Moving Day

 

 

None of our pets is crazy about traveling but they did pretty well on the drive up the coast to their new home. Rosie's carrier was between us and she kept up a conversation with us most of the trip.

 

 

Tybee is 17 1/2 years old. He prefers the front seat and kept trying to squeeze his way up front from the back. His back legs are weak from arthritis and he had to be replaced on the seat a few times.

Bob the Border Collie's black back is on the right next to Tybee. Bob was busying looking out the window the entire trip, way too busy to smile for a picture.

The blur is The Writer's arm trying to keep Tybee in the backseat.

We had a very nice moving crew and they didn't lose their friendly demeanor even in the 98-degree heat and humidity. They were delayed by accidents on the bridge in Charleston, then got to Georgetown to find the weight station had been closed and no one had informed Ms Google! They had to backtrack all the way to Charleston to weigh the truck and a 4-hour trip took them more than 7.

They had already worked a 12-hour day when they left here for their 4 hour drive back home.

 

 

We got up this morning and poked around in boxes to find some cereal and bowls to make breakfast.

 

 

 

There are mountains of boxes like this all over the house.

 

 

I decided to start with the kitchen this morning. It only looks slightly better tonight, in spite of the fact that I have emptied and stowed the contents of 20 boxes.

But the fridge and freezer are sparkling clean and many drawers and cupboards have been lined, dinner cooked, the dishes done, and I now am rooted to the rocking chair.

I'm not moving until bedtime!

 

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Peace, Love, and a Microbus *

When this old VW bus appeared in Beaufort in front of a newly-opened restaurant called "Peace, Love, and Hotdogs," we had to stop for a closer look.

It's even the same color as the one The Writer and I had in the early '70s!

Groovy, man!

 

We thought it was just parked there to draw attention to the restaurant and were surprised to look inside and see that it was full of tools and construction supplies and still very much in use.

It's got to be 40-some years old and still on the road.

Somebody has taken good care of it.

Far out!

 

 

 

 

We traveled many miles in ours, sitting high up, looking out over that steering wheel and through the big front window at this country of ours, searching for the right place to be our home. At night we pulled striped curtains 'round the windows and slept on a mattress on the floor.

When we found the land we wanted in the Blue Ridge Mountains we sold the bus to help pay for it.

Our 30 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with the Smokies beyond

*This post is for Sarah, who wanted to know about the VW bus. xoxo

 

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Betwixt and Between

We have been traveling between three houses. Last Friday was the closing on my house in Minnesota. Thank goodness, that one is done and dusted! Because the other two are in all stages of chaos and incompleteness. And every few days we are making the 3 hour drive in between for one reason. Or six.

 

One looks like this from where I sit right now, with boxes being packed and stacked everywhere.

A couple days ago while we were here working, the air-conditioning was out for 14 hours.

Packing boxes in 99 degree F heat and 85% humidity = sweaty torture!

 

 

Meanwhile, in Georgetown we have had good news on what the house inspector thought could be some pricey repairs. The air-con problem with the potential to need major repair (maybe even replacement) was a fuse, and the foundation moisture fix will cost $hundreds, not $thousands as feared!

Now, on to other decisions that have been more fun!

 

 

The living room

(Disclaimer: the mirrors behind the white shelves will be leaving as soon as the final papers are signed.)

 

Some living room SOFA candidates.

 

(I kept calling them couches which apparently is Minnesotan and kept being kindly corrected, so I'm working on that.)

This one, but maybe in tan?

It's so nice and ... beachy.

 

 

More formal. Larger size? Is the wood too dark with the newly refinished oak floors?

 

The jury is still out on cou... er,SOFAS.

 

 

Kitchen floor, ceramic or vinyl?

Vinyl is easier on the legs, vinyl it is.

Left or right? Leaning left.

 

Hallway carpet. Requirements: soft and squishy, long-wearing, neutral color. You would think that would be easy, but do you know how many shades of beige and degrees of squishy there are? How many prices there are? How many promises of wearability there are? Did you even know wearability was a word?

