Unless you lived in the coast areas of
South Carolina from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s you can not
understand the magnitude of the growth that occurred in that region.
The best example is of course Charleston which went from a sleepy
little Southern town, pretty much disconnected from the rest of the
country, to a multicultural, sprawling city that also happens to be
one of the favorite vacation destinations in the United States. The
astronomical increase of real estate values in Charleston alone
during that period signifies how the coast of South Carolina went
from a rural backwater to a place where rich elites want to be seen
living.
Other areas of the South Carolina coast
had significant growth but couldn't match Charleston's cultural
sophistication. The area called the “Grand Strand” – typically
centered around Myrtle Beach – had a similar growth in population,
attractions, and businesses but desperately held on to its backwater
weirdness for much longer. This is where I enter the picture after
having served four years in the United States Army.
I was driving home to Georgetown from a
date around two o'clock in the morning back in September of 1990.
Back then U.S. Highway 501 was still a badly maintained, four-lane
road with the property on either side still mostly undeveloped. Sure,
one of the places on that highway was the community college I had
just started attending, a few gas stations, a couple of fast food
places and a seedy country club/golf course that had been superseded
by other ritzier places. Even with those establishments, the property
on either side of Highway 501 was overwhelmingly a swampy forest
filled with snakes, alligators, rabbits, and even a bear or two.
Curiously enough I find the situation
on 501 even worse now, the highway has long since been widen to six
lanes with the land now overrun with businesses ranging from
overpriced suburbs, mega-churches, to outlet malls. The worst being
outlet malls since they are created to draw in the traveling but
generally mindless sheep, better known as spoiled tourists.
Personally, in most cases I would prefer the company of an eight-foot
hungry alligator than such humans.
Back in September of 1990 there was one
business on Highway 501 that surpassed weird and bordered on the
surreal. For reasons I could never figure out someone had opened a
fireworks store that ran twenty-four hours a day.
Understand, this was not some trailer
on wheels nor a minor building stuck on a small plot of land. This
was a large steel building painted a glaring white with huge plate
glass windows. The building itself and the parking lot in front of it
were brightly illuminated with numerous light poles of the type used
at Walmart or any other massive businesses. This fireworks store was
not something new, it had existed for several years going back to
the time my lackluster mother made trips running from Conway, South
Carolina to Myrtle Beach to see her drunk and worthless boyfriend.
The fireworks shop had caught my
attention back then but every time I mentioned something about
stopping there to look around, my mother, who naturally had her own
grownup agenda, adamantly refused. So this twenty-four hour fireworks
shop faded into the background as my younger siblings and I were
forced to endure our mother's pursuits.
By that God-awful early morning in
September of 1990, my curiosity of the fireworks shop had long since
died. I was in my twenties and pursuing my own amorous pursuits, the
difference from my mother's being that I was single and that I wasn't
dragging any tired and hungry kids on these jaunts.
The girl I saw the night before was one
that I had met working as a lifeguard at the Myrtle Waves Water Park.
An attraction that has long since been closed, bulldozed, and paved
over with a NASCAR-themed restaurant being built on the property.
What's funny is that I recently learned that the NASCAR restaurant
was closed years ago. Given the nature of property values in Myrtle
Beach, it was probably quickly bulldozed, paved over, with something
equally obnoxious built in its place.
My date's name was Emma and we met in
the water park's lazy river. I was walking through the waist deep
water playing lifeguard and she and her girl friend/roommate were
laying on a double inner tube. We started talking and about an hour
later I asked her out to the usual dinner and a movie. Both of us
were in our twenties, which meant raging hormones, and as far as I
knew neither of us had a significant other. What that all means was
that things were moving quite fast.
From the movie we went walking on Ocean
Boulevard, which involved a little old fashioned necking on the beach.
Eventually I drove us both back to her apartment all the way over in
Conway where things were supposed to get even more physical.
Unfortunately, when Emma and I arrived at the apartment her roommate
had left a note on the kitchen counter saying, “Bob called from the
Gulf.” Those five words sent all my quickly developing plans and fantasies totally sideways.
I didn't learn right away but it turned
out Emma did have a boyfriend, a guy who was normally stationed at
Fort Bragg up in North Carolina. But who at that moment in time was
over in Saudi Arabia guarding a fast growing supply point out in the
desert. Emma's initial reaction after reading the note was a thin
nonchalance with her wanting us to play tonsil hockey on the couch
before going into her bedroom. Never the sharpest knife in any
drawer, I had enough smarts to sniff out the change in Emma's
attitude. And as long as Emma still wanted to play doctor, I wasn't
about to ask any awkward questions.
