It’s got a lot

Especially our elder child, some of our dearest most beloved friends, a couple of our favorite shops

Especially my boys at Tabor

Who convinced me to try on a wool turtleneck in 1000 heat

“Wrap it up, Gents”

Our daughter had moved and wanted us to see the new digs, to hang a few pictures, to arrange some details

We drove her car up as she and her Mama had switched vehicles due to timing, service appointments, and necessity

Who in a family hasn’t juggled cars?

Driving up, we blasted the AC as it was only 10000 degrees out

August in the South

In Charlotte, we switched our overnight bags and other items from car to car

We also drove my bride’s car for the first time in a couple of weeks

Driving to lunch, I noticed that the air conditioning seemed to not be working

Did our child inform us of that prior to getting to Charlotte?

Nope

Are there a hundred dealerships of cars in Charlotte?

Yep

Did she call any of them about the air conditioning failure?

Nope

Did we have to deal with it?

Yep

So we rode around Charlotte running errands and all being blasted by a sirocco minus the dust

We drove the car to the Duke Mansion where we were staying

It’s the only thing with the moniker “Duke” for which I have any love

I love that joint

Really

Great architecture and such wonderful pieces from former owners, including the family of our former back door neighbors growing up: the Coddington Family

I think this large mirror has always been in this spot

“May I have an ice bucket?” I asked the lady at the front desk

“Of course”

She thought I wanted a cold drink, but I wanted to dunk my face in it

Showers required to remove the outside smell. (If you get that, you’re my people)

Then off to our pals for a drink, tour of their garden, and a catch up

Via Uber

Thank God for Uber and Tavarius our driver who had the coldest of coldest of cold cars with the AC blasting

He was a beautiful human being

“Are you a Charlotte native?” I asked. “I think you are because you pronounced it Shawhr lutt”

“You know I am. Went to Eastover Elementary and on up”

“I have pals that went to Myers Park”

“Oh, back in the day, I thought Myers Park was the SHIT. Oh. Sorry”

“It’s fine”

Five stars and a tip

We had a lovely time with our dearests at their house

We solve all the worlds’ problems

We had a lovely time at supper

We had a lovely time back at the Duke Mansion watching a small independent film about a young wizard named Harry Potter

We had a lovely time sleeping under Mr. Carrier’s zephyrous stirrings

We had a lovely time the next morning serving ourselves at the buffet

N.B. I did put oatmeal on a split biscuit thinking it sausage gravy. Lucky for me, the kind lady monitoring the buffet said, “Sir, Sir, Sir, that’s oatmeal not gravy”

“Please tell me I’m not the only one”

“You’re the third person today”

After breakfast and a return to our daughter’s house in the hot box, it was time time to head on home

Three hours

I77 to I26

I sweaty to I sweatier

So, we made the best of it

We cranked up the fan as high as we could

By 9:00 a.m. it was already over 90 degrees out

(That’s around 40 for my European pals)

We stopped at the Farmers’ Market for tomatoes and such. Charlotte’s Farmers’ Market really is just that. Farmers. Produce.

And, the flowers. So beautiful

The Hmong farmers have the most amazing flowers

If you’re ever in Charlotte between a Wednesday and a Sunday, I highly recommend

I posted this picture of their tomatoes

It’s so beautiful

So, as we headed south on I77 with hot mistral minus the smell of lavender and rosemary wafting over us, we began to sweat

Not that good exercise or yard work or sauna sweat

That clammy febrile fitful naps sweat

What did Pink Floyd say? Comfortably numb about such a fever. Well, ours was uncomfortably numb without a fever

As the sun rose on the driver’s side out of the east

As we neared Columbia, I said we had to pull over

Wilson Boulevard

Named for my great great kinsman Uncle Grover Wilson who was married to my great grandfather’s sister, Aunt Annie. They owned a lot of land out that way

I never knew them, but, apparently, they were lovely according to my mother and her sisters who were their great nieces

The AC in the convenience store felt like those old York Peppermint Patty commercial

“I get the sensation of…..”

I wish I could have carried that with us

I’ve only been hotter once

In Zanzibar, Tanzania, staying at The Spice Inn. An old Swahili merchant house in Stone Town. Without a lick of AC. With mosquito netting. With a mosque next door calling the faithful to prayer at what seemed like ever 10 minutes. I would go from the shower to the bed to the shower all night long

This was worse

And I’ve been in Accra, Ghana, when the power was cut to our hotel, but, at least we could go outside and wander down by the water. No such wandering that Sunday

We got back in the car with more damp perspiration beginning to clog pores and drip down heads

In the 1970s, my mother and I were offered a ride between Beaufort and Columbia in the summer. The lady who offered us a ride refused to use the air conditioner in her car because her child complained about the cold. I called my mother to say that I had been involved the second hottest car ride of my life. She knew the first version personally

“Oh, Son. Emily never cut on the AC”

“This was hotter”

We stopped again around Summerville

“Only 20 minutes. We can make it”

We did

Sun beating down

Sweat steaming up

I don’t recommend this type of sauna

I do recommend getting the vehicle checked once things don’t work

…..

