Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-29 20:39:20

Our 2023 Road Trip #9: From the Waterfront to the Rainbow

As I’m posting this two years later, temps have been in the 90s here all week. Right now Pineapple Fountain really looks like my kind of fruit.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and after the history tour, Charleston offered lots more to explore. With time to spare between the ferry ride and our lunch reservation, we walked the varying areas along the edge of the Cooper River as it leads into Charleston Harbor, starting with Riley Waterfront Park. Once a bustling maritime commerce area in centuries past, by the ’80s the area was all weedy overgrowth and ruins until later that decade, when a project supported by longtime Mayor Joseph Riley Jr. (amid a record-setting 40-year run) converted the mess into an extremely pretty public space. Despite a touch of wreckage brought on by Hurricane Hugo in September 1989, the all-new park opened in May 1990 and remained inviting 33 years later.

I don’t expect I’ll grow tired of posting palmetto pics anytime soon.

In an arboreal twist, the park’s main walkway is lined with oaks, not palmettos.

Pineapple Fountain is by far the park’s coolest man-made feature.

The other fountain bears no fruit, not that the frolicking kids care.

Other features include a 1995 statue donated to the park in 2022 by the sculptor Mary Whyte. Its original model Lilly Jones has since grown up and gone on to study at The Citadel.

A plaque honors hero Robert Smalls, who in 1862 led an enslaved crew in grabbing a steamer and escaping their captors. Small went on to a long political career that included five U.S. Congressional terms.

From the park we continued south and slightly west toward Charleston at large…

Sample everyday Charleston ambiance.

More palmettos everywhere. Yes, we’re Yankees and we’re mesmerized and happy to take a break from all the maples back home.

Did I mention the palmettos?

THE CLAAAW! Wait, no, just a sago palm — a rather different form of flora for us.

A lone crane was among the few signs of anything new ushering out the old.

Ye olde U.S. Custom House, across the street from the second place we parked.

The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon is a museum that somehow completed evaded our pre-trip research. At times it served as a Revolutionary War prison, a slave auction house, a post office, et al.

A sidewalk sign proclaims America’s Oldest Liquor Store. Huge, if true.

A magical alley where greenery from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line grow in harmony.

One of the cobblestone residential streets.

Unexpected flashback to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Along the way we heeded the silent tourists’ siren and ducked inside a gift shop to peruse Charleston souvenir options. We chatted briefly with the clerk, who’d actually been to Indiana before — ’round Bainbridge (not far from some of Anne’s family, in fact), where she’d once been part of an experimental agri-tech water purification project. Anne bought a patch and nearly threw in a few postcards till the clerk tipped us off that the City Market sold the latter at lower prices. We noted that for future reference, by which I mean our next day’s itinerary. (Foreshadowing: your key to quality literature!)

Chef Pig welcomes us.

Our southernmost destination for the day was famous Rainbow Row — a distinctive stretch comprising thirteen homes dating back to the 1700s, each painted in different pastel colors that would horrify any stodgy modern-day HOA. The exact reasons for the colors are lost to the public record and occasionally debated among local theorists. Though they were falling into disrepair by the turn of the 20th century, preservation efforts took hold and they’ve enjoyed historical landmark status since 1931.

Welcome to Rainbow Row! Our pics are not in geographic order. I’m not even sure if we captured all thirteen.

Admittedly the exteriors looked far brighter in the travel brochures than in person at sunny noontime.

Note the compromised mix of palmettos and non-palmettos lining the blocks.

Note how said trees made it impossible to get basic shots of just the houses.

Okay, this view’s not bad, maybe even adorable.

Important note: these are private residences, not museums or a theme park. One does not simply walk into a Rainbow Row house and expect milkmaid cosplayers demonstrating how to churn butter.

One house featured a sign for historical context regarding a former kindly owner and one or more subsequent slumlords.

Splendid efforts of one green-thumbed resident who grew other kinds of plants presumably because they couldn’t figure out how to stuff an entire palmetto into a window box.

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Lilly Jones

Showcase how Lilly Jones found success at The Citadel. Learn how the regimental lifestyle, academics and leadership opportunities shaped her journey.

^{OCM Webmaster (How Did I Get Here?)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-04-06 19:20:13

Our 2023 Road Trip #4: Here We Come, a Carolina

North Carolina welcomes us even though we wouldn’t be staying long.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

After our amiable overnighter in Knoxville the next leg of our trip was roughly six hours to our hotel in Charleston, South Carolina — not including multiple stops, of course. The way our path worked out, it wouldn’t be our first state border crossing of the day: we took a 75-mile section of I-40 East from where it forked off I-75 until it connected to I-26, much of which intersected with the westernmost nose of North Carolina, a.k.a. “the High Country” through the Appalachians.

(Hindsight sidebar: a significant portion of this stretch was severely damaged by Hurricane Helene in September 2024, much of which only just reopened last month with limited access. Posting this travelog exceedingly late as I obviously am, I can’t deny the cognitive dissonance of revisiting our personal moments of touristy frivolity that happened fifteen months before the catastrophe, from which they’re still reeling today.)

