Charleston

I'm headed to South Carolina next week for a family tradition: my brother's birthday weekend in Charleston. Typically, this involves lots of seafood at GREAT dive restaurants (I'm not telling you where they are, I don't want them crowded next time I go) and lots of alcohol. It's been going on for almost twenty years, and my brother's in his thirties.

It all started because my father made us a deal as kids - he would take us out to dinner wherever we wanted to go, with whomever we wished to invite, on our birthdays. I grew up in SC, and originally in a smallish town, so choices started out fairly limited. In fact, as young children, our favorite place to go was Duff's, a truly horrible buffet restaurant that we loved for its plethora of desserts. The food was terrible, but if you're 6, you don't care about canned butter beans when you know you have a bank of sugar and chocolate to wade through once you've gotten the requisite peas and carrots out of the way. So early on, the parental deal became, "I will take you out anywhere you want to go...except Duff's." This remained part of the sentence long after Duff's closed forever, just in case.

When I was about 9 we moved to Charleston and the culinary world exploded. Not that my brother and I were able to take advantage of that or even understand it at our tender ages, but at least the choices widened. I think one year my brother wanted to eat oysters, and asked to be taken up the coast to a place at Murrell's Inlet. My Dad's response was, if you want oysters, let me take you to a REAL oyster place.

We ended up at our now regular dive haunt. It's made of cinder blocks. The cinder blocks are covered with graffiti. The workers roast great shovelfuls of oysters on a grate over an open fire at the far end of the room, and when the oysters are sufficiently roasted, they carry the shovelful over to your table and dump them on the newspaper-covered table. You get a bucket to put shells in. You get plastic containers of melted butter. You get a dull knife to pry the oysters open. You get a packet of saltines. Go ahead, eat up.

Over the years, not all of the guests have been as excited as my brother about roasted oysters. Frankly, I'm a little shocked that my sister-in-law ended up part of the family while not liking oysters that much. A testament to true love, I think. But there's something so up front about the place you have to love it. It's dirty and old and plain and all of the energy is focused into getting you some good-tasting oysters. The oysters are great, and that's why you're there, and there's no wasted time. Decor? Who needs it? Shucking oysters is dirty work.

I am suddenly entirely homesick. There are things I don't love about South Carolina, but there are a lot more that I do, and I miss it. I miss the cadences of speech, and the bobs and twists of phrase, and I miss the decoding that comes second-hand to a native. The Midwest is a friendly place, but it's flat, and what you see it what you get. With Southerners, you get layers.

It's hard to explain to people who have only seen the South in Hollywood movies, all Spanish moss and people in rocking chairs on decaying porches with their hound dogs. That is, of course, not the South any more than a lone hog butcher is Chicago or a wisecracking, rugged policeman with a heart of gold is New York. A lot of the South is just like everywhere else nowadays, big box stores and chain restaurants and highways.

Maybe I shouldn't even try to explain it. In the end, it's home.