Seeking Southern Charm: Do It Anyway!

Here's what I've learned so far on this book tour, this life tour, whatever we're calling it these days: if you think you shouldn't do something, do it anyway.

I learned this lesson again yesterday, in Beaufort, South Carolina, wearing the wrong swimsuit. Or rather, wearing no swimsuit at all, which turned out to be the whole point of the story.

They were calling for rain most of the day. Not a maybe-rain, a definitely-rain, the kind of forecast that gives a woman permission to stay in and call it wisdom. I wanted to go to Hunting Island State Park. I hesitated, because of the rain, because forecasts feel like promises even when they're just guesses in a uniform.

And then, because I am trying to be a person who goes anyway, I went.

It wasn't raining.

I should back up, because there was a small automotive subplot happening underneath all of this. My rear window — the one in my trusty old Lexus, the one that has carried me through more of this trip than I like to admit — had stopped working. Again. It had done this before I left home, and I'd had it fixed, both the rear window and the front, thank you very much, paid good money, drove away feeling very responsible. And then somewhere along this southern road it quit on me a second time. I told myself it was the rainstorms. Cars, like people, apparently hold onto old wounds and reopen them when the weather turns.

Anyway. I can already tell this story is going to run long. It's going to be worth it, I promise!

I got up early (well, as we’ve established, early is my natural rhythm) and looked at the brochures again for Hunting Island State Park — which, if you don't know, and I didn't know, is a genuinely beautiful beach, unspoiled by condos or restaurants elbowing each other for the ocean view. There are turtle nests tucked into that sand, and volunteers who love them the way you'd love something you'd sworn to protect, checking on them so gently, so faithfully, that no harm comes to those turtles on their watch. There is something about a place that has resisted being paved and franchised that makes you stand a little straighter.

I decided to go despite the forecast, and because it wasn't a sunny day, I didn't wear a swimsuit. Note this, dear reader, and do not make my mistake: always wear your swimsuit to the beach. Always. Even under the clouds. Especially under the clouds.

The drive out at 7 a.m. was stress-free — no traffic, just me and the road and the particular quiet of a world that hasn't fully woken up yet. I am so glad I went. Yes, it was overcast, but it was mesmerizing watching the sky do its slow, moody work, with storm clouds gathering off in the distance, rain falling on a horizon that was no where near me (or the turtles). 

There was nothing on the beach. Just a few people walking, way down by parking lot 8, and the turtle volunteers doing their quiet rounds. That was it. That was the whole congregation.

And I wished that I'd worn my swimsuit. It was the perfect morning for wave jumping, for just wading in and letting the ocean do what it does. There was no one there to laugh at my mismatched swimsuit, or at the fact that my soft belly is the color of grocery store white eggs while my arms and legs have gone the deep brown of eggs from the farmers market. It would have just been me and the Atlantic, having it out, no audience required.

I didn't get in the water. But I got the lesson anyway, delivered the way the best lessons always are — a little late, a little damp around the edges, and completely worth the drive.

And that, dear reader, was only the morning.

I left the beach craving a burger — a real one, red meat, no apologies — and set my sights on Biddy's, which I had seen was open at nine. What I had not seen was the fine print: nine, on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Not one of those days was today. Boo. I stood there a little bereft, the way you can only be bereft over a burger you never actually had. But it had already been a glorious morning, and we were only a few hours into it, so I let it go and kept driving.

Which is how I ended up in a Verizon store.

My phone had been refusing to hold a charge on this trip and it’s now a couple years old, tired, and done with me. And when you are a woman alone on the road, in towns you've never seen, your phone is not a convenience. It is a lifeline. 

So, in walked me, to a Verizon store I hadn't planned on, with an upgrade offer waiting and a gut feeling that this was going to go well.

It did. Even though it was 9:20 in the morning and they'd only opened twenty minutes before, they were already busy. A gentleman named Ken came over anyway, just to tell me it'd be about ten minutes and to have a seat. And Ken was wonderful. This is what I mean about southern charm, or small-town charm, or whatever the right mixture of the two turns out to be — I genuinely can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Ken was originally from Texas, his whole heart still there, but he'd come out to help his mother. He talked about his life a little, and it was plain as day that he adores his wife. He talked about her the way you talk about someone you still choose, every day, on purpose — she's creative too, he said, with real warmth in it. I don't think I've ever heard a man speak so lovingly about his wife to a total stranger in a phone store. It gave me hope. Maybe there are more Kens out there than I think.

