Charleston by John Jakes

 

Charleston by John Jakes

 

John Jakes is well respected for his books and especially for his wonderful talent for telling a good story.  You may remember his famous trilogy, The North and The South, which is not only a terrific book, but was made into an outstanding TV series.

 

His writing style is so very personal, peering into the lives of friends and families, with twists and turns that draw you into the chasms of history and make you love some family members and despise others.  Charleston is such a book.  Plots and schemes abound, touching on the good and bad nature of man.  Can’t have a good book without villains, but also with good people who do bad things, and others doing good things that lead to the dark edges of both good and evil.

 

I get to Charleston fairly often, and walk the streets hearing names and seeing places that give me pause, as if I should know more, just can only peck at pieces of incomplete knowledge.  You can’t really know a city until the names of streets and areas mean something to you, otherwise you’re just another blank-brained tourist, snapping photos, going to a restaurant someone told you about, passing building and homes that look old.

 

I was on a tour, years ago, and not in Charleston, when the tour guide pointed out the window of the bus and called out, “Out the left side, you’ll see an old church. You might want to take a picture.”  Oh, goody.

 

Did you know the first shots of the Civil War were fired at the Federal fort, Fort Sumter, that still sits in Charleston Harbor?  You do?  Good for you. Maybe you even visited the fort. Even better. (Several places claim to be from where the first shots were fired and who fired them.)

 

But, John Jakes’ book dives much deeper, beginning with the colonial days and the birth of the United States and how Charleston was captured and Red Coats roamed the streets and made the laws and how Charleston had both rebels and British loyalist citizens.  How was the city run under British occupation?

 

And moving along by the decades, what about slavery?  Were there many slave holders and what kind of compromises keep the states together before leading to secession?  Historical figures play a prominent role, but so do the fictional families that walked separate side of those same sidewalks you’re walking now, looking for some iced tea and shrimp and grits.

 

Many things are touched on that lead us right into today’s headlines.  Charleston has had many rough times and been occupied by very unfriendly forces, yet the country and the city and the state and the people somehow survived.

 

Charleston is one of our nation’s oldest cities and one of the most fascinating.  How it all worked out through times of glory and strife, or if it did, and how it did, is intertwined with fiction and history, by the heroic scope of John Jakes’ novel, Charleston.  A bit over five hundred pages, I was glued to every page, happy and angry and hopeful.  Took me only four days to finish this fabulous tale of a wonderful city.  And, by the way, I’m not the world’s fastest reader!

Charleston in Black and White

 

Charleston in Black and White

 

I’d wager all three of my faithful readers have been to Charleston, South Carolina.  All who have visited this lovely old city already know you can’t absorb the sense of it or savor it, or feel out each cobbled street or plumb its secrets in one day or one week, or even in a year.  

 

On my last trip I took a barrage of photos, but in this very short portrait of Charleston in Black and White, I don’t attempt the impossible. I only offer seeing Charleston at a glance. Thinking you can get a taste of the Holy City would be akin to dining once in Paris and supposing you can fathom the intricacies of French cuisine. Julia Child would laugh in your face.

 

Before we get to the photos, let’s take a short stroll through Charleston’s history

 

Charleston dates back to well before the American Revolution, when Charles II of England ceded all the land south of Virginia to eight nobles, know as the Lords Proprietors.   I’m not going to name them all, but some names you’d remember, such as Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Ashley and Cooper now being the names of the two rivers that frame the peninsula that contains the oldest part of the city.  I’ve included photos of several houses that are on the tip of the peninsula known as The Battery. Some date back to the Revolution, but sadly I do not know the ages of each.

 

As you might guess, Charleston, once known as Charles Town, has layer after layer of dusty history.  Along with New York and New Jersey, South Carolina had the most major battles of the Revolutionary War and from 1780 to 1783 was occupied by the British Army.

 

As a side note:  There is the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, but the British army is simply the British Army.

 

Back in the days of yore, decades after the War for Independence, Charleston thrived, mostly agriculturally with crops of indigo and rice, and then with the biggest crop of all, cotton.  All were dependent on slave labor.

