Charleston is a fascinating city to visit, but in August its most insistently noticeable feature is the heat. I have ancestors who lived in Charleston before relocating to New Orleans, and now I understand they were looking for a place that wasn't quite so hot and muggy.
The high temperatures really weren't all that hot: upper 80s, maybe breaking 90 at the hottest part of the day. The problem was that the lows at night were only a few degrees lower than the highs. This may be a seasonal problem; there are few places south of Canada which are actually pleasant during August.
I spent my first full day in Charleston being a tourist, and I make no apologies for it. In the morning, I walked around the old part of town with my wife and son before meeting up with my sister and brother-in-law. They had made a great discovery: the grave of one of those Charlestonian ancestors I mentioned above, in the churchyard of the oldest Catholic church in town. The inscriptions were blurred with age, but we could still make out most of the words.
Then we all piled in the car and drove north to the modern industrial part of the city in order to see a piece of history: the submarine Hunley, raised from the sea floor outside the harbor mouth and currently halfway through an exhaustive stabilization and de-corrosion process at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. The archaeologists have done an amazing job identifying the remains of the crew, even down to pieces of clothing and jewelry.
It's bigger than I had thought, and considerably more sophisticated. I had not known that the Hunley had a snorkel device for air circulation, or a flywheel system so that the whole crew didn't have to keep cranking. The Hunley was a real sub, limited only by the lack of a good propulsion system — and the need to get right next to the ship it was attacking.
The Hunley points up one of the things which always amazes me about the American Civil War: the tremendous technological innovation that went on. Even the supposedly traditional, agrarian South managed to deploy a number of revolutionary weapons, including the Hunley itself. To my mind, the most startling example of the war's technological fecundity was the duel between the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. Here's the South's unstoppable high-tech superweapon, and on its second sortie it is met by the North's unstoppable high-tech superweapon. In fiction it would seem implausible, but it happened.
After our visit to the mother of all subs, we had lunch at what can only be described as a hipster diner called the Iron Dog. By this point the ladies and my son were getting worn out, but my brother-in-law and I gamely went back for a second hike around Old Charleston, admiring the famous "single houses" and speculating with a total lack of knowledge about how the style developed.
When we had enough walking we retired to an air-conditioned eatery for some cooling beverages, then picked up some groceries and crossed the spectacular Ravenel Bridge to the rental cottage. Rather than heat up the house we lit the backyard grill (not without some difficulty) and cooked up a feast: sausage, grilled peppers and onions, a pre-marinated boneless leg of lamb, a tomato-and-avocado salad, and seared peaches for dessert. All washed down with a couple of bottles of wine.
Full and happy, we retired for the night, hoping for good weather on the big day.
Next Time: Totality!
Two science fiction crime capers go horribly wrong: Outlaws and Aliens, by James L. Cambias.
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