The Other Rainbow Row

Charleston's colorful Rainbow Row, always a popular stop on the city's tourist routes, is especially significant during this month's Gay Pride celebrations, for Charleston has long had an active LGBTQ+ community. Charleston College archivist and librarian Harlan Greene has been writing about the Holy City's Queer history for some years now, and even created an interactive map of the noted places and people who contributed to the city's often inclusive, but sometimes not, atmosphere.

Armisted Maupin

Among Charleston's famous but closeted gay residents was writer Armisted Maupin, author of the San Francisco-based "Tales Of The City." But before Maupin settled on the West Coast and came out, he worked as a reporter in Charleston for The Post And Courier, living in the South Of Broad neighborhood and keeping his sexuality firmly under wraps. He often cruised The Battery, then a popular pickup spot for gay men, and told an interviewer many years later that he was still angry with himself for taking so long to come to terms with who he was.

Laura Bragg

Chalmers Street was the home of Laura Bragg (1881 - 1978), the first woman to lead the Museum of Charleston or any publicly funded museum, for that matter. Although not openly lesbian, Bragg was rumored to have had several affairs with other women, and was a friend and mentor to many of the city's gay men and women. Her "at homes" were a much-sought after invitation, and Bragg was cited by many of her guests for her emotional support as well as for encouraging their artistic careers.

Dawn Pepita and John Paul Simmons

One of the city's most colorful personalities was Dawn Pepita Simmons (1937 - 2000), who was born in England as Gordon Hall but moved to Charleston in the early 1960's and became one of the country's first transexuals with pioneering sex reassignment surgery at Johns Hopkins University in 1968. Simmons settled on Charleston's Society Street and, testing the city's tolerance level of the time, married a young black man. Scandalized Charleston society forced the couple to move their wedding from St. Phillips Church to the pair's home, where wedding presents piled in the driveway were firebombed and reduced to a heap of ashes. Firemen swept the debris into the street, and the next day the city's white Chief of Police served the couple with a fine for obstructing the roadway.

John Ziegler (right) and Edwin Peacock

One of the last surviving members of Charleston's more closeted gay history was John Ziegler (1912 - 2015) who with his life partner Edwin Peacock (1910 - 1989) owned The Book Basement on College Way, for many years a cultural touchstone for the city's arts community. The couple were active supporters of both the city's gay subculture and its broader artistic community, serving as a link between the two. A year before he died, at the age of 103, Ziegler told the Charleston City Paper "Everybody accepted us. We just lived our lives like everyone else."

Thanks to Harlan Greene and The Charleston City Paper for background material for this post.

War On The Parkway

It's hard to imagine while we're zipping along Betsy Kerrison Parkway that this stretch of Johns Island was once a Civil War battleground in what became known as the Battle of Haulover Creek, when Union and Confederate forces clashed over access via the island to Charleston's railroads and strategic harbor.

The march to Haulover Bridge

The fighting came fairly late in the war when Union troops stationed on Folly Island were ordered to Johns Island with two objectives: to create a diversion for Confederate troops that would draw them away from the Union's planned attacks further down the coast toward Florida, and to possibly allow Union troops to cross Johns Island and cut the Savannah to Charleston railway at Rantowles Creek, a critical supply line for the Confederacy.

In February of 1864, some 2500 Union troops were ferried across Stono Creek to Kiawah Island, where they camped overnight at the abandoned Vanderhorst mansion; from there, they waded across Captain Sams inlet onto Seabrook Island and sloshed through the marshes to arrive at Haulover Bridge, just north of today's roundabout. They arrived in early morning fog that shrouded them from a Confederate sentinel post where Rosebank Farms is today. Rushed and surprised by the Union troops, the southern sentinels fled north along what is now the Parkway to give the warning to troops already camped near today's Hopkinson Plantation.

The Confederacy's Captain Moses Humphrey led the attack on Union troops

Sporadic fighting raged up and down the roadway, culminating at what was then known as The Cocked Hat, at the intersection of Bohicket, Main and River Roads. (The name stemmed from Revolutionary War times, when the shape created by the intersection of the three byways reminded contemporaries of the then-fashionable tricorner, or cocked, hat.) Heavy artillery fire from both sides boomed throughout the night before falling silent just before dawn; but when Confederate troops reassembled for a renewed attack, Union forces had already withdrawn in the darkness after learning they'd be outnumbered with more southern troops already marching up from the Georgia border to join in the fighting.

No ground was gained by either side, and the clash became a footnote to the larger, bloody sprawl of the War Between The States. Johns Island remained in Confederate hands until the fall of Charleston, marking the end of the plantation era, the opening of the door to land speculators and the eventual commercial development of the barrier islands.

(Photos courtesy Johns Island Conservancy)

Little Digger

The little critter seen here is surely one of nature's more inventive productions - the mole cricket. It looks like a standard issue cricket from body to tail, but sports a shovel-like head and articulated, clawed forelegs for digging, the reason behind the crested tunnels that crisscross your lawns in late summer. They are prodigious diggers, feeding on turf roots and worms, and are the bane of landscapers and golf course maintenance crews.

A mature tawny mole cricket

Although they appear all over the world, mole crickets are most common in coastal areas like ours. Only one of the three varieties encountered here is native to South Carolina; the other two are invasive and probably first arrived during the 19th century in the ballast of cargo ships from South America. These two non-native species - the southern mole cricket and the tawny mole cricket - were first detected in the late 1800's and early 1900's in port cities like Charleston, Brunswick, Georgia and Mobile, Alabama.

Mole cricket tunnels

The tawny mole cricket is the largest of the three types, at up to two-inches when mature, and is considered the most destructive, although its smaller cousins can also damage lawns and carefully tended turf. The insects develop from eggs laid by females during an early spring mating season, when males dig sound chambers with holes at the surface to amplify their mating calls. The same males and females often return to the same location to mate, which is why you may notice tunneling in the same areas of your lawn each year. The larva emerge in about three weeks, molt up to eight times during the late spring and early summer and reach the adult stage by August, when serious lawn damage begins to appear and continues into October. Cooler weather slows the activity, and by December the insects retreat to deeper soil levels to overwinter.

Fortunately, mole crickets reproduce only once a year and can be managed, if not eradicated, with a variety of insecticides applied during the late spring and early summer, before major damage occurs. And in some parts of the world, mole crickets are not viewed so negatively. In certain parts of Africa, mole crickets are considered a sign of good fortune and in drought-prone areas, as a sign of coming rain. In southeast Asia, they're considered a great delicacy, served fried over rice.