The Etiquette of a Lowcountry Oyster Roast

These are social events: wedding parties, family reunions, church dinners, fisherman’s feasts, yacht club annual occasions, or communal Rotary get-togethers. Everyone in the Lowcountry hosts oyster roasts, some with beer-marinated oysters, some with croaker sacks (wet burlap sacks) to lay on top of the steaming oysters. Most oyster roasts have Frogmore stew or Lowcountry boil on the side, or some sort of Cajun beans and rice and seafood, or barbecue, or almost certainly cole slaw, or hotdogs with chili. Probably all oyster roasts have a beer keg or beer van, wine in large plastic containers, and coffee and colas.

Conscientious oyster cooks use power washers to get the pluff mud off the local oysters. The oysters are often steamed in steam-tables that look like stainless barrels with moving parts; but sometimes they are just thrown on barbecue grates and the wet-down burlap sacks thrown on top.

The season for oyster roasts extends through the months with R in them, from September through March (though March gets a little hot to feel comfortable next to a steam table). High season includes December and January, and a very sociable family might hit three oyster roasts in two weeks, with any luck.

Around these parts, the tastiest little oysters are rumored to be those from Bluffton, especially those from the May River and the Bluffton Oyster Company (757-4010) owned by the Reeves family. The "oldest continuous oyster-shucking facility in South Carolina" is at 63 Wharf St. in Old Bluffton, and the secret of the tastiness of the Bluffton oyster is supposed to be in the precise degree of salinity of the May River water

that washes in and out of the beds. An oyster boat is still called a "bateau," but bateaux are now in competition with some models of the Carolina Skiff, commercial wide-bottomed boats with a shallow draft. Most of the bateaux that I saw lying around were wrecks.

The skipjack, a Chesapeake Bay oyster boat with two graceful sails, sadly stopped production (they were built by individual shipwrights) in the 1940s. A local craftsman in the Beaufort area whose work is of museum quality, Tom Boozer, will make an authentic miniature skipjack or a South Carolina-variety oyster boat for you for about $3500, putting in as much as 400 hours of labor to put the sticks together artfully.

At a large oyster roast, the oysters are dumped on broad tables, preferably tables set out under a nineteenth-century oyster factory’s roof, out of the wind on very cold nights. At the Rotary feast, you can see most of the old families from the region under one roof.

The Yankees, newcomers, and come-yahs distinguish themselves by doing all the wrong things. I have heard tales of people from barbarous and unknown regions in the U.S., like Indiana, paying the help to dump a larger share of oysters at their table. Those barbarians do not understand that a Lowcountry oyster roast is a laid-back social event where you meet people, where you don’t get too drunk, and where you don’t hog the oysters. And of course some people do not read the large new signs about not mingling paper trash or aluminum cans in the trash barrels where you dump the shells to be recycled. Nowadays the used oyster shells do not go into tabby walls or crushed shell driveways as much as they go back into oyster beds, to help seed the ocean with lime chunks for new oysters to build their shells with.

The Lowcountry’s revenge on the Yankees is not to tell them that an oyster shell has a sharper edge than most surgical steel carving knives. A lot of Yankee blood is shed at oyster roasts, while the Confederate locals all wear gloves (now orange, and washable) just meant to blunt an oyster’s sharpness. Some local folks actually wear mail fists, like medieval knights. And a Yankee might not know what an oyster knife looks like, whereas all the locals will bring their favorite old oyster knife with them, some of the knives worn down to a sliver by constant prying through the muscle attaching the top and bottom shell of oysters.

The etiquette for large-scale oyster roasts includes knowing when to leave for home. That will probably be when the Cajun, bluegrass, honkytonk band quits its second set, or right past the time when the well-dressed man with the giggling blonde wife says to you, a man, laughing, "Would you like to dance? I am considering giving up heterosexuality." You should park not too far from the entrance to the parking lot; you should not drink too many beers or glasses of wine if you are the designated driver; and you need to watch your feet, after eating so much you can no longer see your feet, when you step down from concrete into sand at the entrance of the oyster factory shed.

One note on croaker sacks, a.k.a. crocker sacks, gunny sacks, or burlap sacks: the name in Jamaica is "crocus sacks," and the sacks seem to have been used to collect the heads of crocuses–the flowers; Americans corrupted the spelling by not knowing how to match "crocus" with "sack."

