by David Burn | Jul 16, 2005 | Lowcountry
In 1956 the James F. Byrnes Bridge, a two-lane toll swing bridge, was constructed at a cost of $1.5 million. This opened Hilton Head Island to automobile traffic from the mainland for the first time. The toll, which was $2.50, was discontinued in 1959. In 1978 the bridge was widened to four lanes. According to the county, the bridge is actually interconnecting twin spans. The one nearest Hilton Head, crossing Skull Creek, is the J. Wilton Graves Bridge. The other, crossing MacKays Creek, is the Karl S. Bowers Bridge.
To the casual observer, it may seem that the bridge is what brought the flood of people to an island that had been dormant and underpopulated since the War of Yankee Agression. But one local sees it differently. Retired journalist, Fran Heyward Marscher, who was profiled on Tuesday in Bluffton Today, is a Bluffton native, as was her daddy and his daddy. When she grew up here there was no grocery store, so her family went to Savannah every Saturday for supplies. There was no A.C. either. Her house had fans.
This isn’t some long lost era were speaking of. A 1959 high school graduate, Marscher mentions she was but one of six in her class. Summing up the reason for so much change in such a short span of time, she says:
Air conditioning is what caused all these people to move here.
While I love the drama and simplicity of that cold hard fact, in fairness, Marscher also says:
I could never have stayed here if the community had not changed. There would have been no newspaper for me to work on. The people who have come here include many smart, creative, interesting people, so there have been many benefits to the growth. It’s a tradeoff.
by David Burn | Jul 15, 2005 | Literature, Lowcountry
Roger Pinckney XI (yes, the eleventh), who I mentioned here the other day, deserves a closer look. Since, moving to the area in February I’ve been learning who the local writers and other artists are. Pat Conroy is undisputed top dog among Lowcountry writers. His long list of books and the commercial success of those books is hard to argue with, although I’m sure some do argue with it.
Then there’s Roger Pinckney. He’s an interesting character. He rightfully places himself in the action in his stories. We see Rog hunting deer up in a tree and boar from a mule’s backside. We see him enjoying hellfire and damnation sermons on Sunday. We see him struggle with the women in his life. Pinckney also struggles mightily with the powers that be in Beaufort County, SC and the changes (not all for the better) happening everywhere around him. Some call it progress. That’s what his short essay, E.O.D., the final statement in The Right Side of the River, is about. Being at the end of his own personal dock in the face of unforgiving progress.
Hilton Head, South Carolina, the island where golf is king. I am waiting on a boat, waiting on the end of the dock. E.O.D. Tags on my groceries, the parts for the ailing Toyota, the box of Kentucky sour mash, all bear the initials.
I’m headed for Daufuskie, where the dockhands will paw over a jumble of golf bags and suitcases and sort what is going to the beachfront inn from the grocieries and parts and whiskey for people who live on the back of the island like I do. I will collect mine at the end of the dock. E.O.D.
But I am too late for one boat and too early for another, so I pour a dram of Rebel Yell and think many things, as I do when sipping good whiskey.
by David Burn | Jul 12, 2005 | Lowcountry
Associated Press: A 7,600-pound nuclear bomb dumped off the Georgia coast in 1958 remains lost – and is best left unfound, the Air Force concluded after its first hunt for the missing nuke in decades.
“We haven’t found where the bomb is,” Billy Mullins, an Air Force nuclear weapons adviser who led the search, told a news conference in Savannah. “We still think it’s irretrievably lost. We don’t know where to look for it.”
The Air Force says the bomb is incapable of an atomic explosion because it lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger a fission reaction. The device does contain an undisclosed amount of uranium and about 400 pounds of conventional explosives.
“The best course of action in this matter is to not continue to search for it and to leave the property in place,” said the report by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency.
A damaged B-47 bomber jettisoned the Mark-15 nuke into Wassaw Sound, where the Wilmington River meets the Atlantic Ocean about 15 miles from Savannah, in February 1958 after colliding with a fighter jet during a training flight.
City officials on Tybee Island, a beach community of 3,400 residents, urged the government four years ago to recover the lost weapon. But after hearing the Air Force report Friday, island City Manager Bob Thomson agreed that it’s best left alone.
