as I saw more and more cadets throughout the town, they sure looked a lot more on the ball than those Corps nimrods at A&M. The next day I saw a female cadet in uniform, entering a bank downtown. Their uniform is really impressive, resembling the West Point cadet’s uniform. Not those stupid Brown Shirt/Boy Scout knockoffs they wear at A&M (can you tell the Texas vs. A&M game is tomorrow?).

That night I walked through the cool evening breeze to a local gym and worked out, then dined at McCrady’s, a relatively new restaurant in an old brick building, with an alleyway access. McCrady’s is the kind of place with dark wood paneling and hidden booths, with its wine collection on easy display, with clever jazz playing in the background. It serves protein by the barrelful-steak, chicken, duck, fish. In Austin, this is the kind of place where 60ish men with receding hairlines and beer guts would take their mistresses on Thursday nights. It also emphasizes fresh food from local sources. I had an outstanding meal of lettuces with spicy goat cheese, followed by duck breast, duck sausage, and roasted potatoes. Despite the calorie gorge, I did manage to resist dessert, however, and waddled back (duck-like) to the hotel. On the way, I saw that the US Customs House had been lit pink, for breast cancer awareness. This is admirable, of course, but the sight of a Greek temple-knock off federal building, in pink, did have me asking momentarily whether I’d stumbled into someone else’s acid flashback.

Next-Charleston, part II