Oysters, a bottle of wine and Thanksgiving

Yesterday, we drove into town and found a parking space near the city market. After walking through the market for awhile, Kate, Dad and I walked down to Mistral, a French restaurant which is one of our favorite places in Charleston, and Kate called her momma and they met us in the restaurant. There was no one in the restaurant at the time, but by the time we had enjoyed our leisurely lunch, with a bottle of wine, the restaurant had filled up with customers.

Interestingly, the manager had graduated from W&L about seven years after I had. It was fun. Afterward, we drove around town, looking at the sights and headed back to Folly Beach. Missy and Megan got there around four thirty and we socialized until it was time to drive up to the road off Folly Road and we headed down the sandy road to Bowen Island Seafood.

We found cars parked near the collection of what looked like abandoned buildings. Exiting the car, we walked through the water collected on the sand parking lot to the walkway between the buildings. As we walked down toward a lighted plywood building, I looked through the translucent glass of a side building and saw the shadow of a man walking around. We passed him in the building and he called out to us, "Do you folks want to eat tonight?"

We answered that we did, and he suggested that we come back to him so we could place our orders. We walked into the little building and found a man in rough, casual dress who offered us self-prepared paper menus. We looked it over and I ordered the endless steamed oysters, but was told that the oysterman had not come by and we were limited to a tray at a time.

Afterward, we walked down to the lighted building and found a table which would accomodate us. We sat down at the rough table and considered the casualness of our surroundings for the evening. Later, they brought food and a tray of steamed oysters for me and we enjoyed our Thankgiving Eve repast. What a tradition.

Today, we were working on getting the different elements of our Thanksgiving supper prepared and I took a break and sat in front of the Packers and the Lions with a Mexican beer in my hand and looked out at the blue sky and water rushing to shore and felt the strong November breeze hitting me in the face from the balcony outside and realized how wonderful it was to celebrate Thanksgiving at the beach.

There are other wonderful places to celebrate Thanksgiving, but this was one of my favorites. Tomorrow we go back into Charleston and share this amazing, historical city with Missy and Megan. More tomorrow.