Puppy Love

I hate it when people write about small, fuzzy, loveable things. It is almost as bad as "Have a nice day" said insincerely, or happy faces pasted on the wall (Mr. Yuck was better, some days).



I haven’t really had a love affair with most of the dogs that have owned me and to whom I have been enslaved to feed, walk, train, and clean up after. But I cannot yet say who was the dog love of my life–Bryan the noble and smart Irish setter; Danny the hypo-alergenic and extremely smart bichon frisé; or Byron (kin to the breed of Keats, Cavalier King Charles). Bryan, Danny, and Byron have all been super dogs to me, dogs I might have gone out drinking with, had I been much of a drinking man, and dogs I certainly have told my troubles to, as one should, with a dog one loves. We do need these animals who live with us. Two of my super dogs are still alive, and one is a nine-month-old puppy already worthy of deep and abiding love.



Danny lives with my ex-wife exclusively, by cruel decree, but he still nuzzles me and sticks his nose in my neck on those rare occasions when I see him. He even makes an exception in my case and gives me a little lick when he greets me. We are still that close.

Bryan the Irish setter of the late Sixties and early Seventies was grandson of a champion at Westminster, but, like some over-bred dogs, he was an epileptic, and I would sometimes find him stiff on the ground or on the floor of a room, for about ten minutes, then he would wake up, looking embarrassed. When I was a runner in training for marathons, he ran circles around me, even on a ten-mile run, and he was a champion groundhog hunter on my farm, piling the corpses with personal pride in the front yard. But he was also sweet and sympathetic, and a dog whose noble head you could put your head together with. At least one girl I dated during that single time visited Bryan after we broke up.



Danny came home in the early Nineties a tiny white cotton ball with sharp teeth, nine years ago, and he worried hell out of an old golden retriever, on her last legs, but he brought out the mother in her, and he brought out the mother in the rest of the family as well. On chilly nights, he slept under the covers with me, his little body curled into mine for warmth and love.




Should I say that these were proper, manly relationships, and that these dogs I am talking about are not gay dogs, even though two of the three were, sad to say for them, altered. The nice thing about dogs and men is that a man can love a dog unashamedly, despite its sex, and the dog and the man can bond without fear of labels.

Bonding Rituals



I wouldn’t get in the face of most Doberman Pinschers or Pit Bulls, and I have heard of mean and bitchy Bichons, but going nose to nose with a dog is one part of bonding. Some people don’t mind being kissed on the mouth by dogs, but you don’t know where that tongue’s been. It is a bizarre enough sensation to wake up with a puppy licking one of your ears.



I like hugging the dogs I love, I know they like their ears scratched, and some of them like you to stick the tip of a finger between their toes, an area that can be deliciously ticklish on some cats and some dogs. Some dogs, at least, seem to laugh. Some of them dearly love their bellies rubbed, but watch that practice with puppies or oversexed males.



A friend who is a dog-lover told me last week, "You’ve really bonded with that puppy," which means that she noticed that Byron plays with me, cuddles me, and even sometimes obeys me. Puppy love is sometimes tough love, when the command is "Stop that!" or "You come back here!" Especially smart dogs even seem to realize that "You come back here" means "Don’t run out into the road or you will get killed and I won’t be able to stand that." So, bonding has something to do with obedience, and a great deal to do with sleeping under your master’s face, in his arms, sometimes nose to nose.



The Criteria for Super Dogs


Sympathy, a sense of humor, and intelligence. Probably mutts from the pound are more apt to have all those qualities than pure-bred dogs, and mutts are apt to have more personality, which should be the fourth quality. Sense of humor is hard to prove, because some people don’t have a sense of humor, but some dogs and a very few cats do have a detectable sense of humor, and those animals enjoy life more than dull, overly serious pets who might mirror the dour aspect of their owners. I don’t think I am talking about the cat who plays with the mouse before killing it, or even the playful dog who is learning how to bite better. It was Thomas Hobbes who said that laughter is sudden glory. There may always be a sinister side to laughter and joy, but every now and then you run into a dog or cat who can really have a good time, and even laugh at himself or herself. That kind of animal may be a party animal, or just enjoy a joke with a human friend. Some cats are sadistic friends who will let you pet them twice, then bite and claw you on the third pet; that again is the murderous kind of playing.

Our pets, even in as highly-evolved a society as Beaufort’s, are emotionally necessary to our human well-being. Of course we are enslaved to them, and there is unnatural co-dependency between us, but we are good to them, usually, and they are good for us.

