Pee Dee Region

Small Towns of the Pee Dee:

Marion, Mullins, Lakeview, Fork, Dillon, Latta, Green Sea and even Loris. There may be more but these are the towns and crossroads we visited during our recent stay at Little Pee Dee State Park in South Carolina.
The state park is a little green gem with the added sparkle of Norton Lake plunked on it’s eastern border. The lake formed by a small dam along the Little Pee Dee. A perfect example of a coastal plain woodland with tall pines, pin oaks, cypress, star maples, dogwoods, and assorted hard woods all draped with Spanish Moss and Kudzu vine. In late spring the forest enchants with fresh green leaves and sunlight dappling about.
The upper branches are full of Scarlet Tanagers, Carolina Blue Birds, Nuthatches of every variety, Pilieated Woodpeckers, and the occasional humming bird. I am fairly certain that I heard a lonely whip-r-will the other day just at dusk, did not know they inhabited this part of the earth, I could be wrong. The heat of the day is punctuated by the barking of four Canadian Geese. We have been told that one Goose lives a solitary life here year round and the other three summer here. Apparently, there is no love lost between the two dominant males. I have witnessed their dances of doom several times. My money is on the home Goose.
Other wild-life of note: Broad Head skinks, I have never seen these before. They seem to be more social than the five-banded skink I am used too. The Broad Heads observe me long enough that I am able to take many photos of their pretty red heads and snake like bodies. Painted Turtles of all sizes sun themselves on the floating lily pad islands abundant in Lake Norman. A few sharp nosed snapping turtles, dubbed locally by one little Latta native as an Alley Gatoo turtle. This same 4 year old, claims the deep throated raspy bark at sunset belongs to the Hawg Frawg. I may have identified a new species of frog, nothing as interesting as the new Hyalinobatrachium dinae or Kermit the frog, but I cannot find it on a google search. Soo, I maybe famous soon, stay tuned. My mom and I sat on a bench at water’s edge and watched a black water snake saunter along the bank in the water. He meandered back an hour later. I cursed my luck at not bringing my camera.
At the recommendation of our park ranger, we went to a lovely place called Webster Manor in Mullins. A home built in 1905, turned boarding house/restaurant in 1947. It closed for a period from the 1970’s to 1986. At which time the current owners reopened as a bed and breakfast and lunch buffet. If you love southern cooking you will find this place a bit of heaven on earth. The highlights include tender turnip greens, cornbread dressing, divine pan gravy, sweet potato souffle, snap beans, and banana pudding.
We also discovered the Tobacco Museum in Mullins. Housed in the old train depot, once a thriving shipping post for cotton, rice and tobacco, traditional South Carolina crops. The depot is a perfect backdrop for the well curated artifacts of tobacco during it’s hey day. Replica plants are displayed at varying stages of growth along with the hazards each stage faced before harvest. Extensive cigarette and cigar commercial packages are on display. I found several items I remembered from my own home. A ceramic camel cigarette dispenser and a loose tobacco canister surrounded by a pipe stand. The curator was an odd little man, who took his job seriously. He is from a long line of tobacco growers and smokers and took pride in telling about each item. A piano from the home of a well-known tobacco farmer pre-civil war is housed in the museum. It boasts several signs to refrain from touching or playing. At one point a member of our tour group’s cell phone began playing Brahm’s. I being the only one standing near the piano received a severe reprimand not to play the piano…there are signs! Funny, because I wouldn’t know the first thing about playing Brahm’s, Heart and Soul maybe, but definitely not Brahm’s! Aside from this he was most knowledgeable.
In Nichols we discoverd the Bubba Redneck Museum. A haphazard collection of redneck stuff. A piano was on display here as well, but I don’t think they really cared if you played it. Mason jars, fishing poles and fancy lures, wooden crates and enamel basins dominated the displays. Lots and lots of hats and wooden Coca Cola crates. No curator, just a self guided opportunity to browse snuff boxes, tin cans and old pocket knives. The center of the museum did house an old screen door opening into an air-conditioned room with bait and tackle of every sort for sale. It also boasted an old Coke ice -chest filled with bottles of Coke for 50 cents. I did not see any Moon Pies, so I was slightly disappointed.
Marion has the Walmart, Food Lion and Piggly Wiggly. Lake View has bagged ice at one gas station for $1.29 per 10lb bag ( we pay 2.50 to 4.00 near the beach). Fork has a stop sign. Nichols has a post office with odd hours. Green Sea has a big football high school, Green Sea Floyds, and lots of horses. Everyone says Latta has the best school system. Loris is home to the Chicken Bog Off Festival in October, we will try to make that. We went once years ago, Little Big Town was the headline band and it was free, if that tells you anything. Chicken Bog will be the subject of another post.
If you are passing through in your RV between the coast of South Carolina and anywhere in Central and Western North Carolina, think about spending a day or two at Little Pee Dee State Park. I think sites 21 and 22 are the best for 35 ft and under rigs. Every site is awesome for a tent. You big motor homes will find some great sites too, I just don’t know the numbers.

