The Tides of History
Apr. 25th, 2006 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringYou have to know the language here. It's English when it isn't Gullah, but it is still not entirely what it seems. South of Broad is not just an area of the city, it's a social and cultural description. And an abbreviation.
Broad Street runs across the Peninsula that makes up the old city of Charleston. Outlying areas over the Ashley and Cooper Rivers are called West Ashley and East Cooper respectively. As a tip, that name Cooper is pronounced "Cupper", but don't think that by pronouncing it this way anyone is going to mistake you for a resident. Even if you speak with a genuine Southern accent rather than my wildly out of place Aussie accent, you're still not going to fit in. You've got to know the language.
South of Broad is where the older, richer, more culturally significant Charleston families live. It's a roughly triangular shape defined on the north by Broad Street, on the east by the Cooper and on the west by the Ashley. South of Broad has the views out across the water. And the breezes. And the b igger, older houses. And a certain something that you can't get even if you have the money to buy a property here. The collective memory goes back centuries here, and if you spent a hundred years, you'd still be a newcomer.
My guides led me to the less refined side of Broad Street. A sign advertised a restaurant - "Slightly North of Broad". It's a statement, I was told. And another abbreviation.
Broad Street separates one segment of Charleston from another, though to be honest, I couldn't pick any visible difference. King Street is another important thoroughfare, not because it divides the city, but because it is the city's main shopping street, and a walk along it is an education in what the fashionable Charlestonian is wearing, eating and drinking. Other major streets are Greeting Street, Coming Street ("is there a Going Street?" I asked, my logical mind kicking in. No, replied my beautiful female guide, and I kept my logical mouth shut for a while afterwards). And Market Street, where the old city markets run block after block, tourists gawking alongside, and topped at one end by the Daughters of the Confederacy meeting hall.
Go far enough south on King and you get to South Battery, which is where an area of parkland on the very tip of the Charleston peninsula. Here South Carolina's cannons fired on Fort Sumter and the anger of the Civil war began. The citizens sat on the balconies and rooftops of the elegant mansions lining the park, watching the show. There are still guns and mortars along the waterfront, but they are for the tourists, and lines of historical markers mark the places where the soldiers paraded.
Fort Sumter itself is still there, a small blocky shape on the horizon, well out in the harbour. Tour boats go back and forth and I esolve to catch one next time I'm in town.
For the moment, my guide, a genuine Southern belle, leads me up and down the old streets. Some of the grandest houses were built for the sea captains who brought in the cargoes that made Charleston rich. Their houses remain, each one slightly different in colour, shape or texture from its neighbours so that the captains could look through their sea telescopes and pick out their own dwelling as they came sailing home.
Some of the streets have a curious stone bases. Somewhere between cobbles and flagstones, these streets were once the ballast in ship's holds. I look at them and wonder what stories they could tell.
We talk a short cut through a graveyard. Here in the middle of the city Charleston's citizens take their eternal slumber in a semi-overgrown garden, all lush green foliage and bright spring flowers. Magnolias bloom above the old grey gravestones, and birds flutter in the branches overhead, while above all another tall spire points the way to heaven.
We break for lunch in a deliciously over the top French restaurant, sitting in a tiny alcove at the rear of the crowded room. Each time the chef in the adjacent kitchen swings around with his ladle we have to duck, but the food is excellent, and the atmosphere unparalleled.
We rise and take a swing through other districts. Here is a park where egrets nest in the trees each May. One year the city, in a sad miscalculation, held an art show beneath, and the contributions of the birds added an extra dimension to the paintings. Another park is dedicated to Marion, the famous Swamp Fox, and I chuckle to see that the memorial fountain honouring this guerrilla leader of the Revolutionary War has a central segment containing swamp plants. Naturally I have to wrap up a book in two plastic baggies and release it into the fountain..
We leave the city and return home. My guide is also my hostess, and we take our cups of coffee down to the small lake behind her house, where we sit on a wooden dock on the edge of the water and just sit back and watch the world go by. Ducks splash down in pairs, creaming wakes along the green water. Egrets and herons flap lazily past, and a turtle pokes his head up to take a look at us. Fish jump out of the water here and there, and I am told about the alligator living at the far end.
"You can tell when he's nearby," I was informed "because the ducks get out of the water and stand nervously on the bank."
That described my posture very well indeed a few minutes later when I noticed a small creature swimming across the surface of the lake. Little white face, dark back wriggling through the water, it could only be a...
"A snake. A cottonmouth. Poisonous, you know. You're very liucky to see one."
Even luckier to be bitten by one, I thought, and when two more appeared in the next few minutes, I began to think that this might well be my day!
Which of course it was. Charleston may be a city of a thousand stories, but the pace of life in this mellow Southern town is slow and relaxing nowadays, and even if I'm not a local, and I miss some of the unspoken language of the place, I'm at ease here, and I cherish these days before I have to climb back aboard a jetliner and hurry off to another destination.
I make a promise to myself to come back and spend a week next time. Here in Charleston, that's probably worth at least a month of rest.
Broad Street runs across the Peninsula that makes up the old city of Charleston. Outlying areas over the Ashley and Cooper Rivers are called West Ashley and East Cooper respectively. As a tip, that name Cooper is pronounced "Cupper", but don't think that by pronouncing it this way anyone is going to mistake you for a resident. Even if you speak with a genuine Southern accent rather than my wildly out of place Aussie accent, you're still not going to fit in. You've got to know the language.
South of Broad is where the older, richer, more culturally significant Charleston families live. It's a roughly triangular shape defined on the north by Broad Street, on the east by the Cooper and on the west by the Ashley. South of Broad has the views out across the water. And the breezes. And the b igger, older houses. And a certain something that you can't get even if you have the money to buy a property here. The collective memory goes back centuries here, and if you spent a hundred years, you'd still be a newcomer.
My guides led me to the less refined side of Broad Street. A sign advertised a restaurant - "Slightly North of Broad". It's a statement, I was told. And another abbreviation.
Broad Street separates one segment of Charleston from another, though to be honest, I couldn't pick any visible difference. King Street is another important thoroughfare, not because it divides the city, but because it is the city's main shopping street, and a walk along it is an education in what the fashionable Charlestonian is wearing, eating and drinking. Other major streets are Greeting Street, Coming Street ("is there a Going Street?" I asked, my logical mind kicking in. No, replied my beautiful female guide, and I kept my logical mouth shut for a while afterwards). And Market Street, where the old city markets run block after block, tourists gawking alongside, and topped at one end by the Daughters of the Confederacy meeting hall.
Go far enough south on King and you get to South Battery, which is where an area of parkland on the very tip of the Charleston peninsula. Here South Carolina's cannons fired on Fort Sumter and the anger of the Civil war began. The citizens sat on the balconies and rooftops of the elegant mansions lining the park, watching the show. There are still guns and mortars along the waterfront, but they are for the tourists, and lines of historical markers mark the places where the soldiers paraded.
Fort Sumter itself is still there, a small blocky shape on the horizon, well out in the harbour. Tour boats go back and forth and I esolve to catch one next time I'm in town.
For the moment, my guide, a genuine Southern belle, leads me up and down the old streets. Some of the grandest houses were built for the sea captains who brought in the cargoes that made Charleston rich. Their houses remain, each one slightly different in colour, shape or texture from its neighbours so that the captains could look through their sea telescopes and pick out their own dwelling as they came sailing home.
Some of the streets have a curious stone bases. Somewhere between cobbles and flagstones, these streets were once the ballast in ship's holds. I look at them and wonder what stories they could tell.
We talk a short cut through a graveyard. Here in the middle of the city Charleston's citizens take their eternal slumber in a semi-overgrown garden, all lush green foliage and bright spring flowers. Magnolias bloom above the old grey gravestones, and birds flutter in the branches overhead, while above all another tall spire points the way to heaven.
We break for lunch in a deliciously over the top French restaurant, sitting in a tiny alcove at the rear of the crowded room. Each time the chef in the adjacent kitchen swings around with his ladle we have to duck, but the food is excellent, and the atmosphere unparalleled.
We rise and take a swing through other districts. Here is a park where egrets nest in the trees each May. One year the city, in a sad miscalculation, held an art show beneath, and the contributions of the birds added an extra dimension to the paintings. Another park is dedicated to Marion, the famous Swamp Fox, and I chuckle to see that the memorial fountain honouring this guerrilla leader of the Revolutionary War has a central segment containing swamp plants. Naturally I have to wrap up a book in two plastic baggies and release it into the fountain..
We leave the city and return home. My guide is also my hostess, and we take our cups of coffee down to the small lake behind her house, where we sit on a wooden dock on the edge of the water and just sit back and watch the world go by. Ducks splash down in pairs, creaming wakes along the green water. Egrets and herons flap lazily past, and a turtle pokes his head up to take a look at us. Fish jump out of the water here and there, and I am told about the alligator living at the far end.
"You can tell when he's nearby," I was informed "because the ducks get out of the water and stand nervously on the bank."
That described my posture very well indeed a few minutes later when I noticed a small creature swimming across the surface of the lake. Little white face, dark back wriggling through the water, it could only be a...
"A snake. A cottonmouth. Poisonous, you know. You're very liucky to see one."
Even luckier to be bitten by one, I thought, and when two more appeared in the next few minutes, I began to think that this might well be my day!
Which of course it was. Charleston may be a city of a thousand stories, but the pace of life in this mellow Southern town is slow and relaxing nowadays, and even if I'm not a local, and I miss some of the unspoken language of the place, I'm at ease here, and I cherish these days before I have to climb back aboard a jetliner and hurry off to another destination.
I make a promise to myself to come back and spend a week next time. Here in Charleston, that's probably worth at least a month of rest.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:37 pm (UTC)I wrote it somewhat late. I'm going to have to return to World War Two very soon. Pearl Harbour tomorrow and my descriotion of Patriots Point soon.