I thought about being all cutesy pie and semi-historical by opening this column with “The Yankees are coming.” That wouldn’t rally be accurate, though. They’re already here, brother. On our walk in Horry County, it looked like the invasion was already complete. I took the occasion of our recent family vacation to the coast to knock a couple of far-flung counties off my dog-walking list. Horry is probably the county I’ve visited the most frequently and vacationed in the most often. I’ve obviously stayed at Myrtle Beach a bajillion times because I’m from South Carolina and that’s generally where you go on vacation when you live here. I’ve stayed at North Myrtle and my entire family used to make a week-long trip to Cherry Grove. For years, we rented a house there from a guy who worked for my dad. For some reason, after my dad fired that fellow, he seemed unwilling to let us stay at his place. Go figure. Because of time, location and the weather, we’d be leaving where we were staying in Georgetown, driving just over the Horry County line and staging our walk in Garden City, a place I’ve been through a lot, but never really been to much that I can recall. Ashley parked the car, let me and the dogs out, then shut door and sat in air-conditioned comfort while Tucker, Gracie and I started trudging down the road (she was dealing with allergies and stuff, so she gets a flier). It was not quite 11 a .m. as we started, but it immediately felt like I was wearing a parka and fur-lined boots in a hot shower. Typical, hot, humid beach day. What with my walking partners covered in fur and lacking sweat glands, I figured we needed to get on with walking and wrap this one up as soon as possible. Garden City, the stretch we were walking anyway, looked like most of the Horry County coastline. There were condos and beach houses and apartments and hotels with a smattering of restaurants and bars. I passed one of the latter and saw a younger blond woman reading a book and she did look up long enough to smile at the dogs. She was drinking orange juice…but was doing so from a large champagne goblet, so I suspect there was a little more than Tropicana in her glass. The bar had a fairly loud sound system that I couldn’t help but hear. As we strode past, they were playing some remake of “When you say nothing at all.” That song, originally recorded by Keith Whitley, is one of the best-written you’ll hear and his earnest rendering is fantastic. Allison Krauss remade it and that stands as one of the single prettiest things I’ve ever heard, with her soft, high voice lifting those lyrics to heights that are almost unimaginable. Well, the version I was hearing wasn’t by Keith or Allison, it was by somebody else and it sucked. It was hot trash in a taco shell. I don’t know who sang it, but my advice to that guy and anyone else attempting to wreck a classic is to not do it. If there’s already two amazing versions of a song, both so good that you can argue that either is the “definitive” version, you probably aren’t going to improve upon it. So don’t try. I have dogs to walk and that lady is reading her book and get hammered and we’d prefer to hear something else…or nothing at all. As I’ve documented before, the one trouble with walking my dogs near water is that they are drawn to it (Tucker especially). He’ll all but rip my shoulder out of its socket as I hang onto his leash for dear life as he barrels towards anything from a mud puddle to a creek. In this instance, there was a whole ocean on just the other side of some dunes. Oddly, even when we ventured up to where he could actually see the water, he wasn’t his normal enthusiastic self. I figured the temperature and humidity might have tamped down his level of energy. It is in no way surprising that when you are walking near the ocean, in South Carolina, in July it is going to be hot and humid, even in the late morning hours. That ranks somewhere on the “surprise meter” between “water is wet” and “trees are wood.” It was particularly bad on this day, though, so for the comfort and safety of Tucker and Gracie, I checked my surroundings, plotted a path and went about walking it so I could get them back to the car. I only deviated from that path once, that being when I saw a pair of booths set up near a public beach entrance. One was selling shaved ice, snowballs, slushies or whatever you wish to call that mix of ice and fruity syrup in a cup. Honestly, I like to have about half of one of those on occasion. As you get towards the bottom, the ice is melting, and it basically turns into super sweet, colored water. Given that is was 700 degrees with 500 percent humidity (roughly, I’m guessing) anything cold and wet would have really hit the spot. That wouldn’t happen both because I had no cash in my wallet and because the idea