Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Early Morning Jogger

MYRTLE BEACH ADVENTURE

Regardless of the price of gas, Alabaster Hickey and wife will travel to great lengths just to get sand laden wedgies on some far away beach. Our hankering to wander has once again overwhelmed our common sense to stay at home and watch the Travel Channel. So we loaded up the PT Cruiser, and headed for South Carolina's Myrtle Beach. Actually our destination was a family reunion, but that is irrelevant to my story.

We stayed at the Sea Hawk Motor Inn (formerly the Sea Hawk Motel) on Ocean Boulevard; it is a quaint mom and pop motel that lies between the shadows of mega-story, beach front resorts in this once, primarily blue-collar getaway. Some of the newer, multi-storied motels along the Grand Strand have built as their first floor a spacious flush channel (disguising it as a parking garage). One motel in particular is well equipped to accommodate the rush of a 20 foot tidal wave, and its accompanying surge. Whereas some of the older motels lack this feature, and are destined to have a good scouring when a hurricane slip ashore.

Sea Hawk Motor Inn
(The motel is left of center, and is yellow ocher)

BEACH GOERS OF THE EAST

Beach goers of the East Coast are quite different from those in the West, while you will see a few in the West that sport tan-lined torsos and legs as white as rice, few have the belly mass, and soft overhang that Easterners seem to prize. Fat and its various configurations are highlighted in the East with grand promenades up and down the beach; whereas, in the West, such public displays are traditionally hidden under a long T-shirt, moo-moo or draped in a four-man Coleman tent. My white legs and expanding waist line felt right at home.

BEACH COMBER ON THE PROWL

As I sat lounging on the beach I gazed to my left to see a woman of considerable girth slowly coming my way. She had a small, blue, plastic trowel in one hand, and was swinging a metal detector in the other. Seeing an opportunity for mischief I seeded the sand before me with a penny (I would liken this activity to feeding pigeons in the park). When her metal detector swung over the spot where "Black Beard's" treasure was buried, it began to squeal. A soggy swipe of excitement crept across her face.

For reasons yet undetermined, this mammoth of a woman chose to bend over directly in front of me, and to my unreserved astonishment I watched her swimsuit retreat into Never Neverland. I became increasingly alarmed as the fabric reached a maximum pitch that sounded like the wrenching tweak of a violin string. TWANG! Instinctively, I dove for cover as a flash of black fabric cut loose and made a deadly swipe above my head.

"OH!" she exclaimed in a shrill tone, "I snapped my thong!"

[NOTE: the aforementioned incident is under Federal investigation and may not have actually happened precisely as narrated.]

ATTRACTIONS FOR EVERYONE

Do you like to golf? How about miniature golf? If either one of these distractions peak your interest, then Myrtle Beach is your kind of place! Now I may have missed some, but according to my calculations, there are 30 golf courses with fairways and greens galore, and at least 50 miniature golf courses with various themes ranging from pirates to dinosaurs. And I ain't kiddin' neether!

Are there any arcades you ask? Arcades, arcades and more arcades! Blocks and blocks of them as well as curio shops, and beach blanket retailers hawking everything from A to Elvis, and over to Z. (I personally have never had any desire to sit, lay or lounge on Elvis' person, but others may find it gratifying).

POOL SIDE ETIQUETTE

Our cozy little motel is gaily painted (a fairly recent addition, I gather) with large murals of some fanciful, tropical paradise; even the pool has had its bottom repainted with the likeness of killer whales, porpoises, and a school of unclassified fish. I think they threw in a sea turtle too.

As I hauled the last of our travel needs into our room, I heard a man's voice sternly say, "Stay off the rope!" Is there anyone that has ever used a public pool and has not heard this phrase spoken? I recall one instance in my youth when I saw that our public pool's lifeguard was preoccupied, so I seized the moment. I swam over to the rope, pushed it under my butt, and sunk it. That was until I heard, "GET OFF THE ROPE."

OCEAN WILDLIFE

This was a day in which to view two forms of aquatic wildlife. One was greeted with awe, while the other invoked an "Awh!" The first sighting was of a small pod of dolphins gliding ten yards offshore, while the other was a fever of stingrays that gracefully flapped between us -- in knee deep water. The latter prompted a hasty retreat to the toe deep shallows of the water's edge.

EATS

We were told that the best deal in town to dine at was Giant Crab. So we took the advice of this local, and drove nearly 10 miles to get there. It was a spread out buffet suited for royalty, and worth every mile, and inch of girth I gained. My first plate was a mountainous heap of Crab Imperial; Oysters Rockefeller; fried oysters, and shrimp; steamed black mussels; a slice of salmon, a round of sushi, bright red crawdads garnishing the sides, a stuffed mushroom cap; B-B-Q'd pork ribs; topped off with a double layer of Alaskan king crab legs, and a cup of "she crab" soup. My second plate nearly resembled the first, but at its pinnacle was a huge slab of perfectly cooked prime rib. Question: can you use the verb cooked in conjunction with prime rib? It seems to me flawlessly underdone might be more apt.

