Within seven hours of arriving from New York City I was on Daufaski Island.
According to legend, Da-fus-ki is "Gullah" for "the first key" ... a key or cay is an island ... like Key West. The Gullah were former black slaves who emancipated and fiercely held onto their language, which is a Jamaican Creole that was bastardized by white people's English. The language is also called "Geechee" in south Georgia and when I was growing up whites would lapse into racism and call black people "Blue gums" when they talked this way.
When Lincoln emancipated the slaves some were pure genius and negotiated their own islands with the federal government ... Daufaski was one. About eighty black families lived there separated and segregated from the world that had raped them. They had beaches, oysters, shrimp and could bend over and pick up handfuls of sand ... which are pulverized sea shells ... broken by the ocean into something ... as beautiful as it had once been.
Broken often leads to something more beautiful than it was before.
I remember Daufaski growing up ... I mean it was always just right there ... but white people went to Hilton Head when they weren't building homes with servants quarters on Tybee Island.
I grew up in Port Wentworth which was a factory town ... literally built around a factory. My childhood friend Pig Jones is the Mayor of Port Wentworth. I loved a Mayor named Pig even before he was Mayor. We grew up together and our Dads would take us to University of Georgia football games or Braves games. Good times!
But they also told us about Blue gums and Daufaski.
So we went to Hilton Head ... where all of the black people lived in the middle of the island ... or Tybee where they all lived downstairs in the servants quarters. Tybee remains greatly proud that it has more historic beach cottages than any community on the East coast. What this means is that there are more servants quarters than anywhere on the East Coast (sorry Cullin Chambers ... but it is what it is).
Then Pat Conroy started writing books. I love Pat Conroy! Everything that he's ever written! When he was a kid after being the lone liberal graduating from the Citedal ... he became the first white teacher of black kids on Daufaski Island. "The Water is Wide" is the name of the book. They made a movie about it named "Conrack" because the Gullah kids could quite pronounce Conroy and it came out different ... as beautiful things always do.
Like a seashell pulverized by the ocean into sand ... it was a thing of beauty once ... but now it is a different thing of beauty ... more beautiful in so many ways!
So "The Water is Wide" is right up there with Jesus, Hemingway, Che Guevara, Frederick Buechner, Carl Hiaasen, Dorothy Day, Alice Walker and Guy Sayles to me.
So Jenny O was having her 50th birthday party and decided to do on Daufaski. About 30 of us collected although only about ten of us remember another ten. I was flying in from New York and though ... there were other things that are important to me ... it's Jenny Orr who is my friend ... on Daufaski.
How could I not go?
So my extended family Jodee and Cheryl took me over on their boat. There is no other way to get to the first key. And it rained beauty throughout the day and night. Though I was so exhausted from New York that I missed half of the beauty.
At one point, I sat on the dock alone ... thinking about the girl stars ... talking to them ... cause I love them most ...
And I sat there ...
Thinking ...
And while ... in the words of Jimmy Buffett singing about Daufaski ... "the bulldozers bury the past" ...
But ... Beach Music, Beach Music, Beach Music ... just plays on ...
So darlin' ...
Save the last dance for me.
