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We were a well-traveled and disciplined Navy family. Home was where the Navy sent us. No whining was allowed. When Mamma saw the pluff mud at low tide, she cried. "From one wilderness to another," she wailed.
Our last duty station had been Kodiak, Alaska. Our car, a 1949 green Kaiser Fraser, had been lifted dripping from the ship in Seattle and had continued to leak, overheat and groan down the coast of California, across the Rockies to Albuquerque, N.M. We carried extra oil, gas and water.
We were trekking eastward, in the opposite direction the pioneers took. We drove across Texas, saw kinfolk in Tennessee and crossed the South to reach Daddy's next duty station.
The first thing Daddy did was trade the car. Who knew that he would be doing business with the same dealership until he died in 1996? Mamma certainly did not. She expected to be out of South Carolina in 18 months or so. Even our first home, the guest quarters on Parris Island, was temporary.
Daddy finally found a little brick house on William Street in Beaufort. It was near the tracks off Depot Road. Mamma thought she had mice in the kitchen. Daddy, who was commissary officer in charge of a clean galley at the Naval Hospital, assured her there were no mice.
One evening, he flipped on the kitchen light. He saw what Mamma saw. Skittering across the linoleum were palmetto bugs as big as mice. Mamma cried that night, too. In the morning, she lifted her chin, took a deep breath and became real good friends with Raid and Flit.
The Beaufort Gazette was a weekly paper in 1954. Early in 1955, Mamma spotted an ad for an open house for three houses on Smilax Avenue. It was love at first sight. Daddy got a mortgage from the Aiken Loan and Security Company for $9,650 at 4 percent interest. The monthly payment was $53.65. The loan was paid off in July 1980. Julian Levin did all the "lawyering" and paperwork for the loan in the early days of his law practice in Beaufort.
The house on Smilax Avenue was built by Earl L. Burnsed. It was a three-bedroom house with cement-board siding. Originally, the siding was a light green. At some point, Mamma had the house painted its signature yellow.
Mamma was queen of what amounted to a sandbox of a yard. Despite the fact every biting and stinging insect loved her fair skin and red hair, Mamma became an avid gardener.
She made friends with "Pop" Cain who was the gardener at the Naval Hospital. He taught her how to propagate azaleas and monkey grass. She and Daddy tramped the woods for live oaks to transplant into the treeless landscape.
She brought lilacs from her mother's home in Springfield, Mass. They died. She dug up cedars from Daddy's west Tennessee home. They thrived and tower still along the back fence.
My father was transferred to Portsmouth, N.H., in 1957, but we were soon back in Port Royal.
Mamma said we were "Done movin'." She was right.
