By Scott Graber
It is Saturday, early, still dark, and in an hour or so I’ll go into the yard and deal with the magnolia leaves that have fallen during the night. Raking-up and removing Magnolia leaves has been the central function in our yard since we bought our Port Royal house on 9th Street. We’ve also got a small patch of holly ferns that requires some attention — mostly trimming.
Although there is the occasional planting of geraniums and replacement dying ferns; we are not natural gardeners. For us its watering, application of Miracle Gro and watching large pickup-pulled boats being hauled down London Avenue on their way to the Sands Boat Ramp.
In the spring and fall, Port Royal is the focal point for various festivals. The routine is to celebrate a species — shrimp, crabs, and pigs — accompanied by rock band on an improvised stage. I’m always surprised when the first chords from “Proud Mary” drift into the yard followed by “Are we having fun yet?”
One doesn’t assume that Paris Avenue is all that attractive but, somehow, this uninspired strip of asphalt (along with Live Oak Park) are the two places where we gather to consume small containers of pulled pork and listen to our favorite polka tunes.
When my wife and I arrived in Port Royal in 1980, it was a muscular town providing single-storied, cottage-sized housing for shrimpers, crabbers and retired Marines.
Port Royal had not yet annexed its way across Battery Creek, and its port was used for the export of kaolin and the import of clay-polished paper typically used by glossy magazines. The port did not, however, employ many local stevedores.
In those days the Marine Corps provided its own on-base housing for its drill instructors — the recruits never leaving Parris Island — so the only visual impact was the daily, sick-bay bus that rolled down Ribaut Road on its way to the Naval Hospital. Eventually there was a motel — dedicated to the graduations — but the Town’s housing stock wasn’t yet in the VRBO business.
Port Royal’s focus in the 80s was the catching (or processing) of seafood. A way of life that employed anyone who could stand on an assembly line cracking-open crab claws for eight hours at a stretch.
“The best workers liked the night shift, for no other reason than an element of social prestige. There was always a waiting list for this particular shift, perhaps because it was Port Royal’s hot spot for town gossip.”
The women who worked the crab-picking line probably had a brother who actually “pulled” crab pots in the early-morning half light. Entry into crab business involved a home-made bateau and a 50-horsepower Mercury outboard that many could maintain with duck tape and a screwdriver.
But exclusive possession of one’s pots sometimes involved a shotgun and the exchange of gunfire. These local sporting events often played themselves out on the General Sessions Court Roster.
After work, if you had any energy at all, there was diversion at the old Customs House then known as the Last Chance Saloon at the bottom of Paris Avenue. Or one might drive over to the Breeze movie theatre in Beaufort. But if the truth be told there wasn’t much to do except go to bed after checking on the chickens.
Beginning in the 90s local shrimp boats began to diminish and the crab pots seemed to disappear entirely. There were fewer children at the Town’s iconic elementary school and at least two attempts by the School District to close it down. These set-backs coincided with a decision — by the State Ports Authority — to consolidate their international efforts in Charleston.
That was followed by what will be known as the Decade of Expectation when townsfolk were told that rebirth and revitalization were on the way. Every few years there would be a “sale” of the port property that would soon bring us balconied condos, Georgian townhouses, candle-scented boutiques and universal prosperity to the Town.
In the wake of these rumors, Florida-licensed SUVs began to patrol the streets, homeowners got letters offering them cash for their little bungalows and property prices went into the ionosphere.
And while everyone waited the Town acquired a YMCA; built a boardwalk and tower; repurposed a drainage pond — the Cypress Wetlands; and soon newly envious Beaufortonians will be able to bike their way into this place by way of the Spanish Moss Trail.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
