Chesterfield Inn, Myrtle Beach.

Once again I waited several months since writing here. This time I am going to write about our vacation last week. Lori and I needed to get away. Returning to school in mid-August just wasn't an attractive idea without finding a place to clear our heads and put our feet up. Years ago our friend Tom Cassidy (from Lynchburg College Alumni Programs) had told me of a place he and Laurie visited. His description had always intrigued me but for some place it maybe didn't seem like a place our daughter was going to want to go. I couldn't remember why I thought that but since she wasn't going this time I e-mailed Tom, got the information and in sort of a cryptic statement Tom said to give it a try and see if they could fit us in. I had no idea how wonderfully descriptive that comment was until I started to look at the website and see when there was an availability. I started wondering what was wrong. No rooms available? Yogi Berra's statement describing a crowded restaurant as "...nobody goes there anymore-you can never get a seat..." ran through my head.  As did Tom's encouragement to keep at it and find a time. We got lucky. Two weeks before school started back there was one room available and Lori called and found the information accurate and we were in. Last week of July we would find ourselves at Pawley's Island in an Inn we knew only by Tom's description. But we trusted Tom and Laurie, with a friendship stretching back to 1972 (I actually met Tom in 1971 playing soccer for EC Glass against the LC jv's) so I knew he would send us to the right place and we went on living our lives waiting for a visit to a place we'd never been with the hope for a restful, healing week to get us ready for the demands of teaching for another year.

So Saturday, July 28 we got up, threw our stuff into the car and off we went. Gas prices around here were about $3.28 a gallon, the Honda Insight was fueled up and with expectations of 5-6 hours in the car, we plugged in the iPod and began our trip. One of the things we both enjoy is traveling through little NC and SC towns.
But there was something more we needed. We hoped that this trip could somehow approximate the visits we both had made to Chesterfield Inn at Myrtle Beach. Chesterfield Inn was a destination for our family for almost 50 years. My parents went there on their honeymoon, Lori and I went there on our honeymoon and Hannah grew up in the same environment at the beach that I knew, only she was with her three cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents and for me it was Mom, Dad and the four children. Chesterfield was an old style inn, creaking floors, cabana louvered doors, meals provided for breakfast and the evening meal with food that had to be tried to be believed. You dressed for meals - I remember wearing shorts and a jacket with a little red bowtie (clip-on of course) as a little guy with only Mom, Dad, my sister and me. When Chesterfield transferred to other owners from the Britton's, it lost it's luster and over a very short period of time it became a mere shadow of itself until it finally closed. Since then we've stayed in North Myrtle, the Outer Banks and simply skipped the beach and gone to NYC or gone nowhere. Nothing anywhere seemed to come close to the Chesterfield. The image to the right is my watercolor painting (prints available-contact me) of the back porch of the Chesterfield with all it's classic black rockers, where we waited for meals, relaxed after a day on the beach, made plans to take the kids somewhere, or when we were kids waited for Mom and Dad to decide if we had behaved well enough to take someplace. A most restful place for an adult, a way station on the way to someplace else for a child.

So we had begun to believe we were chasing a pipe dream, a place to replace 50 years of memories and meals. Could it conceivably be found anywhere? 



 

So to answer my own question, and who am I kidding, no one is reading this anyway, the answer is an emphatic yes. Lori and I spent 7 lovely days at Sea View Inn on Pawley's Island, a throwback to a better time if ever there was one.
Maybe the way to approach this is to talk about the similarities we found and go from there into what made this Inn unique and special.

So earlier I mentioned food and what I am referring to is the Chesterfield provided breakfast and the evening meal and they were included in your room cost. At Sea View the inn provided all three meals. The similarities were great. Both Inns provided excellent low-country cooking and one of the very interesting similarities is almost every evening meal featured some sort of pass around platter and a server who went table to table. Sea View provided three meals daily (one more than Chesterfield) and the rhythm of the week revolved around the bells being rung at 8:30 am, 1:15 pm and 6:15 pm. You could dine barefoot but no bathing suits were worn in the dining room unless you had on some sort of coverup so that was very similar to Chesterfield. The food in both establishments was exceptional.