“I’m not saying it’s a good thing that we have a warhead out there,” Thomson said. “But I believe the greatest danger is it being disturbed from its watery grave.”
by David Burn | Jul 11, 2005 | Literature, Lowcountry
I’m reading a truly outstanding book of essays by Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate and Lowcountry native, Roger Pinckney XI. There’s so much to touch on in this man’s wonderful collection, but for now I’ll just focus on one small, but important aspect. Pinckney introduces a cast of characters who belong to the Burn clan*.
Pinckney makes mention of Arthur “Papy” Burn, the keeper of the Bloody Point Lighthouse on Daufuskie Island during the mid 20th century.
According to Lighthouse Friends, Arthur “Papy” Burn lived at the lighthouse until his health forced him to move to the mainland. Papy was quite involved in island life serving as a substitute teacher, a Sunday School teacher, a magistrate, and taxidermist. Papy was known for the beautiful flowerbeds that surrounded the lighthouse each spring, but he is probably remembered most for his winemaking. They say Papy never drank, but in 1953, for some reason he started making wine in the old lamp house, which he christened the Silver Dew Winery. Papy would make wine out of anything he could get his hands on, including blackberries, bananas, elderberries, scuppernongs, and oranges. Papy passed away on Sullivan’s Island in 1968, having outlived three of his four wives. Papy’s body was returned to the island for burial, and more than one person has since felt or seen his presence at his beloved lighthouse.
Papy’s daughter-in-law, Billie Burn and her son Bobby Burn live on Daufuskie today. Billie has written a book on the island’s history, folklore and Gullah traditions, Stirrin’ The Pots on Daufuskie. Artist, Bob Burn, is the proprietor of Silver Dew Pottery on Daufuskie. According to a new piece for Orion by Pinckney (not in the book), Burn is also a strong, wiry, storyteller with a deep knowledge of “Indian stuff.”
Then there’s Francis A. Burn, Bob’s uncle, residing at Burn’s Landing on Daufuskie. With all these potential kinfolk in the area, I’m feeling just a little bit more at home.
*Note, very few people in the U.S. spell their name B-U-R-N. Of course, I happen to be one of them.
by David Burn | Jul 9, 2005 | Lowcountry
I was surprised to see a local news story today on our neighbors down the street.
Bonnie Rogers’ home on the sixth fairway of Old Carolina Golf Course has been pelted nearly a thousand of times. She has 715 golf balls collected from her yard to prove it. The Rogers have lost three windows and now have twenty odd pockmarks in their vinyl siding. According to the report, not one golfer has stepped forward to offer apologies, to say nothing of compensation. Golf club general manager, Scott Adams, said it is the golfer’s responsibility when they damage property, but he admits few are prepared to do the right thing. Rogers says they’d sell their two sixth fairway homes, but rightly asks, “Who would buy them?”
by David Burn | Jul 9, 2005 | Art, Lowcountry
Pluff Mudd is a term indigenous to the South Carolina Lowcountry. It refers to the odiferous ooze that carpets marsh bottoms and riverbeds in the tidal zones of the May and Colleton rivers. Pluff Mudd smells of rotten eggs, and is the reason why salt marshes have that typical smell at low tide—the result of anaerobic bacteria that proliferate in the muck. Pluff Mudd is rich in nutrients, and supports a rich ecosystem for the oysters, shrimp and other aquatic creatures.
Wilderness Way by Peggy Duncan
Pluff Mudd is also a Calhoun Street gallery in historic Bluffton, owned and operated by painter, Peggy Duncan.
by David Burn | Jul 6, 2005 | Lowcountry
When one moves to a new place, there are many new place names that don’t mean much until one has time to digest them. On Hilton Head Island, Coligny Plaza is sometimes thought of as the town center. After a little digging, I learned that Gaspard de Coligny was Admiral of France in the mid 16th century, and the man responsible for sending Jean Ribault to the New World. Coligny and Ribault were both Huguenots, or French Protestants. Thus, the acquisition of new lands had a decidedly religious, as well as nationalist, thrust.
