Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It wasn't until I reached Beaufort (pronounced “Bew-furt”) that I got my first proper
look at the sea. I rounded a bend to find myself, suddenly and breathtakingly, gazing out
on a looking glass bay full of boats and reed beds, calm and bright and blue, the same
color as the sky. According to my Mobil Travel Guide, the three main sources of in-
come in the area are tourism, the military and retired people. Sounds awful, doesn't it?
But in fact Beaufort is lovely, with many mansions and an old-fashioned business dis-
trict. I parked on Bay Street, the main road through town, and was impressed to find
that the meter fee was only five cents. That must be just about the last thing a nickel
will buy you in America-thirty minutes of peace of mind in Beaufort, South Carolina.
I strolled down to a little park and marina, which had been recently built, from the
look of it. This was only the fourth time I had seen the Atlantic from this side. When
you come from the Midwest, the ocean is a thing rarely encountered. The park was full
of signs instructing you not to enjoy yourself or do anything impertinent. They were
every few yards, and said, No SWIMMING OR DIVING FROM SEAWALL. NO BIKE
RIDING IN PARK. CUTTING OR DAMAGING FLOWERS, PLANTS, TREES OR
SHRUBSPROHIBITED.NoCONSUMPTIONORPOSSESSIONOFBEER,WINE,OR
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES IN CITY PARKS WITHOUT SPECIAL PERMISSION OF
THECITY.VIOLATORSWILLBEPROSECUTED.Idon'tknowwhatsortofmini-Stal-
in they have running the council in Beaufort, but I've never seen a place so officially un-
welcoming. It put me off so much that I didn't want to be there anymore, and abruptly I
left, which was a shame
really because I still had twelve minutes of unexpired time on the meter.
As a result of this, I arrived in Charleston twelve minutes earlier than planned, which was
good news. I had thought that Savannah was the most becoming American city I had ever
seen, but it thumped into second place soon after my arrival in Charleston. At its har-
bor end, the city tapers to a rounded promontory which is packed solid with beautiful old
homes, lined up one after the other along straight, shady streets like oversized topics on a
crowdedshelf.SomeareofthemostdetailedVictorianornateness,likefinelace,andsome
are plain white clapboard with black shutters, but all of them are at least three stories high
and imposing-all the more so as they loom up so near the road. Almost no one has any
yard to speak of-though everywhere I looked there were Vietnamese gardeners minutely
attending to patches of lawn the size of tablecloths-so children play on the street and wo-
men, all of them white, all of them young, all of them rich, gossip on the front steps. This
isn'tsupposedtohappen inAmerica. Wealthy children inAmerica don'tplay onthe street;
there isn't any need. They lounge beside the pool or sneak reefers in the $3,000 treehouse
that Daddy had built for them for their ninth birthday. And their mothers, when they wish
to gossip with a neighbor, do it on the telephone or climb into their airconditioned station
