By Mickey Dunaway | Reprinted with Permission by Currents Magazine |June 2023 | Cornelius, NC 

As May turns toward June each year, at least we Mecklenbergeans, if no other part of the state, semi-officially declare the beginning of Summer on Memorial Day each year.  We don’t even wait for June 1^st.  Ski boats, Jet Skis, and Sailboats dot the horizon.  From early morning until after-dark campfires, summer has unofficially begun. To drive across the I-77 bridges, it seems everyone in the county must own a boat.  

Not really.  Boating is far from the only vacation opportunity for people in our part of North Carolina. The choices of short vacation spots seem almost limitless.  So, I won’t try to list them.  However, I do want to talk about my favorite, which sits only three and a half hours south of us. I checked with Google Maps as I wrote this!

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We did the typical things on this first two-day side trip to Charleston.  We walked Meeting Street and admired the Three Sisters‘ facing the harbor.  They would later appear in my novel about the Civil War: Angry Heavens, where Charleston and the area were as much characters as were the protagonists and antagonists in the story.  We took the mule and buggy tour and spent hours in the City Market and at the Battery.

As it was getting toward supper on our first day, we asked the buggy driver about his favorite local place to eat seafood.  I highly recommend this technique—it will likely save you a few dollars and present you with the best food in the city—the food the locals crave.  The buggy driver’s suggestion wasn’t in Charlotte-proper but located on the banks of Shem Creek, in Mt. Pleasant, SC—The Water’s Edge, only 14 miles from Charleston.

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Back sooner to Charleston was only a couple of years later when the School Board in Fort Branch, Indiana, and I agreed to part ways after three years.  There is an old saw about new superintendents and football coaches. Neither has been fired—YET.  That was me and 2005.

My wife, Sandy, and I moved to Charlotte, and I took a job teaching at UNCC in July.  And after settling into the house and my office in the College of Education, we needed a little respite from the recently endured stresses.  We had sold a home in Haubstadt, Indiana, and moved into a rental house in Evansville, Indiana.  Bought a house in University City, and when my contract with the school board expired, we moved out of Evansville and into our new home in Charlotte.  We needed rest.

We decided on a plan that focused on our favorite parts of Charleston.  We left Charlotte at 9:00 A.M., and three and half hours later, we were in the oyster shell parking lot of The Water’s Edge for lunch.  We messed around the other restaurants on Shem Creek (all face the water with boats coming and going) and headed to our favorite places in Charleston: The City Market, The Three Sisters (and other houses on Meeting Street), the Battery from which the cannons exploded on Fort Sumpter to begin the Civil War, and the numerous beautiful high-steepled churches that at one time gave Charleston the moniker of The Holy City as sailors sailed into the city.

Soon it was 5:00 P.M. and nearing suppertime.  We headed to the Water’s Edge for yet a different seafood delight.  Soon after 6:00 P.M., we headed back to Charlotte and were in our beds by 10:00 P.M. We had completed our first one-day Charleston vacation! 

The first of many.

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South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.– Pat Conroy