| It is with deep
appreciation that we include on this site the following memories of Dr. Charles Spencer. He and his family have been an important part of the Edisto community for generations . His father served our church as pastor. Charles has provided us a second installment titled "How the Manse Survived Three Fires." That story will be published here as well. We will use it to mark an important milestone in our progress. So keep checking back! Webmaster
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An Idyllic Childhood
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by Charles Spencer
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The other day I looked at a photo of the young minister and his family who will occupy The Manse when the current renovation is completed. I looked particularly at the two beautiful little children in the photo. And I wondered if they would learn to love this old house as much as I did? I certainly hope they do. My father, the Rev. Charles Spencer, arrived as pastor with his family and occupied The Manse in 1945. I was seven, my older brother was eight, and my younger brother was still a toddler. We stayed for two years. On school days, a car picked up two kids at the front door (I think we were in a carpool), took us to the old Edisto School, and delivered us back home. We had no idea how fortunate we were to live in a historic house in the country. The National Register had not yet been invented, and we wouldn't have cared if we had had three plaques by the front door. What we did care about was what there was for city kids to do, and we soon discovered that we were rich. First we explored the house, which seemed huge. Nice living room with a fireplace, but off-limits to little boys except when we had company. Big, warm dining room, where the family shared most meals, and said prayers every day after breakfast, without exception. Here, a big oil-fired heater, the only one in the house, blazed away all winter and (partially) heated the whole house. We had lived in colder houses, I promise you. Tiny, primitive kitchen, but Mother did not complain, and we children certainly did not notice. The bathroom on the back porch was cold in winter, but the flush toilet worked, and we liked it a lot better than the outhouses still used by some of our neighbors. Upstairs, an entire bedroom had been converted into a bathroom with its own wood-burning heater and huge, claw-foot tub. It was the largest bathroom we had ever seen: what luxury. That left three bedrooms: one for our parents, one for baby brother, and one for older brother and I to share. Yes, we sparred over "territory", but so did many acquaintances our age who shared a bedroom. You got used to it. And then there was the attic, with an actual stairway going up. How big it was, how mysterious, how filled with interesting boxes and trunks of old stuff to look at. We made up stories about the huge water storage tank in the attic, an open-topped steel barrel that must once have held hundreds of gallons of water, but was empty in our time. (Before electricity, water was hand-pumped up from the well periodically, and gravity fed the pipes to the bathrooms and kitchen.) And how high off the ground you were in the attic when you looked out toward the creek! From up there you could actually see the "big river" (St. Pierre's Creek) that hugged the shoreline across the marsh. How wide it was, compared with the little creek under our bluff, which was larger then than it is now. One Christmas, with company occupying our bedroom, older brother and I slept on cots in the attic. At daybreak Christmas morning, unable to go back to sleep, we crept down two flights of stairs, removed our personal stockings from the living room mantel, crept back up, and proceeded to examine our treats, one by one. Even then, we were less impressed with our very own apples and oranges than with candy and toys, so we set them aside. Mother finished the story with a smile for the next sixty years: how the rest of the household was awakened at 6:00 A.M. on Christmas Day by oranges rolling down the attic stairs: "Thump, thump, thump!" But better still was the out of doors. There was a huge porch, partly screened against mosquitoes, all good for games on rainy days and for sitting with company on sweltering summer evenings before air conditioning. Under the house were two curious, dusty storage spaces open to the outdoors, which made excellent hiding places. We had acres of grassy yard to run in and play tag and ride bicycles. Older brother and I climbed the ancient oaks in the yard, explored the woods, checked on Daddy's vegetable garden in a clearing in the woods, built "projects" in his workshop in the old garage, and collected eggs from the henhouse at the back edge of the woods. (We also had one milk cow. Daddy took care of her and milked her daily.) With permission, we could walk half a mile through woods and pastures to the farm next door and visit our cousins, two boys our age and a younger girl. Best of all was the creeks. Big brother and I learned to swim with the cousins, without adult supervision, in a shaded swimming hole, only chest deep at high tide. We learned to both paddle and row a boat, fish with a hand-line, and catch crabs by the chicken-neck-and-dipnet method. We learned to walk the muddy creeks at low tide, catch crabs with just a stick, and bog in the pluff mud up to our hips, if necessary, and get ourselves out. We learned to identify the most common trees, crops, animals and birds. We saw lots of snakes, learned to leave the harmless ones alone, and to identify the poisonous ones and report them to an adult. Although we heard stories, no child we knew ever got bitten. Yes, we got hurt occasionally. We had frequent bumps and scrapes from climbing trees and falling off bikes. Our feet were cut by oyster shells in the mud at low tide and on dock ladders at high tide. We got poison ivy on our arms, sunburn on our faces, impetigo in our ears, and ringworm in our bare feet. But our parents could heal our wounds or find the right medicines for our infections. In exchange, we learned to appreciate Nature, to take care of ourselves in many situations, to help each other out, and to treasure the freedom of the out of doors, the sheer exuberance (and devilment) of childhood. In many ways, the old Manse was the best home I ever had. -- 0 --
Respond to this article by E-mail to: c.s.spencer@att.net
Charles Spencer's two-volume Edisto: A History has been published
by The istory Press in 2008.
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