Thanks to a friend commenting on yesterday’s post we decided to see the Customs Building before leaving town.

We found out it opened at eight and made plans to be there as soon as it opened.

Fortunately we found a parking spot right in front of the building. After loading the meter for two hours we walked across the street and up its many steps to get to the front door.

It wasn’t open. Not only was it not open, we learned it would not be opened without an appointment.

Hmmmm. Something seemed amiss. What kind of museum is only open by appointment?

We piled back into the car, said goodbye to the four bucks I’d loaded into the parking meter and were driving down the street when we came upon another Customs House.

Eureka! The right one. But it didn’t open until nine o’clock so we had time to kill.

That’s when we happened upon a beautiful waterfront park with two water fountains and a walkway lined with live oaks.

By the time we made it back to the Customs House it was open. My buddy was right. It was worth seeing, especially if you’re a history buff.

I’ll let my pictures do most of the story telling, but our guide was fantastic.

There are three floors in the building.

The top is where South Carolina conducted matters of state, ratified the constitution and hosted big wigs like George Washington. Anyone of importance saw that room.

The first floor was for general customs business and presently houses a museum and gift shop.

The basement was where merchandise was unloaded from ships and accounted for before passing through to the city of Charleston. It was also a Provost Dungeon for convicts and political prisoners. Three of which ended up signing the Declaration of Independence.

Shortly before the British retook Charleston General Moultrie hid seven tons of gunpowder in the dungeon behind a false wall. When they captured the city and occupied the building they never realized they were sitting on all that gunpowder.

Another interesting fact is that there are four million bricks in the building. Like a lot of Charleston’s old buildings I expect most were made at Boone Hall Plantation nearby.

After touring the Customs Building we walked a couple blocks to a place where slaves were bought and sold. It is a wonderful museum that tells about the tragic lives of the people who were treated as nothing more than property years ago.

That market was for domestically raised slaves since importing people to be sold ended in 1807.

Before that date, forty percent of slaves entered the country through Charleston.

As in most of the bricks made in Charleston slave fingerprints are probably preserved in those baked blocks of clay that built the city.

And then we headed home. The GPS indicated we would be home by 9:34. It lied.

We were a little past Asheville, North Carolina when a message popped up on the screen stating that we would save forty minutes by taking a detour on Highway 209.

I looked at my Atlas and told Tina it appeared to be a little out of the way, but it might be an interesting drive. It was.

Remember what Yogi Berra said? “When you see a fork in the road take it.”

I beg to differ.

What began as a quaint drive through Bald Mountain squeezed into a narrow curvy road. When I say curvy I mean very, very curvy.

Tina always drives because she gets car sick. The longer we traveled the harder she gripped the steering wheel.

We ascended into the hills. Then descended. We went through hairpin curves going up and going down. Now repeat that process half a dozen times.

According to the Atlas there were no curves in that road. It lied.

According to the Atlas the detour appeared to be about twenty miles long, give or take. It lied.

I looked out the window and I couldn’t see the top of the mountain. Then further along the road I’d look out and I couldn’t see the bottom of the valley.

We passed a couple cemeteries and I was amazed the headstones hadn’t toppled over.

Then the sun disappeared as we made our way through the canopy of trees.

We passed Woolyshot Road, Wolf Holler and other nameless paths into the hills that were hiding behind mailboxes along the way.

That’s about the time it occurred to me that no one else had taken this time saving little detour.

No sooner than I had mentioned that little observation to Tina and joked, “Well at least no one is behind us trying to pass,” a motorcycle suddenly zoomed by and disappeared around the first bend in the road.

Our GPS was stuck on 18.5 miles until the next turn off for a long time. Just when we thought our little detour was about to end we came to the intersection on Highway 25 and the GPS recalculated.

Thirty two more miles to go before we would intersect with I-40.

However, the road widened and improved greatly. Instead of traveling twenty to twenty five miles an hour we were up to fifty.

She looked over at me and said as soon as we made it onto the interstate she was getting off at the first sign of a motel and calling it a day.

I wasn’t about to argue.

I figured we were on that forty minute time saving detour for a nerve wracking hour and twenty minutes.

Whew!

Goodnight and God Bless!

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Rick Algood
June 29, 2022