The Sun Hasn’t Set Over Folly Beach

Folly Beach was my kind of beach: wide and flat. I could walk out into the ocean about a quarter of a mile and still not be up to my chin. The water was the temperature of a gentle, lukewarm shower.

The only thing that confused me about Folly Beach is that, for a California lady, the sun went down backwards--over the land.

It was about 20 years ago and we were in Folly Beach, S. C., in one of those sand-scoured beach houses in the dunes, a house that had the eternal fragrance of banana daiquiris, chili dogs, potato salad and corn chips.

We were there to celebrate Bo’s graduation from the Citadel, the oldest military college in the United States.

The beach house was full of Citadel graduates, laughing girls, my sister Patsy (Bo’s mother) and Patsy’s two daughters, Mandy and Muffy.

The song of the season was “Leaving On a Jet Plane,” and the last day, we all did, all heading in different directions. That was the last time we have all been together since.

That summer weekend of sun and sand and Bo playing “Mr. Bojangles” on a mellow guitar are gone forever. And now, so is Folly Beach. But it will be back after months of agonizing, heartbreaking work. The low country breeds a strong genus but none of them has ever been through anything like Hurricane Hugo.

Bo told me that the aerial photos showed houses standing here and there but when the owners went to see them, their homes were hollow shells, totally gutted by the 135 m.p.h. winds and walls of water.

Patsy lives in Beaufort on the Broad River, right at sea level and inland from the ocean about 10 rows of piney woods.

When the governor of South Carolina gave the order for people in all the barrier islands and the low-lying towns to evacuate, Patsy and Mandy and Mandy’s four children went to Bo’s house, which is about a 2-hour drive away. What’s important is that it’s in Columbia, about 138 miles inland.

They did superbly, mostly because they were together and didn’t have to anguish about someone else. Of course, there were no telephones and no electric power. But Bo, ever steadfast, has a generator. So they had television, radio, a microwave--all those things we are convinced we can’t live without. They got full power back Saturday night.

Charleston really was devastated, according to Bo and Patsy.

Bo told me that the fine gourmet restaurants in Charleston cooked everything in their freezers and gave it to agencies feeding hungry homeless people.

Patsy said, “It sounds like the biggest freight train you have ever heard thundering down on you. Then it becomes deadly still and you know you are in the eye. You hunker down and wait because you know it’s coming through again.

“After Hugo had passed by, it left wild weather. It was 80, hot and humid and then the temperature dropped 30 degrees in about an hour. I saw a television piece on a lady standing on a barrier island in a hole in the sand, She said, ‘I’m in my kitchen.’ Really we had less trouble in Beaufort than in Columbia. When Mandy went back the day afterward, all that was destroyed was a couple of small tree limbs and some Spanish moss.”

Patsy and her family are in great shape and grateful to be able to talk about it.

I talked to Mandy last night and she had been gathering and packing clothes to send to Charleston all day. The television shows us the havoc, but it is not like reaching your hand out to help someone who has nothing left but prayer and hope.