Tuesday 9th March 2010 - Tourist Encounters

          So it's up and off to Charleston, which is still in South Carolina.  We stay on US-17, and, to my surprise, Dulcie happily concurs.  US-17 runs along the coast, and, except for the huge concrete highway bridges (Americans just love concrete), it is, well, 'coastal'.  In fact, it is popularly known as the lowcountry, conventionally spelled as one word.  Dulcie steers me safely into the heart of downtown Charleston, where I stop for a tourist encounter of the first kind (that's observation): I go down to the battery and take a picture of Fort Sumter.

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          Fort Sumter is where the Civil War started.  It's the black streak to the left of centre.  The fuzzy lump to the right of centre is one of those huge container ships.  Pretty soon I'm getting to a tourist encounter of the second kind (physical effect): it's putting me to sleep ( Hynek,who defined the alien encounter scale, specifically mentioned catelepsy as one of the defining effects).

          I then go for the third kind, and try to make contact.  I go into one of the downtown motels to ask their rates.  This is a chain I recognise.  It's one of the cheapest I've stayed in, in Pottstown PA.  I almost lost the power of speech when they told me.  I fled to the interstate to look for a motel nest.

          The first intersection I come to has a 'meerkat' advert for one of my favourite breakfast places, and I suddenly remember I haven't eaten yet.  As I turn off, I see an advert for the best of the cheap motels.  So that all worked out nicely.  Except their internet wouldn't work, nicely or other wise.  But there is a chain bar across the road, and it usually has internet, so I pop over there.  They don't, but the staff, conspiratorially, invite me to try to pick up one of the other hotels, and, after a few false starts, I do.  (Smoking is permitted here, not just at the bar, but also in the restaurant, which is the first time I've encountered that.

          This is the stuff I'm happy at: darkened taverns with strangers talking nonsense to each other, attempting to arrange close encounters of what is now called the seventh kind (have a guess!)

          Perhaps I should just stick to the interstates.  Except I'm going to Wilmington next, and the interstates don't go that way.

 

          Later that night, I drove downtown for my kind of encounters.  In the first bar, I was just about to sit at the bar whan this decidedly grown-up lady took the stool.  If I'd been sitting on it, it would probably have been an encounter of the fourth kind (abduction).  I told her to go have a seventh encounter with herself and left hurriedly.

          The next bar I found was called the Blind Tiger.  This, I found out when I was researching the whiskey gangs in Alabama, was a generic name for speakeasies during prohibition.  The practice was to get the patrons to pay for entry to see some exotic animal (like a blind tiger) then provide the booze free.  Whatever kind of encounter that is.