Dec. 15. 2010
This afternoon we pulled into the docks at Leland Oil Co. (calling it a marina is a stretch)in McClellanville, population 400, between Georgetown and Charleston. We were drawn by what our friend and fellow trawler owner Norman Mason and the various guidebooks described as a town “lost in time.”
We also had read that the T.W. Graham & Co. seafood restaurant was really special. Special because it’s the the only restaurant downtown serving more than sandwiches. And special because it has a Johnson & Wales-trained chef. It’s open for lunch from 11-3, with dinner on Thursday-Saturday. Today is Wednesday. It would be a close call whether we’d make it by 3.
We have enough food on board to last us for months, but the lure of freshly caught seafood was irresistible. As we cruised along the waterway, I called the restaurant to check on its hours.
“Yup, we close right at 3,” was the curt but cheerful response.
We tied up at about 2:35 p.m. I asked Dwayne the Dockmaster if he thought we could make it to the restaurant before it closed.
“You can tomorrow,” he said matter-of-factly.
I looked at my watch: 2:45 p.m. I looked at Dwayne the Dockmaster.
“Come on; I’ll take you in my truck,” said the 60-something with white curly hair and a white mustache.
Philip and I climbed into his white Ford pick-up, which was parked next to the two-story marina building (woodworking on the ground level, an office and run-down closet-sized bath/shower upstairs). Next to the building is a live oak tree with a tire on a rope that had been made into a kid’s swing.
He whisked us the few blocks to Pinckney Street to the restaurant.
“When you come back, walk down to Oak, turn right, and take your second dirt road on the left” he said. Twice.
“Are you from the boat?” the thin, bespectacled waitress asked loudly as we walked into the restaurant/makeshift museum/art gallery. We nodded.
She and the four remaining luncheon guests whooped and applauded.
“We were betting whether you’d make it,” chirped waitress Jodie, a self-described “Cracker” and transplant from Ocala, Fla.
“How about some shrimp and clam chowder to warm you up?” she asked before taking our order of fried oysters and grilled shrimp.
“Cracker,” she continued, is a real term from the days when there were wild cattle in central Florida. “Cracker?”
“From the crack of the whip” the ranchers used, she said. “It’s true.”
The cook, Jodie’s son Macon (Philip’s convinced Macon was conceived in Georgia),came over to see if we liked our lunch. He said he had trained under the owner, Pete Kornack, who we read married Claudia, a McClellanville girl.
Jodie came back to our booth with a “to go box.”
“Here’s a traveling gift,” she said, grinning: a piece of cranberry and chocolate chip pie that had flopped and apparently couldn’t be served or sold pie-like. But it was still tasty, she said, especially if heated first and topped off with ice cream.
Philip bought a T-shirt in the gifts’ corner of the restaurant near the kitchen. Paul Bunyon-sized sparkly white snowflakes dangled from the barren ribs of an old kayak hanging from the ceiling.
“Connie,” said Jodie (we were on a first-name basis by now) “pick something from our drawing and you could win 10 percent off” anything. I obliged and dipped my hand into a plastic bucket: “One free beer” read my reward. We’d have to stay another day or cash it in on the return trip.
Andrea, another employee, rang up our meal. She’s from Troutville, outside of Roanoke, Va., and married a local boy.
We walked around the village, the scene of two movies because it really is a postcard from the past. In the latest flick, a new movie about aliens starring Kevin Costner, the Arts Council office was used as a police station. Jodie said the flick never made it to theaters but advised that we could still see it on video.
Spanish moss hangs like skeins of dull gray yarn from nearly every branch of the live oak trees that line the main streets; most of the side streets are dirt roads. Idle shrimp boats line the waterfront, staying put because of this week’s cold and windy weather. Several abandoned homes, destroyed by Hurricane Hugo two decades ago, are nearly hidden by overgrowth. In the center of town is a park fronted by a live oak with a plaque proclaiming that the massive tree is 1,000 years old.
Leland, Jodie had said, is the mayor. He owns the marina. He owns a seafood company and God knows what else. She said she loved living over the marina where she could watch the shrimp boats come and go, but at some point she was ousted.
We ducked into the unlocked St. James’ Santee Episcopal Church, whose 1706 parish is the second oldest in these parts, after Charleston. The current church was consecrated in 1890 and its framework is of “South Carolina longleaf pine and cypress, mortised and tenoned together. Its black cypress shingles, which cover the roof and exterior sidewalls, were shaped with handsaws,” according to the parish web site. Two large wreaths crafted from magnolia leaves, taken from the massive tree in the church’s back yard, decorated the double doors.
Of course we had to buy fresh shrimp from the seafood market at the docks. Diana, a blonde with cornflower blue eyes that matched her long, heavy vinyl apron, said she was from Rhode Island and had been here for eight years. She hadn’t lost her New England accent, but her colleague -- a native to McClellanville -- said she was starting to pick up local phrases like (Diana demonstrated) “We good,” leaving out the verb.
Tied up in back of Epilogue is a 55-foot or bigger dive boat from BVI - its owner (who made a pretty penny taking his flavored syrup company public and then selling the enterprise)works with people searching for sunken artifacts. Or as Dwayne the Dockmaster said, “He’s a treasure hunter.”
There’s a 5-foot tidal change along the unlighted floating dock strewn with various size and color hoses where we are. To get back on board, we could leap off the rickety boards to the floating dock below or walk a ways and climb down one of two ladders, although the rungs on one are busted.
It’s definitely a unique town. We like it so much here we’re staying a second night. And we might just have an opportunity to cash in the “free beer” coupon.
No comments:
Post a Comment