Month: June 2007

I don’t know how many people exactly attended Joan’s service, but there was a number, around 20 I suppose of mostly Tingles and their husbands and wives and children.  After the services back in the Fellowship Hall of the Church, I tried to mingle but felt like a billiard ball bouncing from this little bit of conversation to the next, struggling mightily the whole time to remember exactly to whom I was speaking, what with fatigue and the ravages of time having wreaked considerable havoc on my memory and other mental capacities. 

I remember much more vividly than last year speaking briefly with Uncle Douglas’s wife and his children, a son, whose name now I have forgotten completely, a daughter with her daughter and another child evidently on the way.  Douglas’s son works at Clemson College as one of the managers of the dairy farm there, with hundred and fifty cows, not to mention students. 

Uncle Douglas died very young, years back, in his mid fifties I think of lung cancer.  He took up the habit in the military and he smoked Chesterfields, unfiltered, which was the only way you could ever get that particularly awful brand.  Or was it unfiltered Camels?                                           

Uncle Carl was there though it was not sure he would be since he had been in the hospital in Greenville but the day before because his blood pressure had been going up and down erratically.  So he was checked in for observation, I guess.  He had been out driving somewhere again without his license when his condition was discovered.  I told him he should probably stop driving because it could get him in trouble.  I asked him how his eyes were and he said, bad and getting worse.  I can hardly see a thing.  The condition of his eyes though I could tell was not going to keep him from behind the wheel.  He has been driving since he was about 13 and he has no intention of stopping till he drops or becomes too weak to turn the wheel.

Uncle Carl is a small man and he has shrunk further every time I see him.  And every time I look at him I am startled because he looks so very much like WB but with a very bad overbite and smaller chin.

Aunt Edith, who lives up in Greenville, is very frail.  Aunt Adie struggles with a very bad lung conditions, and Carl, well, is Carl, though there is less of him each time.  They are all that is left of the original seven.  Aunt Mamie died a few years back of cancer, colon cancer, I believe it was and Uncle Neal died sometime in the 80’s of a massive heart attack while sitting alone in his truck.  

I felt bouncing around like a billiard ball an awful lot of loss.  I know the next time I visit, as I believe I will, in all likelihood there will be still fewer left and my connection to the family, although I continue to cultivate relations with cousins, will become thinner, and more anemic.  And so too will my connection to that particular piece of country side become thinner.  Every time I go back another landmark has vanished.  All that will remain soon of what I remember will be that little church, founded in 1792 and the graveyard beyond it with WB and Joan lying there now side by side.

We were fortunate on the day of Joan’s burial to have weather more balmy than blistering, not like June 17^th of this last year when we laid WB’s remains to rest.

The service started promptly at 11 and the Reverend preached for a good 30 minutes from diverse texts including the 23^rd Psalm and 1^st Corinthians among several others.  The subject was death and how to stand it, with his being a strong advocate of the Christian approach to this existential problem.  All had been laid down for Joan and her kin even before the beginning of time, he said.  This idea, however, frightened me even more than the idea of death, so I am not certain I benefited in the intended way from his homily.

After the preaching, we repaired to the graveyard for further preaching.

Joan’s ashes had been “vaulted,” the Reverend having attended to that for us, in a metal box itself coated over with what appeared to be a beige space age plastic completely unyielding to the touch.  This was a new policy set in place by the church to keep the ground from sinking over decaying boxes.  The vault and Joan’s ashes within it appear completely non-biodegradable.  That box, barring an atomic explosion and some form of anti-burial policy in the distant future, will remain in that graveyard for the next three billion years until the sun blows up and the end of time.

 It was that kind of day overall, one that made one think of the time before time and the time when the earth will be reduced to an astral charcoal briquette, if even that, when the sun gives up the ghost and goes nova.   These thoughts—and that of one’s personal morality—put the day on the hard side emotion-wise.  Most of my days are on the hard side emotion-wise, but this was quite a bit more than usual hard, if you can imagine.

Later Carol and I towards the end of the day on the way back from a visit to the Village Cup, Lauren’s one and only coffee house, drove again through the graveyard and ran into the Reverend, who was there doing graveyard chores.  At first I didn’t recognize him in his street clothes, and as we talked about the day, I realized that his shape in his street clothes was so considerably different than his shape in his suit and robes I had to conclude that the Reverend had to don for his preaching a corset or something of that kind that shifted the weight around his waist more upward.

