Spending Childhood Summers in South Carolina with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Spending Childhood Summers in South Carolina with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

I spent my childhood summers with my sister K. in Murrels Inlet, South Carolina.  My sister had an apartment on the property of one of our distant cousins’ summer homes on the inlet.  She worked as a printer during the week and on the sport fishing boats on the weekend as a licensed small boat captain, skipper, and mate.

My favorite part of summer was going out marlin fishing on the weekends.  My sister took care of a boat for a couple from Charleston, South Carolina, who rented it out for sport fishing.

She was the skipper on these boats, and I was able to go out as a mate-in- training while one of our friends captained the boat.  At the time, children could work in well-supervised capacities in family businesses.  Chinese restaurants have known this for years.

I sat up with the captain and learned the buoy system for how to get in and out of Murrels Inlet into the Atlantic Ocean.  The captain taught me how to read a tide table and run the sonar equipment to find pools of fish in the water below.

I also learned how to read a compass (“Point the boat west in an emergency,” he said).  I called the tackle shop in port on the short-wave radio.  They told me how to alert the Coast Guard, but only to do that in an emergency.

I was not allowed to touch the steering wheel, but I was shown other important equipment like the fire extinguishers, first aid kits, and the orange sea rescue donuts.  The captain told me, “If someone is drowning or thrown overboard, you have to throw the orange donuts out to them and pull them in.  A drowning person can pull you under with them in a state of panic.”

We set up the marlin fishing lines, which arch over the water.  Marlins are flying fish when they are caught and incredibly dangerous when they are brought on board a boat.

Marlins thrash around and flail their fins in and out when they land on a boat deck after reeling them in.  I had to sit in the captain’s chair when a marlin was caught.  People stuff marlins and put them on their walls as sport fishing trophies.  They stop fishing for them when they get one.

Once the marlin was caught for the sport fisherman, who had rented the boat that day, we would fish for our lunch or early dinner.

The fish off the South Carolina coast are very tasty – red snapper, grouper, and schools of shrimp.  We would grill these and make a cream sauce for them with sautéed peppers and tomatoes over Carolina rice.

K. would make some corn bread for me, because I did not like rice.  She also made me green beans and a salad of tomato and cucumber.  We had warm peach cobbler for dessert and vanilla ice cream.

During the week, I would go out on mid-size fishing boats (80 people) and larger boats (81 – 120 people).  These boats were rented out by corporations for what would be called “team building” decades later.

The passengers were almost all men.  I was allowed out there, because I had marlin mate training.  All of the boat captains and owners were our relatives somehow, too.

When I would go out on the boats, I would go around the boat and ask, if I could help bait hooks or string caught fish on lines to take to the scaling and freezing shops in port.

I told the passengers the names of several places they could go and get their fish prepared to take home.  The men caught sea bass.  Sea bass is a white fish that tastes good with the same sauce that you make for red snapper.

When the men would eat, I had to go up to the bridge and get cleaned up for lunch.  I got to eat my lunch sitting in the skipper’s chair on a tray.

Corporate teams always eat well, so I got to eat crab cakes; shrimp etoufée; steak and kidney pie (which I thought was just great); mashed potatoes with sour cream, butter, and chives; cheddar buns; and warm, peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream.  I drank sweet iced tea with this nice lunch.

I know I had to go up on the bridge, because the corporate teams might have been bonding with beer and bourbon. 

I also went out on the mid-size deep sea fishing boats.  These were roly-poly affairs.  The boats tilted to one side or another with the waves.

I helped with the baiting of hooks and taking fish off of hooks on this boat, too.  On one occasion, a shark that was just as long as the boat came alongside the boat and began hitting it, because we had fish lines going.

This was the era of the film Jaws so, I went below deck “right now” and put on a life preserver.  I sat next to the emergency exit by the lifeboats and put on a life jacket.

The captain shot the shark several times before it floated away from the boat.  Sharks swim in groups, too, so we quietly made our way back to port.  I took out a book and started reading it.  The mates told the team building guys to put on a life jacket like Ruthie and read something quietly.  They watched Jacques Cousteau growing up, too, and knew about sharks traveling in packs.

I considered those mid-size boats to be roller coaster rides.  You really should locate lifeboats and know where life jackets are when you go out in the open ocean.

I also went out on the tourism boats in Murrel’s Inlet and told ghost stories.  I loved reading ghost stories.  I would tell people, “If you see a gray man walking on the beach, a hurricane is coming, but you will be saved.”