Frank

He was a very quiet institution in Beaufort, the Rector of St. Helena’s Episcopal Church, a deeply spiritual man–not obviously a civic leader, but a spiritual leader nevertheless and the consummate administrator of his church. He is the main reason I came back to the Episcopal Church and the reason I usually go to church (well, it is across the street, as well) on Sundays. He is a sweet man, a decent man, and a tolerant man, despite having conservative and sometimes unpopular views within the church. He is aware of how much humankind suffers from sin of a very private kind: privacy is very important to him, and he understands the sins of others through the sins he knows. He jokingly expresses anger at his lovely, tolerant wife and then makes fun of himself in sermons for expressing such anger. His sermons are a delight, often very funny, though he never forgets Original Sin or the miracle of the Resurrection.

He has been divorced, in the distant past, and he remembers that pain. He is not afraid of admitting that he was an atheist before receiving the call to come into the church. He twits the notorious worldliness of the group often called "Whiskeypalians" in the South, while he embodies its sophistication about clothes, golf, tailgating at Clemson football games, or making the right choice among bourbons or wines. He has been known to say "I like your stuff" to a well-dressed parishioner. He is a spiritual man without a trace of self-righteousness, even in the midst of firmly held beliefs that are not always popular. He does not like to hear Jesus, or even St. Paul, accused of self-righteousness. If either can be rightfully accused, Frank’s religion might be full of holes. Without a touch of self-consciousness, Frank signs his letters with a phrase from the General Confession, "Miserable Offender."


Frank seems so hard on himself that he can forgive other sinners, like me, with apparent ease. He leads a good, thoughtful, tolerant life, even though his church and his diocese have been accused of intolerant perspectives toward gay bishops or gay marriages, among other hot topics in recent church history. I wrote one column mischievously titled "A Queer Eye for a Straight Bishop," but then I squelched it for publication, out of respect for Frank. I am sure he would read it with tolerance and see the humor in the situation.

My favorite photograph of Frank, one I wish I had taken, is of him bopping. The picture is in the social events section of images from the St. Helena’s directory, and the occasion was a dance sponsored by the church. Frank is a runner (he runs at ungodly, godly hours such as 4am), and he is a graceful man, capable of winning an egg-in-a-spoon race for the sake of charity. In the picture he is bopping at a jaunty angle, with the complete assurance that his dancing is, well, cool. You can tell why the ladies have always loved Frank and why he kisses them with godly innocence as they pass through the reception line on Sunday.

When I heard that Frank was retiring in order to take a deanship in a large church in Birmingham–from Frank’s mouth at the eight o’clock service–my eyes filled with uncontrolled tears. The woman sitting next to me must have thought I was a sentimental idiot. Selfishly, I was already missing this man who had been a living link to my mentor, the dear Rev. Churchill Gibson, who had confirmed me in Richmond, Virginia, and had tutored Frank at Virginia Seminary. Both men had been my examples of how and why a Christian should live his life, from day to day, in sickness and in health, in sympathy and in anger, with love and with tolerance.

I was thinking last night, while walking meditatively at bedtime, that I would have followed Frank into battle willingly, if he were my commanding officer, but then I thought of how ridiculous an idea that might be, except in an age of onward Christian soldiers.

Frank goes to be Dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, a position of great fanfare and esteem, and the church has, I am told, 3400 parishioners, and a huge administrative staff to administer. Frank moves up in authority, and he would not go if he did not believe that the large responsibility is part of his calling.

When I last saw Frank, after the 6pm service on the day he announced his departure, he was talking freely to the few informal parishioners who attend that service with the guitars and the singing of spirituals: he was there among some of the heaviest previous sinners–those who took the liberties of the Sixties seriously–and he said to one of them, "Someone asked if I was happy, this morning. Of course I am not happy, with leaving." He was dabbing his eyes as he said it. I shook his hand, twice in succession I think, and I said I would be seeing him privately, I hoped, before he went his separate way to Alabama. It was comforting somehow that he was crying the way I had cried that morning.

Growing prize leeks and potatoes as a solution to the world's problems

"Think globally, act locally." "Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem." "Don’t let the %#@%&%#@ get you down; don’t get hassled to a frazzle."