He got me squared away, no upselling, none of the usual "you also need this, and this, and this" that I walk into every store back home in Pennsylvania bracing myself against — and still, somehow, I walk out with gadgets I don’t need or, if I’ve stuck to my guns and not added any extras, I still feel frustrated that I’ve had to say No a thousand times. I'm working on that about myself. But Ken didn't do it. He just helped. And then, hours later, he texted to check that everything was working fine! Come on now. How awesome is that!

And then — dear reader — when I tried to roll my back window down, it worked! 

Feeling like it might be my lucky day, and that taking chances pays off, I went and did something else I'd been putting off: getting the back of my hair trimmed. My hair grows fast, and I have a long history with hairstylists — one who was wonderful and then left, another who was wonderful and then left, a parade of colors and cuts over the years, pink, shaved, long and gorgeous (I still miss that one, if I'm honest), blonde, dark, everything but red. I walked into Hair Play Salon and Color Bar, a block from my Airbnb, and asked Tara if she'd just trim the back, dry, no wash, so I could watch it happen and know exactly what I was getting.

If you ever want to know a town, go get your hair cut there. That's where all the real knowledge lives. And this shop had it — that easy, unforced warmth that doesn't feel like a performance. Back home, conversation can feel like work. Down here, it feels like you've been let into the family. Maybe that's just how they treat the tourists. I've decided to believe it's how they are all the time.

Still craving that burger, I walked to the historic district, sat down at the next place I found, and opened the menu. No burgers there either. I asked, a little sheepishly, and the server pointed me a couple doors down to Luther's or Hemingway's. I know, you would THINK I’d have picked Hemingways, but she had assured me Luther’s had a burger, and it would be a good burger. 

It was, without exaggeration, the best burger I have ever eaten in my life. Amber was behind the bar — sweet tea for me, not a drop of anything stronger, and somewhere on this trip I have quietly become a sweet tea person, which I never saw coming. Amber grew up in Beaufort, lived for a while in New Jersey and New York, and came home anyway. She was wonderful, and she offered to take my picture right there at the bar, no fuss, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then I popped into a few book stores (I’m going to do a separate post on all the bookstores!) and finally made my way back to the Airbnb (I’m also going to list all those in a separate post!). 

So here's where the day landed: a day I had planned to spend indoors, hiding from rain that was supposed to fall from sunup to sundown. It didn't rain a drop until nine o'clock that night.

It's funny — I arrive in every town and immediately think, this is the one. Harrisonburg, maybe. North Carolina I never really got to know; that was just a one-night stop to break up a long drive, nothing against it. Charleston, where I stayed in Mount Pleasant with the beach practically outside my door, is the town I'd move to tomorrow if I won the lottery. And now Beaufort — beautiful, historic, gentle, full of the kind of nature sounds that feel like a good friend sitting quietly beside you. An hour and a half from Charleston, an hour from Savannah, all that charm in one small place, and I haven't even scratched the surface of it yet.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Savannah. Can it top all of this? I honestly don't know, but I’m betting I’ll adore it just as much as all the other places on my journey. 

So here it is again, the lesson I keep learning on repeat this trip: if you think you shouldn't, do it anyway. Bring the swimsuit. Go before the rain. Say yes to the Verizon store and if the trim turns into a haircut – it grows! But what you can't get back is a morning you talked yourself out of. Thank goodness I listened to the “do it anyway” voice!

Sweet things ahead! – Birdie Jane 

Bewfort, Not Beaufort: Finding My Sandy Feet in the Lowcountry

Here is the fastest way I know to explain the difference between Charleston and Beaufort: in Charleston, everyone called me Ma'am, like I was a lady of some consequence passing through. I liked that just fine. But when I landed in Beaufort and sat down at the Magnolia Café for a pecan-crusted chicken salad — strawberries, blueberries, feta, a lemon dressing I would've licked off the plate if there hadn't been witnesses — the waitress called me Honey. "Here you go, Honey." "How you doing, Honey?"

I did not take a photo of that salad, by the way. A woman has to draw the line somewhere, and mine is not looking like the tourist who photographs her lunch in a town of four thousand people who've seen every kind of fool come through.

Now, back home, I know women who'd draw themselves up to their full height if a stranger called them Honey. They'd tell you all about it later, too, at length, with their arms crossed.

Me, I could've wept a little. It's warm. It's unhurried. Nobody in Beaufort is in any rush to prove anything to you, and Lord, isn't that a relief.

