The Pat Conroy Cookbook by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online Page B

knew of my loathing for my homeless state, and she said as she turned our station wagon onto Highway 21 and my twenty-third address since birth: “From what I understand, Beaufort, South Carolina, is a perfectly charming town, Pat. I know you hate all this moving, but this might be a place you can call home.”
    “I don’t have a home, Mom,” I answered. “I can’t have one. It’s too late.”
    “It’s not too late,” she said. “You’re a military brat, son. Because your old man defends this country, you’ve got a right to claim any town in America as your hometown. Any town. It’s your choice.”
    “I don’t know a single soul in Beaufort, Mom,” I said.
    “It’ll take some work on your part, son,” she said. “You’ve got to earn a hometown.”
    I took my mother’s advice to heart, and I buried myself like a wood tick into the arteries and the historical tissues of Beaufort, South Carolina. There was nothing Beaufort could do to stop my invasion of its cells. In six months, I found myself maddened with the love of this water-ringed town. The curve of the Beaufort River still remains the prettiest change of pace and direction I have ever seen a river have the innate good taste to make. The founding fathers of Beaufort agreed with me and put one of the loveliest towns in America on its high banks, and they lined Bay Street with a row of kingly mansions that look like a row of wedding cakes when viewed from the river. Within a month, I would roam the halls of Beaufort High School with classmates who lived in some of those breathtaking houses. The town had an immaculate feel of welcome to it, and I enfolded myself into its silky embrace. I have never looked back.
    Most of the books I have written have been psalms and cards of pure, unalloyed praise of Beaufort, South Carolina. Before the town took me in, I had no idea that geography itself could play such a large role in theshaping of a man’s fate and character. Because of the Marine Corps, I had entered at last into the country that was going to become the landscape of my entire artistic life. The great salt marsh spreading all around as far as my eye could see has remained the central image that runs throughout my work. I cannot look at a salt marsh, veined with salt creeks swollen with the moonstruck tides, without believing in God. The marsh is feminine, voluptuous when the creeks fill up with the billion-footed swarm of shrimp and blue crabs and oysters in the great rush to creation in the spring. The marsh taught me new ways that the color green could transform itself into subtle tones of gold as the seasons changed. The people in the Low Country measure the passing of the seasons not by the changing colors of the leaves of its deciduous trees but by the brightening and withering of its grand and swashbuckling salt marshes, the shining glory of the Low Country and the central metaphor of my writing life.
    On the first day of school at Beaufort High School, the teacher of my life, Eugene Norris, presented himself to my junior English class. A kid on my left whispered that Gene’s nickname was Cooter. The marines in my life had all carried nicknames like Bull, Wild Man, and the Great Santini, so it was a pleasure to welcome a man who was named after a water turtle. Gene Norris was the anti–Don Conroy the antitoxin to childhood days so filled up with a screaming, out-of-control male. Gene was dapper and soft-spoken and good-humored, and in the first month, I found myself riding shotgun next to Gene as he drove me around the streets of the great cities of Charleston and Savannah, telling me the history of mansions and the names of the nearly mythical families who inhabited them. “Let’s ramble,” Gene would say, and we’d visit every antique store in the Low Country. During our rambles, Gene taught me to prize rarity and delicacy and craftsmanship. I learned about porcelain and coin silver and Empire furniture and Wedgwood, and I learned to