After the race on Saturday, Cathy and I journeyed the 35 miles from Ridgeland to Hilton Head Island to eat lunch, and get books from Barnes and Nobles. It was maybe 10 a.m., so not quite lunch. We went to Atlanta Bread Company, which is sorta like a Denny's for upper-middle class white people. Instead of a ham and cheese omelette, you get a prosciutto and baby swiss omelette. There were just as many morbidly obese people there as in the land of the pea-cakes, but they dress a little more like they just got off the links. And let me tell you, Hilton Head has some of the whitest white people you'll ever find. Go into any of the public shopping places around the Island, and it sounds like a flock of geese. I don't mean that in a bad way. Shoot, I'm so white I'm practically clear. I can't lie down on the beach because young children think I'm a dune.
Still, there was a time when HHI was a bastion for Gullah culture. You can still find some native Islanders on the North end of the Island. My exe's mom was a native Islander, and talked of a time when race relations were pretty good on the Island. There weren't that many people on the Island at that time, and there wasn't a bridge to connect it to the mainland, so people had to get along to thrive. She said they used to ride horses on the beach, and had to take a ferry to school either to Beaufort or Savannah. Her dad owned several oyster plants on the Island (a restaurant called "The Old Oyster Factory" used to be located on one of his old plant sites. Maybe it still is. I haven't been over there in years). One Islander that I met fifteen years or so ago is local artist Jonathan Green. I saw a book of his artwork in B&N.
Hilton Head is actually a decent place... It just isn't special in the way it once was.
6 comments:
You diss my home and my homies, now I'm obliged as an HHIslander to stick up for my rock. Yeah, it's changed over the years, that's what happens over time, all over the world.
I first came to this island 34 years ago and granted it was a very different place. I sure appreciate it today just the way it is and would not want to step back in time to the island that offered little more than oysters, golf, the beach and a bit of tennis. We still have those things but the island now provides so much more to its residents and visitors. We have infrastructure, a decent hospital, a regional arts center, and yes we do have chain restaurants like Atlanta Bread Co. We also enlighten people in our schools and through programs like Literacy Volunteers of the Low Country where I spend two nights a week helping those native Islanders who 'missed the boat' to school, learn to read.
Sure there are white people here, but the HHI public school where I teach enjoys a student ratio of 39% Hispanic, 30% White, 28% African American, 2% Asian and 1% other (I think those are the transfer students from Walterboro).
Next time you come over the bridge skip the B&N and ABC and I'll take you to the Wal*Mart where you'll get a snapshot of who all lives here with me. They're good folk even if some do dress in golf attire.
P.S. Hope that safety pin helped to mend your next door neighbor's broken rib last night.
I was teasing HHI, but I wasn't really dissing it. Just said that the marketplace is rather pale. I'll grant you that I chose the venue. I could have had BBQ in Ridgeland or any of a number of choices in the Boro. I don't doubt that Wal-Mart will always have a more diverse crowd than Barnes & Nobles. It's just that the diverse crowd that prepares the food in most of the many restaurants, and keeps the yards in those million dollar homes (okay, not all of them are million dollar homes) looking good are not generally prominent in the daily life of the Island, as Marnie told me that they used to be back in the day. I'm going out on a limb and suggesting that the public schools are only 40% white because of Hilton Head Prep and Hilton Head Christian Academy, whose populations are overwhelmingly white (the odd football or basketball scholarship player notwithstanding). Not making a judgment there, as THA, where my oldest attended, and CPA, where my twins currently attend, are even less racially diverse- as are the public schools in Ridgeland (only they are the reverse of THA). Just noting that the folks in Walterboro and Ridgeland are generally from South Carolina (except me, of course) and don't have the same crusade mentality that many in the HHI community seem to have. I'm here to tell you that a closed community can be really tough, but the newcomers have so dominated HHI that I have a little compassion for the folks that have been sort of pushed aside in the changing of the guard.
...and that was strange wasn't it? I asked young Zach about his mom. He said she hurt a rib coughing, and the safey pin was to hold the Ace bandage. Weird.
I know you were just messin with us geese and I just felt like writing a rebuttal last night.
Hope your neighbor took it down to Marlboro lites while she's healing.
Doubtful, Amy, doubtful. I think she thinks smoking is smokin'!
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