Sights and sounds of coronavirus lockdown in Beaufort County: Lights in a dark tunnel
Jim Gibson called the other morning to check on my “coronativity.”
Wasn’t that nice?
He and Weezie are going through their contact lists each morning, dialing up a few people to see if they need any help during our COVID-19 coronavirus shutdown.
Now, I’ve been known to call Weezie when I’m down and out just to heah huh Suthun accent, flowin’ sweetuh than iced tea at the guvnah’s mansion.
And it’s always good to hear from Jim. He’s a whole-hog-cookin’, retired lawyer in Beaufort who loves to tell stories. He just published a book of them called “Ridin’ Round.”
One chapter is “True Stories as Far as I Know.”
Jim, in his own way, readily admitted that there’s probably not a lot he and Weezie could do for me if I were in trouble.
As his mother would say in her backwoods, crossroads home up the road in South Carolina, Jim said his call to me was “like a frog helping the cooter out of the ditch.”
Fortunately, this old cooter has been lifted out of the ditch by a number of silver linings during this pandemic that for four weeks has nailed us to the house for work and play.
Here are some of the sights, sounds and tastes from my side of the ditch:
Deas-Guyz
Reggie Deas lives around the corner. You may know him as the lead of one of our most popular bands, Deas-Guyz.
His band has lost at least three months of gigs, including his popular Sunday night set at Hilton Head Island’s Jazz Corner. And, fortunately for me, as I walk the dog, Reggie now has time to get a lot work done in his yard and garage.
Reggie is working to music so wonderful I want to bring a folding chair and park myself in his yard.
He’s listening to Nat “King” Cole and Sam Cooke. But there’s another big sound coming from the garage, one that Reggie’s sweet-singing father introduced him to. It’s Brook Benton, who came out of a humble home in Camden to record more than 20 top-40 hits and 18 million-sellers.
I’m walking the dog back and forth hoping to hear “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” or Benton’s best-known song, “Rainy Night in Georgia.”
Reggie said Benton’s songs have something more than the smooth sound of Elvis and Frank Sinatra.
“They have meaning,” he said. He told me to listen to “Lie To Me.”
Our stages have faded to black.
Our musicians are doing yard work.
But Reggie Deas says to pop Brook Benton into your YouTube, and pull yourself out of the ditch.
Restaurants
We can’t go to restaurants, but they’re selling whole meals to take home and cook in your spare time. Our daughter and her husband sure lifted us up with this one: Frozen lasagna Bolognese from Michael Anthony’s Cucina Italiana.
Sea Pines generosity
Picture a Sea Pinesian pulling up to the Harbour Town Clubhouse in a sporty convertible, an icy beverage in the drink-holder and a dog in the back seat.
He asks what he can do to help. The help would go to the chef and small staff at the grill who are cranking out suppers six nights a week for furloughed Sea Pines employees.
A friend tells me that most of the money for it came from managers in the family-owned Sea Pines Resort company.
The man in the sports car left a check for $1,000.
RBC Heritage
History will surely record that no greater silver lining has ever surfaced in a pandemic than last week’s announcement that the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing golf tournament will be played at Harbour Town in June.
Fans won’t be there, they say, but to be selected by the PGA Tour to host the tournament telecast by CBS Sports is a great tribute to Sea Pines, Steve Wilmot and the tournament staff, chairman Simon Fraser and the Heritage Classic Foundation board, and generation after generation of volunteers.
That’s not only a bright light shining into a dark tunnel.
It’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
New Easter
Nobody that I know of was able to go to church on Easter Sunday. And the oceanfront sunrise service that Hilton Head’s First Baptist Church has organized for more than 50 years did not happen.
But, walking the dog, I took a picture of Easter-looking flowers blooming. It was a volunteer lantana on the side of the roadway. It didn’t get the memo that it was a castoff. It was wearing a beautiful coat of yellow and purple.
I put the photo on Facebook, and the little lantana seemed to preach to a lot of us as we pull each other out of the ditch.
