Which Way to Bluffton?

September 19, 2005

… Dunkin’ Donuts
… A Sporting Clays Course
… 24-hour Coffee Shop with “Wi-fi”
… 24-hour Steak house that delivers spaghetti dinners
… Greek Restaurant
… Corner Store
… Mellow Mushroom
… IHOP
… Cracker Barrel
… Kohl’s
… Best Buy
… Circuit City
… Burger King
… Rita’s
… Barnes & Noble
… Borders
… Chili’s
… Bertucci’s
… Krystals
… White Castle

Ok, bloggers – don’t shoot the messenger. Each morning I check the Bluffton Today website (job security) to see what the community is blogging about. And frankly I am a bit surprised by the continued action that the “What Bluffton Needs” blog sees.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the bloggers posting the above suggestions have similar address histories and birth certificates to mine. I’d assume (I know, I know what that implies) that they are Yankees, not that there is anything wrong with that.

When my family made the decision to move to Bluffton, our “pro and con list” never included fast food restaurants or stores. Don’t get me wrong - I’d give my left arm for a Lord and Taylor. In my dreams I continue to drift to a place where designer clothes sit on clearance racks and coupons for an additional ten percent off arrive in mailboxes. But, I digress.

People, wake up! Bluffton is a jewel, a precious gem. And the lack of the establishments listed above is the reason we chose Bluffton (except for those of you forced here through the witness protection program of course).

Let me give you an example …

There are two people in this world who call me “sweetie”. The first is my husband, mainly because I think he can’t come up with any other clever nicknames to match the ten or so that I have for him. The second is whoever is working the register at the Sippin’ Cow when I go in for lunch.

The folks at the Sippin’ Cow don’t know me from a hole in the wall but they make me feel like I’ve been going there forever. How I love when my sandwich is up and I hear “where’s Courtney” – I swear, my thank you is always uttered with a Southern drawl so I feel like I belong – my, how I love the way of the South.

This, my neighbors, is why we chose to live in Bluffton. Embrace its charm, don’t try to change it. We live in place where there are road-side stands selling fresh seafood (I marvel that there is always a line and I bet that the people who own those stands know their customers by name), where a curvy, bare-bottomed lady sits high above Route 46 inviting customers to the Squat –n- Gobble (as if the name isn’t enough to pique your interest) and where the associates at Publix bag your groceries and walk you to your car. This is nirvana!

On my first “cruise” on the May River, I noticed a directional sign that sits in the River with arrows pointing in two directions, both toward Bluffton … as if whoever placed it there never wants the town to end. I know I don’t.

Plunging Into Bluffton

September 12, 2005

Just last month my mother sold the house in New Jersey that I grew up in. (To move to Bluffton, of course.) As she toiled packing up 33 years of memories – and let’s face it, some bunk – she remarked that our neighbor, Bill, had talked to her more in her last weeks there than he had in the 20 years that they had lived next door to each other. He lived there for twenty years, I asked? Hmm, I couldn’t pick this guy out of a line up. Now that I think about it – the lady who lived across the street for the last 10 years was an utter mystery to me as well. And, that got me thinking.

I’ve been in my new home in Bluffton for just over a month. I know the name of all of my neighbors and I’d even recognize them outside of their driveways and backyards, where we often wander over to chat.

We lucked out … all of the homes on my street where be being built at the same time, so we would often bump into each other on Friday afternoons as we surveyed the work that had been done during the week. Then, in quick succession, we all moved in within days of each other – piling up empty moving boxes on our neighbors front porch for their use, to then be passed along to the next.

We immediately bonded with the folks next door when we had to knock on their door on our first afternoon in the new house to embarrassingly ask to borrow a plunger. The bad news for all was that their plunger was still packed in an unmarked box as well.

We have been blessed with great neighbors next door, who have soon to be four year old twin boys. Picture the kid from the movie Jerry McGuire (the one with the infamous “the human head weighs ten pounds” quote) and you’ll quickly understand … and just when I thought, this is the cutest kid I’ve ever seen, over strolls his brother who is the cutest kid I’ve ever seen.

My husband and I quickly became Mr. Joe and Miss Cort-e-nee (and our beloved pup Darby now answer to De-barbie), which immediately endeared us to our pint-size neighbors. We quickly learned that nothing is as relaxing as the sound of children’s laughter. The “boys” as we call them have become our friends (their parents are pretty cool too).

When they ask if we want “to play”, we, of course, oblige … we watch them swing in our hammock and we run for the camera, we play catch, we “race”, and we pretend to struggle across the monkey bars on their new swing set.

Instead of wondering about who our neighbors are, we know.

So now that we are settled, and comfortable enough to ask for a plunger when needed (yet still determining where to put those bronzed baby shoes that mom packed and brought with her) – I leave you with this … your neighbors are one key piece in the puzzle to making Bluffton home, go ahead, go ask for a plunger – it may be the start of a beautiful friendship.

A Southern Gentleman

September 5, 2005

I got my first taste of the South as my husband and I were venturing down Interstate 95 from Pennsylvania en route to our new home, Bluffton, South Carolina.

Three hundred miles from Bluffton, somewhere outside Raleigh, North Carolina I heard the moving truck emit a noise that I knew could not be good. I watched as my husband pulled the truck over to the side of road, and panic set in. Hoping for the best, yet not knowing what that may be, I followed suit. So, there we sat on the side I95.

We’ve all witnessed this scene before – heading down the interstate for the big summer vacation and there is that one desperate family sitting on the side of the road. A car stuffed tight with pillows, pop tarts and travel Parcheesi, bikes bungeed to the roof, and the family sitting on their cooler, waiting for help.

You can see them, can’t you? We’ve all driven past this family at one time or another and commented, “Glad that’s not us.” Well, this time, it was us.

We were the family with the moving van towing the SUV, being followed by the sedan, filled with the dog, two cats and everything that we couldn’t fit elsewhere.

Our options were to have another truck dispatched, which would kindly wait to tow the broken down truck while we unpacked it and re-packed the new truck. Or, we could wait for a tow truck and hope they could fix the problem. We chose the later – the prospect of unpacking our household items on the side of I95 while the rental company sat on our cooler and watched was not appealing.

And then, a Southern gentleman arrived. At just after 6:00 p.m. in the evening he broke the news, the truck could not be fixed but he would tow the moving truck to Bluffton. Tow the 26 foot moving truck? Ok. At 9:30 p.m. our moving van arrived in Bluffton escorted by the kindest man we had ever met. Knowing that this gentleman now had to return to Raleigh and wouldn’t get in until well after midnight, my husband attempted to tip him. The gentleman declined and when my husband insisted – he obliged saying, “today is my wife’s birthday, I’ll stop and get her some flowers on my way.”

And this was our introduction to the South – a gentleman who reached out to strangers in a “foreign land.” Something tells me that his wife understood because she married him for just this reason. This doesn’t happen everywhere, I guarantee you.

I have since found that all that I had expected from this new chapter in my life has been realized. Bluffton is a hidden gem, with all of the charm and uniqueness that we envisioned when we began our journey. This column will serve to celebrate the people and places of Bluffton and introduce other “newbies” to their new home. I will let the waterways, pathways and people here be my compass – just point me in the right direction.