Look Out, Gallbladder!

It's Fried Everything Day at the SeeWee Restaurant in Awendaw, South Carolina - although as nearly as I can tell, every day is Fried Everything Day at the See Wee. And God bless 'em for it, because if you and your alimentary canal can withstand it, the fried everythings at the SeeWee are absolutely finger-lickin' delicious. The basket of hushpuppies is on the house and brought to your table without your having to ask, just to tantalize you while you're perusing the menu.

Here was my lunch:

That's fried catfish, French fries, and fried okra. You could also have had fried green tomatoes and fried pickles, just about any kind of seafood fried, and a fried gallbladder on the side. And then there's this:

Truly one of the best red velvet cakes I've ever had, with 3 layers of light, barely-chocolatey cake and honest-to-goodness fluffy cream cheese icing. I couldn't even finish it. I would have taken a picture of the hubster's warm bread pudding with caramel sauce but he demolished it before I could even pull the camera out of the bag.

I say with love and respect that the SeeWee is pretty much a roadside dump, by which I mean that it is very down-home and unpretentious and the bathroom, which is a 1-holer, is outside and around the back of the place. It's a bit more of an adventure than I'd like to have when needing a ladies' room, but that's how it is. I think there are around 20 choices every day from the "sides" and the desserts are just ridiculously amazing. The waitstaff is young and incredibly cheerful, including our server who told us when he brought the condiments that "the 'c' is for cocktail sauce and the 'k' is for ketchup and that's as complicated as it gets around here."

Gotta love that.

Getting to the SeeWee is a bit of a pain, because Highway 17 appears to be under 50-odd miles of traffic-choking congestion, so if you plan to go, you may need to pack some emergency snacks for the drive. On the good side, that part of Highway 17 is called "Sweetgrass Basket Alley" or something like that because both sides of the highway are dotted with little shacks where people sit weaving sweetgrass baskets for sale to the tourists. You will have plenty of time to admire their handiwork and even to make comparisons among the artisans since you'll be sitting in traffic before getting to the SeeWee. But it's all part of the adventure of getting there.

From Seabrook, we had to drive to Charleston, then over the big bridge to Mt Pleasant, and then 11 more miles or so to Awendaw. So it was a bit of a schlep. But I was aiming for something authentically low-country and un-touristy, and on both those scores, plus on the deliciousness meter, the SeeWee was a home run.

Newtered!

The state of South Carolina, my putative adopted new home, has officially been Newtered. Yesterday Gingrich slaughtered Romney in the Republican presidential primary. Which makes me wonder: what the hell is wrong with these people?

So I am an unapologetic left-wing liberal Democrat, and I think everyone should be, but unlike the right wing I do not attempt to impose my ideology on anyone else. (I just think they're wrong, but I keep it to myself. Except for blog posts.) But even allowing for differences in people's political views, I have to say that I totally do not get it with Gingrich's "appeal." He is a gasbag, a hypocrite who led the charge against Bill Clinton for philandering while he himself was philandering in a Major Way, an elitist and, in my opinion, a racist. He wants to put underprivileged children to work as janitors in public buildings. The only good thing I can say about him is that he likes zoos and dinosaurs.

But good for you, South Carolina. And good for you, Republican party. Go ahead and anoint Newt as your nominee. I think this only makes President Obama's path to reelection easier. 

Them And Us

See this guy? I am now about to unload on him, which I feel especially confident in doing because I think there's only one person aside from myself who reads this blog. (Hi, Jenni!)

Last night the Hus and I went to Seabrook's annual "soup supper," which was highly touted as one of the premier social events of the year (which says an awful lot about Seabrook's social scene, really.) It's sort of a higher-end potluck dinner in which the participants are asked to bring a crockpot full of their best soup, and/or a dessert, and everyone gets to sample lots of different things and share companionship. When I say everyone brings a crockpot, here's what I mean:

If there should be some sort of national crockpot shortage crisis, the invading forces should make directly for Seabrook Island, South Carolina. Those in this picture are but a smidgen of all the crockpots - not to mention the crackpots, as will be discussed further below - at this event.

Before you get too judgmental about this event and condemn it to the ranks of Utterly Stupid Shit I Would Never Attend Even if my Life Depended On It, take a look at the scenery from the front porch of the beach club, where the dinner was held:

Yeah, pretty darn nice. Anyway, we went, armed with a crockpot full of chili, a homemade hot milk cake, and optimistic attitudes about meeting some new people.