I really have considered living by all those important sayings and song lyrics of the late Sixties, but I also believe in "Forgive them that hate you," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

I don’t believe in "the Golden Rule: ‘Gold rules,’" or "Life isn’t fair," or "Greed is good," or "Never give a sucker an even break."

Now, though, is the time to act locally, because we can grow the best-tasting tomatoes known to humankind, Rutgers; we can bake the best bread in the country using natural and healthful ingredients, as the French and Germans and Norwegians do; and we can encourage the industry that made a number of the prominent families in Beaufort prominent: truck farming.
I was just in Northumbria, northernmost England, a few weeks ago, and, in the little hamlet where I stayed, [name withheld because I don’t want any other tourists there], there was an active contest to grow the biggest and best potato and the biggest and best leek. Hell, the contestants had little water tubes leading down to the roots of each leek, and they all dug around in river soil deposited thousands of years ago to find the greatest fertility for the beds of leeks or potatoes. Towns sponsored the "Best leek [or potato] grown in five-gallon buckets using your soil" contest, and posters were up at post offices and tea rooms in larger towns. There was pride in those home-grown leeks and potatoes.

Prize leeks protected by corrugated steel

Widows living in seventeenth-century Northumbrian slate-roofed houses all were growing vegetables in the side or rear yards (the front is reserved for an abundance of flowers). You could see the pride in the straightness of the rows and the healthiness of the leeks or lettuce or beets.

I kept thinking, "We should be doing that in Beaufort." It would be one way to win the war over using oil to bring us shrimp from Patagonia or coffee from Colombia. We may not be able to grow coffee in Beaufort, but we can grow shrimp. And we can certainly grow tomatoes, strawberries, watermelons, squash, and collards.

The front garden of a Northumbrian cottage

We don’t have to let the @#$%^*&%$# get us down: we can ride a bicycle to the farmers’ market and buy local chantarelle mushrooms, local gumbo, or local watermelons. We could even put the produce in a back-pack to save a plastic or a paper bag. We can save our cars for really important or urgent transportation, and, when we use them, we can do it as part of a carpool. There is no good reason to keep driving our SUVs off the sides of the cliff of the world economy like lemmings or crazy competitive sheep. And a study has appeared in the last few weeks that proves that aggressive driving, petal to the metal, is the principal culprit in our waste of gasoline. It is suicidal in more ways than one to speed by someone in a large bully of a vehicle. Practice the real Golden Rule instead.

In an op/ed piece in the New York Times August 5, Bob Herbert wrote that efficiency and conservation are obvious answers to our current explosion in energy cost. And, of course, there are the everyday good energy deeds that would help make a world of difference: car-pooling; taking public transportation when possible; using more efficient lighting; dropping the thermostat a couple of degrees; buying more efficient appliances; unplugging appliances that aren’t in use, and so on.

In addition to living at 77 degrees in the air-conditioning, as they are now doing at the U.N. building, we can do all that Bob Herbert suggests and more. We can compost our waste vegetable matter, fruit peelings and coffee grounds, in the back yard and use the decayed compost around fruit trees. If we have to have irrigation to keep our grass green, at least we can use part of that water to make vegetables and herbs grow. We can reuse plastic bottles by putting tap water in them and pretending that the water is from Perrier or Evian. Denmark has done most of this, and Denmark is now energy-independent, as Thomas Friedman describes in the Times.

In addition to bicycling and car-pooling, we can learn to walk again, at a pace that makes it ever so easy to talk to neighbors and make strangers into friends. Our dogs would appreciate that, and, if they do poop, we can, slightly yuckily, save the remains to bury next to a rose bush.

Am I some kind of a nut? Not according to the people of rural Northumbria, who raise their own chickens and grow their own vegetables and herbs, preserving one of the most beautiful regions known to civilized humans. They seem to get along with their neighbors; they provide work for each other to make a living with (I bought a hand-made shepherd’s crook for £45, and I met Angus, who made the stick and then used my money to buy dinner and a lager or two); and, because they are usefully occupied with productive activities like gardening, they seem not to waste much time with hatred or anger at the follies of the human race. At the bed and breakfast where I stayed, the innkeeper, Gareth, had installed solar water-heating panels about ten years ago! And the most competitive sport in rural Northumbria? Growing prize leeks and prize potatoes.

What is Tacky?