Nightlife

Late at night the anxiety creeps into my belly. Restless legs tangle the sheet.  Damp hair clings.  Furtive glances at the glowing green light reveal the same time as last night, a repeat nocturnal performance.
I am not entirely new to this breach in sleep. I have not been on the Sandman’s list periodically since high school. Mid-terms, finals, wedding, birthing, crying babies, money, fights, allergies and every other common sleep demon jar me awake in the wee hours. Type A personality also requires playing out various scenarios in the middle of the night until satisfied that plans A through at least D are firmly in place. “Wonderfully spontaneous,” reads one feed back card after leading a women’s retreat. What a fake I can be!
Sudden sleep arrest and my dance with sheets and pillows begins. I lay there as waves of fear wash over me.  I live in a camper. I have no address.  Does that make me homeless? I roll over, punch the pillow and take a deep breath. My husband is ill. Mental illness lies in wait, threatening and menacing the life we have built.  Will tomorrow be a good day or a bad day? Kicking the sheets off now. Do we have enough in our account for the prescriptions and gas for the truck? Is a  big bottle of wine a week too much?  Mental note to take alcoholic test on internet tomorrow.  Cold sweat brings the sheets back up.  What if I gain ten pounds every year until I die? No fair, I walk a lot, I bike, I swim. I eat too much. The sky light over our bed shows the slightest graying of sky. I rise and make coffee.
Coffee cup in hand, I step outside into the world. It’s so quiet. I smell damp earth and last night’s wood smoke.  Birds take up their chorus in the spreading light.  Squirrels stare  me down.  The warm mug reminds me of the sweet friend who made it. We have been friends since elementary school. Then I think of other friends. I am not alone.
Sneaking back inside for the second cup of my daily allowance, I see that the dogs are awake.  They come outside with me.  Early in the morning we break the leash rules. No one to see us. A quick pee and they sit by me watching the morning roll in.  My mind wanders to grandchildren soon arriving for a camping overnight.  We have recently discovered the beauty of  toasted marshmallows and chocolate in an ice cream cone. Crying over sticky fingers only a memory.The camper door opens and my husband steps out. He is smiling. Last night’s fears join the sticky fingers. Today will be a good day.

*Why does the night makes more out of our fears than the day?

Lessons Learned

My husband and I sold our home to become full-time RV’rs in July of 2014. We are in our fifties, the parents of three grown daughters, grandparents to four girls and one boy. Family camping vacations are some of the best memories we have. My husband’s early medical retirement prompted a lot of soul searching on how we wanted to spend this new phase of our life. We came up with a three year plan to live the camping life, we figured it would take at least that long to visit our list of top ten places to go. Good-bye yard work, broken dish-washer, homeowners association! Hello new life!
October marked the beginning of a six month stationary journey. Getting our “sea-legs” before hitting the open road. We parked our little home on wheels in a beach front campground in South Carolina. The winter home to Canadians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers (lots and lots of New Yorkers), and other Yankees smart enough to escape the cold and snow. April is the bookend to October. We are pulling up stakes, literally, and heading out for some road adventures. But first, a review of the things I have learned thus far…
1. Coffee tables are not a good idea in a space only eleven feet wide. Stubbing my toe elicits the f-word everytime.
2. Avoid food with other people’s pet hair baked in. In other words, do not sign up for every pot-luck the campground hosts. Added benefit: saving money by not feeling compelled to buy sweet Miss Betty’s hand-made sequined tee-shirts on sale at every pot-luck.
3. Cleaning supplies require their own budget line. Purchasing candles, wax melts, bio-degradable soap, and other fresh smelling cleaning supplies really adds up. Two hundred and ninety square feet with two dogs and a husband whose sweat smells like B.K. Whoppers with onions festers really quickly.
4. We are not good at corn-hole. Not familiar with corn-hole? Google it. There are such things as corn-hole tournaments, with t-shirts and everything.
5. People really do run meth-labs in campers. An almost certain meth-lab parked next to us for a little over a week. Strange comings and goings, lots of trash and the crock pot was on all the time. ( I know about the crock pot because they parked so close to us that I could see in one window. The crock pot’s little “on” light glowed orange day and night.)
6. White Boxers scare people. Our white Boxer, Snow, came in handy with #5, I felt safer. I have gotten really good at explaining to people that she is not a pit-bull, but if she was, I would love her just the same.
7. Coffee tastes better when camping. No explanation needed.
8. My husband is friendly, I am not. I always thought it was the other way around. This adventure has taught me otherwise. I am annoyed when people stop by to chat and I am trying to read or write…or drink wine. My husband initiates waving at passersby. If they should stop, he will further encourage them by asking, “where do you hail from?”
9. I do not like the phrase, “hail from.”
10. Negative is funnier than positive. See above list. Turning negatives into something you can laugh about really helps in almost all situtions. Positive things are just… well…positive.
I loved daily walks on the beach; salty air; roaring ocean; campfires; being outdoors, etc. But these things I already knew from vacation camping. I am an experienced vacation camper. Living full time in an RV with no other home is like, without a net, free-falling, no helmet , X-games extreme sport. I have a lot to learn. Looking forward to the journey.