Anyhoo, we made a decision. But it was in a carpet warehouse at the end of another 99 degree/85% humidity day of decisions and our decision-making ability had tanked somewhere around noon.

We had to go back the next morning and change the order.

The clerk didn't seem too surprised.

 

 

But it hasn't been all work and no play.

 

I picked out my coffee shop in Georgetown where I can get my favorite morning brew -- iced Americano -- and take it across the street to enjoy on the harbor walk on the waterfront, watching the yachts and working boats come and go.

 

 

 

 

One night we went to hear a friend of The Writer's singing at a restaurant at Murrells Inlet a ways up the coast. He is a fantastic entertainer and it was a nice place on the water.

My brain was fried and instead of the beautiful harbor and decks and docks behind him, I chose the background of the parking lot for the photo!

This is Bil Krauss. If you get a chance to hear him, he plays all over the East Coast and you'll have lots of fun.

 

 

 

 

This coming weekend The Writer will be gone to Orlando, next week I fly to Minnesota to take care of my grandsons for a week while my daughter and son-in-law are in Washington, DC, and the following week we close on our new house and move in. So please forgive me if things are a little quiet on my blog for the rest of the month and I don't get around to yours as often as usual.

I'll be around when I can!

 

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Happy Birthday, USA!

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My grandson Aiden doing what every seven-year-old American boy loves -- celebrating with fire.

 

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(His mama took the photo last night. The boys were "practicing" for the real event tonight and had to try out a few sparklers.)

 

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Pawley's Island Beach, 'Our' Beach

We spent the last couple days in Georgetown making some arrangements for the purchase of our new home and doing a little exploring.

Near the top of our list in importance was checking out the place where we will walk the beach most mornings.

Pawleys Island is a barrier island on the Atlantic that was a summer refuge for the rice planters and their families. It turns out that those rice fields, flooded all summer for growing phenomenonal crops of golden rice, were just as good at growing big crops of malaria-bearing mosquitos. The island breezes blew the bugs away and kept malaria somewhat at bay.

Pawleys Island beaches are just 20 minutes from our new home and one of the big reasons we chose Georgetown. It is unique among the other islands on the southern Atlantic coast with their towering condos blocking the view, commercial beaches, and endless tourist shops. It was and is still known for its "arrogantly shabby" vacation homes and beach life.

 

Here's a typical beach house, I guess what is meant by "arrogantly shabby",

 

 

There has never been a large hotel on Pawleys Island. The Sea View Inn was built in 1937 and is still operating, as is the Pelican Inn, built in 1858. This is the Pelican Inn.

 

There are no other commercial businesses on the island, no hotels, restaurants, or shops. You have to go back to the mainland for those.

In the 1980s property owners heard talk of large chain hotels considering vacant land on the island and banded together to incorporate as a town. In 1986 with their slogan "Keep Pawley as it is," they passed ordinances forbidding commercial establishments and high rise buildings. A few condos built in the 1970s were grandfathered in and remain the exception with no further such buildings built since the ordinances were passed.

 

Sunrise

Early morning surfing lesson

 

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Raise Your Hand If You Remember These!

" Step right up on the box, Junior, and put your foot in the radioactive machine so I can check your feet inside your new shoes.

"No, Mother, don't you worry, it's perfectly safe. Junior's toes will not fall off or glow in the dark from radiation. This is science at work to give Junior a perfect fit and an inch to grow in."

********

We visited a small museum in Walterboro, South Carolina and came across a flouroscope, which I hadn't seen since I was a child in the 1950s getting new shoes for school.

 

The flouroscope was invented in the 1920s as a sales gimmick to sell shoes. It X-rayed the customer's feet, revealing bones and the outline of the shoe assuring a perfect fit.

Even by the1950s when the dangers of radiation should have been fairly clear and clerks who used the boxes were reporting burns and other injuries, the hazards were brushed off and the machines continued to be used! By the mid 1950s there were 10,000 of them leaking radiation all over the place in the United States and a similar number in England.

 

The customer, most often a child, would stand wearing new shoes with her feet in the slot in the bottom of the box. At the top were three viewing places, one for the salesman in his suit and tie, one for Mom in her dress and heels, and one for the child, also dressed up for the occasion.

