Post #32: Carolopolis

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 (Election Day!) 

There are a lot of things about Charleston that I really like, including the city seal, for obvious reasons.

The Latin inscription, “Aedes mores juraque curat” is translated as “She guards her buildings, customs, and laws.”  After walking around the city for 6 hours today, we would wholeheartedly agree that Charleston “guards” and cherishes its architectural treasures!  This is a beautiful, vibrant city with so much to offer that I look forward to spending more time here on our return trip when hopefully we’ll feel more comfortable visiting museums, outlying plantations, Ft. Sumter, and going out to eat.

We felt so welcome here and very comfortable because the city has mandated mask-wearing everywhere, every establishment provided hand-sanitizers, and some even provided free masks.

After taking care of boat chores this morning, we said good-bye to the Roseway, a teaching vessel that is often seen in Boston harbor during the summer but provides hands-on learning for about 30 students as it travels up and down the eastern seaboard from Boston to St. Croix. What a fabulous “gap year” for the fortunate students who are living and working aboard her during the pandemic—sure beats hours in front of a screen.

We walked into town, stopped at the Visitor’s Center but decided not to take the free shuttle to the historical areas since it was an enclosed bus.  Instead, we walked down the shopping streets (everything from T-shirts to Louis Vuitton), visited the Old Market and took an hour-long tour on a horse-driven carriage.

Unique Charleston “single houses.” The classic configuration is built one room-wide facing the street with a “privacy” door that doesn’t actually go into the house but opens instead onto an open piazza.  The front entrance to the home is actually from this piazza.  The porches provide owners with much-prized breezes in the summer and some privacy from the street. Our tour guide commented, “In Charleston we don’t have ‘yards,’ we have ‘gardens.’”While originally the piazzas looked out on those gardens, today many of the side areas have become parking spaces for the homeowner. Still, there were many wonderful hidden gardens and parks that would be spectacular to see in the spring.

Our tour guide regaled us with tales of Charleston’s important historical roles during pre-Colonial days, during the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. I really want to visit Fort Sumter in the spring on our return trip. The Civil War has always been ‘real’ to me because I was so very fortunate to live next door to my paternal grandmother, Katherine Perley Benson.

Grammie was born in 1882, in the house I lived in for the first 25 years of my life.  She remembered living in our house before it had running water and electricity and when their horse, Big Red, plowed the tomato fields where Benson’s parking lot is now. She told stories about Papa Benson buying his first automobile—a 1917 Model T; of driving to Topsfield in the 1950s to see t-e-l-e-v-i-s-i-o-n, and she lived to see a man walk on the moon.  What a life!

I saw her every day, learned many lessons from her, and she made American history come alive for me.  Her father and his two brothers had volunteered to fight in the Civil War but only William Perley returned home.  He brought back with him his musket and powder horn, a leather wallet, and a few “’federate bills” that Grammie described as “funny money.” She relayed her father’s story of sometimes having only three beans for his daily food ration—he would suck each one as long as he could as they marched across the South. 

I wonder if he ever was in Charleston.