Jimmy Kimmel, we’re not as weird as you think

Jimmy Kimmel thinks Hardeeville has one of the weirdest stores in America, and I’m sure he’s right.

From time to time we need someone from Hollywood to tell us what’s weird. In our day-to-day lives in the Lowcountry, the weird can seem normal to us.

The late-night TV star gave a blast of fame to one of our finest — the Golf Ball Outlet and Fireworks Mega Store at Exit 8. It was appreciated like fine wine for it’s odd “multiple specialties.”

I can appreciate that. It was in Georgia that I once looked up from my barbecue plate to see that the guy who owned the joint was also a taxidermist. I’m thinking that in the best of all worlds, I’m eating Bambi.

But Hardeeville has more fireworks than China and, to us, M-80s and cherry bombs go with about anything.

Even elephants.

I’m sorry Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get to meet Al and Lizzie.

They are gray and pink Fiberglas elephants whose blackened eyes stare out at U.S. 17, just south of Hardeeville proper.

For more than a quarter of a century, they have stood outside Papa Joe’s Fireworks through dud hurricanes, sizzling summer storms and earth-rattling 18-wheelers.

And here’s why fireworks and elephants aren’t such an odd pair. Al and Lizzie, for whatever reason, silently yank some inner chord of the human race, making cars stop and people come on in Papa Joe’s.

It’s a good thing because there used to be some stiff competition across the highway. At an old gas station, a cocker spaniel would take a customer’s paper money and give it to the cashier. Honey the Money Dog made USA Today.

Interstate-95 ended at Hardeeville when Papa Joe’s opened in 1974. All those cars headed to Florida — filled with kids on the lookout for the first sign of an alligator farm — were squeezed into the U.S. 17 corridor. It was the Lowcountry Las Vegas before the Savannah River somehow threw cold water on all of our sins and kept them from spilling into Georgia.

Small cinder-block buildings were made to look huge when loud yellow plywood walls were tacked onto both sides — screaming that Papa Joe’s, Crazy Joe’s, Joker Joe’s, Loony Luke’s, Crazy Cecil’s or P-Nut Carter’s offered TNT, M-80s, cherry bombs and Black Cat firecrackers, buy one get one free.

Red, white and blue neon buzzed and shimmied in the thick Lowcountry air as America lit the fuse on a mobile society.

Al and Lizzie drank it all in, not the least bit puzzled by a golf ball outlet and fireworks mega store.

They’ve filled Americans with such a sense of wonder, we’d forgotten that we’re weird.

This story was originally published May 21, 2017 at 6:05 AM with the headline "Jimmy Kimmel, we’re not as weird as you think."