Myrtle of the Beach My grandfather (mom's side) was born on the coast of South Carolina near the North Carolina border. His father was a preacher and when my mom was a child they would drive down to the coast to visit the family and my mom and her sister would have to wear their bathing suits underneath their dresses because Grandpa Preacher didn't like people swimming or exposed flesh or some other imaginary jibba-jabba. They'd wear their dresses all day and then somehow sneak away for some time at the beach.
Mom's aunt owned a little motel nearby. There is/was a small lake/pond in front of the motel and it was occupied by one lazy alligator who liked to come up into the yard and sun himself. They also had a cat. The cat spent its waking hours harassing the alligator whenever he was quietly sunning himself in the yard.
"Don't mess with that alligator", they told the cat. Repeatedly. But, being a cat, it didn't listen and/or didn't understand English.
The alligator put up with the cat's antics for a number of years. Honestly, for way longer than he needed to.
One day the cat didn't come home.
Family Vacation 2011 Comes to a Close I'm typing this while looking out on the ocean. It's our last day here, which is good, because the weather is turning into the cruddy suffocating heat and humidity that this area is famous for. We stay in our compound (as I like to think of it) and only make trips out to get food and/or beer. Six adults and two kids go through a lot of food and beer.
This year we had unusually cool-ish temperatures (for this area) and low humidity and spent much of the time on the porch. The whole family.
Good times.
Highlights - My sassy 4yr old niece (4, right?) pronounced "beach" as "bitch". Or so she led us to believe.
- My name may permanently be changed to "Uncle Funny".
- Mom's aunt gave her some nice looking squash from the garden.
- This same aunt had a rattlesnake (?!?!?!!) in her yard. She called her son and he came over and shot it. Shot a snake. That seems like that would be trickier than you'd think it would be.
- We went to the Lowes grocery store (not related to the hardware store (I don't think)) and while it's a generally lovely food store, it has one of the saddest seafood sections (um, your salmon has changed color) and not-as-sad-but-still-pretty-sad meat departments. It made me depressed to think that people don't have access to fish shops and butcher shops in most of this country.
- In the meat section, they had plastic wrapped beef with a sticker that said, "BUDGET BEEF". I would have taken a photo, but my iFone camera was acting up.
- My nephew would put a box on his head and pretend to be a robot.
Viva the France I'm going to France in a couple of weeks. It will be awesome.
We are staying with our pals Serge & Irene in Brittany where Serge's father lives. Brittany! Land of butter and crepes. That will be awesome. Then I go and spend a week in Champagne drinking wine and then a day or two in Cognac.
Holy crap. Excited.
(ooops. I mentioned that on my last post.)
Update We got home and after a week of fried seafood that I don't think comes from anywhere near the southeast of the United States, I had a serious jonesing for oysters.
Not fried, like Dad likes them. But proper oysters.
