Coosawhatchie House

Coosawhatchie House, originally uploaded by lalapapawawa.

When I was 8 or 9, my family moved to a dot on the map known as Coosawhatchie, South Carolina, located in Jasper County. At the time, people in this county were the lowest per capita income earners in the state, sharing a border with Beaufort County, which was the highest in the state owing to Hilton Head Island.

At that time, my dad was friends with a local farmer, the father of someone I went to grade school with. The farmer owned and farmed thousands of acres in the area. Tucked away in a small corner of all this land was a small brick ranch style house, and it was a drain on his books because despite being unoccupied, he had to pay taxes on it each year, amounting about $300 dollars. When he found out dad was interested in moving us closer to his work on the island but remain close to mom's work in Ridgeland, he offered up the place in exchange for paying the taxes each year.

The location was nearly ideal. The house was surrounded by land where we could have a garden, chickens and a horse, and not only did it face the water but it backed up to Dawson's Landing, a public boat ramp. It was a living situation impossible to pass up.

If you leave Ridgeland, South Carolina by the frontage road and head for Interstate 95, you'll find Highway 462. Go a few miles down a two lane highway shielded on either side by thick stands of pine and water oak, and you'll discover an unremarkable paved road on your left. A state road sign will tell you that there's a public boat landing at the end of that road. That's an even smaller, less frequently paved two land road, still flanked on either side by stands of trees. At the end is a small parking lot. Long ago the lines for each parking slip faded. At the back of the parking lot is an open air covered structure where fishermen clean their catch and where boaters party when not on the water. It had electricity running to it so it was also where I hosted my 9th birthday party so my friends and I could play loud music and roller skate.

To the left is the boat landing itself. A wide concrete ramp descends into the water below and a rugged dock build from thick timbers coated in creosote ran out to the water with steps down to a lower platform where one could tie up and board a newly launched boat.

Just before you arrive at the landing, there is another unremarkable road leading to the right. It's dirt, not even a road really but two ruts that run between a stand of trees and the fence that marks the county's property line. The curves to the left and marks the edge of a scraggly stand of pines covered in honeysuckle vines. Just beyond this is the edge of a large field where the farmer's planting was done, but for the most part this is hidden from view and easily ignored.

If you were to follow the road further, you would come to a fork. The right fork ran for miles, serving as an access road to the rest of the fields in the farmer's possession, and access for the state forestry's fire breaks, large swatches of unforested land kept clear of trees and debris to provide a break should fire start and try to spread along the tree tops.

The left fork ends in the backyard of the Coosawhatchie House. There is a large oak tree between the driveway and the back steps leading into the house. And several shade oaks, sagging with Spanish moss, stand between us and the Coosawhatchie River, an intercoastal waterway. It is a dark and fertile brackish, carrying fresh water sweet enough to drink from Allendale down to the Broad River on low tide and on high tide bringing back water salty enough to entice the occasional shark. In the old days, trees were farmed nearby. The trees would be felled and rolled off a large lumber platform into the water to float the river to a processing station. The operation long since ended by the time we lived there, but the platform remained a few hundred yards from our house. In the heat of summer you could bust bubbles of the hot sticky tar they had used to waterproof the timbers. Even if I left the house in shoes, I'd return with black toes from running them through hot creosote.

I don't remember the inside of the house in detail. I don't remember if there were two bedrooms or three. It was only important to me that I had my own room, though I remember my parent's room better because it was painted a deep shade of blue and because there was a window seat on one end. I remember the room feeling large, as if it might at one time been two rooms. And toward the end of our time there, my mother was ill, and it would be a room I would see in my anxious dreams.

But that did not happen first. We lived in the salad days after moving in. The kitchen was open to a small front room with a fireplace in it. One door led down the hallway to our rooms while another opened to the livingroom. The door on the other side of the livingroom opened to the back porch, which was screened in and always seemed cluttered with unfinished projects on my parent's perpetual to-do list. I don't remember seating on this porch and never regarded it as anything more than a pass through to the outdoors. I never lingered there. There was always something more interesting elsewhere.

This is the landscape I recall in memories. Any inaccuracies would be a factor of time and my age. But this is how I remember it.

--Laura Burke