There were hundreds of people at this event. Literally, hundreds of people bearing crockpots and/or desserts. And let me say right up front: both the zillions of soups, and the zillions of desserts, were fantastic. People brought their A games for sure.

In fact, desserts are so good that they have to impose restrictions on when you can start hitting them up:

(People largely abided by that rule.)

Like everything else in Seabrook, this event was a well-oiled machine with a very structured system for dropping food off at the door, where it was met by a crew of volunteers who transported it inside the venue and set it up:

And they had the grooviest little 4-well plates so that everyone could sample four soups of their choice:

It really was a well-run event. However...

Of course we knew literally not a single soul in the room aside from each other. So we knew going in that it could prove challenging socially. Not long after getting inside we began to notice that many of the large tables had "reserved" signs on them, so we began picking our way through the room trying to find a table where we would be allowed to sit. It wasn't easily done, and as we wended our way through the room lots of people were eyeing us with suspicion. Perhaps this was due to the fact that our name tags literally bore our names, and an asterisk. The asterisk designated us at "outsiders" or "non-members." Or, as I came to think of it, the asterisked name tags were sort of a less pernicious (much less pernicious) version of a yellow star or a pink triangle. Our name tags marked us as "other."

Finally we found a table without a reserved sign and with empty chairs, and we grabbed two of the chairs and stood behind them, smiles pasted on our optimistic faces. (Did we look enough like we were saying "Please talk to us"?) But in short order I noticed a couple of people standing nearby who were growing increasingly agitated, their whispers more fervent, their heads together as they gesticulated and spoke animatedly to each other, while casting nasty looks in our direction. Eventually, the guy depicted at the top of this posting told us we had to leave, because he had "saved" the seats we were claiming. "Um," I said. "There was no one here when we got here, nobody at this table at all, and no reserved sign on it." His reply was, "Well, there was literally no one sitting here, but we had reserved these seats." I suppose he had done that with his brain waves, and I suppose we could have refused to move, and I am more than 100 per cent certain that he was too old and feeble to pick my carcass up and move it, and I am sure my former Marine husband could have stood his ground and ensured that we would remain where we were, but it wasn't worth it, especially in a community which we are contemplating joining (or maybe not, after last night), so..we moved. 

All's well that ends well. We landed at a table with some actually super nice people who were much more our own ages, and we had a really fun evening after all. But there is no question about it: here on Seabrook, there is a very definite Them and Us mentality. Interestingly, our tablemates last night were busting on Kiawah, our neighbor island just up the road, for being snooty and clique-y, so I'm not sure the Seabrookers have looked in a mirror recently. Just another thing to think about when we think about whether we want to move here.

(That's the Evildoer in the orange sweater, again. The lady he's speaking to was one of the Highly Agitated Ones who wanted us to move.)

In our neighborhood at home, we live in ancient houses with rich traditions, among people who are super-wealthy (and some who are not so super-wealthy), and nobody tries to be exclusionary, and nobody looks down upon people who are new to the neighborhood. In fact, everyone is very live-and-let-live in Roland Park, and happy to welcome newcomers. I am liking my hometown all the more, having experienced an evening where people wanted to pull up the drawbridge and not let us in.

The Politics that got in the way of my Buying a House

The South Carolina Republican presidential primary will be held this coming Saturday. I find that weird in the first instance because I've never heard of any kind of election being held on a Saturday. 

But that's the least of why the upcoming South Carolina Republican presidential primary is weird. Since we've been here we've been inundated with political ads on tv that spew the most vitriolic venom you can even imagine. Ron Paul wants to "drain the swamp." Newt Gingrich says he's "the only one who can beat Obama." Not even President Obama - just "Obama." The ads play back to back to back like some hideous montage. And today as I was driving dog and cat to the groomer, I passed a church - a church, I point out - with that sign out front: "Vote while you still can."

Subtext: Better vote now, Mr and Mrs America, because the socialist Obama agenda wants to strip you of your right to vote.

Last night I woke up in a cold sweat because I remembered that in South Carolina, they fly the Confederate flag at the State House. By morning I had talked myself out of believing that, but then the pesky internet verified my nightmare - the stars and bars do indeed fly at the state capitol. So it's one thing for a majority of residents of this state to have terrible political views, but it's another thing entirely for an atrocity like that Confederate flag to be officially sanctioned by the official state government. 

How can I even consider moving here?

Househunting

We've been househunting. And wondering whether we are putting the proverbial cart before the horse, because we haven't resolved the philosophical questions that we brought with us when we came down here a couple of weeks ago: what about the terrible politics here? What about our aging parents? What about the isolation of living on an island?