Ribault reached Port Royal–which he named–in 1562. He and his men set up shop in what is today Parris Island, naming* the small settlement Charlesfort for their young King. Ribault then turned back to France for more supplies, but upon arrival found his nation engaged a religious civil war. Ribault fled to England, where he was jailed as a spy in the Tower of London. He escaped jail, returned to France and was sent back to Charlesfort to help fortify the colony, which had since moved south to the St. John’s River under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière.
When Ribault made it across the Atlantic, he was caught in a hurricane and shipwrecked south of St. Augustine, where he and his surviving men were rounded up and killed by the Spaniards, who’d clearly “had it” with the competition. A few, including Laudonnière, escaped.
All the while, one French Huguenot settler, Guillaume Rouffi, stayed behind at Port Royal, marrying the daughter of Indian King Audusta. Smart kid.
In 1566, Pedro Menendez de Avilles traveled north to Port Royal and built the town of Santa Elena on the exact same spot as Charlesfort, with the intention of making it the new capital of La Florida. Ten years later the Orista Indians–who had been on good terms with the French–attacked the nascent town of over three hundred, sending the Spaniards racing for their boats. They watched ten years of labor receed behind them as they sailed for the safety of St. Augustine.
*Ribault called Hilton Head Island, Ile de la Riviere Grande. The Spaniards called it, Isla de los Osos, or Island of the Bears.
by David Burn | Jul 1, 2005 | Literature, Lowcountry
Ten months ago I wrote What I Really Want To Do, wherein I listed five book ideas to shop around. I have another I’d like to float by you.
The story is set in histortically signifcant Beaufort County, South Carolina, where Chance Pinckney’s people are from. Chance himself grew up in West Philly. He’s black, educated and something of a firebrand. He’s also a speechwriter in search of an independent candidate for Congress.
He eventually finds his man and they make their way to Washington. In a story such as this, where a radical element has center stage, it’s tempting to kill off the hero. But that’s too easy an out. No, Chance and his candidate get shot at (this is post-modern realism) but they escape harm. I hope that doesn’t ruin it for you.
by David Burn | Jun 27, 2005 | Lowcountry
The Unitarian Fellowship of Hilton Head Island hosted a service by Johnnie Mitchell this morning. Mitchell is a native islander who is passionate about the preservation and promotion of the Gullah culture. As part of her efforts, she has written extensively on Native-Gullah history and culture, and she co-owns De Gullah Creations at The Mall at Shelter Cove.
The church service was part of a larger celebration this weekend honoring Mitchelville—the first Freedmen’s village in the United States, formed in 1862 and called for by Union General Ormsby Mitchell. Descendents of the Mitchell family were in attendance this morning.
According to Organization of American Historians, former Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, on a visit to Beaufort in 2000 challenged community leaders to work together to provide opportunities for the public to learn more about Reconstruction era sites in the county. Including:
– the Penn School for former slaves founded in 1862 and located on St. Helena Island
– the Old Fort Plantation on the Beaufort River where the first African Americans assembled on 1 January 1863 to hear the reading of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
– the Freedmen’s Bureau housed in the recently restored Beaufort College
– the Beaufort Arsenal where free slaves in Beaufort voted for the first time
– the first Freedmen’s Village of Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island
– many other noteworthy historic buildings and archeological sites associated with the Civil War hero and Reconstruction leader Robert Smalls
by David Burn | Jun 16, 2005 | Lowcountry
Bluffton Today is runing a spread in today’s paper about an historic building in Beaufort that faces demolition, in order to make way for an expanding Inn. The Tom’s Shoe Repair building on the corners of Port Republic and West streets once housed the offices of Edmund Rhett, a lawyer and three-time Beaufort mayor, who along his brother Robert, was a leader of the “fire-eating” secessionists. The Articles of Sesession were drafted in this office, and later signed at Edmund Rhett’s house at 1113 Craven Street, a home which enjoys some preservationist protections.
According to the article, the structure could move to another location in downtown Beaufort or to a city-owned lot in historic Bluffton, provided a generous donor arranges for the transfer.
Bluffton’s ties to the building date back to July 31, 1844, the day the “Bluffton Movement” was born under the Secession Oak. On that day, as many as 500 people gathered to hear Congressman Robert Barnwell Rhett espouse his belief that the South could gain economic freedom only by breaking away from the union.
