Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [66]
And it was wildly changeable. By midday the sky could be a blazing blue with a sun that warmed you all over, so much so that you didn’t even need a sweater. But not that morning. It was simply miserable outside, a real Ohio winter day of the sort I remembered from my childhood.
I knew that DuBose’s arthritis had to be troubling him, because my rheumatism was bothering me, not that the medical establishment seemed to be able to define the differences between them to me. It didn’t matter. It was pretty obvious that cold dampness aggravated our conditions. But I loved being on Folly Island in every season and I didn’t like to complain, because it didn’t change anything if I did. And it wasn’t as if we had not taken advantage of every alternative treatment there was. I had tried everything from ordering Hanovia’s Alpine cockeyed sun lamps out of a catalog to every diet in the world designed to reduce the inflammation in my joints. So had DuBose. Nothing really helped. We finally came to the conclusion that staying as thin as possible, being physically active, and taking aspirin was the best course. I normally weighed about eighty-eight pounds and DuBose could not have weighed more than one hundred and twenty-five. (Of course his tailor cleverly padded his jackets to make him appear to have a more manly physique!) And hot baths helped us, too.
So that morning I soaked in a steamy bubble bath until the water was cool and I drained the tub a bit by removing the stopper with my big toe and added more hot water, turning the faucet with my big toe as well. I did this over and over until my skin looked like prunes. I finally got out, feeling ever so much better. I covered myself with great puffs of bath powder and thought about what I would make for dinner.
This whole living on a shoestring business was beginning to be a trial but it was useless to complain about that as well, because it would only depress DuBose. What could he do? The whole country was still in a slump since the Crash in ’29. If only the Gershwins would finish the score for Porgy and Bess so we could get it up on the stage. Nine years! But did George Gershwin need money? No! He was flying high on Rhapsody in Blue! Our situation was not his problem. Ah well, when Porgy and Bess was finally up, people would come to see it in droves and then we’d be in the chips again. Golly! Have patience! I told myself this all the time. Patience, patience.
Then I remembered I had split peas soaking from last night and I thought about how good the soup would taste with ham. The recipe I had yielded six servings for about eight cents a bowl. That was almost as thrifty as my vegetable soup, which also tasted better cooked with a ham bone for flavor. Didn’t a ham bone make everything taste better? (And don’t fret, the recipes for all of my budget meals are in the back of your program, too.) Anyway, I thought I just might take a walk down to Mazo’s Grocery to see if he had a smoked hock that fit my budget. And some cornmeal. I’d make a pan of cornbread in my cast-iron skillet. The walk would do me good. Moving around to work the kinks out of my bones always made me feel better.
So I bundled up and made my way down the road leaving my husband and daughter in the Land of Nod under piles of blankets and quilts, still fast asleep. As I walked along, I wondered if the streets would always be paved with oyster shells. I loved the crunch of them beneath my feet. I would just hate it if anything here changed. This was one of the many things I loved about Folly. Streets with oyster shells, wooden sidewalks on Center Street, cars on the beach, and the goats people kept to landscape their yards. Yes, goats! You never saw that in Ohio. I even loved the two-tiered buses, with their tasseled shades, that brought us deliveries from Charleston. And I adored the fried chicken from the Magic Lantern. We stopped there for dinner every time we went to Charleston for drinking water. Now,