On the back of both inns was a porch. Both porches had a grouping of rocking chairs. The Sea View also included a "joggling board" which is a Pawley's Island innovation, apparently designed to give a courting man and woman a way to naturally be slid together. A seat that takes away society's rules for keeping two young lovers from ever touching. If that's not a throwback I don't know what is. Here is a photo of one - although not the one at Sea View. Sea View's is about twelve feet wide to give you some idea of the scale and is painted Charleston Green which is a green tinted almost black. It is sort of a replacement for a swing. There was also a beautiful hammock at one end of the porch. Here's a shot of the hammock overlooking the beach.
On the beach the Sea view provided chairs, umbrellas, a couple of sea-going kayaks as well as private outdoor showers. At Chesterfield we had to rent umbrellas. We could use our own chairs but renting an umbrella each day could get pricey. So there's an immediate advantage to Sea View. We didn't have to haul anywhere near the usual amount of beach "stuff" so we were able to travel in a smaller car that got phenomenal gas mileage. We took our beach towels, a camera, our books and sunglasses and Lori's spf 50 lotion and we were ready to go. The beach behind the Inn almost has a secluded feel. The stone jetties every 200 yds or so seem to enforce almost a backyard feel. That can be good or bad. In this case it was mostly good. We did have several houses as neighbors and one about two to three doors down had a very out of control testosterone feel to it. From the first day two young teenage boys had jet-skis out in the surf going back
and forth with the attendant constant drone of the machines. One of them constantly broke down so there was a maintenance effort going on the entire time they were there. These riders would zoom around out on the ocean making their racket, but they also zoomed into the shallows trying to jump over the higher waves hitting the shore. They did everything at a high rate of speed and were oblivious to children being in the waves close to shore. Someone finally called the Police, who spoke to the boys and from then on the jet-skis were launched up island. The testosterone showed up now, though with the two zooming back and forth right behind the Sea View instead of down the back several houses. I guess they showed us. One day it rained heavily so lots of people were on the porch reading. That's when our jet-skiers hauled a huge tent out and started maintenance on the jet-skis. They didn't seem to understand that there were other people there also. So now we know that narcissists go to Pawley's Island also.
The Inn itself is an old building (1937?) with paneled everything, louvered cabana doors, ceiling fans, window fans, a toilet and sink in every room but the shower is at the end of the hall. Did I mention a TV? There is none. Did I mention AC? There is only AC in the cottage but we didn't miss it. We stayed out of the room during the day and by the time we went to bed the ocean winds had lowered the room temps to a very manageable level. Did it get hot at night? Sure, but it was definitely manageable. What's that about the shower at the end of the hall? That's right, no shower/bath in the rooms. The prevailing joke for Lori and I all week was which one of us had the room key since we never saw one. The inn's walls were covered with great artwork. There were at least two shelves of books with the instruction that if you don't finish it, mail it back sometime. Games, cards, loads of entertainment ideas were available also. When you enter the inn at the back, there is a cabinet. In one of the drawers are sticker labels and sharpies to allow you 
to label whatever beverages you brought with you. There is also a huge icemaker and huge refrigerator to keep your beer or wine, sodas, whatever, cool. Every evening, limes and lemons appear so you can mix your favorite libation. The inn also provided cups and coozies (wraps for beer bottles) for your use. In the "courtyard" formed by the "u" shape of the inn and the cottage, there were amazing flowers growing and at least three or four cats which the children there never ceased trying to pet. The cats, being typical card-carrying members of the the cat world, spent their week avoiding all entreaties.

The people. Hmmm. Sea View has so many rooms booked by people who visit every year at the same time that for Lori and I it very much felt like we were intruding on someone else's vacation. I thought they were family until Wednesday night when one of the very friendly guests explained that they were all different families who came the same week every year. My response was that the shared experience over a number of years had made them  as close (if not closer) than many families. This is a huge reason the Sea View still operates I think. It is an anachronism in our time of large seaside hotel and condo developments but one which is so valuable. This is ocean housing of the '40's and '50's, probably not the thing for today's  20-somethings but valuable at the very least for the slice of americana it preserves. Lori and I weren't there an hour before several guests introduced themselves and brought us into interesting conversations on the back porch. I cannot begin to remember all the names, and one of our newly made friends tells me that comes after the second or even third year there, but a nicer group of people from a wider range of pursuits I don't think I'd ever be able to find. The connection across the board was the Sea View. I commented to a couple of them that I had never met nicer kids (from teenage to toddler) and how impressed I was with their "family." They said, "Thanks, but we aren't family." Maybe not by blood but the shared experience made them a family. Didn't make it easier to be there, feeling at times like we were intruding on their shared vacation, but as the week went on it definitely got better.