I continued to regale passengers with this spooky tale, “We have lots of dog ghosts barking for their dead owners on plantations.  And, we have just tons of clanging bells announcing supper.”  The real tour operator would tell other stories, and I got to sit with the millionaires paddling around the South Carolina seashore islands.

During the week, I would spend most of my time swimming with our neighbor’s children and their mother supervising, who made comments as needed.  We would dive off the covered dock and eat bologna sandwiches down there and get nice tans.

When it was 4 o’clock, I would go to the restaurant next door and pick up dinner.  My sister would order dinner, and I would pick it up.

The restaurant was named Pittypat’s Porch.  It had Gullah owners.  (African-Americans who maintain African languages and customs and live on the sea islands off South Carolina and Georgia.)

My contact to pick up dinner was named Rooster.  We usually had simple food during the week like the following:

-shrimp étoufée, which we called shrimp Creole.

-fried sea bass

-deep-fried hush puppies (savory donut holes with scallions and red pepper) that we dunked in melted butter

-freshly made coleslaw

-lemonade

-small pieces of key lime pie or peach cobbler

I tried to read, but Big Sister would tell me to go swimming and get out of the house.

My sister had a wire crab trap down at the dock that I would check before I got dinner at Pittypat’s Porch.  If there were a crab or two in the trap, we would add that to what we would eat for dinner.

I was the one who would empty the crab trap.  I used ice cube tongs (alternative use of a Southern kitchen implement) to capture the crab and take it to the house.  I would chase my sister around with the crab snapping its claws while we were waiting for water to boil to cook the crab.

My sister would tell me, “Stop!  You little varmint!” and chase me around with an eggbeater.

When the salted water came to a rolling boil, we would drop in the blue-skinned crabs, watch them swim around, turn coral-red, and fish them out of the pot.  My Big Sister would make homemade mayonnaise to eat with them on toast.

I loved it when we got 3 or 4 crabs caught on one day.  My sister would make all of them and go out to her garden and harvest some stuff for dinner.  (I was not allowed in the summer pantry.  You can save a lot of money, if you know how to cook and can what grows in a garden.)  These were some of the items we could make out of the summer pantry:

-boiled corn on the cob

-coleslaw

-tomatoes and seeded cucumbers in mayonnaise

-sauteed zucchini or Italian squash

-lemonade

-banana bread or zucchini bread

-small pieces of peach cobbler or key lime pie

My big sister took me on some lovely excursions around Murrels Inlet.  One of the most famous places we went to is the Hermitage, a former plantation with lots of dangling, gray Spanish moss over its entry gate and lane leading up to the mansion.

The Hermitage Plantation, owned by the Flagg family, has a slightly spooky story associated with it.

There was once a young Flagg daughter named Alice, who married a man that her family did not approve of.  Her brother broke off her marriage and threw her wedding ring into the oyster beds with reeds in the inlet.  Alice died of heartbreak.

Alice’s ghost comes back at night and hunts for her wedding ring among the reeds in the oyster beds to this day.  (See the Hermitage website for more information.)

My Big Sister K. took me to Brookgreen Gardens after going swimming and sunbathing at the beach.  Four former plantations made up this garden.  One of the plantations was named Brookgreen.

There are sculptures of twisting, bucking horses worthy of Bernini all around the garden.

My sister bought a membership at Brookgreen Gardens, so we could go there after beach outings all the time.  The gardens are French style.

When our mother came down to South Carolina for her vacation, my mom, my big sister, and I would visit Charleston, South Carolina for a very touristy vacation.

Charleston was founded in 1670.  It has a French Protestant (Calvinist – Huguenot) Cathedral and the only Huguenot Congregation in the United States.  Other Huguenots went to London, Berlin, Switzerland, and the Southeastern United States when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed religious freedom in France.

There is a French quarter in Charleston, South Carolina, too.  We went to a restaurant called Porgy ‘N’ Bess.  The play Porgy ‘N’ Bess was the first African-American play.

The Charleston theatre crowd went to this theatre for pre-dinner meals before going to the Dock Street Theatre: the first theatre in the US with theatrical productions.  The French Quarter got its name from all the merchants located there.

There is an Episcopal Church in the French Quarter of Charleston, South Carolina, too, called St. Phillips.  The graveyard for this church is the final resting place for Edward Rutledge, the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Another politician whose tomb is in the graveyard is US Senator John C. Calhoun.

