Folly

Mamiya 6, film unknown, Folly Beach, 2009.

I vaguely mentioned in my first post that 2009 was a shit year. It was.

One morning, after a particularly bad week, I drove towards the coast of South Carolina. A lengthy roadtrip was not all that easy for me to do at the time. One, I couldn’t afford it. Two, it’s not all that close to Knoxville, where I was living (and where I’m from). I was bleeding money (for various reasons), and it was all going on a credit card anyway, but I justified every bit of it for the sake of my mental stability. Besides, rental cars weren’t that expensive with the set weekend rate at Enterprise, and I don’t recall gas being all that expensive at the time either. I had all the time in the world, so that wasn’t a factor, and I didn’t have an appetite so I wasn’t eating much to speak of. Work was being very relaxed with me at the time. They knew something was up, and if I called in sick on Monday it wouldn’t be a big deal. A state university is a pretty good place to work when you’re spiraling out of control.

Anyhow, I woke up, grabbed my camera, rented the car (mine was limping along and couldn’t make the trip), and I drove. I don’t remember much about it to be honest. I stopped in North Carolina to visit my brother and sister-in-law for a night. After sleeping on their couch by a pretty nice fire for the night, my aim was to keep driving and sit on the beach to figure it all out. Maybe drink a beer or two.

I crossed the bridge into Charleston proper and rented a room at the Days Inn. Not terrible, not nice, been in worse. I walked around Charleston, not really paying attention or looking at anything in particular, but thinking. Worrying. My marriage was falling apart, and I wanted to fix what was broken. Only I didn’t know what was broken. I was naive in a lot of ways, and hadn’t seen it coming. All I knew is that we were struggling. But there had been signs. In hindsight, there had been lots of signs. But everything I did to try and “fix it” just made it worse. Like I said, I was naive.

Souvenir Cannon

The only thing I remembered about Charleston was a trip my family took when I was probably 5 or 6 years old. It’s the only vacation I remember taking as a family. The weather was stormy. I didn’t like the water. We stayed at one of those cinderblock one-level motels, ate cold shrimp in a big bowl, and my dad bought me a cast iron and brass miniature replica of a cannon from the Fort Sumter gift shop and gave it to me on the ferry while I raised hell about not getting a souvenir. I was a brat, and I still have that cannon on my desk as I sit here typing.

So I walked around and I thought about that trip. Thought about my failing marriage. Thought about my family and why we hadn’t taken vacations. Then I went to a bar. Big John’s Tavern (I think). I was drinking Guinness at the time, and while I was drinking my pints in peace the guys shooting pool behind me kept coming up to the bar, treating the bartender like crap, and being loud… something I’m generally not. Frankly, they were interrupting my sulk. I had a good sulk going on, and a good buzz, and I wanted to sit in it for a while. But they weren’t having it.

Every time they came up to the bar they said, “Put it on the Citadel”… so I deduced it was all one big group of Citadel cadets out on the weekend, drinking a lot, playing pool, and treating the barkeep like shit. I drank my fill, and as I was settling up to leave I said to the bartender, “put it on the Citadel”… mostly as a side-eyed joke, but also as a nod that I had appreciated his service. Well, he looked at me, took ahold of the hint, and he indeed put it on the Citadel tab. I tipped heavily, walked out smiling a bit to myself, waved at the loud-fellas, and got the hell outta there before it was noticed I was walking away drunk on their dime.

A quick drive to Folly beach the next morning to apparently snap this pic, turn it around, and drive it on “home”. Home was an attic-room being lent to me at the time by a friend.

I think this shot of a Folly Beach flag is the only photo I made on the entire trip.