How Bluffton got its mojo: Turning a page in Old Town, and the funky Eggs ‘N Tricities
Its first big hit was ZooDoo.
Yes, elephant poop from Smithsonian’s National Zoo, sold in a small gift box.
Of all things, that’s what helped put Eggs ‘N Tricities on the map in an old fillin’ station at the quiet corner of Calhoun and Bridge streets in Bluffton.
That was 30 years ago, and its been selling “funky junk” — gifts, art, clothing, jewelry, home accents and funny cards (“We go together like drunk and disorderly”) — ever since.
Nancy Golson’s odd enterprise was a good 20 years ahead of its time in a town now branded “Old Town” for artsy Calhoun Street. Eggs ‘N Tricities has helped give Bluffton its mojo.
Now Golson is retiring. She sold the store to employee Georgia Holhaus, who took over last week at its “new” location at 5 Lawton St.
For Golson, it was time to turn the page, but it was a favorite chapter of the book of Bluffton.
Babbie Guscio started it all, and she’s still there. She opened The Store in 1973 in an old Peeples family store on Calhoun Street. She offered classy and unusual items in a small town that prided itself on being eccentric, but had more use for crab pots than crab dip bowls.
Now their artsy vibe — the unpretentious look, the use of the old rather than putting up something new, and the notion of selling what is fun, frivolous and beautiful in the eyes of the beholder — are a big part of a boom town flirting with Anywhereville.
“I wanted to be a part of little downtown Bluffton that was so beautiful,” Golson said.
“Look what happened.”
Calhoun Street
Golson is a decorator at heart, reared in tiny Glenn Springs long after it was a thriving spa town in Upstate South Carolina.
She married Charlie Golson of Savannah, the chef and founder of the popular Charlie’s L’Etoile Verte restaurant on Hilton Head.
She was a waitress at Charlie’s when she co-founded May River Montessori School in Bluffton.
A diner asked, “Why would you want to put something way out there?”
Bluffton was a place people came to look at the Church of the Cross, look at the May River and leave.
But Golson couldn’t take working alongside her husband around the clock.
“I quit and opened the shop,” she said.
She said it was Rachael Cram’s idea. She opened it “1989 or 1990” with partner Martha Ladermann, smashing on the scene with an eccentric gala.
Golson already had the name. Her two children were often pictured in the late Graham Bullock’s newspaper, The Bluffton Eccentric.
“They called it the Bluffton Eggscentric,” Golson said.
The campy building had been the home, store and gas station of Sam and Nonie Pinckney Collona, who reared two girls in the back. Later Grady Messex had a store there. For a while, it was home of the Calhoun Station thrift shop.
Golson and Ladermann filled it with folk art from a trip to North Carolina to take kids to camp.
Golson said she bought a warehouse full of timeworn furniture in Savannah, with “primitive painting” in lowbrow shades of pink, blue and green.
“The South wanted to throw it away, but Ralph Lauren was collecting it,” she said.
The folk art didn’t sell so well, but zany jewelry and clothing took off.
“Nancy herself was part of the ambiance,” said Ruthie Edwards of Hilton Head, a decorator and retailer for 35 years. She laughs about Golson wearing an egg-beater headband, with the handle and crank on one side of her head and the beaters on the other.
“She could take a big piece of nothing and make something of it,” said Edwards, who made something of an old Okatie church building when she and her husband, Berry, had it barged to Hilton Head in 1973 to be headquarters for their new Greenery nursery.
“Nancy has a wonderful eye,” Edwards said, “a great way of displaying her merchandise and a divine sense of humor driving it all.”
Golson eventually bought out her partner, and for more than 20 years, Patsy Hodge has worked in the store.
“We can finish each other’s sentences,” Golson said.
“I had two swings out front, and we’d just sit in the swings and everybody who stopped at the stop sign out front knew both of us. We all talked.
“The other day, I stopped my car on Calhoun Street to talk to someone outside the Montessori school across the street, and a man pulled around me and said, ‘What the hell are you doing, lady?’
“I thought, ‘This is Bluffton. Get a grip.’ That’s how it is these days.”
Art colony
Bluffton’s Calhoun Street was an art colony long before Golson opened shop.
And longer still before many of its homes were converted to art galleries, shops and restaurants with a constant stream of visitors. Recent Eggs ‘N Tricities shoppers have included Kelly Clarkson, the first American Idol winner, and Hank Williams Sr.’s granddaughter, Holly Williams, sporting his big diamond-studded “HW” ring on her right hand.
Jacob Preston, “Bluffton’s tallest potter,” has been part of the scene since 1975. Back then, he threw pots in the old Planters Mercantile building, where Sandy Banks made stained glass, and Louanne LaRoche had a painting studio.
Artist Mark Flowers, professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and his wife, Kristy Higby, a weaver, created art in the old church building on Church Street that is now home to Jacob Preston Studio.
When Guscio founded the Bluffton Village Festival on Calhoun Street, it drew people from Savannah and Charleston to see their work.
“Sometime in that period (late 1970s and 1980s), Calhoun Street got a reputation as sort of an interesting place to spend an afternoon,” Preston said.
He said Eggs ‘N Tricities was “one of those quirky little things that popped up. It’s not as if there was a crying need for a funky shop in Bluffton, but once you had it, it was an essential business. If you needed to know anything that was going on in town, that is where you had to go.”
Calhoun Street had a different economy then.
“Artists always break the ground for new, interesting neighborhoods and communities because there’s cheap studio space,” Preston said.
“Nancy just stepped out into the ether there, and made something nice. Opening a cute shop in a town of 2,000 people — that’s a pretty adventurous thing.”
Preston said the old vibe still works. He said he can sell well more pottery than he can make, and it remains a beautiful place.
Golson said it’s not a quiet town by the river anymore, and everyone who has been there over the past 40 years has helped turn it into what it is now.
“Lo and behold, come to Bluffton, they did,” she said.
She cannot believe the high-density development planned for the corner where her funky store opened — the old gas station now leveled.
“It’s time for me to go home and not worry about it anymore,” she said.
Emmett McCracken, a former mayor and the bard of Bluffton, said, “Nancy and Babbie, with The Store, kept Calhoun Street the place to visit before the days of annexation and growth downtown.
“Nancy has an innovative eye and creative talent. And she was able to show what could really be done with an old fillin’ station.”