Well, we started looking at houses anyway, those questions remaining largely unanswered. Maybe they're not answerable, or maybe we won't ever answer them. And we have found a couple of houses that we are absolutely in love with. Those houses carry a pretty big price tag, and we're not planning to sell our home in Baltimore for a while, so that would mean two sizeable mortgages and a lot of debt.  And that would further mean taking all the remaining vacations of our lives, most likely, here at Seabrook. No more dreams of Italy or of returning to France or Spain. Where we've been is where we'll have been by the time we die, because there won't be extra cash around to finance those big trips anymore. Am I ready for that? For all my remaining vacations to be in South Carolina? Never to see Rome? 

The house we love most is big, it sits on a lagoon, it has a Wolf 6-burner gas stove and hardwood floors throughout the house, marble bathrooms, and four bedrooms. All that while still looking beachy and informal. Huge palm trees line the driveway and the lot size amounts to just about an acre, most of it natural and untamed. This dream house has three decks, two fireplaces and a screened-in porch. There's an enormous two-car garage with an enormous 650-square foot room on top of it which could be used as an office for Mr Big or, since it has a modern, full bathroom and a small kitchen area, as guest quarters or an "in-law apartment."

But who would be our friends? Would we just be sitting in our snazzy house looking at each other and the cat and the dog? Would our families visit? Would our politics shift? Do I really want to live in a state that still flies the Confederate flag at the statehouse?

Send in the Flying Monkeys

Who has a better husband than this: knowing that my bicycling skills are, to put it kindly, rustic, yet knowing that I would really like to join my fellow islanders in tooling around on an "island cruiser" bike, mine went out and not only bought me the most adorable Tillie-green machine, but also bought a pair of adult-sized training wheels (not easily found) and installed them. 

Here's the backstory: growing up in a working class family, I had a bike, but it was of the "cruiser" variety, which is to say, it was just a stop-and-go bike with no gears. In fact, I think I was in college before I was even dimly aware of the existence of bicycles with gears. Those were for the rich kids. And since I also very early on in life developed quite slug-like habits, preferring to lie rather than sit, sit rather than stand, stand rather than walk, and walk rather than run, I didn't really ride my bike very much anyway. And my parents really tried hard to propel my butt outdoors, and strongly encouraged me to ride my bike, but largely to no avail.

But here in Seabrook, everybody rides bikes everywhere.  The terrain is very flat, and on the island the maximum speed limit is around 25 mph, and the broad streets are in excellent shape, so it's sort of an ideal situation for bikers.  Lots of people bike up to the local grocery store, buy a few things, and tool home to make dinner - I like thinking of that as a sort of French way of doing the marketing. I like the environmentally friendly nature of biking around, too. And the most hardcore Seabrookers bike to the gym, work out, and bike back home - I'd like to be one of them. But a couple of years back, while vacationing on Kiawah (where everyone also rides bikes everywhere) I tried to hop on an island cruiser and nearly cracked my head open; so I'm scared. (*Note: I didn't actually come close to cracking my head open; I just felt like I was going to do so at any moment.)

Knowing that I want to better myself by re-learning to ride a bike, my awesomely fantastic husband scoured the internet and found adult-sized training wheels. (Your local bike shop is not likely to have them, for those of you who are as bike-challenged as I am.) And he and the dog installed the wheels on the bike last night while watching the football playoffs.

(She contributed encouragement by wagging her tail, as you can see in the photo.)

Today, when the going got tough during the Ravens game, and my nerves were shattered, I pulled the bike out of the garage and, like a second grader, rode shakily around in the driveway. Luckily for me, the neighbors who live across the street and would otherwise have had a great view of that comedy show, are not in residence at the moment. I had fear of looking like Arte Johnson from Laugh-In and just pitching over sideways while trying to ride, but my training wheels held me up.  Of course, the adult-sized training wheels stick out so far on the sides that my bike will essentially take up the entire width of the sidewalks, but I don't care - hopefully I'll get my confidence going in pretty short order and will be able to take the wheels off soon.  (The wheels also realign the bike in such a way that even if I put the kickstand down, it doesn't touch the ground!)

I've already planned to tell people "I have a head injury" if anyone looks askance at me on my comical bike, but people here are pretty (outwardly) nice, so I'm not expecting many questions. (Maybe some local gossip, but not many direct questions.)  The husband also bought a very awesome wicker basket that can actually be removed from the handlebars and taken inside for shopping; just call me Miss Gulch from The Wizard of Oz! I have to start practicing saying "And yer little dog, too!"

Another Reason to Love Charleston