The Backyard Tourist

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The Backyard Tourist

If you’re lucky enough to live in the Lowcountry, every day is a vacation waiting to happen. Follow us over the river and through the marsh…

Why Walterboro Rocks, Part 2

Wednesday, 15 September 2010 11:05

Casual observations from Main Street USA

walterboro-christmas-gifts “I’ve been on this street 58 years,” says Cindy Corley. She’s helping to mind her mom’s store while her mother (Helen) runs an errand. Infinger’s Jewelry is one of the few businesses relatively unchanged this last half century in downtown Walterboro. A few blocks away on Washington Street you can still sip a Coke float at the soda fountain in Hiott’s Pharmacy while your prescription is filled. Otherwise much is different. “My mom actually moved into this store when I was two weeks old. I grew up on this street,” says Corley. As a girl she remembers emptying ashtrays (“yes, you could smoke in stores back then”) and cleaning up around the store for the dollar price of a Saturday matinee at the local movie house around the corner.

Why Walterboro Rocks, Part I

Wednesday, 01 September 2010 12:41

walterboro-rocking-chair “You can tell it’s a friendly town because they’ve got all these rocking chairs out on the street and nobody’s stolen them.”

- Unidentified woman commenting on the abundance of bright red rocking chairs (the town symbol) lining the downtown shops

It’s after five o’clock on a weekday afternoon and The Blarney Stone in downtown Walterboro is beginning to fill up with hot, thirsty people in search of cool respite from the hammer stroke of another blistering August day. Gary Davis takes time out from our conversation to greet his regulars and welcome the newcomers, mostly day-tripping antique hunters and “halfbacks” taking a break from interstate traffic.

Why Walterboro Rocks

Wednesday, 18 August 2010 11:05

The Backyard Tourist gets more than he bargained for in Walterboro, “The Front Porch of the Lowcountry.”

Searching for the Good Stuff

It’s been said that a Tourist doesn’t know where he’s been and a Traveler doesn’t know where he’s going. I’ve always been more traveler than tourist, an advocate of throwing the bare essentials in the car and wandering out into the undiscovered country. This is sort of the central idea behind The Backyard Tourist – to get out and discover the good stuff around our Lowcountry hub of Beaufort, to find things and places that appeal to visitors and locals alike, perhaps a bit more Tourist than Traveler. So when I mentioned to a friend that I had yet to visit Walterboro since making my way back to the Lowcountry, she insisted. “I’ll make some calls.”

Redneck Heart of Darkness

Wednesday, 21 July 2010 14:46

A couple of enlightened journalists get their Southern on, Knievel style.

heart-robbie-knievel Every once in a while a Southern man needs to get in touch with his Inner Redneck: eat some barbecue, drink a Pabst Blue Ribbon, listen to “Sweet Home Alabama,” howl at the moon.

Mark Shaffer of Lowcountry Weekly and Richard Brooks of Bluffton Today, both of the Enlightened Redneck persuasion, eschew the racist, violent and misogynistic aspects of their heritage.

Nevertheless, there is something to be found in the motorsports arena that appeals to the Southern-born male on a visceral level – and it’s not just the head-turning appeal of big hair, halter top, cutoff jeans and stiletto heels peculiar to the culture.

Summer Vacation, Revisited

Tuesday, 08 June 2010 11:03

summer-vacation-beaufort2 Editor’s Note: Last summer, Mark Shaffer wrote this wonderful meditation on summer vacations… while on summer vacation. This summer, we offer it again for your reading pleasure, because Mark is on hiatus. (Actually, he’s on summer vacation.)

Vacation used to be a luxury, but in today's world it has become a necessity.

- Author Unknown

Summer vacation. What sort of double-barreled shotgun blast of memories just flew through your brain with those two simple little words? My guess is that even as you begin to read this, hi octane nostalgia is already beginning to fire through the dusty synapses of those carefully stored, seldom-used recollections of hot days and tepid nights spent at the beach, the mountains or a lake – wherever the family fled each season to “get away from it all.” Theoretically.

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