A really tacky thing from Italy

The most feared word in the South is the one that hurts so much if it is applied to you, something you wear, something you do, something you own. The scene would be perhaps a hunt club ball, with all the men in tuxedos and all the women in full-length gowns. One of the men from a semi-distinguished family decides to be flamboyant only in that he wears a ruffled shirt with his black bow tie, his real onyx studs and cufflinks, his nothing-but-cotton low-gloss black cummerbund, his black and polished wing-tipped shoes. He should not have worn that shirt. Someone comes up to him, someone from an older family with a fancier name, and says, loudly enough to be heard by those around them, "Fred, that just isn’t done." The women off to one side start chattering, and the fearful word comes up, tacky.

God help Fred. He must slink off to the corner of the ball or go home and change his shirt, right now. His wife is ashamed, blushing darker than her rouge or her lipstick. They will never live it down. In an earlier time, Fred would have had to challenge the distinguished gentleman to a duel the next morning, to save what was left of his honor. And all this was caused by his tackiness.
That was the law of the old South, and it is still around, say, in the wine selection at an exclusive local country club. You wouldn’t own a pink Lexus, would you, if you were from old money? Your swimming pool wouldn’t have a plastic liner, but a Gunite one, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have a new yard ornament as compared with an ancient fountain, would you? --especially not a gnome with a funny hat. Your shutters (you do have shutters, don’t you?) have to be Charleston black-green. Your car should have leather seats, even if it is a Honda. You can eat rare tuna, but not Spam, certainly. And the family four-poster bed is less tacky than a king-size.

There is a variant on tackiness, and that is redneckedness. I like the sound of that made-up word which should be pronounced "rednekkid-ness," I have to admit, but I have heard "redneck" used as an adjective, in public, as in "Why, honey, that’s so redneck!" I think it was tacky to say that, but redneckedness, the state of being a redneck, is certainly perceived as being worse than being tacky. If you want the ultimate in irony, the very person who thinks rednecks (whatever they are) are awful might just be trying to save themselves from tackiness or separate themselves from rednecks. I sort-of resent the label redneck, because I have owned a farm, driven a tractor, and taken in the hay, and I have known a lot of gentlemen farmers and lady farm wives, basically and fundamentally decent and polite, hospitable people who worked hard for a living. Certainly they weren’t leering mountain men or Daisy Mae farm wives or Appalachian ignoramuses who had gun racks in their pickups and shot hippies on sight. But the backs of their necks might have been red from constant exposure to the sun. I don’t use "redneck" any more than I would the n–word, or any other racial or ethnic filthy and hurtful prejudicial tag, but that’s just me: "redneck" is a colorful word, and many local people, black and white, use it colorfully.

But what of the social distinctions made by the people who say "draperies" but would never say "drapes"? They think saying "drapes" is tacky, like saying "divan" (pronounced "dye-van") instead of "sofa," but is making those sorts of distinctions all bad? In Virginia, I was taught that saying "pee-can" was incorrect and of the lower classes; here in South Carolina, though, you had better not say "p-cahn." It may be bad to discriminate against fat people just for being overweight, which they may not be able to help because of glands or unhappy obsessive behavior, but what about letting fat people know that their being fat will kill them, or letting smokers know that smoking will do the same thing, quicker, to themselves and to those loved ones breathing secondhand smoke? These are all touchy issues, like purchasing hair-straighteners and skin-whiteners, painting your face according to Max Factor, using depilatories, having boob-restorations, buying wigs and toupees and hair-dye, having tummy-tucks and face-lifts performed (look at poor Michael Jackson, having to lie about that to Barbara Walters). Which of these things do we do or not do, for fear of being called tacky?

Really tacky thing from Italy, up close:

The Beaufort Marine Institute

"Marine" in the title does not refer to the U.S. Marines, nor to a place where boats are worked on. Most people driving up U.S. 17 past Lobeco see the sign on the right and probably have no idea what it might refer to. But the Beaufort Marine Institute has helped mend the lives of hundreds of "troubled" boys who might otherwise have continued to go wrong. The BMI is indeed an institute, in the old sense of a place where students are taught proper conduct, and it does have a connection with the sea.

The physical plant is not unlike a Boy Scout camp–intentionally Spartan, utilitarian, without frills. Signs along the vehicle path in the grounds of the BMI name such virtues as "Loyalty," "Family," "Honesty," "Integrity,"
"Diversity," "Leadership," "Enthusiasm," "Dedication," "Creativity," "Safety." All those virtues are taken seriously here. An air of military discipline and orderliness energizes the whole place. Here are dormitories, there is the administration building; there is the donated swimming pool to teach the kids how to avoid scary situations at sea, there is the mess-hall; and there are the classroom buildings with small libraries and banks of donated computers.