 I do not judge.  But I was put in mind of Ecclesiastes and the vanity, all is vanity theme that runs through that book.  But of course I am not sure of Ecclesiastes is saying that vanity is a bad thing really; just perhaps that is how it is.  In which case that would make Reverend Roper, in the words of that notorious atheist, F. Nietzsche, “human, too human.”  And who is not, human, too human?.

Continue reading Human, too human→

I sit in something called California Chicken waiting for a salad a couple of blocks from the South Carolina state capital in Columbia, SC.  Carol is about five miles away talking with an administrator in the dance program at Columbia College, which has been in operation since 1852, though you couldn’t tell it from the buildings since it was burnt to the ground a couple of times over the years.  Now it’s all red brick buildings.

I got a somewhat less than terrible night’s sleep.  And we got out of the Charleston hotel about 10 and hit the road for a 2 hour drive to Columbia.  It was an OK drive except for a torrential downpour that became more and more torrential as we approach Columbia.  It got cool enough that I had to put on this light jacket I brought and a pair of Jeans in the male locker room at the all woman college.

The area is unimpressive, sort of uncontrolled California sprawl, strip malls aplenty, but with trees to make it all more green and to hide some of the ugliness of it.  Also the gas stations all have strange names and the gas is at least a buck cheaper a gallon than back in SB

I will eat my salad, if and when it ever gets here, and go back and pick up Carol about 230 ECT and we will start the final leg of this transition day down to Clinton, SC, where the brothers should be assembled by the time we get there.  Right now Dan and Steve are in the air and Teresa and Dave may already be down in Clinton or on their way.

Part 2: having arrived at the Day’s Inn in Clinton, David, Teresa, Brian, Dan, Steve, Carol and me (Nick) all went for pit smoked barbeque at Hickory Hills, 257 Torringon Road, Clinton SC.  Low plain buildings stand in an area surrounded by a high chain link fence.  Nobody seems to know why the fence is there; one person said by way of explanation, “It’s always been there.”  One parks wherever one wishes there being no blacktop or parking spots per se.

One enters and heads straight for the all one can eat bbq buffet.  One picks up a paper plate, the kind with the little ridges to make separate areas on the plate.  One then proceeds to cover the plate with such things as cole slaw, potato salad, hash, white rice, chicken, fried and barbequed, pulled pork to be put between two slices of white bread or just eaten on the side, spare ribs, onion rings and pork rinds.  Plus other unknown things.  One downs the whole assortment with sweet tea, and if one so desires one can polish off the whole affair with soft chocolate ice cream.  Oh, and of course one may go back to the buffet as many times as one likes.  Oh, and corn bread of course, and green beans.  The whole thing costs 8.99; one pays on the way out.

Then one lies down on the ground and never gets up again having gone to pork heaven.

I do not travel well.  Also perhaps the nature of this particular journey—Part 2 of Trailing the Ashes or the Burial of Joan—is stirring up crap low down in the unconscious.  In any case, I was an off again, on again, raving lunatic throughout the day.  The day is not over yet but thankfully at this point Carol and I are still married and talking to each other.  Probably a miracle considering my mood.

We went out driving in our ugly burgundy whatever car from some part of Asia, Korea, I think.  We asked the kid at the front desk where to drive.  He said don’t go to this one place—the Isle of Palms—I think because all you will see is BMW’s.  He recommended another place called Folly Point.  The name should have dissuaded us but we drove there anyway.  It’s an Island.  There is no end of Islands around Charleston. 

This was a place along the order of Pismo Beach in California.  Sort of low down, a bit tacky, really local stuff, I guess you might say.  With beach houses all strung out along the main drag, mostly retails.  I guess some families come there every summer and hang out to vacation a little near the water.

I turned the wrong way at the stop light and drove out towards where a light house was said to be located.  So we start walking down this paved road as the sky gets darker and darker and thunder starts rolling and lightening starts cracking.  We kept on going so we could see the light house.

It is pictured here with the storm gathering above it.

That was fun actually—the storm I mean.  You could drive without air conditioning, with the windows open though all sorts of grit blew in.  Then we got coffee at some place the name of which I forget and we asked the waitress person where to go next and she told us about a couple other islands about 30 minutes away.  So we drove there; but the one we went to was so exclusive you had to have a pass to drive around it.  I do not like the whole idea of gated communities.  So no way was I going in there, especially not in the mood I was in…the sight of all that wealth was sure to get me ranting and raving again.