We started our  week at the beach with a folder full of mapquest directions which took us on the most boring travel part of the trip to Myrtle Beach we've ever experienced. So on the way home we went the old way. Much nicer. We got to within an hour of Myrtle Beach and spent about the next three hours bumper to bumper in a torrential downpour. Traffic was miserable, crawling at 20 mph with brake lights flashing all around us, wipers on full speed, hot and humid in a small hybrid. In the Honda Insight, when you touch the brake and the gasoline engine dies, the cooling part of the ac goes away and it blows outside air. Outside hot, humid, air mixed with auto exhaust. Not a pretty part of the visit. Every small town on our trip, all the places we have enjoyed meandering through for years had been bypassed by new highway construction. Anyway, we had to be there by 6:15 for the dinner bell and we rolled in about an hour early. The clouds were broken up and blue was showing through everywhere. The first problem we encountered was parking. There was no place to put the car except a small lot that said: "Absolutely NO parking for Sea View guests!" So we parked there, went in and got a short tour. The manager, Kip asked where we parked and said, "Don't worry about that, we have that worked out with them. You can park there." The car faced the salt march on the landward side of Pawley's and we made our way up to the first of many great meals. Sitting outside after dinner, one after another, multiple guests introduced themselves and asked how  and who we were so by early evening we alreay knew several folks. We walked out to the Salt Marsh and watched the sun go down. A more beautiful sight would be hard to find. The tide was in and that meant the marsh was full of water. There were crab baskets hanging from ropes and a kayak was tied up to the old, worn deck. The temperature was wonderful and we sat and watched the sun drop over the horizon. We had already unloaded the car and after a day of crawling in traffic we both were ready to end this day. Our room was an "oceanside" which meant it was in the main inn and had views of both the marsh and the ocean (with a little work). We got lovely breezes coming in both windows and with the full door open (a cabana door was there and latched) and the ceiling fan and two window fans keeping a constant breeze through the room and out the windows across the hall we were able to survive above average nighttime temperatures. Breakfast was served at 8:30. Too much to eat. We went out to the beach (there is no pool) and plunged into a day of reading and taking dips in the bath-like ocean. We lived by the bells calling us to meals and at 1:15 we had changed and showered and were sitting down to too much food to eat. The same goes for every meal and the spaces between the meals
every day. It did rain one day and we took the opportunity to visit a few shops and a Piggly-Wiggly Grocery Store. Then it was back to wait for the bells. Good thing I know about Pavlov's dog. So there was more food per meal, 1/3 more meals per day means we were eating way too much. But we were eating way too much very, very good food. Collard greens to die for, probably the best fried chicken I have ever had, but Wednesday night they just upped the ante. A low-country shrimp boil. A large outdoor boiler filled with large shrimp, kielbasa, corn, potatoes, onions, garlic and other stuff along with two packages of crab boil. Incredible. This was all poured out on newspaper outside and the bell was rung. Excellent!
The people. From the staff to the other guests, we met some of the nicest people and I told several parents how impressed I was by their children. Remember, no pool, no tv, no cell phones, no computers. But these young people were so impressive. Wow. On Friday night as we were winding down and beginning to lament the end of our vacation, the kids scheduled a talent show and asked everyone to sign up. It was an amazingly talented group of people. They put on such a fun show. I cannot even begin to express how much I enjoyed it. There was one song about poisoning the pigeons in a park sung by a gentleman who added such energy and drama that a song full of multi-syllabic words but a pretty sick theme became hilarious. He sold it. There were poems and dramatic readings and I felt like I had turned back the clock.
Saturday we left early and came back to the world. But what great memories! Thanks, Sea View, we'll be back.