Tag: Charleston

Heavenly Weather

§   “Oh, but it’s a dry heat,” I hear you saying. Well, so is an oven, but I’m not going to stick my head in one.   §

I have lived in only two States in my lifetime. After barely three years in Charleston, South Carolina, I returned home to Indiana. There were many reasons for the return move, not the least of which was family and friends, but the weather played a role, too.

Living in Charleston was akin to living in a tropical fish tank lodged inside a sauna. It was bright, colorful, endlessly interesting–and hotter than the hinges of hell. It was ‘step out on the sidewalk and collapse from heat stroke’ hot. To add insult to injury, I lived there in the years immediately following the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens. Ash in the atmosphere somehow did nothing to reduce the glaring heat of summer, but gave South Carolina some of its coldest, nastiest winters ever during the years I resided there. (Climatologists will argue this fact, but, remember, I was living there with the Rebels. I saw how shocked they were at the winters of ’80, ’81 and ’82.)

No, much as I loved other aspects of that lovely city, the weather in Charleston was hardly my idea of heaven.

My idea of divine weather is days of temperatures no higher than the low 70s—75°F is optimal—and nights in the 50°F degree range. I call this “sweatshirt weather”, and I love it. I enjoy sunlight in moderation—a sun-and-clouds variation day is delightful to me, as are soft rainshowers and even an occasional mild thunderstorm. Breezes, too, are important; a windless day is anathema. Living in Indiana means that for at least two seasons a year, spring and fall, I get plenty of these preferred days and evenings. That’s six months, sometimes seven, with numerous days, occasionally even weeks, of the type of weather I favor. I’m willing to endure Indy’s less pleasant variants–the humid heat of July and August, and the bitter temperatures and snows of January and February, for the pleasure my lovely, perfect spring and fall days, with the windows of my home thrown wide open, and with the occasional white noise of a window fan whirring softly in the background.

Almost as important to me as the temperatures, though, are those variations. As dreary as the Midwestern world might be at the end of March, with trees still stripped of leaves tossing bare limbs in strong winds, it is merely a lead-in to the incredible bursting forth of spring buds. Daffodils, crocus, tulips. Forsythia blazing out. Trees softly cloaked in green lace. Nothing satisfies a hunger of the soul like the riotous colors of early spring following the dreary end of winter. Conversely, nothing is as welcome after the humid heat of July and August as the first hint of fall chill; of autumnal color in the leaves, and their crunch beneath one’s feet as they begin to whirl down, cloaking the ground in colors brighter than Joseph’s coat.

That is why when a dear friend moved recently to Sun City, Arizona, I wished her well and godspeed, but declined even the faintest notion that I might ever be visiting there. A city where the mean temperature in the summer months is 104°F is, I explained to her, quite seriously akin to my idea of Hell.  (“Oh, but it’s a dry heat,” I hear you saying. Yeah, well, so is an oven, but I’m not going to stick my head in one.) And please, please, PLEASE don’t give me that, “Oh, but in the winter…” nonsense, either. Yes, temperatures in midwinter might (emphasize might) drop to my preferred range for a month, perhaps even two, but by very early spring they are going to spiral back up into the 80s. The only thing temps in the 80s are good for, in my estimation, is hanging out at the pool…and I’m not one to hang out at the pool. Leaving entirely aside the un-pretty sight of me in a swimsuit, chlorinated water just isn’t my thing. Oh, I like to jump in and splash around a bit with the kids of the family, but, as I am prone to sunburn (as in, I step outside, say, “Hello, Sun!” and walk back into the house having turned the approximate shade of a boiled lobster), a sunworshipper I am not.

I know without question that my beloved “big sis” is having a glorious time in her chosen environment, but, nope-nope-nope! It’s just not for me. Barring, of course, a total backflip of that whole desert environment montage due to global warming!

 

The Slave Cabin

When I was in my mid-twenties, I first visited and then lived for three years in Charleston, South Carolina. There was much I loved about the city; always a history buff, it was wonderful to live in a place where so much of U.S. history was tangible in just  walk down the street.  Battery Park, carriage rides, ancient graveyards, the city market, and Fort Sumter; gigantic ancient live oaks, Magnolia and Middleton plantations, Drayton and Boone Hall, flower-sellers in the streets, hearing the lilting, deep tones of the “gullah” still spoken by the descendants of enslaved people…  For one who loves history, it was a glorious place to dwell.

But the darker history of Charleston, from the indentured servitude of its earliest settlers to the hell that was slavery, was (at least in those decades ago that I lived there) rarely on display, especially to tourists. In the 1980s, racism was still casually accepted and rife throughout the city.  The large insurance company for which I briefly worked had to be forced by the head office in New York to hire its first African American agent.

History, as is often said, is written by the winners. But the truth is still out there, if one is open-minded and willing to search, to look.  And the truth of Charleston’s history came home to me in one swift and sickening moment when I was still just a visitor to the lovely city.

My soon-to-be mother-in-law and I had gone on a tour of one of the larger plantations—possibly Middleton or Magnolia, I think, although I don’t now recall precisely which one. Entranced, we moved from room to room in the mansion. I recall comparing in my own mind the luxury of modern, expensive homes to this gem from a previous century: admiring the beautiful, hand-crafted furniture and ceramics, the jewel-toned carpets on polished wooden floors; marveling over the cloudy, bubble-filled antique glazing of the windows; cringing over the lack of sanitation and the primitive facilities for preparing meals.  Our tour guide was a wealth of detailed information, and I was enjoying every minute of sightseeing until the moment when she took us through a door out into the nearby grounds of the mansion.  There, with a casual wave of her hand, she indicated the adjoining cabins—the homes, she explained, of the house “servants”.

Slave cabins.

Side by side with the main house, just a few steps away so that (one assumes) the occupants could quickly to enter the mansion each morning, stood a row of rough, log-walled, earth-floored shacks.

Coming from the relative luxury of the plantation house, the dichotomy was shattering. I felt physically ill as, separating from the tour group, I walked to the door of one of the slave cabins and looked inside to the gloomy darkness.

Never had the ugly reality of American slavery been brought home to me more forcefully then it was in that moment, standing in the dark doorway of a slave cabin on the plantation grounds. I reminded myself that in the unspoken caste system of slavery, the house slaves considered themselves a cut above the lowly field workers. But this—this was their reality.  A decrepit shack, smaller even than the log cabins of the first American settlers.  Four walls, a shake roof, a stone fireplace, an earthen floor. This was the home of the highest caste of slaves.

Each day, they walked from that degrading housing to the carpets and china and silver and glass of their owners’ mansion, to serve according to the whims of those lucky enough to be born Caucasian. Each day.

I’ve experienced many other sudden revelations of truth in my time on this earth—possibly, probably, just as vital, just as powerful, as that eye-opening moment of revelation of the unbearable ugliness of slavery.

But (perhaps because of my youth on that long-ago day in Charleston), few of those revelations stand out as powerfully, or as painfully unforgettable, in my memory, as the experience of standing in the slave cabin outside the door of the plantation manor.