The streets of Charleston are paved with cobblestones.  The oceanfront, two-storey homes are painted in pastel colors. 

There are horse-drawn carriages.  When mom is on vacation, both my big sister and I got to go one the full tour of Charleston in a horse-drawn carriage.  The streets stay clean, because the horses wear leather diapers that are regularly cleaned between rides.

We stayed at a bed-and-breakfast run by an English lady in the French quarter.  We had a substantial English breakfast and did an afternoon tea complete with the three-tiered tea stand that the English use.

“Walking tourism today,” mom said after tea.  We took a ferry out to Fort Sumter, which is where the first shots of the Civil War started.  My Big Sister K. has books about Civil War battles, which I was allowed to read on Sunday with her.  We had one with us and walked around the fort identifying things.

Fort Sumter is a pentagon-shaped fort well inside the Charleston Bay.  There are four forts located around the island that are well hidden – Moultrie, Johnson, Castle, and Pinckney.  Any ship that attacks Fort Sumter should, in theory, not be able to escape from the fire of those forts.

The only reason that Fort Sumter was lost to the North I think is that not every commander was loyal to the Confederacy.

Louis XIV wanted a similar fort island defense built in Poitou (home of many Huguenots) to protect against English invasion.  His chief engineer Vauban advised him against it.  The kind of fort Louis XIV wanted was built eventually – Fort Boyard of French television fame.

Back in South Carolina, mom drove K. and I to Pawley’s Island where Alice Flagg’s grave was.  K. told me that if you walk around Alice’s grave 13 times backward at midnight, Alice will come out and grant your wishes.

Then, we drove down the Atlantic Coast to visit the sea islands.  Gullah women sell hand-woven baskets, textiles, hats, and food products along the seacoast highway.  Our mom stopped and bought baskets and hats for K. and me.  (2018 note: There are now Gullah-owned restaurants along the coast.)

When our mom left, K. and I would go back to regular time.  I went to Vacation Bible School and studied the life of Old Testament Joseph.  I won a Bible for doing all the work.

Murrels Inlet is also close to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  K. would drive me up and down the Strand with music blaring, so I could wave at people walking along the street and yell out to them, “Cool shirt!  Cool hat!  Cool sunglasses!”  I went on the roller coaster several times with K., who showed me how to hold my arms up on the way down on the roller coasters and just yell away the fear.

As summer wound down, I was allowed to read some of Big Sister’s books:

-1984

-Animal Farm

-Clockwork Orange

-Cybernetics (I actually brought this book with me from home.  We have three generations of female, newspaper printers in the family, so we keep up with all new technology.)

Since I had been a good kid, I got to visit one of our rich cousins who lived in Hilton Head, South Carolina.  I think my Myrtle Beach antics helped him sell some real estate there.

This relative played golf and loved Hilton Head for this reason.  There really was nothing to do on Hilton Head except buy merchandise and play golf.  I emptied the golf kingdom of sand dollars while K. and our cousin talked on the beach front terrace of his home.

K. told hime, “Ruthie wants you to sell sand dollars and make money.”

Sand dollars are red and hairy, fresh out of the water.  You have to dry them in the sun and then scour them to get the hair off.  Finally, you soak them in bleach to turn them white.

You can charge $5 for them at beachfront stores in places like Myrtle Beach.  Our rich cousin looked at the hairy, red sand dollars lying on his fancy terrace and was not sold on the idea.

Kathy took out some pristine white sand dollars and some that had been spray painted gold to illustrate what they looked like as a final product.  They were both laughing about what people would buy in Myrtle Beach.

Our rich cousin shared his wealth.  We ate fillet mignon, Duchesse potatoes, coleslaw (I asked for it), and German chocolate cake for dessert.

My good-bye to my South Carolina summer vacation was always a restaurant outing to Pittypat’s Porch.  Rooster would dress up in a crisply, ironed shirt with a bowtie and be our waiter.

The food was the same as what I go out the backdoor everyday, but I got to rock on the front porch and look out over the oyster beds with the reeds while we waited for our table with its red-and-white checked tablecloth.

I loved shrimp Creole.  They gave me a lot, because they knew I was going home to Detroit, Michigan where even frozen shrimp is expensive.

All the cooks, busboys, waitresses, and hostesses came to see me and give me hugs. The fishing boat captains, who were eating dinner at different tables, came over to us and told me, “Study everything and especially learn math and science, mate.”

They gave me a little compass as a going away gift to always be able to find True North for directions without a map.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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