Things proceeded between us as I had
hoped up until Emma's phone began ringing. She answered and from the
look on her face a few moments later, I immediately knew everything
was over. It was Bob and he had called to beg some sort of
forgiveness and of course, Emma started crying saying she had never
stopped loving him. Just hearing Emma's side of the conversation I
was able to piece together all the important elements of their
relationship.
Barely five minutes later, I'm leaving
Emma's apartment with her still on the phone now making plans to move
up to the Fort Bragg area when Bob got back from Saudi. Feeling
extremely bummed out, I began my long drive back to Georgetown and my
own bed.
The disappointment was still strong but
as I turned onto Highway 501, I slipped a Buffett CD into the player
and began singing along. As my mood lighted, I came up on the bizarre
fireworks store on my left. My long dormant curiosity flared when I
spotted the flashing “Open” sign in one of the large windows and
saw a single store clerk calmly sitting at the counter reading what
looked to be a magazine.
I initially passed the strange building
but turned around and drove into the parking lot. Except for a single
car in the parking lot, which was most likely the clerk's, the place
was deserted. In fact as I drove up to the front entrance the clerk
didn't even look up from his post. As I stepped out of my car, little
voices in my head started buzzing around like gnats reminding me of
several Twilight Zone episodes along with a multitude of science
fiction stories all centered around people who enter strange places.
I entered the fireworks store half
expecting it to be some elaborate facade like something from a movie
set. It wasn't, just as I had seen after numerous trips between
Conway and Myrtle Beach over the years it was a huge store with long
clean aisles of nothing but various types of fireworks. What still
bothers me even now was the near surgical-level of cleanliness, to
the point I would have felt comfortable eating off the floor.
The clerk, a clean-shaven guy who
looked to be in his thirties dressed in what I would call business
casual attire look up from his magazine long enough to say hello and
that most items were buy one get another at half price. He made no
attempt at small talk nor asked just what in the hell would I be
needing fireworks a little after two o'clock in the freaking morning.
Yes, I should have immediately asked
the clerk why has this store been open twenty-four hours a day for
years but honestly, I was getting really spooked. Something wasn't
right about the place with the Twilight Zone quality growing
exponentially. As I browsed the aisles it wouldn't have surprised to
see hideous monsters dressed as stockmen emerge from the store room
pushing loaded carts of colorful explosives.
As far as firework stores were
concerned, it was the Sam's Club and Costco of such items. Every
conceivable type of fireworks were on display going from simple
firecrackers and bottle rockets to larger items that probably needed
professionals to safely set off. Naturally, the air temperature
inside the store was quite cold and as the minutes ticked by with me
strolling the aisles, I felt close to shivering. At some point I knew
my curiosity was more than satisfied and that I needed to buy
something and get the hell out of the place.
I grabbed a packet of bottle rockets
and walked up to the counter. The clerk, who had stayed silent during
my browsing, simply asked how I was doing as he rang up my item on
the cash register. It was then that I saw what magazine he was
reading, a copy of the Economist,
which surprised me in a way. I somehow imagined it would have been a
copy of Playboy or
even Hustler. It was a
possibly cruel but definitely unjustified assumption, I just couldn't
see an intellectual type working at an all-night fireworks store in
the middle of nowhere South Carolina.
Yeah,
I have to mention again how surreal the fireworks store seemed. But
my curiosity was definitely quenched and I knew as certain that bears
take poops in the swampy woods on either side of Highway 501 back
then that I would never reenter the place. Just to throw a little
extra weird icing on the unearthly cake, as I was pulling out of the
parking lot I spotted the clerk talking on the telephone looking
intently in my direction.
For
the next two years I passed that fireworks store going to my
community college and then back home again. Yes, there were several
times I saw the parking lot with numerous cars, almost always near a
holiday like Christmas, New Years, or the Fourth of July.
Occasionally, as I pursued my single guy life back then, I would pass
the place at night and see someone sitting at the counter but no
customers. Eventually the fireworks store again faded into the
background as it had when my mother was doing her stuff.
After
moving up to Columbia in 1993, I didn't get anywhere near Highway 501
for several years. By the time I did travel that road again the
entire nature of it and the area in general had changed. The
fireworks store was long gone, a victim of the highway being expanded
to six lanes. Whatever purpose of having an all-night fireworks store
was, I have this nagging feeling it wasn't to sell drunk locals and
tourists sparklers and roman candles. While I may had struck out with
Emma, this cat did survive a close encounter with his over active
curiosity.