 

The War of 1812 bypassed Charleston in terms of battles, but South Carolina did supply men and material

 

And as the federal government expanded its powers, one South Carolinian leapt into the thick of the politics of the central government versus states rights, John Caldwell Calhoun.  He was the Vice President under two presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.  He also served as Secretary of State under President John Tyler.  Without going into details, Calhoun fought hard for Southern institutions, including slavery.  (You might want to read about the Nullification Crisis and the Compromise of 1820.)

 

Within a couple of decades, the Civil War erupted (also known as the War Between the States…and in the south, as The War of Northern Aggression).  It was Charleston where the first shots of the war were fired at the federally manned Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

 

Sometimes I find history is more digestible on a personal and fictional level.  For the Civil war, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, and for the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. For Charleston’s history, check out Charleston, by John Jakes.

 

Enough blather, maybe?  Time for you to see what I saw on my recent trip to the wonderfully historic city of Charleston, South Carolina.

A Wonderful Coffee House

Graveyard near St Phillip's Church

These houses are all in the area called The Battery

Cherry Scones from The Careless Cook

 

Cherry Scones from The Careless Cook

 

By now everyone has a good scone recipe, but do you have The Careless Cook’s version? Let’s look at the very basic recipe.  Then we’ll talk luscious, fan pleasing, never to be forgotten, cherry scones.

 

I should warn you right away, if you’re a CPA, or a nuclear physicist, or a big fan of Julia Child, you’re going to be very disappointed by how The Careless Cook scampers through a recipe using the That Looks About Right (TLAR – pronounced T-Lar) method.  But, for the cook who is more interested in results than the process, this recipe may calm your nerves and settle those butterflies flapping their wings in your stomach.  After all, cooking at its best should be entertainment, for you and your ungrateful friends.

 

The Careless Cook’s Plain Scone Recipe

 

Heat the oven to 450ºF

 

Incredients

 

2 cups flour, plus a little more for rolling the dough (bread flour or all purpose flour) 

2 tablespoons baking powder (I sprinkle about what looks right in the palm of my hand)

2-3 tablespoons sugar (same)

3 tablespoons cold butter

½ teaspoon salt (Yes, that too)

1 cup heavy cream, also called whipping cream

 

Grab a bowl or your food processer (I do everything in my food processor) and mix the dry ingredients.  Now chop the butter into bits and blend it into the dry mixture. 

 

Add the cream and mix well to form a dough.

 

Scatter some flour on your counter. Form the dough into a ½ inch thick circle and cut it in sections as you would a pie.  Bake for 12-15 minutes.

 

 

 

But, what if you’re tired of the tried and true and feel like a blind date adventure? I’m talking Cherry Scones! 

 

Use the regular recipe, kinda….there are some changes!

 

Changes are in bold print

 

Cherry Scones

 

Heat the oven to 450ºF

 

Use a can of cherry pie filling and separate the cherries from the wet filling. See photo.

2 cups flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

1/3 cup sugar, or more if you like

3 tablespoons cold butter

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup heavy cream

½ cup pie filling, minus the cherries

 

In a bowl or food processor, mix the dry ingredients.

 

Chop the butter into bits and blend well.

 

Add both the cream and the pie filling, but not the cherries.

 

Blend into a dough.  

 

Flour your counter. Roll out the dough to a ½ inch rectangle and cut as desired.  Mine are roughly two inches by two inches. With your fingers, press a cherry into each piece.

 

Bake for 10 – 11 minutes.  Remember each oven is different.  Mine took 11 minutes.

 

I sent all my cherry scones to a group of ladies and got rave reviews and very interesting comments that should have made me blush, were I bashful and shy.

 Try some other combinations:  Cinnamon, Lavender, Sweet Bacon, Lemon

The Third Victim and Stranger in Paradise: Two Great, Fast Reads!

If you enjoy small town murders and mayhem, I’ve got two summer reads that will crowd your nights and fill up your morning coffee time.  These quick and easy reads glue themselves to your imagination, yet still leave room for yard work, grocery shopping, and all those impromptu social engagements that keep you busy from now through Thanksgiving.  How can you resist when the plots keep you guessing and turning pages? This book is filled with starkly interesting and clearly cut characters who walk both sides of the dusty, pockmarked streets. 

