$1,000 to take a job? Small town Bluffton has now seen it all
It was a startling sight, but it really shouldn’t have been.
The ad I saw in last Sunday’s paper was begging people to take a job at posh Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton.
The positions sought by Montage Palmetto Bluff were no surprise, although they might have saved ink by simply saying they’re looking for “everything.”
The ad said they seek hires in “administrative, banquets, culinary, engineering, equestrian, food and beverage, front office, guest services, housekeeping, marina, pastry, retail, shooting club, spa, And More!”
The surprise is that they’re offering a $1,000 signing bonus. I understand others around here are doing the same.
That helps explain the kick I got out of an old newspaper article to cross my cob-webbed desk later in the week.
It reflected a drastically different Bluffton.
I’ll let you figure out which one is better, Booming Bluffton or the little town of this headline in a long-ago edition of the Savannah newspaper:
“Bluffton Boasts Backwardness.”
The article from Aug. 24, 1935 was sent to me by Wise Batten of Estill.
“My father, Wise Batten, gave it to me,” said Wise Batten the Younger. “He received it from one of his mother’s sisters.”
The story leads with a summation that caused “one of his mother’s sisters” to write in the margin: “Did you think there was a town like this in S.C.?”
It says: “Bluffton is perhaps the only town in the United States with a population of more than 500 that can boast the absence of a railroad, telephone, telegraph, electric lights, running water, bank, hotel, factory, mill, liquor store, barber shop, restaurant, town hall, public library, soda fountain or filling station.”
The only thing I doubted was the part about the liquor store.
But the un-named writer explains that.
“There is one gentleman who keeps a private stock of (liquor) on hand, and can be easily persuaded to part with a few pints or quarts at almost any time of the night …”And the article qualifies the filling station thing by saying that “nearly every store has a pump, but the town is without a modernly-equipped service station where free air, greasing, etc., can be obtained.”
The Depression-era readers were told that “one store displays a soda fountain, but it was out of commission long before it was brought to Bluffton and is used only as a counter.”
Bear in mind that this peculiar counter would still have been quite cosmopolitan compared to the more rural Hilton Head Island at the time.
In fact, it was Bluffton that was “essentially a resort town,” the story said, even though it had no hotel. It did have several boarding houses “where excellent meals and lodging can be secured.”
But the story said that other than “the government’s relief undertakings with its $2.40 a week wage scale,” there was not one steady payroll in or near the town.
Other than the postmistress, “there can hardly be found one person in the whole town who receives a regularly-paid twelve months’ salary.
“There are a few pensioners, a few widows and old maids with small though certain incomes, and a few other fortunate who are managing to eke out a somewhat comfortable existence according to an antiquated standard, but 80 percent of the town’s population has no more idea of where the next meal is coming from than a fisherman has of what his luck will be.
“But the same thing can be said of both the fisherman and the Blufftonian – so long as the river doesn’t go dry, neither of them will starve.”
Despite all that, the story reports that there would be no other town in the country of equal size to take better advantage of an education.
It said that over the previous decade, more than 25 Bluffton kids had attended colleges and had gone into the world “to climb high upon the ladder of success.”
And it says that some Blufftonians married well, stepping into the national limelight by marrying into two of America’s wealthiest families.
Miss Etta Pollitzer married “into the Hartford family, owners of the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company,” the story said.
And Wendell Simmons “married a daughter of the late Richard T. Wilson, brother of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and himself a multi-millionaire banker and sportsman.”
And Bluffton’s “historic interest and natural charm” rendered the peculiar town a muse to artists: “Several prominent authors have mentioned Bluffton in their writings, or have used it as a setting for their stories.”
We’re told that “Slippy McGee” and “Purple Heights,” two of Marie Conway Oemiler’s novels, “were written, so it is said, while the author was visiting in Bluffton and have local settings.”
Also, Stephen Elliott and Dr. James H. Mellinchamp wrote of the local botony.
And so it is that the article’s sub-head concludes that the town with no railroad, electricity or jobs “gets along just the same.”
And now you can decide which Bluffton is better.
David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.