Single-Wides

It’s all in where you come from.  Here in Charleston there’s lots of talk regarding “single-wides”.  Now, where we come from in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S, when someone talks about living in a single-wide, they’re talking mobile homes and often implying a class distinction.

Not here in Charleston! Some quirk in 18th century tax law caused houses to be taxed based on their road-front footage.  As a result, many houses were built one-room wide at the street, with a porch running deeply along one side. In the center of this porch was the front door, which entered into a hall with a room on either side and stairs leading to the upper floors, sometimes up to four floors high!

We spent two full days exploring historic Charleston, and thanks to the generosity of Great Loop Harbor Hosts Jenny and Jerry, we got to go inside many of the 17th, 18th and 19h century homes and their gardens. Jenny volunteers for the Charleston Historic Society, so was able to give us tickets.

It’s difficult to provide a good image of what block-after-block of these wonderful structures really looks like.  It’s difficult to even absorb from the street.  They reflect a great love of history by their owners, some of whom are house  collectors from other parts of the country; others are currently occupied by the 6th generation of the same family.  Most are obviously owned by folks of means, given that the houses are valued in the millions, even tens of millions, though some are modest or appear to be in need of more care than they’re currently receiving.

We also spent this morning taking a boat tour to see Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston Harbor.  Today was the 151st anniversary of the shelling of Fort Sumter where the Civil War first began, a conflict which took more lives, 700,000 +, than all the other wars the USA has participated in since then, combined.  The structure itself was not all that impressive, but the images and stories it evoked were.

While on our walking tour of Charleston we stopped at a street vendor and bought a Sweetgrass Basket.  This is a form of coiled basket whose method of making was transported from West Africa by enslaved people, and the 3residents of Charleston prize this craft and pay dearly for collections of these baskets. They’re made of bulrush or sweetgrass, palm fronds and pine needles.  Women who make these baskets today learned the craft from their mothers, who learned it from their mothers . . . and you get the idea. 

Sweetgrass is a local, indigenous straw frond that is exceptionally soft and replaced the use of bulrushes in these baskets.  Cathryn selected a moderate-priced basket and told Bob he could give it to her for a Mother’s Day gift!