Globe Corner Blogs

McLeod Farms McBee, SC -- photo by Nicole

Fall is my hands-down favorite time of year, especially here in New England where the trees spontaneously combust with fiery reds and oranges and homemade pumpkin pie is readily available.  The August air goes from wet blanket ( with that unmistakable garbagey odor — one of the many pleasure of big city living) to September cool and crisp.  And though I’m a Low Country girl, born ‘n bred, the humidity does not agree with either my temperament or my hair.  Like the boiled peanuts my dad loves so much, I will never get used to it.  So I am always happy to say good-bye to the season of unflattering tank-tops and awkward tan lines and welcome with open, sun burnt arms the season of bookish cardigans and stylish scarves.

Summertime, though, is also the time of the peach, the most delicious fruit known in this world or the next, capable of producing truly magical culinary feats.  And it is always a minor tragedy, at the end of August, to buy what you know will be your last basket of peaches of the season.  The subject of peaches is one my fellow South Carolinians and I have been raised to take very seriously.  Every good South Carolina native will have her favorite place to buy peaches, whether it is the small-town farmer’s market or the even smaller bed of a pick-up truck on the side of the road.  There are festivals devoted to the peach all over the state and even a gigantic water tower shaped like a peach in upstate Gaffney known as the Peachoid.  I suspect Roald Dahl may have found inspiration for his children’s classic James and the Giant Peach here, although his official biography makes no mention of this. Continue Reading »

Myrtle Beach, SC--photo by Nicole Jones

Most people who grow up in tourist hot spots will tell you that along with insider tips on the best seafood buffet (the Calabash joint on Kings Highway South), comes a general sense of superiority over the outsiders who flock to vacation in your hometown. You roll your eyes at all their pale, northern skin; you laugh at the Canadians from places with strange sounding names like Ontario and Quebec, who come down to sunbathe in February; you immediately look at a car’s license plate if it commits a traffic offense, knowing-even before you visually confirm- that the driver is one of them. A tourist. A rubbernecker. Often a Yankee.

So it is a little strange when I return to Myrtle Beach every year to visit my family. I have been away for about ten years, and I am no longer a local. The license tag on my car is not from South Carolina. I have lost my perennial tan. I own snow boots…

Myrtle Beach is a much bigger place now than when I grew up there, not the sleepy small town I remember. The New York Times recently named it one of their “31 Places to Go This Summer.” The city has torn down the oceanfront Pavillion where my grandparents would go on dates and have replaced it with Hard Rock Park, a rock ‘n roll theme park complete with a Led Zeppelin rollercoaster. Admission is fifty dollars, and it overlooks a strip mall and the highway. “How in the world (pronounced “whirled”) are families goan afford that?” asks my grandmother, a lifelong resident.

A lot has changed, but the actual beach, the original tourist attraction, has not. It is still just as beautiful- the sand still as soft and the ocean still as gray and vast. And that still feels like home.