recognize the furniture makers of Charleston above all others. For my mother’s birthday, Gene helped me select a gift that was within my slender budget. When my mother unwrapped the celery glass that, to me, was beyond beautiful, I said with a burst of pride, “It’s an antique, Mom! A real antique.” That celery glass sits in my writing room today, and I cannotpass it without thinking of my pretty mother or the sweet-natured man who came into my life when I needed him the most.
The first mansion that I visited on the Point, Beaufort’s historic district, was the Christenson house, where Gene rented a second-story room with a veranda and a view of the Beaufort River. While driving around the Point, Gene would tell me a story about almost every house we passed. “That house was built in the late 1700s. It’s fine. Very fine. Its wooden paneling is one of the glories of South Carolina. The old woman who lives in the house across the street is just crackers and can’t even tell you her first name. Over there lives a common drunk but his wife covers for him by telling everyone he’s got the flu. Poor man’s had the flu going on thirty years. That house is called the Castle. It’s got the most beautiful staircase in Beaufort.” Passing another house, Gene whispered that the family had migrated to Beaufort as carpetbaggers after the Civil War but had managed to overcome this shameful origin by becoming valuable, first-rate citizens of the town.
It was through Gene Norris that I discovered the great motherlode of story that forms the scaffolding of almost every book I have written. I had never come to a town so overripe with narrative. In the fall of that year, I saw an albino porpoise swimming in a pod in the middle of Harbor River. I learned that the white porpoise was called Carolina Snow by the locals, and that it was a sign of good luck to see her. There were black voodoo doctors who practiced their trade for great profit out on St. Helena Island. A fifteen-foot alligator had taken advantage of a spring tide to swim close to a house on the marsh and had killed a small pony before being shot to death by the man of the house. In Beaufort, there were houses still marked by wounded Union soldiers who had signed their names before facing the fearful amputations and hospitals set up in abandoned mansions. Gene showed me a boardinghouse where E. B. White had visited each year, as did Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley as had General Mark Clark of The Citadel.
On Bay Street, Gene stopped his car in front of the Verdier house and said, “On that veranda, Count Lafayette addressed the citizens of Beaufort in 1825 as he made his triumphal tour of the United States ofAmerica.” Turning on Craven Street, Gene pointed with great reverence to a two-story house and said, “That is my priest’s house, the Reverend Hardy, who is charged with the care of Gene Norris’s immortal soul.”
“Tough job,” I said. “Because you’re going to hell, Mr. Norris. So is Reverend Hardy.”
“Surely you aren’t telling me that you Romans are so arrogant that you think we Anglicans can’t go to heaven!”
“We sure are,” I said. “We’re that arrogant.”
“I never heard such a thing,” Gene said. “You papists repel me sometimes.” At the next house, he paused and said, “This is the Secession House. In this house, a man named William Rhett met with a group called the fire-eaters and planned the secession of the Southern states from the Union. This is sacred territory to a Southern Civil War buff.”
“Are you a Civil War buff, Mr. Norris?”
“Of course I’m a buff,” he replied. “I had two granddaddies fight in the Civil War.”
“Which side did they fight for?”
“My family is South Carolina born and South Carolina bred,” he said.
“So they fought for the losers.”
“Losers? How dare you call my distinguished ancestors losers, scalawag?” Gene thundered.
As his Buick poked along Bay
The first mansion that I visited on the Point, Beaufort’s historic district, was the Christenson house, where Gene rented a second-story room with a veranda and a view of the Beaufort River. While driving around the Point, Gene would tell me a story about almost every house we passed. “That house was built in the late 1700s. It’s fine. Very fine. Its wooden paneling is one of the glories of South Carolina. The old woman who lives in the house across the street is just crackers and can’t even tell you her first name. Over there lives a common drunk but his wife covers for him by telling everyone he’s got the flu. Poor man’s had the flu going on thirty years. That house is called the Castle. It’s got the most beautiful staircase in Beaufort.” Passing another house, Gene whispered that the family had migrated to Beaufort as carpetbaggers after the Civil War but had managed to overcome this shameful origin by becoming valuable, first-rate citizens of the town.
It was through Gene Norris that I discovered the great motherlode of story that forms the scaffolding of almost every book I have written. I had never come to a town so overripe with narrative. In the fall of that year, I saw an albino porpoise swimming in a pod in the middle of Harbor River. I learned that the white porpoise was called Carolina Snow by the locals, and that it was a sign of good luck to see her. There were black voodoo doctors who practiced their trade for great profit out on St. Helena Island. A fifteen-foot alligator had taken advantage of a spring tide to swim close to a house on the marsh and had killed a small pony before being shot to death by the man of the house. In Beaufort, there were houses still marked by wounded Union soldiers who had signed their names before facing the fearful amputations and hospitals set up in abandoned mansions. Gene showed me a boardinghouse where E. B. White had visited each year, as did Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley as had General Mark Clark of The Citadel.
On Bay Street, Gene stopped his car in front of the Verdier house and said, “On that veranda, Count Lafayette addressed the citizens of Beaufort in 1825 as he made his triumphal tour of the United States ofAmerica.” Turning on Craven Street, Gene pointed with great reverence to a two-story house and said, “That is my priest’s house, the Reverend Hardy, who is charged with the care of Gene Norris’s immortal soul.”
“Tough job,” I said. “Because you’re going to hell, Mr. Norris. So is Reverend Hardy.”
“Surely you aren’t telling me that you Romans are so arrogant that you think we Anglicans can’t go to heaven!”
“We sure are,” I said. “We’re that arrogant.”
“I never heard such a thing,” Gene said. “You papists repel me sometimes.” At the next house, he paused and said, “This is the Secession House. In this house, a man named William Rhett met with a group called the fire-eaters and planned the secession of the Southern states from the Union. This is sacred territory to a Southern Civil War buff.”
“Are you a Civil War buff, Mr. Norris?”
“Of course I’m a buff,” he replied. “I had two granddaddies fight in the Civil War.”
“Which side did they fight for?”
“My family is South Carolina born and South Carolina bred,” he said.
“So they fought for the losers.”
“Losers? How dare you call my distinguished ancestors losers, scalawag?” Gene thundered.
As his Buick poked along Bay
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