 

The first of these startlingly addictive books is The Third Victim, by Phillip Margolin, an author I’ve never had the pleasure of reading, but will again!  I know you’re busy baking cookies, digging in the garden and hastily showering and getting ready to meet Fred and Gloria for lunch, so I’ll as brief as I can, and still show you how excited I am about this book!

 

A small town cop is driving along a lonely road at night, when he catches something startling in the headlights.  A woman, bruised, bleeding, whose clothes are ripped, with a face that is clearly distraught, is in the road, waving frantically.  Of course, the cop stops.   

 

Now that Mr. Margolin has sucker punched you, prepare yourself for a host of villains, many of which might have a tendency toward rough sex, greed, or at least shady situations involving money in great quantities.  Trouble is, not all the characters are THAT bad. And mixed in with the villains are some upright citizens and protectors of the law, including cops and lawyers. At least I guess so.  To tell the truth, which I sometimes do, I couldn’t figure out who-done-it.  Guess that’s why I read this 300+ page book in three sittings, and apologized to Fred and Gloria for thinking they meant dinner, not lunch!  The Third Victim, by Phillip Margolin.

 

My next recommendation was like finding a treasure without a map. Stranger in Paradise, is a Jesse Stone novel by Robert Parker.  I thought I’d read all of his Jesse Stone novels.  I know I’ve read most of them, but this one popped up, starling me like a squirrel about to lose his nuts.  See, I’ve even stooped to reading, or I should say, tried to read some follow-on Jesse Stone novels by those who mistakenly thought they could just make friends with the ghost of Robert Parker and write on.  Doesn’t happen, boys and girls. Genuine is genuine. A Zircon isn’t a diamond just because it glitters.

 

So, admittedly I was beside myself with the joy only a Jesse Stone fan can know, when I found an original I hadn’t read.  Let the coffee get cold!  Who cares?  When I saw it was Fred is calling, I didn’t answer. I had to read this book!  Maybe, if it had been Gloria…

 

So what is the attraction?  I’m talking about the book again. Jesse Stone, for the benefit of the three people who haven’t seen the made for TV movies, starring Tom Selleck, is a small town sheriff with a couple of personal problems, a bottle of Scotch, and an ex-wife he’s still in love with.  Living in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise, he’s a man bound to his own set of rules for right and wrong.  Sometimes they match the law and sometimes they don’t, but are always the right thing to do.

 

If you grew up as a teenager in a small town in the 50s or 60s, you know what I mean. The sheriff, or a deputy didn’t toss you in jail for speeding through a red light, he (there were no shes back then) would stop you, and give you the chat. “What the heck did you think you were doing? Do it again and I’m going to tell your daddy!”  We can certainly have along discussion about what things were like back then, compared to now, but let’s keep talking about the book.

 

The people in Paradise are mostly good and the word ‘bad’ often carries the connotation of nothing more than snobby or slightly rude.  But, all that changes when a man called Crow, a handsome killer, comes into town, dragging some big city problems with him.  Added to the plot is a delinquent teenage girl, as far away from nice as mud is from pudding, and her daddy is a big time mobster from Miami.  Yes, it’s an omelet that Jesse and his deputies, Suit and Molly, have to unscramble before someone gets hurt.  Oh, it gets worse, and as usual it involves money and greed, mixed in with right and wrong and the law and Jesse’s code of ethics. 

 

What kept me reading? The extraordinarily compelling complex and complicated characters and a plot cut with a razor that keeps you guessing who’s going to bleed.

 

These are not books of great intellectual interest, the kind that appear on every high school and college reading list.  No need for Cliff Notes to get you through the course and no amphetamines to get you past the first paragraph.  Nope. None of that. These two are simply entertaining, exciting, with fast moving plots and characters that stick like Gorilla Tape to your rapidly fluttering fingers.

 

The Third Victim

               &

Stranger in Paradise

 

These two will turn anyone into a speed-reader!