Reader emails jolt my memory

It seems that every time I write about the good ol’ days here in the Lowcountry, I sure do get a lot of emails and phone calls. Many come from old-timers but, oddly enough, newbies to our area love to hear what it used to be like around these parts.

From reading their emails, it’s seems like they read my column and then sit in their recliner, close their eyes and try their best to imagine the things I describe. To me at least, that seems darn near impossible.

One common question I get with great regularity is, “Do all the changes bother you?” Of course, I would prefer the way it was but I have had a long time to get used to change.

I know that many of you from Beaufort are tired of hearing about Hilton Head and Bluffton, but that was my stomping ground. That’s not to say I never went north across the Broad River, but even though I could legally have had my driver’s license at 15, I was a late bloomer.

Instead, I rode around on this weird contraption from France called a Solex. It was kind of like a combination of a bicycle and a moped. The motor was over the front tire and, to use it, I would have to push a handle down and this little wheel inside would rest on the front tire and spin the tire. I think top speed was a little over 20 mph at best, so heading to Beaufort was out of the question.

I think I finally decided to get my driver’s license when I was 18 because girls didn’t cotton riding on the Solex’s metal frame behind the seat.

Because there was only one tiny grocery on Hilton Head, my folks and I had to go either to Savannah or to the PX on Parris Island. Parris Island was a real trip and those visits had a lot to do with convincing me that soldiering was not for me.

While my parents shopped, I would watch the recruits training. They all wore bright silver helmets to help with the sun, but the sun was the least of their problems. I’m pretty sure the rules have changed since then, but drill instructors back then were absolutely brutal.

If a recruit messed up, he got his rear kicked — and I mean kicked — plus his head was whacked repeatedly with one of those double ended padded fighting sticks. For a young’un like me, it was scary. I saw some of these poor guys standing on one leg for 45 minutes in 100-degree weather, repeating over and over what the drill instructor told him to say.

All I can say is I’m glad Marines are on our side.

Getting back to change, probably the hardest change to accept was when Highway 278 went from two lanes to four lanes. You would not believe the massive live oaks that were cut down. When it was two lanes, it was like riding through a tunnel. Spanish moss was draped on most all these mega oaks, giving it almost a surreal feeling.

At night, herds of deer made driving dicey — they were everywhere. About the only places to eat were the Roadside Rest Restaurant, located mid-island where the urgent care is now, or just down the road at Abe’s Driftwood Lounge. Unlike today, even during peak tourist season, the beaches were never, ever crowded and we would get a bunch of us, build a bonfire and shoot off fireworks.

My favorite fireworks game was — we would each draw a circle in the sand and you would have to stay inside your circle as we would try to hit each other with bottle rockets.

On full-moon nights in the summer, we would drive down the beach looking for loggerhead turtles laying their eggs. Most times we didn’t have to go far to find one and it was so cool watching her lay dozens of ping-pong ball-sized eggs. Their eyes always made them appear to be crying, so we would wait until she had covered her eggs and then help her back into the ocean as well as cover her tracks so raccoons wouldn’t dig the eggs up.

My summer jobs included working at the Sea Pines Racquet Club caring for the clay courts and, from there, I went on to making most of the wood signs in Sea Pines.

In that job, I worked with Bob McCall and Herb Perkins, both former security guards for Sea Pines. I had long hair and boy, oh boy, did those two love to rag me — especially when a girl would show up to take me to lunch. It was as if neither of them had ever seen a woman. Cat calls, whistles, the whole shebang.

Luckily, Sea Pines had money then and sent me to their development in Puerto Rico called Palmas Del Mar to teach a Puerto Rican how to make the signs for that project. Why me? I was fairly fluent in Spanish — and what a time I had.

They flew me down on the corporate plane, gave me a Ranchero car, a house with a housekeeper and paid me outrageously. It was one of the best years of my life, but that story will have to wait because right now I’m going fishing.

Thanks for jogging my memory with your emails because, quite frankly, I thought some of these memories got lost during the ’60s.

This story was originally published March 11, 2017 at 1:22 PM with the headline "Reader emails jolt my memory."