With the crescent moon and a single star,the clear wisp of a summer Southern breeze. My mind is taken back on a more restful journey, where a decade was the total of a little boy’s lifetime. Palm trees affixed in the bend, the movement of air reminding and inspiring one to move forward. Hot sand between my toes and the sting of salt on sun soaked skin was still the least concern of one who was afforded the ocean’s excitement. From the “Lighthouse,” through the dunes, my friends and I raced to escape the burning sand and be the first to immerse in the other world of cool wetness. We would cone our hands to the shape of binoculars, or maybe a pirate’s spy-glass, hoping in pretend to catch the distant sails of a tall sailing ship once used to break the Yankee blockade on our sweet Southern home.
Then to the forest we would find ourselves, and to the edge of a river “Broad.” There we raised our guns and shot musket balls at the passing Yankee fleet of “ironclads,” safe and secure behind the walls of “tabby forts.” Battlements left by brave men, those who never considered that they would be the playground for their progeny.
Oh, this was a great place to be a boy, where unfenced yards were the path to another unbridled adventure. My furry brown “Shadow” and I, both unleashed into a world just prepared for our appetites. Here a fishing pole and casting net could be the providers of a bountiful feast, or just the vehicle of which an unfettered imagination would spend the day preparing the world for it’s enviable future.
Yes, there were those of a more gentle nature in my playground, and my eyes viewed the dawn of adolescence, as I considered the allurement of blond curls, blue eyes and a bright summer dress that greeted me every Sunday from across the empty street were I lived.
Could there be a more perfect time to be, a more perfect place, where large oaks older than time and covered in Spanish moss restfully cooled me on hot humid days. What more perfect place for the delight of a young boy than the dearest land I know, my “Low Country.” No more amazing world than this sandy wooded land prepared just for pleasant memories from my boyhood home, ancestral resting place. This timeless place covering me in peacefulness to calm me in the more restless decades of life.
-By Father Dabney
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