of trying to hold a cup and spoon while also holding the leashes to two active, excitable, 80-plus-pound dogs is laughable. That would be a straight up recipe for my cup of shaved ice ending up on the ground. Or with my luck, on somebody’s car or shoes. I had to pass, but the lady running that little stand had already noticed my dogs. “My goodness, they are beautiful…but how in the world do you walk both of them at once?” the lady asked. I thanked her and told her it’s like riding a wild horse. I just hang on and try not to get bucked or trampled. “Did you dock that one’s tail?” she asked, pointing at Gracie. We actually get asked about that a lot. I guess enough people whack their dog’s tails off that most people naturally assume when they see a no-tail dog, that’s what happened. To me, that would’ve been like your mom chopping off your earlobes. “You had some real droopy earlobes. It’s not like you need them. You can still hear.” I explained that Gracie was born with no tail at all. You can feel back there that there is nothing, not even a nub. A shaved ice stand in that spot makes a lot of sense. There is a lot of foot traffic, it’s hot, people want something cold etc. The second little stand was something I’d never seen. It was a “burn center” for lack of a better term, with a lady offering a variety of sunblock and related items for free. The whole thing was sponsored by a local church. That’s an interesting form of outreach and if it allows them to reach and touch folks, that’s great. I’ll tell you, though, if I was that church, I would be very tempted to just take that theme all the way. “We don’t want you to burn on the beach…or in that other place.” “If you think it’s hot on the beach…” The lady stationed in that stand waved and asked my dog’s names, then spoke to them. Mainly telling them how pretty they both were. Tucker, in particular, always likes to hear from his adoring public, but at this point he was pretty hot so it was about time to head back. We only went a little further down the road but two things caught my attention. The first was the number of golf carts I saw, particularly ones modified so as to be able to carry stuff. People were loading up their beach gear in these things, some of which I think were actually like golf cart taxis that you call for. I get that if you have a big family, there is a nice convenience to having something to tote around your chairs, floats and things and it’s great for folks who perhaps have a little trouble getting around on their own…but I promise you, I saw one family staying directly across the street from the beach (literally, a few feet from the sand) load their stuff up, drive across the road and unload it. My first impulse was to think “man, y’all are lazy” but actually, they are really poor planners. It took WAY more time to load their gear up, drive 30 feet, then unload it, than it would have to just carry it. We used to walk a good third-of-a-mile to the beach in Cherry Grove lugging every beach item imaginable with us when we did. There was no ease of travel with a golf cart. You carried chairs, bags, boogie boards and everything else and if you had to use the bathroom, dad wasn’t giving you a quick ride back to the house. You ran back there yourself or did your business in the ocean. THESE KIDS TODAY WITH THEIR GOLF CARTS!!!! The other thing that really started to stick out was the number of folks from faraway lands (like Ohio) that were staying in Garden City. South Carolina is a vacation destination, obviously, and I’ve always noted the variety of license plates and things there from outside the state. I’d never seen this many, though, nor seen them manifest themselves with so many college colors. Almost everywhere I looked there were Ohio State Buckeye flags flying from balconies, Michigan gear, Notre Dame paraphernalia. My first impulse was to take it as an affront…it’s one thing to come here, it’s quite another to literally wave the flag of the Fighting Irish in the home of Tigers and Gamecocks. Really, though, they’re visiting and they’re spending lots of their money in my home state. Plus, all of them I interacted with (which included Michigan, Ohio State and Purdue fans) were all nice. Granted, they looked at me like I was an extra from some Hee Haw sketch when I opened my mouth, but they all got goo goo eyed over my dogs. I can appreciate that while also hating your team. That Big 10 annex is about where we turned around to go back. That lady was still sitting in the open-air bar reading her book. I noticed. She didn’t look up and smile at Tucker and Gracie this time. I noticed her glass had been topped off, so she might not have been able. I like our visitors from the north but man, they can’t hold their liquor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |