CHARLESTON
©Denise May 1998
This column first appeared in Senior Living Newspapers’ East Tennessee Edition in July 1998.
I had heard about it all my life. I felt like it was a part of me regardless of the fact that I had never been there. Finally I would get to touch the essence of my mother’s memories. We were bound for Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1942 when my mother was eight years old, World War II was reaching its climax and the ship yards needed steamfitters. My grandfather answered the call, glad to get well-paying work, and moved his family to a tacked-on apartment at the rear of the single-house at 127 Wentworth Street in Charleston.
They were there only eighteen months or so before they moved back to Tennessee and a job at the new facilities in Oak Ridge, but it made a lasting impression on the family. I sat spellbound to many a tale of giant rats with red lice, cockroaches setting off rat traps, street vendors shouting, “‘rimp, ‘rimp,” and VooDoo witches hiding in doorways.
My expectations were very high, and I was not disappointed. Charleston is a city of extremes. Each bridge we crossed warned about ice in winter while the temperatures soared into the upper 90s. Huge merchant vessels shared the harbor with tiny sailboats. Charleston has been leveled many times by earthquakes, hurricanes, fire, and bombs and she comes back dainty but strong. She is a strange mix of Southern Belle and seaport tramp.
The buildings are jewel cases built to protect the families of tall ships’ captains. Amid the aroma of Low Country cooking and heady flowers, the descendants of African slaves sit in the market and sell seagrass baskets beside first generation Asians with tables of decorative enamel ware.
Always in the distance the ocean churns. Salty wind dampens you even if you weren’t warm enough to “glisten.” Lush is the only word I can think of for the gardens. Palmettos and century plants thrive alongside crape myrtles that can grow up to three stories high. Herbs fall through the fences and lend their fragrance to the people passing by.
We strolled along the streets, visiting the little shops along East Bay and Market and getting our bearings. We browsed the antiques shops along King Street and ate lunch at Hyman’s on Meeting Street. By the way, Hyman’s is a must if you like good seafood at reasonable prices. The service is excellent.
Ah, but then I really got busy. I went to the Charleston County Public Library and trudged up the stairs (they do have an elevator) to the South Carolina Room on the second floor.
This room is large and well-lighted with plenty of tables and cubicles with room to spread your notes. There are several computers available to read CDs and search the internet, but the thing I loved most was the new microfilm/microfiche reader/printers. They have four and plenty of microfilm to go with them. The reader/printers are fully automatic and when you want a copy you slip a dime into the slot on the side and hit the “print” button and before you know it your copy is sliding out right in front of you. They take any size microfilm and also microfiche. Wonderful machines.
My mother and grandparents must have just missed the people who published the city directories because they weren’t in the 1942 version or in the 1944/45 edition and 1943 is missing.
I didn’t think of it until we had started home, but I should have looked in the public health records in the library. Mama caught malaria there and the health department sent someone out to inspect the house for possible mosquito breeding sites. The landlady, Mrs. Lisk, was horrified when informed that the mosquito that gave my mother the infectious bite was probably from the bowl of water that held her sweet potato vine on the veranda.
Mrs. Lisk seems to have formed quite an attachment to my mother. The feeling was mutual. I never heard anything but glowing comments about the landlady. The only thing that Mama ever made a negative comment on was the fact that Mrs. Lisk kept repeating, “Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end.” My mother can whistle from daylight till dark.
Mama is an only child and a red-head. Granny did her hair in Shirley Temple-style ringlets and taught her to memorize songs and sing in front of crowds at the age of five. Needless to say, Mama was used to attention–stares even–so when fear still lit her eyes as an adult it impressed me.
One day as Mama walked home from school she came around a corner and the witch, partially hidden in a doorway, was watching her. The witch was a tiny, gray-black skinned woman with blue eyes and white hair. The other children and some adults said she practiced VooDoo.
Mama shrank back in surprise and then the witch flashed a snaggle-toothed grin at her. Mama walked on by, but was even more frightened when she found the witch waiting for her, still grinning, in different spots along the same street for several days in a row. The woman was probably just having some fun, but Mama was scared enough to take the long way home from school after that.
I wish I had made time to take the Ghost Walk. Maybe the witch would have shown up.
I did find my Blairs living as boarders in York County, South Carolina in the 1900 census.
My great grandmother and her younger brother were already full-time workers in the cotton mill. She was fifteen and he was thirteen. She had been working since she was nine.
I also found several good clues on my Bishops, Bollings, and Sheltons in South Carolina.
I recommend researching in the South Carolina Room if you find yourself in Charleston. And if you take the Ghost Walk I expect you to tell me all about it.