I've been to Charleston, S.C. a couple of times. First time, about 20 years ago, I met with some Upstate NY friends and a Southern friend kind enough to drive. They rented a house on Sullivan's Island for a week for about $400 a week at the time. We went crab hunting on the beach, boat riding on the Fort Sumter historical tour that described the place where the Civil War began. My first impressions were hot, humid and still a little bit stuck in time. Couldn't stay long and wanted to explore more.
2nd time, was in 2001, I came back and took the historic carriage ride in the downtown market place where baskets made by African Americans of the Gullah tradition and foods are displayed and sold. The tour guide was a theatrical and historical southern gentleman that described the "Northern Aggression" and the Pirates that hung from the Weeping Willow trees still standing along the "Battery" waterfront during the American Revolutionary period. Most of the American Revolution was fought in the back woods of South Carolina and Charleston's key waterfront position with George Washington's support. (Key historical fact overlooked in my Upstate New York schooling where Harriet Tubman's and William Steward's house still stand.)
Huge planatation-style homes line the waterfront and still have Civil War cannon holes in their front porches during the final fight for Southern rights. There's a southern society here that attempts to preserve the idealized version of the South. It is beautiful with the undercurrents of a war that still has not been forgotten, or a grief for a lifestyle that is long gone. This was 10 years ago, and the culturally sensitive people must have gotten wind of it. I understand that a new museum has gone up since where the slaves from West Africa were displayed and sold, right next to the charming lantern lit, bricked road shops that have glossed over a people's pain and suffering.
Low county cooking is popular here with the boiled peanuts, hot sauces, shrimp & grits and Po' Boy sandwiches of crabmeat, crab cakes, and she-crab soup. Sweet potatoes and sweet potatoe pie another favorite. Rice side dishes (homage to the rice plantations grown in the 17th-18th centuries) with bright orange Saffron also can be found. There's also the ubiquitous chain restaurants that the locals have recommended to me. I try to avoid. Young partiers can be heard on a week-end night carousing down the streets and the annual Charleston marathoners can be seen running by, juxtaposed against the Georgia-style 17th century architechure backdrop on Meeting Street from the hotel window where I stayed.
I also bought a signed copy of The Ghosts of Charleston and met with the young & handsome co-author and co-founder of www.tourcharleston.com. Edward B. Macy, who just happened to be doing a book signing during my visit, humored me with a sincere smile during my Northerner questioning on the ghost photos that he took as he wrote "TO CONNIE-ALL THE BEST! MACY." Little did I know that he would go onto CNN and History Channel fame for documenting these hauntings. The book is based on eyewitness accounts and stories of Charleston natives who have accepted supernatural sightings as present-day facts. The Civil War & Revolutionary War stories that are said to cause the hauntings are fascinating, but I was too scared to actually go on the walking tour. If you're brave enough, be my guest & click on Charleston title above!
I need to visit again and see the lobby of the hotel that Oprah went to and watch the rich people go by.
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