The Magic of Plums

When I was a girl I worshiped my grandmother. Lillian Lucille Adams Lee, Mama Ceile to me. Salon styled hair with a curl on her forehead just so. Skin so Soft and Roses Roses (Avon’s top seller in the 60’s) wafted in the air about her. Sleeping-in at her house was allowed and I often woke to the whispered cussing peppering her stories on the phone with her sister Jewel. The first sign of my stirring removed the pepper and added more sugar to her conversation. Shortly, the call would end.

Long summer afternoons spent at her house in Georgia were some of the best days of my girlhood. There was a lot to explore and if I got hungry there were the plums. My memory tells me that her plum trees gave fruit from April until September, books tell me that is not possible. Magic is the answer. Tight skin holding back sweet sticky juice just waiting to explode with that first bite. Rivulets of plum juice stained my arm from wrist to elbow. Even now a good plum will transport me back to a sun-warmed picnic table piled with the little round beauties. Magic.

I am now the grandmother. I like to believe I am styled in the fashion of Mama Ciele. I do have her ample and soft lap. I am known to whisper swear words within earshot of my little grands. I do not smell like her, I waft my own scent of lavender and patchouli, my generation’s signature smell. I had plum trees for a short while.

It took three years and 6 plum trees to finally yield a small crop of plums. Three trees died, three thrived. For one glorious week my granddaughters came to stay with me. I let them sleep in. They explored and gorged on sweet plums. “Dress-up” was the favorite game. I tucked them into bed each night and then stood listening to their little giggles and demands of more pillow room. That week added to the magic memories floating before me each time I indulge in the fruit of my childhood.

I had to say good-bye to the plum trees and the vision I had of grandchildren coming home to Ma Kay’s house (Ma Kay, that’s me). I have traded that life for one on the road in an RV. Traveling in an RV was a guilty dream I have had for years. The freedom from daily family obligations, the freedom to reinvent myself if I wanted too. The freedom. I never thought to realize this dream. The ties that bind are too strong and I love my ever-growing family fiercely. Fate intervened with a solution. An excuse for hitting the road. An excuse to help with the guilt of telling my mom we would be leaving the house next door to her. An excuse that came at great cost to my husband’s health.

So here I sit, reminiscing the past and looking forward to this summer. In less than a week we will be camping near three of my grandchildren. They will be spending their spring break with us in our RV. We will explore, have new adventures and who knows maybe find a plum tree. Magic!

Letting Go

Purging of things, people, food, and words is hard for me. I am a keeper. I have letters from the 1960’s and 70’s. My favorite pair of jeans from high school resides in a box alongside other mementos from the longest four years of my life. I still cherish people that only reach out at Christmas time. I have been known to search for long lost friends on facebook late at night while drinking a glass of wine. My refrigerator would make the witch-hunting, date-checkers orgasm. Books are the most popular thing in my house. Long story short is always my goal, I often fail. Even now I ramble as I get to the point. Downsizing from a 1600 square foot home with a garage and an attic to a not quite 300 square foot travel trailer is the reason for my current conflict. I, borderline hoarder, am embarking on a three year voyage as a full-time RV’er. I must lesson the load.

I am reminded of my luck at being the mother to three beautiful daughters as I begin sorting my things. Many of my collections of stuff find their origins in those three girls. Special baby clothes, pottery art projects, school papers, baseball cards, stuffed animals, have all found their way into my attic. Awesome! These items will find their way back to their rightful owners. Now that I think of it, they may be grateful to not have to wait for my demise in order to be beneficiary of some of my treasures. I am so blessed to have three girls with homes of their own to assist me with this downsizing. Phew! I have escaped the true ridding of things by the “things relocation program.”

The amount of square footage should not require the removal of people in my life as I only live with my husband and he gets to stay. Alas, homeostasis in the current friend category can not be totally achieved. We have two friends who are occasional house guests. They stay with us when they want to stay near the beach on the cheap. We may have to loose them though. They do not seem to know that toilets flush. Okayish in a home with bathrooms removed from living areas, not okay in a tiny camper. I am happy to have friends that still want to stay with us and have good hygiene and manners.

Fortunately, our new refrigerator will be self limiting. It is only 8.2 cubic feet. As I am not fond of jars of old olives falling out of the refrigerator onto my toe upon opening the door, I think I can keep up with this task. (wow, what a sentence!) Which leads me to my final problem.

Words! I own more than 1000 books. Not bragging, I love books. Many people will no doubt sympathize with my plight. I have managed to sort the books into four piles: donate, keep, keep at daughter’s houses, keep at mom’s house. Again, those daughters sure do come in handy. Not only can I pass on some of my favorite collected authors, I can also visit them and borrow them anytime I want. Plus, my overlarge bookcases will look fantastic in their living rooms! My love of books was encouraged by my mom at an early age. It is to her that I owe my love affair with historical fiction and modern poetry. When I remind her of this, how can she refuse the storage of a few books at her house, right? (more on my collection of journals in another post.)

I think I may have this problem licked. My husband says our new home can bear a load of about 4000 lbs. I must go now to make sure he knows what he is talking about and then figure how to go about weighing my remaining stuff.