In between the buildings are sandy soil and tall pines. We are on an island, a sea island accessed by a causeway, not far from deep water; but we are also in the boondocks, miles from any town’s temptations, down a dirt road. The kids who come here, boys between the ages of 14 and 17, have all been in trouble more than once. They grow to like the quiet seclusion.

Within the last fiscal year, 2005-2006, the BMI had an amazing 100% completion rate, which means that all of the students who graduated in 2006 have remained for their whole term. Also, only about 28% of recent graduates (they graduate in about five months, and return to their homes) are repeat offenders. The BMI is a model for other recovery programs around the state. BMI represents a desirable place, not a Dickensian group home, and the atmosphere there is more like a family than of an institution.

The young men come from Charleston as well as Walterboro, and from Columbia as well as from Yemasee: they may be street smart or farm wise. They may have arrived tough and lacking in respect for father, mother, or any older member of society. They may have come out of a drug-dealing gang that offered them an appealing home on the street as compared with a home without a father, or a home with alcoholism or crime ever-present. Some have sold marijuana or cocaine in various forms; some have been led into fights which the law calls assaults. All have probation officers who have provided their names and files to the BMI for possible admission.

When I asked one of the boys what his offense was, Dariell’s voice and face dropped as he answered me, "Yes sir, I was busted for possession AND selling marijuana." He was obviously ashamed and embarrassed. The attitude of the boys towards their crimes and misdemeanors seems to be one of genuine contrition and confession, not one of hardened pride in criminal achievement.

The name Beaufort Marine Institute might also be a little misleading because the local chapter, founded in the 1980s, is now part of the Associated Marine Institutes, based in Tampa, Florida. The AMI originated in Boca Raton under the auspices of Florida Atlantic University’s Florida Ocean Sciences Program, and it took shape with the guidance of a benevolent judge trying in 1968 to find something useful and educational for troubled kids to do (to take them to sea, among other things, and show them the necessarily-disciplined life of a sailor under command): thus the "Marine."

The BMI aims to be a successful home for wayward boys, taking kids with budding criminal careers and setting a strict rule over them, trying to help with what is called the unified approach–concentrating on their education; channeling their teen energy into sports, camping, and meaningful labor; and taking them out to sea after they have learned swimming, diving, and other maritime skills.

Of course rules are necessary, more than in a Boy Scout camp. Students get in line and march to breakfast or the work-place; they announce when they are leaving a building; they answer adults always with "Yes, sir," or "Yes, ma’am." They introduce themselves politely to strangers.

What I have observed while becoming a Board member is that at the BMI "behavior modification" is a positive thing. The institution builds mutual respect for adults and for the other boys. The boys learn self-discipline, they begin to practice politeness and mutual respect as a way of life, they accept military or marine models of rank and rewards, and they come to understand that hard and gratifying work is in itself the better alternative than a life of petty crime. They certainly leave believing in the value of education. When I have asked a group of four kids whether they want to go to college, they all said "Yes sir," without hesitation.

BMI is very much about role-models, and the teachers and administrators there try to be good models. The 32-member staff of the BMI represent kindly father-figures or mother-figures, administers of compassion rather than just keepers of rule-books. They may offer the first evidence of loving kindness a tough boy has ever experienced.

One of the best models, judging by the boys’ enthusiasm for his teaching, is Larry Peck, a retired biochemical engineer, a grandfatherly type who knows everything about boats and seamanship, takes them out and gives lessons in marine life, the way a grandfather should. The kids admire him, and he has affection for them. Together, they re-build marine engines and paint donated boats so that they can be used or sold to help raise money for BMI. The boys are learning useful, marketable skills, and they love to learn from Larry. "I have one kid who wants to study underwater welding," Larry told me, "and that pays well, even if it is dangerous." As I watched, Larry showed several of the kids how to hold and cast a shrimp net from the campus dock, and we even brought up a few shrimp. "The kids love him," Amy Nevells, Director of the BMI, tells me. Meanwhile, the kids working for her or for Larry earn "recognition points" for such virtues as leadership, good attitude, respect, appearance, and participation, and those points help them rise in the ranks. By the time they leave, very few of the boys should be called "troubled" any longer.

