Southern Comfort

Discovery Magic's Blog
John & Caroline Charnley
Thu 25 Nov 2010 17:45

We have taken full use of having a car for a week.  Having travelled many hundreds of miles to Norfolk and the Smoky Mountains, taking in the flat coastal route through North Carolina, the rolling hills of Virginia, pretty homesteads of West Virginia, and rather hick areas of one corner of Tennessee, we also wanted to see the Charleston area of South Carolina.  However, as we would be sailing past much of Georgia (harbours are some distance up estuaries), we felt that a trip to Savannah was in order too!

 

Charleston and Savannah see themselves as sister cities, with comparable periods of development, fortunes made from the slave trade and rice and cotton plantations and a rich history of privateers and pirates.  (They both seem to have a lot of ghosts too, but I have a suspicion that the number have grown as the tourist industry has developed.)   Charleston is nicknamed by some as the Holy City with its more than 160 places of worship.  Resisting the British during the Revolutionary War they even painted church steeples black to blend in with the night sky.  An earthquake in 1886, nearly destroyed Charleston town and 100 years later (1989) Hurricane Hugo damaged more than three-quarters of the homes in the city’s historic district and, as with Savannah, fire damage seems to have been a constant hazard.  Despite all the onslaughts both cities have retained much of the genteelness and elegance of the past, largely thanks to energetic preservation societies. Some of the traditional ‘single’ houses have winged stairs to their imposing front doors, or an elaborate wrought-iron gate shielding a well-tended garden of palms, ferns and climbing fig. Their hallmark is that the house is only one room wide and it has a side veranda.  This sitting-out area is on two storeys, running the length of the house and offers a convivial place to enjoy the shade and cooling breeze. Both cities are blessed with many trees, shielding them from the fierce heat of the summer, but to me a symbol of these southern towns is the live (evergreen) oaks with their shroud of Spanish moss draped from almost every bough.

 

In contrast to the picturesque ‘downtown’ areas, there was a lot of evidence of poverty and economic depression, with derelict buildings, poor housing and large wasteland areas where industry and businesses had faltered.  South Carolina’s State motto is “While I Breathe, I Hope”, but it would be good if some of these folk could stop hoping and have more prosperity.  Yet, once again, we had a warm welcome: I was addressed as ‘doll’ and ‘Miss Caroline’ and we often heard ‘What can I get y’all’ even when there’s just two of us.

 

 

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