We’ve been on the road for just over three weeks and traveled about 1,500 miles. We’ve seen old friends, started learning about the Gullah-Geechee culture of the southern coast, gathered sea shells and shark teeth, eaten a lot of fresh seafood, and laughed a lot! No real MyInnerSociologist moments have appeared lately, but that hasn’t mattered. These Odds and Ends will, I hope, help you experience some of the fun we are having, even if vicariously.

General Hilarity

We were not on the road for 24 hours before we came across a boat in a tree and a combination barber shop and reptilium. So far, they are the only ones we’ve seen. We hope we find more. You just can’t come across enough barber shop/reptilium two-fers.

Dumb Roadside Attractions

Maybe there’s nothing really funny about the U.S. Vegetable Laboratory or a fish bait vending machine. I just hadn’t expected them.

True Bathroom Humor

Maybe Men’s room/toilet stuff isn’t very funny to some people. It is to me. In case you can’t read it, the poster reads, “All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don’t mean shit.” If we are really lucky, this will not be the last toilet humor I subject you to.

Trump Moments

Unlike 4 years ago, we have (blessedly) not been inundated by visual pollution from endless Trumpsters. Even in South Carolina, where the primary ended on Saturday, 2/24, the roads were remarkably free of political drivel. But that is not to say that we didn’t experience some. The most memorable was the hand-painted sign in southeastern North Carolina that read, “Biden was not elected. He was installed. Like a toilet.” Damn, that’s clever! I didn’t get a picture of it. But I did snap a few others….

One of the most alarming and persistent sights throughout America is the ubiquitous presence of short-term loan purveyors. It hurts to think about the number of hard working, honest people who do not have the capacity to earn enough to go from paycheck to paycheck. I often wonder how the owners of these establishments can live with themselves while exploiting others so shamelessly, and I feel truly badly for the people who must work there, knowingly ripping off their neighbors so they can support their own families. Surely we must be able to do better.


Lighthouses
Every lighthouse has unique markings and shapes. They are a reminder of where we are and where we have been. Many of them continue to operate. None have operators. I assume none of them are necessary thanks to GPS technology. Nevertheless, they are really cool.

Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island GA

When I was a kid, my family and another family of best friends vacationed on Jekyll Island. We have a wonderful story of filling the bathtub with fresh-caught crabs, only to have them escape the tub and freely populate our tiny cottage. Imagine freaked out parents trying to manage a bunch of pre-teen boys trying to catch rampaging crabs. We’ll be staying with Bill in Atlanta in a few weeks. I’ll bet our respective memories of the great crab escape aren’t terribly different.

I remember Jekyll as a comfy middle-class beach vacation spot surrounded by some very high-brow homes. It has changed to become far more commercial and less middle-class. Driftwood Beach says something meaningful about changes in a beach community. It had been a grove of live oak trees (the same live oaks in the hull of Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution, docked in Boston Harbor) when storms and erosion shifted the beach. Today, those long dead live oak trees stand as breathtaking remnants of the past.

Traveling the Deep South: Boiled Peanuts

Few things represent the true deep south to me more than boiled peanut (pronounced “bawled peanuts” … unless you are from other southern locales, where they are pronounced “biled peanuts.” No place are they pronounced boiled peanuts until you get north of the Mason-Dixon line!

Bawled peanuts and cooker at Davis Produce near Tybee Island GA

Finding a place to eat on Tybee Island

Tybee Island, off the coast of Savanna, is not very crowded in mid-February. In fact, it is pretty empty. Bubba Gumbos at the Tybee Island Marina provided all we needed, and we ate pretty well (though my jambalaya is better).

Charleston SC: In search of a hurricane

In the early 1970s, my brother Joe and I lived together in “Upper” South Carolina, the mountainous part of the state that abuts Georgia … where Deliverance was filmed. One weekend, we decided to visit his friend “Steinberg” in Charleston. Moments after we left the mountains, the radio started blaring alarming messages of Hurricane Gladys bearing down directly on Charleston. It was going to be a direct hit only a few hours after our arrival. Being a couple of dumb-ass boys having fun, we said WTF, let’s go anyway. We arrived at Steinberg’s, filled the bathtub with water to be safe, bought a mountain of fresh seafood and beer, and settled in to a balconied Charleston apartment waiting for the storm to hit. At the exact moment the winds were to arrive, the clouds opened and the sun broke through. We had plenty of seafood, beer, and water, but never a single sign of a hurricane. I have not been back to Charleston since. The photo is assuredly not the exact location, but a Charleston balcony is a Charleston balcony. It is damn close to where we had planned to weather the storm. Plus, the brunch we had at the High Cotton restaurant was darned good, and the jazz duo playing were fun to listen and to talk to.

We had a swell brunch at the High Cotton in Charleston of She Crab Soup, shrimp and grits, and some really sweet live music.


Diner Art

If you are really lucky, you might happen across a local diner that showcases some amazing local art. Kate’s Pancake House in Carolina Beach, NC filled the bill. A local artist gathers driftwood, sands and polishes it, then adorns it with fabricated brass pieces. The result is magnificent. We captured the sailfish (maybe 6′ long), the marlin (about the same size), and the turtle family (the large one must weight 150 pounds). Really beautiful, unusual, well-crafted work.

Eating in the Low Country

Ain’t nothing better than low country seafood!

$0.50 clams and low country shrimp. But they always overcook the corn!

Fun Moments

You just gotta love a good ship in a bottle. There is no shortage of them in the museums and visitor centers along the coast. I’m awed by the work that goes into them and love the stories … like learning that the wood in the carving came from the ship in the bottle.

This is not actually me on the moon. It is me on Wallops Island, VA, on the road to Chincoteague. Stay tuned. We will be at Cape Canaveral in the few days with our grandsons. If we are really lucky, we might just find another photo op.

Superlatives matter. “A small church” in America may not have caught our eye. But the “smallest” church did. So we turned around for pictures. It’s about 6’X8′. No preacher. No bathrooms.