Tales from Brookgreen

by Lynn Michelsohn

  Now, I understand that on some archeological digs where artifacts of gold or precious jewels might be found, it is common practice to pay workers handsomely for each find so that they turn in valuable objects when they discover them and artifacts are not lost to the black market. None of the archeologists from Charleston ever considered that our workers might view these objects as worth concealing for monetary gain. They didn’t realize the effects of their enthusiasm until that morning when James approached the scientist in charge. They only began to understand as they listened to James’ unusual story.

  ~

  Once James understood how valuable the artifacts were (he explained) it was hard to resist pocketing just a few. He thought happily about being able to sell them for much-needed cash or supplies. He knew he would have to take them to a big town to make any real money but figured his brother, who worked for the railroad in Florence, could help the next time he came home on a visit.

  Soon James had quite a collection of relicts in his small cabin: arrowheads, hands full of beads, and several small axes. He had also collected a pocketful of loose teeth, which he kept in a coffee can on his mantel. James felt bad about taking objects but tried to look at it just as extra pay for a job no one else had the courage to take on. He also reasoned that money from the artifacts would be much more important to him than to Mr. Kimbel, who already had more money than anyone needed.

  Still, James’ conscience bothered him and he didn’t sleep well at night even though he was tired from the excavation work. Tossing and turning one night, he gradually realized that way off in the distance he could hear the wailing voices that everybody talked about, or was it just wind in the pines? Each successive night he slept more poorly, between worrying about his stealing (because that was what he was having to admit he was doing) and listening for wailing or other strange noises outside in the night.

  One night the noises were no longer outside. They came from inside the cabin, right there with James! He awoke to rattling sounds from the coffee can on his mantel and strange low murmurs from shadows passing in front of the window. As James lay stark still in his bed, the noises grew fainter and the sound of his pounding heart grew louder. He lay there like that until the sun came up, by which time he had convinced himself that he had just had a bad dream.

  Still, it was even harder to get to sleep the next night and close to morning James again awakened with a start to the same rattling noises and moving shadows, only this time their voices were louder and their tone was angry. He could not make out any words but the shadows were clearly men and it looked like they were waving weapons at him! Fear clutched his heart. He could hardly breathe, much less move. The next thing James knew, he awoke to sun streaming in the window, relieved to be awake, alive, and away from his horrible nightmare.

  The next night James once more lay down to sleep with great trepidation in spite of his increasing exhaustion. His anxiety was heightened by distant thunder that signaled a building storm. In spite of his fears, James quickly fell asleep. A clap of thunder soon woke him to a frightening spectacle however. Flashing lightning illuminated a group of angry Indian braves decked out in skins and feathers there in the room with him, shaking their spears and tomahawks at him! Frozen with fear, James could hear chanting and shouting as well as rattling and pounding, even over the thunderclaps. The Indian braves stomped and gestured directly at him ever more wildly! Suddenly a gigantic flash of lightning and a thunderous crash shook the cabin! In that flash the braves in their regalia vanished but the coffee can hurtled off the mantel, scattering teeth all across the floor.

  James sat bolt upright in bed, terrified. Thunder and lightning continued but the braves never returned. James lit a lamp and sat up the remainder of the night, wide-awake, but he was not visited again.

  At dawn, James bundled up the artifacts, getting down on his hands and knees to search out every last tooth from under his sparse furniture. He took the bundle straight to the dig and presented it, along with his confession, to the scientist in charge that morning.

  James begged to be allowed to continue working on the dig because he was in great need of money. The scientist accepted his confession, along with the return of the stolen items, and agreed to let James keep working. Here was one worker who certainly wasn’t going to carry off any more artifacts!

  Later that morning the scientist called a meeting of all the workers. He carefully explained that, while the artifacts were priceless for the information they gave us, they had little real monetary value. He did offer rewards for any special pieces the men found that they thought they might be able to sell elsewhere, just to encourage the workers’ honesty.

  ~

  When their excavations were completed, the Charleston scientists, with Mr. Kimbel’s permission, were kind enough to encourage me to select a souvenir of the dig in appreciation for my assistance. I chose these beads for several reasons. They were women’s ornaments and I felt a kinship with the women who, like me, must have worried about their stricken children. The beads had obviously been important to them; they had left them with their most precious objects, their children.

  I also chose the beads because they were lovely. Their pale, soft colors must have ornamented special costumes in happier days.

  Finally, I chose these beads because I knew they had a story that went back even further than the Indian people who buried them at Wachesaw. I knew this because these beads are made of glass.

  While Indians made beads of shell and stone, they did not possess the craft of glass making. So Europeans, not Indians, made these beads. They most likely originated in the glass furnaces of the tiny island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon, long before Italy even existed as a country, perhaps before the mothers who buried these beads with their children were born. The breath that formed the fine hollow tubes that would be cut and polished into these individual beads also formed words in the dialect of Marco Polo.

