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watermelon salsa
So, I didn't get the mp3s posted-- my computer decided to cop out on me. And I didn't get my pictures up, either (going digital was supposed to make sorting pictures and putting them in albums less of a chore, wasn't it? hah,) but if you *need* a fix, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stellar_dust has pictures from trip up and down the New Jersey-Delaware-MD coast up (some of which I took) and dreamsquirrel has pictures from the picnic/barbecue we had Saturday up (some of which I took).
Right now I am on the coast of South Carolina. stellar_dust and I are staying in a lovely, friendly old beachhouse (up on stilts!) named "Future Beachfront" as guests of Brother Dan and his family. Brother Dan is a very interesting and wonderful guy who had been Dad's best friend since they were in middle school together, and the rest of his family is also wonderful and interesting. His sister and her husband own two beachhouses here, a few dozen miles south of Myrtle Beach, in among little seaside towns that are just starting to get noticed by people outside the state. They rent the cottages out, but also invite the family down several times a year, and to Brother Dan we count as family. They've been coming here for a very long time, but this is the first time in thirty years everything's worked out for us to come along; he left a message on our answering machine the day we drove back from Cape May, so we're here with him and his youngest daughter Elisa and his wife and sister and brother-in-law for the week.
The average day at this house seems to go like this: Get up to watch the sunrise over the ocean from the roof and look for the green flash (unless you are a recovering student, in which case you attempt to sleep through it), get up around nine for breakfast and then a morning dip in the ocean. Spend the rest of the morning shopping or exploring or fishing or going places, and then take an early-afternoon nap in a hammock over the inlet in the back yard. Swim again at the height of the afternoon, just before dinner. And if they eat dinner in, Brother Dan insists we watch the sun set over the inlet, and then spend the evening visiting or watching movies or playing board games.
And it has wireless internet!
Tonight we went out for dinner, to a burger joint where they put peanuts on the table and expect you to throw the shells on the floor. I had a peanut butter burger, which was very peanut-y and burger-y. Brother Dan sings barbershop and went to hang out with the local group tonight, so his sister took the five of us home by the long way, through some of the old neighborhoods and new developments. Then, seeing a light on, she took us in to visit Anne, who is one of the two oldest residents of Murrell's Inlet, an amazing woman with the most gorgeous and classic Carolina accent I've ever heard in real life or elsewhere. She told us stories about the old days and her family and the gummint ('See these little brown dots on my arms? The doctor says they're age spots, but I say they're battle-scars. You know, I used to go down to the caounty co-athouse, and as I walked down the hallway, they'd all be so scared they'd close their doors before I got there...') Her summer house is a tiny little wooden building that has been through two hurricanes with her and before she bought it was a little community store; she sleeps out on a cot on the screen porch and goes swimming in the inlet. It was rather odd, though, to sit and listen to her complain about the new development coming in, why they're charging over $400,000 for a house on a tenth-acre waterfront lot, and it'll be built out of two-by-fours, plywood, and staples! In her day this was all forest. (Yeah. I'm probably less than a quarter her age, and I've seen the same thing happening in my backyard. Only in our area, property within walking distance of an estuary wouldn't go for less than four times that, the houses are built out of cardboard, the lots are smaller, and they moonscape all the way down to the red clay when they take out the forest.) Actually I've been amazed by how much of a local small-town feel remains here, just an hour's drive south of the condominial horrors of Myrtle Beach, but you can see that it's very much at risk of changing utterly. Dan's sister hates the main local developer with a fiery hate that stops just short of burning his mansion down.
Anyway, about then we were interupted by an excitement: Elisa noticed than an eldery neighbor out walking her dog with her husband had tripped on the dog, fallen, and cracked her head open on the road right out front of Anne's house. So she rose to the occasion and got us to call 911 and by the time the ambulances arrived there were half a dozen people gathered around to help.
And when we'd seen them off, we walked down the road in the night to stand by Mickey Spillane's driveway and watch the moon over the inlet.
And then we had a nice evening of ice cream and reading-- the *other* oldest resident of Murrell's Inlet, Sister, wrote a memoir, and apparently her policy is that she'll only talk to visitors if they've read her book first, so I started reading one of the copies here. Dan's sister kept trying to get me to skip to the chapters about the local ghosts, but the whole thing is good reading; the author spent the depression following her mother around doing local interviews for the federal Writer's Project, and the book so far is half her upper-class-white perspective interspersed with excerpts from the interviews from the other half of the world.
