A Jewel on the Carolina Coast
Charleston, SC
April 6, 2018
“Didn’t you see me fall?” inquired our exasperated younger son.
“When?”
“Just now! I tripped over the curb and fell. I was right next to you and you just kept walking.”
“No, sorry…I didn’t see that.”
“Sigh…”
Such is the allure of this charming town that David could stumble onto the street, risk a horse-drawn carriage mortaring him as human adhesive among 18th century cobblestones, and his father be so entranced by the addictive architecture, enticing eateries, authentic history, and swaying palms that he proceeds unperturbed by the filial trauma unfolding on his flank.
I am here a few times each year to visit one employee and a particular business line that are fortunate enough to call Charleston home.
Till now, however, I have not had the pleasure of Rita, Alexander, and David joining me.
About one thing we as a family can all agree…
Charleston, SC: not a sh*thole.
Passing from St Philip’s to the French Huguenot Church, on our initial afternoon we strolled to and thru the Charleston City Market, established in the 1790s as an extensive collection of local merchants, cuisine, ornaments, and adornments.
Anchored at Meeting Street by the impressive Doric-inspired Market Hall housing the Confederate Museum, the bazaar deposits its curious or acquisitive prey four blocks away at Bay Street, a jaywalk from the Roman-revival U.S. Customs House.
The best view of that impressive edifice is from the rooftop bar atop the Market Pavilion Hotel, one of many delightful perches that enliven the Charlestonian sky.
We intended a only brief stop to imbibe a drink and the view, but the soft breeze, soothing sea, and panorama of sails, steeples, and sunset retained us thru dinner.
Innumerable streams of chance, choice, exchange, and chicanery flow and converge to determine the fate of cities.
Charleston, on the business-end of an invasive US military and a capricious planet, suffered considerable poverty in the wake of the War Between the States and the 1886 earthquake.
As Rita noted Wednesday over lunch at Eli’s Table, such indiscriminate, tho’ not total, destruction planted the seeds of preservation.
The extent of the death and dearth inhibited the purchasing and razing of older buildings to accommodate newer edifices that contemporaneously rose in more prosperous cities such as Hartford, or in more destitute ones, like Atlanta, upon which Sherman’s shells inflicted near total ruin.
The surviving neo-classical, Adamseque, Georgian, Federal, and Italianate structures beautifying the blocks amid the spires of St Michaels, St Matthews, St Philips, and St Johns all subscribe to stipulations of the Charleston Board of Architectural Review.
One regulation preserves scale and perspective by constricting the height of any building to no more than 55 feet, while a riot of detailed rules govern the minutiae of every shutter, shingle, or soffit susceptible to the painter’s brush or carpenter’s craft.
While my work intervened the next couple days, Rita and the boys were left to the pleasures of King Street and an informative three-hour walking tour led by a seventh-generation Charlestonian.
After escaping the office, I met them at Marion Square, from which we treated ourselves to a brief excursion to the extraordinary Randolph Hall and its Ionic order columns on the idyllic College of Charleston campus.
From there we walked further out King Street for apéritif at Felix, and then dinner next door on the newly opened patio at The Ordinary.
Sister restaurant to the renowned FIG (Food Is Good) on Meeting Street, this Southern seafood brasserie has for five years occupied a 1927 bank building that adheres to the design and spirit of its original architects.
Despite an inordinately cool evening, the al fresco setting was pleasant, the service attentive, and the food delicious.
The cool clear evening of the prior day became the crisp, clear morning of the next, providing ideal conditions for Rita and the boys to visit Ft Sumter while I returned to the office.
They spent several hours under a glorious April sky exploring the garrison that the US obstinately provisioned despite South Carolina’s ordinance of independence, offers of compensation, and overtures for peace.
Lincoln’s recalcitrance ultimately elicited Beauregard’s bombs.
After several hours, US Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Casualties that morning amounted to only a single confederate horse, but the events precipitated almost 800,000 deaths as the wages of Mr. Lincoln’s war.
Without the ultimate Union victory, this expansive harbor at the confluence of the Ashley, Wanda, and Cooper rivers would not now host the carrier USS Yorktown.
The original Yorktown was lost June 6, 1942 at the Battle of Midway, with this incarnation launched the following January.
After several engagements in the Pacific theater, she was de-commissioned after the war, re-commissioned in the 1950s, and was later prominent in Vietnam and as rescue ship for the Apollo 8 expedition.
Leaving work late yesterday afternoon, I met Rita and the boys as they returned from Sumter and joined them for a self-guided tour thru the galleys, sleeping quarters, medical facilities, engine room, and arsenals that sustained the missions and needs of 3,500 men.
Adjacent to the Yorktown in the shadow of the Ravenal Bridge are the destroyer Laffey and the submarine Clamagore, both accessible to tour at each person’s preferred pace.
Dubbed “the ship that wouldn’t die” for surviving Okinawa, D-Day, and a slew of kamikaze attacks, the Laffey is the most decorated World War II destroyer still extant.
As horrific as kamikaze attacks were, they may have been preferable to spending the Cold War within the confines of the deteriorating Clamagore.
Hunching from one compartment to the next evokes the sensation of maneuvering thru multiple MRI machines, albeit narrower, with dimmer light, greater potential for explosion, and less prospect for release.
Had I been in a box with someone shoveling dirt on me I would have felt less claustrophobic.
Fortunately, in the spirit of Easter, this crypt enabled escape.
Emerging into the clear light of a gorgeous late afternoon, we returned to Charleston for a quick drink on the rooftop at Élevé, and a very relaxed and satisfying meal across the street in the bustle of Jestine’s Kitchen.
As ocean and bay sparkle under the rising sun, crêpes and coffee beckon at Breizh Pan Parisian café, an appetizing way to delay departure from this jewel on the Carolina coast.
JD