My Airbnb has a screened-in porch, which is the entire reason I chose it — I did not come all this way to sit indoors like a woman with something to hide. And it's a good thing I have it, because it's been raining like the sky owes somebody money. My first night here, a thunderstorm came through that shook the windows in their frames, lightning going off like a photographer with no manners, and then — once it passed — the whole animal kingdom seemed to clear its throat at once. Cicadas. Crickets. Frogs holding a committee meeting somewhere in the dark. Some kind of fowl that sounded personally offended. I got it all on video, over on Instagram, @BirdieJaneLane, if you'd like to hear the Lowcountry argue with itself.

The next morning I walked into the historic district — fifteen minutes past white churches with steeples like they're reaching for something, old graveyards being minded, patiently, by live oaks so big and twisted they look like they've been standing guard since the Flood, Spanish moss hanging off every limb like gray lace some grandmother forgot to take off after the funeral. The sun didn't show itself, so I didn't get my good morning from my usual warm friend, but I had the whole town to myself at seven a.m., and there is something to be said for having a place all to yourself before it wakes up and puts its face on.

I found a coffee shop and nearly did a little dance. Then I got close enough to read the sign: Open at 8. Well, all right then. This may be a sleepy town, but I haven't slept until eight in the morning since I was sixteen years old and it was summer and nobody needed me for anything.

But that's the thing about Beaufort. It's slow on purpose. It's gentle on purpose. It's not an accident, and I don't think it's for sale, either — you either fall into that rhythm or you don't belong there, and I fell in without even trying.

On the walk in, I passed the blue bottle trees and porch ceilings painted that same soft blue — a Gullah tradition, meant to keep out the haints, the evil spirits, who are said to mistake the color for sky or water and can't find a way across it. I like a town that paints its ceilings against ghosts and doesn't think twice about it.

Then I went to Publix — everyone in there was so nice, and everything in there cost more than it does back in Montgomery/ Bucks County, which I did not expect from a town this unbothered. Not everything. Most things. I've decided it's a small toll for living somewhere this pretty, and I paid it without complaint.

Even the fast food places here look like seaside restaurants. Pastel colors, striped awnings — like McDonald’s got confused

and thought it was in the Bahamas!

By noon, the church bells were announcing the hour like they had news, so I went back into town and took a historic golfcart tour with four other people and our guide, Chance. I called him Chase twice. He did not seem like a Chance to me — he seemed like a Chase (actually, I’m just at that age I forget things). My apologies to Chance, should he ever read this!

That tour was worth every dollar (it was only 36 bucks, and look, I saved money on not buying coffee from the closed coffee shop!). Two things I have not stopped thinking about since:

The "morality stairs." Some of the old homes split their staircases in two, rising separately before meeting again at the top, so a lady in a hoop skirt could climb one side and a gentleman the other, so the male wouldn’t so much as catch a glimpse of a naked ankle! I don't know who thought up architecture as a chaperone, but I respect the commitment.

The crooked front doors. A handful of the historic doors are set just slightly off — not quite square in their frames. The story goes that spirits can only travel in a straight line, so a door with a little crook in it is a door a haint can't find its way through. I don't know if that's true. I know that someone, generations back, built a small piece of protection into every doorway on purpose, and that's stayed with me longer than most facts do.

It was also on this tour that I learned mispronouncing Beaufort is a quiet sin around here. It is not "Beau" like "Bo" — that's Beaufort, North Carolina, and nobody here is interested in being confused with it. Here, it's Bewfort, South Carolina — second oldest town in the state, with Charleston holding the title of first, and don't let anybody in either town tell you different.

I'm reading Pat Conroy's A Low Country Heart while I'm here, which feels like the only correct choice. He's practically the patron saint of this place. We passed the house where he and his wife lived, and it was every bit as lovely as a house is supposed to be when a man like that loved it.

I keep getting this feeling of déjà vu here — like I've walked these streets before, in another life, or at least another Monday. Then I remember: it's because I've read so many of Conroy's books, and so many others besides, all set in exactly these places. I read about the moss and the live oaks and the humidity and the kind, odd, particular people long before I ever stood among them.

And now here I am, walking around inside somebody else's beautifully written story.

I understand, finally and completely, why the South keeps producing writers the way it produces peaches — like it can't help itself. This place is romantic and brutal in the same breath, kind and a little haunted, and there's something in the salt air I keep trying to name and never quite manage to catch.

It is charming. It really, truly is. And I am not even a little bit sorry to have fallen for it.