And so I have much better things to do than hang out on the internet, like dozing in a hammock with a book on my lap. This entry will probably have to hold you for the rest of the week.
stellar_dust has pictures from trip up and down the New Jersey-Delaware-MD coast up (some of which I took) and dreamsquirrel has pictures from the picnic/barbecue we had Saturday up (some of which I took).Right now I am on the coast of South Carolina. stellar_dust and I are staying in a lovely, friendly old beachhouse (up on stilts!) named "Future Beachfront" as guests of Brother Dan and his family. Brother Dan is a very interesting and wonderful guy who had been Dad's best friend since they were in middle school together, and the rest of his family is also wonderful and interesting. His sister and her husband own two beachhouses here, a few dozen miles south of Myrtle Beach, in among little seaside towns that are just starting to get noticed by people outside the state. They rent the cottages out, but also invite the family down several times a year, and to Brother Dan we count as family. They've been coming here for a very long time, but this is the first time in thirty years everything's worked out for us to come along; he left a message on our answering machine the day we drove back from Cape May, so we're here with him and his youngest daughter Elisa and his wife and sister and brother-in-law for the week.
The average day at this house seems to go like this: Get up to watch the sunrise over the ocean from the roof and look for the green flash (unless you are a recovering student, in which case you attempt to sleep through it), get up around nine for breakfast and then a morning dip in the ocean. Spend the rest of the morning shopping or exploring or fishing or going places, and then take an early-afternoon nap in a hammock over the inlet in the back yard. Swim again at the height of the afternoon, just before dinner. And if they eat dinner in, Brother Dan insists we watch the sun set over the inlet, and then spend the evening visiting or watching movies or playing board games.
And it has wireless internet!
Tonight we went out for dinner, to a burger joint where they put peanuts on the table and expect you to throw the shells on the floor. I had a peanut butter burger, which was very peanut-y and burger-y. Brother Dan sings barbershop and went to hang out with the local group tonight, so his sister took the five of us home by the long way, through some of the old neighborhoods and new developments. Then, seeing a light on, she took us in to visit Anne, who is one of the two oldest residents of Murrell's Inlet, an amazing woman with the most gorgeous and classic Carolina accent I've ever heard in real life or elsewhere. She told us stories about the old days and her family and the gummint ('See these little brown dots on my arms? The doctor says they're age spots, but I say they're battle-scars. You know, I used to go down to the caounty co-athouse, and as I walked down the hallway, they'd all be so scared they'd close their doors before I got there...') Her summer house is a tiny little wooden building that has been through two hurricanes with her and before she bought it was a little community store; she sleeps out on a cot on the screen porch and goes swimming in the inlet. It was rather odd, though, to sit and listen to her complain about the new development coming in, why they're charging over $400,000 for a house on a tenth-acre waterfront lot, and it'll be built out of two-by-fours, plywood, and staples! In her day this was all forest. (Yeah. I'm probably less than a quarter her age, and I've seen the same thing happening in my backyard. Only in our area, property within walking distance of an estuary wouldn't go for less than four times that, the houses are built out of cardboard, the lots are smaller, and they moonscape all the way down to the red clay when they take out the forest.) Actually I've been amazed by how much of a local small-town feel remains here, just an hour's drive south of the condominial horrors of Myrtle Beach, but you can see that it's very much at risk of changing utterly. Dan's sister hates the main local developer with a fiery hate that stops just short of burning his mansion down.
Anyway, about then we were interupted by an excitement: Elisa noticed than an eldery neighbor out walking her dog with her husband had tripped on the dog, fallen, and cracked her head open on the road right out front of Anne's house. So she rose to the occasion and got us to call 911 and by the time the ambulances arrived there were half a dozen people gathered around to help.
And when we'd seen them off, we walked down the road in the night to stand by Mickey Spillane's driveway and watch the moon over the inlet.
And then we had a nice evening of ice cream and reading-- the *other* oldest resident of Murrell's Inlet, Sister, wrote a memoir, and apparently her policy is that she'll only talk to visitors if they've read her book first, so I started reading one of the copies here. Dan's sister kept trying to get me to skip to the chapters about the local ghosts, but the whole thing is good reading; the author spent the depression following her mother around doing local interviews for the federal Writer's Project, and the book so far is half her upper-class-white perspective interspersed with excerpts from the interviews from the other half of the world.
And so I have much better things to do than hang out on the internet, like dozing in a hammock with a book on my lap. This entry will probably have to hold you for the rest of the week.