C
and I took a midwinter break and drove to Kiawah in February seeking warmer
weather and some sun.
On
the way down we stopped in Smithfield NC at the Ava Gardner Museum. It is small
but very good. I enjoyed the introductory video on her life and then wandering
around looking at the movie posters. I knew about her marriage to diminutive Mickey Rooney but I did not know she was a friend of Ernest
Hemingway. It appears she and Frank Sinatra were deeply in love but they could
not live together.
In
looking on the internet I picked up two interesting anecdotes. First she came
home to NC often after she was a star and she enjoyed flipping burgers at a local
eatery and swinging in a chair at the post office. They said when she was at
the PO swinging the locals came in and bought stamps one at a time so they
could look at her. The second one is that she supposedly went swimming nude in
Ernest Hemingway’s pool at his casa in Havana. EH told the staff never to
change the water in the pool.
After
Ava we went over to the Outlet Mall, also in Smithfield.
Then
the longer part of the drive started, straight to Kiawah.
It’s
was cloudy and cool. We got in a couple of long walks on the beach, watched
some movies and a terrible basketball game for Duke, saw a couple of gators, a
flock of black skimmers on the beach and had a great dinner at the Fat Hen. It had lots of down home SC dishes and a wonderful peanut butter cup dessert.
On
the trip back we ran into rain and then snow in the middle of North Carolina,
got hung up for an hour and twenty minutes behind a horrible truck and car
wreck, and ended up driving the last few hours at about 45 mph. I think I
deserve a lifetime achievement award for getting us home safely but late under those
conditions.
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