  Glass blowers of Murano created these beads for trade with native peoples and sold them over the centuries to explorers and traders heading for the gradually expanding New World. Spanish settlers with Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon near here at Chicora, who were the first Europeans to settle in South Carolina, may have carried these beads across the Atlantic in their small sailing ships. Or Miss Dusenbury’s ancestors, early Carolina fur traders of English descent, may have brought them up from Charleston by dugout canoe to exchange with the Waccamaws or Winyahs for deer hides, which they sent back to England by way of Charleston. Or these beads may have made their way overland to us along native trade routes through the western mountains, acquired from French traders coming up the Mississippi or down from Hudson’s Bay. They may even have arrived in South Carolina along coastal trade routes, passed on by natives who originally received them from Dutch settlers in exchange for land on Manhattan.

  Yes, these beads have a long history that involves gondolas and sailing ships and dugout canoes, or perhaps pack mules, as well as all varieties of adventurers and traders, before they ever reached graves here at Wachesaw. And who knows where their path will lead over the next centuries. I am happy to be a small part of their history, like those Indian mothers who treasured them for a brief period, then left them with their precious lost children.

  ~

  I have never felt any sad or threatening emanations from these beads. I truly believe the previous owners were kindred spirits who would have wanted these beads to continue to bring joy and comfort to their owners. But I will tell you a little more of their story that does raise some tiny doubts in my mind.

  Brookgreen Gardens is open to visitors during the day but closes at five o’clock every evening. The front gates are locked, as are the doors to the few buildings such as the Old Kitchen and this building, the Museum. We have rarely had any problems after hours but a night watchman patrols the grounds throughout the night just to make sure. The night watchman follows set rounds on a set schedule. He carries a time clock with him and must punch it at set int
ervals with keys attached to various boxes around the Gardens to show that he is actually on the job.

  One of the time clock key boxes is located on the back wall of the second of the two small-sculpture galleries attached here to the Museum. Each gallery is formed by a rectangle of twelve-foot-high gray-brick walls, mostly covered with ivy. Small sculptures are displayed inside along the brick walls with the center of each gallery open to the sky. Several times each night the night watchman must unlock the front door of the Museum, pass through this part of the building containing the postcard display cabinets that also hold the Wachesaw beads, go through the first small-sculpture gallery, then enter the second small-sculpture gallery. There, on a chain in a little metal box attached to the brick wall at the very back of this second gallery, he finds the time clock key for this location and uses it to punch his time clock.

  Now our night watchman is not a fanciful man, but often at night when he is on the front porch preparing to enter the Museum, or when he is in the Museum, or in the open-air galleries heading for the time clock key box, noises come to him, rising and falling like distant voices wailing.

  Are ancient spirits who once owned the Wachesaw beads still mourning their long lost relatives? Are ghosts of long dead Indians trying to reclaim property taken from their graves? I cannot answer that for you. You must decide for yourself.

  I will tell you one possible explanation for the wailing. If you look closely at the brick walls here at Brookgreen Gardens, including the walls of the small-sculpture galleries, you will see that they are not solid. Spaces between the bricks form a lattice pattern. This saves on the number of bricks needed to make the walls and also creates an attractive openwork design.

  Some people say that as night winds blow around these walls, the holes between the bricks cause peculiar whistling or wailing noises. That could certainly be true. Or perhaps Indian spirits still want to make their presence known around my Wachesaw beads.

  Chapter 8. The Great Sandy Island Expedition

  (Miss Genevieve helps a Texan preserve our Lowcountry heritage)

  Like many young people in the 1950s and ‘60s, I was caught up in the revival of popular interest in folk music. My enjoyment of Kingston Trio records led to a curiosity about more authentic roots of our American folk tunes. I was so thrilled to receive a copy of the fascinating anthology, The Folk Songs of North America, by Alan Lomax, that I carried it everywhere with me, including to Murrells Inlet.

  “You should show Miss Genevieve this book,” Cousin Corrie suggested after I shared some entries with her. “I think she knows the man who wrote it.”

  I smiled indulgently at Cousin Corrie. In my young mind, I couldn’t conceive of our plain old Miss Genevieve as ever knowing anyone important enough to write such an impressive book. Reluctantly, to humor Cousin Corrie, I brought the book with me the next time I visited Brookgreen Gardens.

  I was right, of course. Miss Genevieve didn’t know Alan Lomax at all. The man she knew was his father, John Lomax, the person responsible for the most important collection of American folk song and folklore recordings in the world today, the same John Lomax whose recordings and writings had fueled the entire folk song revival that so captured my interest!

  “Live Oak”

  I first got to know Mr. Lomax when I went to work for the WPA in the 1930s (Miss Genevieve explained). Our country went through a terrible Depression at that time. The prices of cotton and tobacco fell drastically here in South Carolina. People couldn’t make a living farming and many lost their farms and their homes. The textile manufacturing plants closed too. So many people were out of work! And no welfare or Social Security to support them.

