Same ol’ Folly

By Smoky Weiner

I ran into an old Folly friend today by the name of Tom T. Hall.  No, not the country singer who penned the immortal tune “Four Hundred Hogs”, a song about a trucker hauling a hundred thousand pounds of angry bacon. This was Tom T. Hall, Folly’s capable and oft beleaguered former building inspector. He is now striking fear into the hearts of do-it-yourself homeowners on James Island. He looked relaxed. People on James Island are normal for the most part and what a change this has to be for Tom. It reminded me of a time just after my divorce. I was at a party and a pretty woman brought me a drink and smiled at me sweetly. Three of my musician friends – namely Nature Boy Nik, Paul Jameson and Fred Bombelyn – told her almost simultaneously to be careful not be that nice to me, as the shock might cause me to have a stroke or something. Divorce from a spouse or a job for that matter is always hell, but you bounce back!
Aung San Suu Kyi is the Burmese (or  Myanmarian, or whatever you call somebody from Rangoon these days) opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner who has been under house arrest for fourteen years and just got sentenced to another eighteen months.  If she were serving her sentence on Folly, no one would even notice. I know at least twenty people on Folly who haven’t left the beach in fourteen years! There are certain people from Folly whom you would not even recognize if you saw them in Charleston.
Folly seems a little different on Center Street; more brightly painted and commercial-looking, but as you go deeper into the Casbah, it’s more like it always was, except no more Swamp Fox. The Swamp Fox was an old hotel which was converted into beautiful sub-standard housing. It burned down, which is always a terrible thing. The only good thing about it burning down was that it prevented it from just collapsing for no reason. Places like that are important, though, because they give poor people a way to live where they want to. Some people on the various barrier islands believe in a sort of “ethnic cleansing”. Get rid of the funky places, the old time renters, the people with small incomes, the musicians, and of course the young people and then we will be rid of all that crime and garbage.
These people start focus groups consisting of twenty people and then harass the Council members into believing that twenty is a majority. Well, they are right. Twenty people you can see is more than a hundred that you can’t see. These people should save themselves a lot of trouble and just move to I’on.  It is very nice and pure. Folly has always been the party and music summertime beach town. Folly’s been this way since the forties and fifties, when it boasted nationally known bands on the pier and an amusement park. Folly hasn’t gotten out of control at all; it has just evolved exactly how a rational person would expect it to, given its history.
In a couple of short weeks the whole season is going to wind down and the population will dramatically decrease. All Folly has to do now is just sweep up and count the tax money. All you renters and young folks and just plain old disillusioned, sick-of-politics types should go to the Council meetings, mainly because some of the people that always go don’t want you there! That way they can act like the majority. (I think this is how the whole country runs!)
Every Wednesday on Bowens Island I host an open mic blues jam. We have some pretty good people showing up, like Juke Joint Johnny and John Etheridge, Tommy Thunderfoot, Stevie Kent, etc.  Every Saturday starting on August 22, there will be music from 8 – 11pm with The Hungry Monks who play Americana, Grateful Dead, Folk, Blues and Traditional music. Come check it out. It’s the Saturday Night Fish Fry at Bowens Island.

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Tags: Smoky, Weiner

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.