There’s an old joke about three men crossing the desert and what they needed to set off on their trip

One is English who has water requested

One is a Bedouin who has camels requested

One is a Pejorative Term used for a certain Eastern European country who has a car door requested

When asked about the car door, he replies

“If I get hot, I’ll roll the window down”

Especially with iconic shots of a land grant university in the Upstate

Where the Blue Ridge yawns its greatness

We’re all in

On

Clemson

Having done this twice now, I think sophomore year drop off is waaaay better than a freshman year drop off

Down to the last detail

Car packed on Friday evening

Enlisted a dear neighbor t…

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Reading is fundamental

I can sit for hours

Unmoving

Head bowed into the pages of a good read

Even a sad read

I think my love of reading began with stories read to me as a very young child

Margaret Wise Brown’s quiet cadence in a great green room

An Owl at home

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First time, on my leg. Non-Mohs. Just a dig out and cauterize.

Second time, on my nose. Mohs. Clear margins. One small tiny stitch. Not much to it

Third time, on the upper third helix of my left ear

This time it hurts

Stings

Throbs

I waited over 48 hours to remove the pressure bandage and strips and tape

O…

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I love Wimbledon

I watched Mr. McEnroe’s what was then considered extremely brattish behaviour (u on purpose) back in 1981

I was nine

My father and mother despised Johnny Mac

I loved him

And Björn Borg

And Jimmy Connors

And Chrissie Everett

And Martina Navratilova

And, and, and

It seems like July 4th weekend always coincided with the championships

I …

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35 degrees out

For us Fahrenheiters, that’s about 95

In the courtyard of his palazzo on the Via S. Barnaba an 86 year old kid from The Bronx and his chief creative director done did it again

Ralph Lauren

John Wrazej

And all their crew

Dropped it

Dropped it hard

On a Friday

In the last weekend of Spring

Right before the Equinox

And, damn,…

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Beaufort is my hometown

I’m a pluff mud baby

A native

Born in Beaufort Memorial Hospital

Delivered by Dr. Ernie Collins, the County’s first OBGYN

Every time I’m home, I stop by the “new” cemetery at St. Helena’s, officially named the Sacred Ground Cemetery, across the street fro…

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Truly

Love them so

My maternal grandfather’s sister and her husband and their children and grandchildren

We had other Savannah kinfolk, but I never knew Aunt Zenobia and Uncle Wade, who were long dead by the time I came along

Growing up in Beaufort, we would often make the then 40 minute drive through the wilds of what …

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Full on Graduations, Commencements, Closing Exercises

Pomps and Circumstances

Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus!

All these talented young people

Parents, grandparents, family, friends beaming

So many wonderful pictures

Caps and gowns for some schools

White dresses for the young ladies in others

A local school has its young gentlemen …

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Now, in the summer, I’m in the office

Twasn’t always so

A few years back, I coined a hashtag

#summerisaverb™️

It kinda caught on

I would love to use summer as a verb

As in, “Where do you summer?”

Or as in, “We summer in Maine”

Or this one, “We just opened the house. We summer in Maine”

Can you tell I love Maine?

I was there last summer

Anyway, summer ain’t w…

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Rodney Scott’s on Upper King Street

BBQ

Based on the original in Hemingway, South Carolina

James Beard Award winner

Champine Cuisine

“Every Day is a Good Day”

“It’s All Wood”

This spot

Gone

Closed

Shuttered

A victim of over leveraging, corporate buyouts, mushrooming growth, ballooning debt

Part of a larger restaurant group that’s struggling to pay i…

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Discussing landscaping, we both agreed we hate, like HATE, like abhor certain plants, some of which are very popular

Here’s my list of garden anathema with the worst saved for last:

This cabbage palm is in a neighbor’s yard….they didn’t plant it

Palmetto trees -the cabbage palm; our beloved state symbol. They look great on o…

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Oregon grape is the common name

Crazy chartreuse wood in the stems

Insane bright yellow flowers in the dead of winter

Beloved by the bees when nothing else is blooimg

Softy leathery emergent leaves in late March

Then clusters of see pod fruits that look like grapes

Hence, the common name

Not native

Hence…

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Would rather watch grass grow

Think that would be more fun

(We can unpack the childhood trauma of trying to be taught golf to no avail at a later date)

That being said, like all non-communists, I am a HUGE fan of a certain tournament going on in Augusta, Jawja

The Masters

Thanks, Bobby Jones

If you can go, you should

I’ve been

Would go again in…

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Last night

A few short hours ago

Nick Drake would have been

Peter, John, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha were

They saw the moon

Behold the Man

Behold the moon

The pink moon

The Passover moon

The moon that heard Him give the New Commandment

The moon that lit the Upper Room during the Last Supper

The moon that established the date of …

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I mean like love

If there is dirt under my nails and my feet look like I’ve been tromping through mud, then I’m at my happiest

My feet are dirty and cracked and in need of pedicures from now until Christmas

From walking in the yard, garden

Where last summer we replaced a fence

OK, we had a wonderful fence contractor replace a fe…

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I sat in their kitchen with them and discussed the issues

Sitting there, a blur of fur came out of the back hall running ahead of their son

Said blur came right up to me, jumped in my lap, and snuggled its head in the crook of my elbow

There was no further moveme…

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I remember an old black and white map showing the below demarcation

Much has been written about our barbecue divides

I am a big vinegar fan

I’ll do the mustard

I don’t truck with the tomato kind

Our vinegar pepper like our cousins in Eastern North Carolina

Our mustard from our Ger…

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We didn’t have it round here growing up

First hockey game I ever attended was in Massachusetts in 1987. A classmate had to explain it to me

Didn’t know a Zamboni from a Zambian from a zambra from a zamindar from a zampogna from a zaman from a zamarra

But, Lord, this past Sunday

I’m still basking in a win at a rink in Milan

Wish I had be…

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