  Mr. Roosevelt in Washington knew that something had to be done so he started all sorts of government programs as a part of his New Deal to put people back to work. One of the most important programs was the Works Projects Administration. A division of the WPA hired workers to build roads and parks and government buildings all over the country and then hired artists and craftsmen to decorate them, leaving us a marvelous legacy.

  The part of the WPA that affected me was the Federal Writers’ Project. My husband had died, leaving me with five young children to support. I was fortunate enough to get a position with the Federal Writers’ Project because I had done some writing off and on over the years, mainly short pieces about our local culture for New York magazines.

  Working for the WPA Writers’ Project was one of the most interesting jobs I have ever held. Our best-known accomplishment was publishing the WPA Guide to South Carolina. Each state in the Union wrote a travel guide for that state that also included sections on its history, geography, economy, and culture. You can still find copies of these in many public libraries and they still make wonderful guides for exploring the states.

  To me, an even more interesting WPA project involved writing up interviews with former slaves and collecting folktales and folk songs from them and from other local people. I got to know Mr. Lomax because he was Folklore Editor for the Federal Writers’ Project. For years he had been collecting folk songs and stories from all over the South. He wanted to record traditional songs of local people before radio and phonograph records changed everything. When he read over the stories and songs I had collected, he recognized how alive the unique Gullah culture remained in our area.

  Mr. Lomax and I corresponded regularly and he began including Murrells Inlet on his recording tours of the South. Fortunately, I was able to introduce him to a number of local people and persuade them to sing and tell stories into his recording equipment.

  Mr. Lomax came to visit us here at Murrells Inlet several times over the years. He always brought his recording equipment and he usually brought his wife, who helped with the recording and kept notes on people and places he visited. She also tried to smooth over her husband’s lack of social graces. Mr. Lomax was from Texas, don’t you know. He talked like a cowboy and he acted like one too: kind of rough and not too civilized but very kind and friendly. The local people always remembered Mr. Lomax as that Texas cowboy who wanted to hear old time singing. Lots of people around here sang for him, both white people and black people.

  Mr. Lomax had some fancy recording equipment owned by the Library of Congress, the government agency that sent him out to collect songs. When he could, he hooked up his recording equipment to electrical power but when that wasn’t available he had big heavy batteries, sort of like our car batteries today, that could run the recording equipment for more than an hour. He carried it all, several hundred pounds worth, in the trunk of his Ford sedan.

  The recording machine itself looked a lot like a big bulky phonograph. There was a turntable and an arm with a needle attached to it. When he put a blank record on the turntable, set the needle on the disk, and turned the machine on, the record went around and around and the needle cut grooves in it, recording the sound that came from the microphone. The microphone was a big box attached by wires to the recording machine. The wires were quite long so the singer and microphone did not have to be right by the recording machine.

  Not all houses in this area had electricity at that time but the house where we lived with my father, the Hermitage, did, so Mr. Lomax often set up his recording equipment there. He would put the recording machine in the sitting room but would stretch the microphone wires out onto the porch where the singers preferred to perform because it was cooler there. He would operate the recording machine himself inside the house while Mrs. Lomax, outside, would announce the song or singer on the record and make sure they stood close enough to the microphone.

  The records were 78s of course back then so there were only a few minutes of music on each side of the disk. Mr. and Mrs. Lomax had to carry boxes and boxes of records with them in the car in addition to the recording equipment and batteries, and their suitcases too of course. They were usually pretty heavily loaded when they pulled in to see me.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lomax always spent time touring Brookgreen Gardens whenever they vi
sited Murrells Inlet. Walking among the ancient live oak trees hung with Spanish moss was a special delight for them, whether they came in summer when flowers were blooming or in winter when the Gardens were subdued in greens and grays.

  When Mr. Lomax visited us here, it was always as part of a grand tour of several Southern states. The tours usually lasted a month or two as he visited Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and maybe others. He usually stayed with us several days in Murrells Inlet. This was one of his main locations for Gullah, the creole language and culture developed by coastal Carolina slaves. Back then, lots of former slaves and their families still spoke Gullah, or at least understood it.

  Those must have been adventurous expeditions for Mr. Lomax and his wife. They usually traveled along main highways and most of those, like the King’s Highway, were paved by then but it was still a long way between towns if car trouble developed.

  And it seemed like one thing or another was always interfering with his recordings—at least here in Murrells Inlet. One time, all the singers I had arranged for him to record got into some kind of family dispute and all refused to come sing for Mr. Lomax. I was able to find some other people to sing at the last minute but it was a confusion and he missed a lot of the songs I wanted him to record.

  Another time, something was wrong with his recording needle and it had spoiled some disks. By the time he got to Murrells Inlet, he was down to his last few records and had to limit the number of songs he recorded.

  One summer, there was a terrible polio epidemic in our area. Summers used to be dreadful that way. Thank goodness we don’t have those anymore! That summer I had arranged to gather a group of local children together for Mr. Lomax to record play-party songs and rhymes, but then all gatherings of children were banned to try to control the spread of the disease. Once again, I had to find substitutes for the planned recordings.