The boats and engines Larry and the kids paint and restore to working order have all been donated by local individuals or businesses. Of course the Beaufort Marine Institute takes cash donations as well (call 843-846-2128), and the BMI Board of Trustees sponsors a very popular croquet tournament at Bray’s Island every spring, which this year raised more than $30,000 for operating expenses. There is no greater asset to the Beaufort community than the Beaufort Marine Institute.

Graduation at BMI in 2008: Leviticus and his mom, who forgave him

No-see-ums

"I am faint: my gashes cry for help."

So says the bloody Sergeant in Macbeth. When the no-see-ums were out, we members of the cast knew what the bloody Sergeant was talking about. The chainsaw jaws of those tiny diptera cut into our unprotected scalp and hands. Tiny gashes cried out for help. After a bombardment of what are sometimes called sand flies, gnats, or midges–most heavily at dusk but at other times during the day or the night as well–the backs of our hands were red with slapping and decorated with little dots of blood, our ears itched like crazy, and our scalps were on fire.

No real-estate agent tells you about the no-see-ums unless you ask a pointed question. No Chamber of Commerce pamphlet tells you not to go near the marshes when the gnats are out. Quietly, the natives of this area say no-see-ums are placed here by God to keep the Yankees out.

How can you tell you are becoming a native? Because if you are native, they don’t bother you as much. They even seem to go to tourists first. They are like alligators or copperheads or Marine fly-overs: you just learn to live with them. The "Beaufort salute" is a swipe with your hand in front of your face, to keep them out of your eyes.

The one-two punch of tiny mosquitoes and even tinier no-see-ums can leave a tourist dizzy and drained. It is the female of both of those species who is to blame. As Macbeth says, "Blood will have blood." These female flies are blood-hungry. They need it to feed their babies-to-be, and they may get it in a kamikaze raid, knowing that their bite hurts and that many of them will be killed by wildly slapping hands or madly itching fingers. If they could think and laugh, they might chuckle at the spectacle of grown men and women slapping their heads, looking like the little moron who kept hitting himself because it felt so good when he quit.

To defend against them, people spray a fog of Deet in the air and walk into it, as if they were testing perfume and inhaling toxic waste at the same time. Other people, even non-smokers, ask cigarette addicts to blow smoke in their hair, to make no-see-ums cough and get sick. When I sprayed Off directly into my hair, I got the strong impression that the little buggers were slime-skiing between my hair-follicles, enjoying themselves on the slalom course. Either that or they were still biting as they died.

The only chemistry that seems to work against no-see-ums, as far as the intelligentsia of Beaufort can tell, is an expensive skin cream (or lotion or spray) marketed by the Avon lady and local drug stores called Skin-So-Soft (no , I am not an Avon lady). The product started life as a skin-rejuvenator, something like Oil of Olay, but actors on location in some country below the Equator discovered that the product they were applying on their face to keep it forever young was also keeping the bugs off. Something in the product–its viscosity, its deep chemistry, or its cheap perfumy smell–worked to keep the gnats from doing their job.

Here in Beaufort the gnats breed in the marshes, the tidal wetlands. There are so many of them and they breed too fast for us to have any clue how to control them yet, though perhaps we may be able to trap them using an approximation of human scent and a zapper. We may all soon be installing bat-houses on marsh property, since bats seem to love to eat small diptera and mosquitoes. And those scientists who like to alter DNA might be able to shift a gene or two in the no-see-ums so that they develop a taste for alligator blood and leave us humans alone. As they now are, they have evolved until they have become flying motor-mouths, with powerful swept-back wings covered with spots for camouflage. As soon as they land, they dig in until you slap at them, and even then they seem to die happy, having succeeded in their mission to make your life miserable and feed their children at the same time. My scalp itches just thinking about it.

I remember one horrible time when I had to wade through pluff mud to the edge of the swamp grass to collect a floating kayak paddle. I was in shorts and a flimsy shirt, wearing high rubber boots, and the boots stirred up the no-see-ums. I felt like a water buffalo at the edge of the water hole, where all the killer flies hung out. Water buffalos go crazy under such attacks.

You will pay for foggers, for aerosol cans, for creams, for lotions. They all stink and sting. Skin-So-Soft costs about $7 for a little bottle of lotion, but it does spread thinly, and it does seem to work. Perhaps it is a Yankee invention, to help us remain in beautiful Beaufort.