But on the way there we drove through the James’ Island State Park and it was wonderful and beautifully green, and the rain started coming down at that point to add to the very southern atmosphere, what with highways covered over with trees and moss hanging down.

So aside from ranting and feeling like a lunatic off and on, the drive was a good thing to do today.  With the weather being the most interesting contributing factor.  Who would have thunk it.?

Dave and Teresa drove north on 17 and were just getting back in the Charleston area when I gave them a call upon our rearrival at the King Charles Inn where once again our so-called keys did not work.  Dave seemed in a good mood.  They had eaten at a nice place, and they were in the middle of a downpour as we briefly spoke.

Seems to be about 4 pm ECT here in Charleston.

 We go out, come back and once again our plastic keys don’t work. So Carol gets another set and then they both don’t work. 

 So finally, they are going to get somebody to look at the lock.  The automatic assumption is that the person renting the room is screwing up the lock.  So it has to screw up a dozen times before anyone will look into seeing if there is some problem other than the person renting the room.

 I sound a bit irritated.  I am.  I didn’t sleep terrifically well.  And while as I have previously noted, I am a very regular person constitutionally, travel does muck about with my regularity.  That’s also irritating.

 On the non irritating side, the weather is very mild for this part of the world at this time of year.  Overcast with an occasional shower.  Reminds me of when I was a kid back here; a storm would come up, out of nowhere, black as hell, deposit its load and move quickly on.  Not like Southern California where—when it does rain—it comes in low and sort of broods on top of you for a couple of days before doing its business and moving on   (hmmm..the metaphors I use suggest a bowel preoccupation).

 So Carol and I were out walking down by the water and while we sat there talking with a student from Charleston College who was selling Italian ices, rain comes up, wets the ground and moves on.  Carol wanted she-crab soup so we went to 82 Queen where the she-crab soup is for lunch, and struck up a conversation with a woman sitting across who is a flight attendant and was graduated from the University of Athens and with the waiter who is a few years out of college and spent two years as a Peace Corp Worker in Siberia of all places.  That’s Siberia Russia.

 He thinks there will be a revolution in Russia next year; the people want to go back to some form of socialism and the corruption is beginning to get way too blatant.

 The Italian Ice girl is from Boston, but likes Charleston ok.  She plans also to go abroad after graduating.

 Lots of people going abroad.  If the USA has a brain drain we have had it.  If I were a bright, well heeled young person today I would go abroad also.  The USA is not the wave of the future.

 We took David and Teresa to the airport to pick up their car.  They drove off to visit a plantation and we went back to the hotel to get our luggage that finally arrived.

So now we are in Charleston with our clothes and other stuff and we have a room that’s clean thougsh the keys don’t work.

Not too bad, I guess.

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That’s a bad pic of the she-crab soup place at 82 Queen. 

Well we made it to Charleston but without our luggage.

We got up at 415 to be at the airport by 515 for a flight to leave at 6 only to be greeted by a line of people and the announcement that our flight had been postponed till 7.  Actually it left at 730.  So we barely made it to our connecting flight in Dallas, but our luggage didn’t make it.

Overall, a terrible trip.  We are on the run way at Dallas getting ready to take off and we are called back to the terminal because they forgot to sign some paper work.  The world is in the control of incompetents.  So we go back and sign the paper work and take off again.  Finally arriving in Charleston at around 5 pm but without our luggage.

There we were greeted by Brother Dave and Sister-in-Law Teresa who had taken the red eye the night before.

We get those plastic keys to our room.  But they don’t work.  So I take them down and get some more.  But those don’t work either.  Finally, the young woman at the desk walks up another set of plastic keys and this time they work.

Brother Dave and Sister in Law Teresa have a really nice room at the corner of the building (The King Charles Inn on Meeting Street), big and roomy with a frig and a micro that Dave found on the web.  Ours is OK but not quite so well appointed.  I think it is almost eleven SC time, but my body still thinks it’s about 8.

Damn.

We had dinner at this place Carol likes because they have she-crab soup.  It’s a quaint sort of place, with waiters who talk way too much, and it makes me nervous when the so-called entrées top 20 bucks.  It’s a sociological thing.