 

 

 

 

 

I got two pairs of shoes every year, brown "oxfords" for school and patent leather "buckle shoes" for church. They were always the same. No one asked me what I wanted and I don't even know if the store had any other options. The brand was Buster Brown and they came from the small town shoe store that had the X-ray machine. I don't remember its name.

When you put your feet in the machine with the new shoes on, you wiggled your toes around inside the new shoes to check the fit, and I can't tell you how exciting it was for a five or six year old in the mid 50s to see the actual bones inside her foot moving around. I could have stood there wiggling my toes all day long!

This is from an article I read when I was looking up some facts about the flouroscope. If it's true, it's pretty frightening but I didn't see any research about it that looked more detailed. So take it for what it's worth.

"By the 1970s, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were almost universally banned, but damage had already been done; foot cancer began to rear its ugly head in many older patients, and there was little question of Its source."

If you want to give yourself nightmares, Google foot cancer images. Yikes.

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Be It Ever So Humble

You might have noticed I've been missing for awhile. Perhaps you saw a weather map and assumed I had melted into an oil slick and floated off to sea. Or fled to Australia where it's winter to cool my fevered brow.

But nope!

We have been searching for a place to call home and believe me, that is a full time job.

Sunset from the deck of our island home

We started months ago thinking we would buy the home on the island that we have been renting. You can't beat its peace and beauty. But the house needs many repairs and a lot of upkeep, and the more we thought about it, the more reluctant we became to spend our time and resources fixing things. It is very difficult to get people to do work way out here. (For example, we have been trying steadily to get a plumber to fix a plumbing problem for over a year and have not yet been able to get one to show up. We are tired of trying and just lucky we have one toilet that works!)

Our next plan was to move to Beaufort, population 10,000 and the second oldest town in South Carolina. It has gorgeous old southern homes, a slow southern lifestyle, lots of history, a pretty waterfront. We have spent a lot of time there and come to love it. And we have spent entirely too much time dashing off to look at yet another home that has come up for sale in order to make an offer before it has been snapped up.

Only to become more and more discouraged.

Sunday morning on Beaufort harbor

Prices have soared over the last couple years with homes of little value going for ridiculous prices. There has been no urban planning so there are decaying old trailer homes grandfathered into neighborhoods of nice homes, making us leery of being able to resell the home when it becomes necessary.

Two weekends ago we looked at three more houses that left us cold for various reasons and completely discouraged. It was 98 degrees, so humid the moisture hung in the air as haze and hit your chest like a wall every time you walked out the door. I couldn't even count the red bug and mosquito bites I had, not to mention the two new fire ant bites on my foot.

We were done with Beaufort. What to do? We came home and started looking at a map.

Long story shorter, on Monday we drove three hours north to Georgetown, the third oldest town in South Carolina. Neither of us had been there before but it took only about a half a day of looking around to realize it had what we wanted. It was several degrees cooler because it is 20 minutes from the ocean. The historic town center is intact and thriving, there is plenty of outdoor recreation, a nice library, lots of history. Best of all, real estate prices were about $100,000 less than what we had been looking at! Georgetown was our town!

We returned to Georgetown on Friday to look at houses with a realtor. We looked at lots of houses but there was only one house that struck both of us as The House. When we walked in the door we each knew that this was the house for us. Everything about it was perfect. Well, everything was perfect except that negotiations were under way with another buyer. The buyer and seller had been going back and forth for quite some time trying to agree on a price, and we were told they were close to an agreement.

We decided to make an offer anyway. Why not? And by the next day, ours was the offer accepted!

In the course of looking at houses I'm not sure how many we have looked at. Fifty? A hundred? Some had a fatal flaw, like neighbors with chained dogs or yards next door full of trash. Some were strange with things like tiny rooms with no use. Many were okay but had no personality. A couple gave us the creeps and me nightmares. This house, the Maryville house, gave off sunshine and brightness and good vibes. You could tell happiness and love lived there.

We can't wait to add ours!

A hedge all around of red roses and purple hydrangea

And look, in the center--a small banana tree!

 

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