Barone's day in Georgetown, S.C.

Welcome to Georgetown, S.C., and Elite tourney No. 2 of 2016 in a town loaded…

…with history…

…and small-town charm. I think every street I drove through near downtown had this very cool canopy of trees and…

…historic markers, everywhere, even back-to-back in some places, so come on…

…let’s check the town out.

Now normally I kind of fumble around and figure out the place by myself but this time I have with me, Chris Wells, the Bass Chaplin to many of our anglers and a native South Carolina dude, “I’m South Carolina’s biggest fan, I’m just in love with the state and this town.” So who better to help me tell you about this place than my buddy Chris who has lived in town here for four years. Listen…

“db, porches are a symbol of a time and a place where families came together, a social gathering place, and Georgetown is full of porches that bring back the memories of…

…a simpler time, bring back the memories of those past who once sat there and told you the stories of your heritage, told you the stories of farming and fishing, of kindness and neighborly ways.” I get this, where I grew up we sat on front steps, bounced tennis balls of the concrete and learned who we were and where we came from, yeah, I get this.

I’m not to sure I get this though, many porches have the ceilings painted and according to Lauren Joseph, the Tourism Marketing Director of the town, this color ceiling paint is used to protect the house from “Haint” which she told me are “Spirits, hags and plait-eyes which will come in at night and ride you right before you fall asleep.” Um, hmm, she also told me that the town has “63 structures 200 years old or older and has more historic homes on the National Register than Williamsburg.” My money is more on her second quote then the “plait-eyes,” but I may be buying me some of that paint…just saying.

Like my hometown of Buffalo, the steel mills shut down, as did this one in Georgetown, and to be honest no matter what the Chamber of Commerce may smile and say…you shut down the mills, and people get hurt. Some in my family did, but also like my hometown this place, to me, has a sense of resiliency, I know that feeling personally, and this area has got it as…

…it goes back to its roots, which in some cases is shrimping which…

…is still active locally…

…but it is more than holding onto the past…it’s about…

…honoring it, giving it, and those in it, their due. In my scale of liking a town, when I saw this, Georgetown jumped up several notches in my heart. I took this photo and then for a moment bowed my head for all those who gave us all this, doesn’t hurt Bassmaster or me none if you take a second right here and do the same.

Hey, I am an unabashed small town liking dude, and on a 1-10 scale I give this place an 8, and rising. The architecture…

…is amazing and being saved and preserved…

…along with some cool automobiles…

…but throughout downtown you find cool small mom and pop stores and…

…neat things going on. If you don’t know what shag dancing is, dial it up on YouTube, it is very cool and is part of the music history of this state. If I didn’t have two bad knees and one and a half bad hips and no sense of rhythm I’d have Barbie out on the dance floor dancing to it as well.

Downtown also has a couple museums and…

…just a relaxing atmosphere to sit…

…or visit like Ellen and Harv, both from Ontario, Canada, are doing, or..

…taking photos of things…

…or friends…

…or taking little ones down to the boardwalk to see…

…the sights or…

…the cool cars parked there.

Meet Gary Lee. He just spent 24 days on his sailboat sailing, “…up here from Florida, 24 hard days you know that bay out there can be a rough son…. sometimes. You here for that fishing tournament? I passed some of them out there, those boys going to land some big ones you know.” Gary told me that he has been sailing, “…for 67 years or at least that’s all I’ll admit to,” then added, “going to pull up anchor today and head up to Baltimore, should take 14 days with me and my first mate, Tiki.” And this…

…is first mate, Tiki.

Buddy Chris here graduated from Francis Marion University with a B.A. in history. That monument he’s leaning on honors the man who the school is named after…

…Francis Marion, known throughout Colonial America as the Swamp Fox. Here’s Chris: “Francis Marion disrupted the English Army supply lines so much as they tried to march south that they turned around and went back up north where General Washington and the troops were waiting for them. We enabled Washington to finish the job and when he became President he came down here to this town and thanked us for it.” I’m a huge Revolutionary War buff, and many times the South’s involvement in that war, is forgotten, don’t let it be because the first 10 names in column 1 & 2 of the Declaration Of Independence were the signatures of the men from Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina and this sentence documents “in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…” did not mean only New England.

But nowhere in this town did the history of this place connect with me more than it did at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church.

Nowhere…

…did the sense of time, sense of place, sense of those who built this area, and this country grab me like it did when…

…I walked through the doors of this 200-plus year old church. That’s Mary Boyd standing in the doorway, she is with the historical society and she gave Chris and I a tour of the church. Yeah I live in a town founded in 1645…100 years before this place of worship was built…but I’ve never seen what I saw inside and I’ve been in a lot of old places, but…

…this brought it all home. Individual church pews, some numbered and owned by town folk, some…

…just open and saved for the public, but it wasn’t the pews which hit me, but what we found inside…

…200 year old inscriptions of those who sat and prayed inside. They tagged their pews…

…this one, a carving inside a pew was done around the turn of the century…1900…the boy turned into a man in this town, worshiped here all his life and awhile back died at 90 years of age. That’s an image of the ships a young boy saw dock in his town, tall masted ships from all over the world. Times like these I wish I could put my hand on it, close my eyes and see what that young boy saw. And then there was this…

…a 197-year-old note: “On March 7, 1819, this day a bird cold robbed me of 3 hens…” I’ll never forget the first time Mary Boyd read that note to me, never forget the chills that went up my spine, sure I read history books but to see history, to see the fate of three hens, and maybe this person’s livelihood scratched out, this is an untainted real world 197 year old message. It may not be one of “3 hens” but this message still rings true today.

It’s no secret that Barb and I are looking at places to retire, and to be frank about it, I never knew anything about Georgetown, S.C., until I stepped into it a couple of days ago. But thanks to my friend Chris, thanks to the dozens of friendly people I’ve met here, thanks to the sense of place, sense of history…and yep those wonderful porches…I’m going to be adding Georgetown, S.C. to the top 10 places to retire to list. If you have time, check the place out, I’m sure the folks here will pull up a chair on their porch and tell you, “Welcome to Georgetown, South Carolina.” There you go…db.