By the way, I loved their Oysters Rockefeller, and left the dabs of spinach between my teeth to prove it!

PACKING UP

While packing the car for the long slog home, I overheard a conversation between a weary young mother and her child:

"Mommy!" said the young girl, her voice tense with excitement.

"What?" replied her mother.

"MOMMY!" the girl's voice ratcheted up two octaves.

"What do you want?" queried her mother in a soulless tone.

"Are we going to the beach?" the girl snapped.

"Wait…" the word drained from her lips.

I looked over at her mother and said, "It sounds to me as if you've gone through this routine before?" Her mother looked up, cracked a faint smirk, and said, "Yes…"

Myrtle's Motel Row

Shoreline Waders

Bridge over the Potomac River and Maryland power plant
(Coal burning power plants such as this are loading our rivers, lakes, and
bay with mercury. )

Woman in Red Cowboy Hat

Sunrise on Myrtle Beach

Copyright © 2008 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Jonathan Aspensen.

To The Beach We Go--

The Drive Going

This Saturday morning I sleepily looked out the front door window and to my surprise saw that we were socked in with a heavy fog. The air conditioner kept our townhouse unrealistically cool, and so without thinking as to the season I slipped into my sweatpants and “hoodie” (long sleeve sweatshirt with pull-over hood), leashed our dog for its morning trot, and stepped out the door into a more dreadfully humid environment than I thought possible. Relating this experience to a not yet fully awake wife, she suggested that we head for the beach. “Fine idea,” I thought; if we were going to be miserable in this thick humidity, we might as well do so on the coast where the humidity might have competition with a complementary breeze from Heaven. Hours later -- the beach is not exactly down the street you understand -- we stepped ashore at Hammonasset Point which is east of New Haven, Connecticut.

A closed down, actual, diner car and erstwhile restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
New Brunswick was a seedy, graffiti covered town with hoards of rude drivers coming at you from every direction. Now in all fairness, there may well be a prettier side to the town that I did not see, but the main drag through it was just that -- a drag. It was New York City in miniature -- absent the crush of yellow cabs.

When you think of New England you imagine quaint boroughs, and townships with white churches whose steeples jab sharply above the trees. Well it t'ain't so along the coast, that is, it ain't so what I saw! It looked like anything but the picture postcard I think of New England as. However, we passed through the Ivy League town of Princeton, New Jersey, and were awed by the diverse mansions of various designs and what we were able to see of the campus it looked as if someone had torn a page right out of medieval England. I know, New Jersey is not considered New England. But Princeton was the only saving grace along the road.

The price of gas was slightly astounding, $4.43 for regular and diesel was a staggering $4.93 a gallon. I am sure that by this fall these prices will be considered benevolent. Start filling coffee cans, and Mason jars now!

On the whole, we stayed on the interstate and were whizzing by some of the most undesirable real estate of the Eastern seaboard. We passed through industrial zones, dilapidated row houses, walls of graffiti, and Stalin-style projects that warehoused the poor. I wondered what the people’s view of their life was as they lounged on their narrow, sky-high patios overlooking the Bronx; their “backyards” -- stacked one atop another, and cluttered with B-B-Qs, lawn chairs, and flagged by drying clothes of color -- was a picture of urban uniformity. But what really struck me was the sterile environment void of even one weed to fuss over. If I were to live in a project I would garnish my slab of concrete with wilderness! I would have planter boxes of dandelions, and crabgrass, thistles, and flowing drapes of puncture vines. Why my lofty courtyard of concrete would reflect the world around me in shades of prickly green, and wafts of smog!

From the New Jersey side of the Hudson River we could see the Empire State building. In light blue silhouette it stood alone, in audience with skyscrapers bunched to its north. What an edifice it is; a mountain range on its edge; Jacob’s ladder at its first landing -- wow!

The View From New Jersey

The following portrait was a collaborate effort by two eye-witnesses to fully illustrate an event that no picture could possibly explicate:

While heading north the loud rumble of motorcycles could be heard coming up from the rear. The first biker was a wiry, tattooed fellow, in a bandanna, dark sunglasses, and a stringy beard that the wind blew over his shoulder. The second biker was a large man in a tank-top, and whom we presume, had recently lost a good deal of weight. He was still quite stout (stout my gluteus maximus, he was huge!), but not as immense as he once was. The blanket of loose skin below his upper arm flapped in the 80mph slipstream that blew over his rotund, tattooed, biker’s body like amber waves of grain in the Midwestern wind, the tattoos rippling on his skin like patriotic symbols on a flag from Bikerville. Of course, what we saw, and how it has been tastefully masked is far from the visual reality. The verity is, the view was fleeting and most captivating; but we have not captured just how repellent it was.

Upon concluding our pleasant, and late lunch (we ate at 5:30 PM), we only stayed for 30 minutes, and then it was time to head back.

Copyright © 2008 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Jonathan Aspensen.