We had light plans for the Tarheel State later in the week, but Day Two would give us merely a sample of the greenery to come…in the form of yet another welcome center seemingly competing in the imaginary Most Charming Welcome Center Contest that might explain the well-kept roadside amenities in Kentucky and Tennessee if said contest were real. I’m not sure if it’s a Southern Hospitality thing or a nationwide movement in the American welcome center industry, but we’ve had plenty of pit stops in our share of “official” scary dives over our past 25 years’ travels and these facilities were not what we’ve gotten used to dreading.

The first official welcome sign welcoming us before the Welcome Center’s welcome sign also welcomed us.

Interstate mountain tunnels always feel like an amusement park ride to me. This is one-half of the I-40 double-tunnel around Mile Marker 5, which is visible in that post-disaster video I linked to above.

Welcome Center #3 of 4 on our eastbound journey. Collect them all!

Decorative pond with peaceful waterfall.

Value-added bear statue, though we never saw a single live bear on this trip, as usual.

Flora on display included this Adam’s needle.

Inorganic displays included this sticker-covered electrical box.

Exhibits inside include a replica of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, located on the Outer Banks…

…and outfits not unlike those as might’ve been worn by the characters in Asheville native Robert Beatty’s Serafina YA novels.

Anne enjoyed a lengthy chat with the info-desk attendant that doubtlessly spanned various historical topics relevant to the region. I didn’t take any notes except to note that Anne started it. One of her little joys on such trips is finding other folks knowledgeable in such matters who’re in a position to converse more intelligently than my own cabbage-headed self.

They also had one heck of a backyard.

…and from there we bore deeply into the heart of South Carolina. For those interested, we did indeed return to North Carolina later in the week and spent a night, which we’ll cover later in this miniseries. Regardless, we were happy to cross two more Eastern Seaboard states off our to-do list, leaving only New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and poor Delaware as yet untouched. We do hope to finish the rest of New England someday. As for now: onward toward more Southern history and cooking, not necessarily in that order.

As a heartening postscript: Knoxville NBC affiliate WBIR confirmed the Welcome Center has indeed reopened along with I-40, though with only one lane in each direction for the time being. Also, the bear statue survived.

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-14 03:21:38

Our 2023 Road Trip #7: Across Charleston Harbor

Gratuitous vacation boat ride selfie!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Longtime MCC readers may recall our past stops at assorted forts and battlefields at the behest of Anne the American history aficionado, who’d love to be called a professional historian if only someone would pay her to give the sort of lengthy, unprompted history speeches that I routinely hear for free here at home or on long car rides. Charleston offers tourists many reasons to drop in — the food! the beaches! the weather when it isn’t hurricane season! — but of course our primary objective was a tour of Fort Sumter, where the Civil War officially began. Whether you routinely read 100+ nonfiction books a year or struggle to name more than three Civil War battles without cheating, both sides can come together and enjoy the ferry ride across Charleston Harbor to the island where the fort stands.

Sure, South Carolina flowers are pretty, but Anne is here to for history!

DAY THREE: MONDAY, June 26th.

Morning rush-hour traffic did us no favors. We arrived fifteen minutes before our tour’s ferry takeoff time but had bought tickets in advance, saving us an extra line wait. We didn’t have enough time to check out the accompanying museum and had to save that for later once we returned to shore. We brought rain jackets just in case, but the storm clouds we saw across the water never came near us. Mine was light, but began roasting me anyway as the temperature climbed.

Tour guests were directed to use the parking garage of the South Carolina Aquarium, which was next door to the ferry dock.

More piers along the same shoreline, which we landlubbers don’t see back home too often.

Next to those scenic piers is Dockside Condominiums, which were evacuated in early 2025 due to critical structural issues. Units are available as of this writing, priced at $145K-$550K if you’re patient enough to wait for the completion of $151 million in necessary repairs.

Our ferry awaits. By the time we arrived, all the seats were taken, so we had to ride the entire way hanging out on a staircase.

Our same ferry later as we boarded for the return trip. We made sure to grab seats then.

The happy amateur historian on the high seas. That’s the island in the distance.

Bordering us on the north was the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which we drove a few times over the next couple days.

COMPUTER, ENHANCE IMAGE.

Everyday life carried on in the harbor.

Boats and beaches and so forth.

Surfboards and knee boards, whether vacationers or locals.

The decommissioned USS Yorktown, docked at the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, which was on our sightseeing shortlist but missed the final cut.

Seabirds showing off.

More seabirds awaited us on the island. Oh, and some history stuff, too.

…and eventually we disembarked at Fort Sumter. To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Townhomes next to Charleston's Dockside will also be evacuated after engineers find the tower unsafe

Residents of Charleston's Dockside and nearby townhomes told to evacuate by Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. after engineering firm found the building unsafe to occupy.

^{Ali Rockett and Teri Errico Griffis arockett@postandcourier.com tegriffis@postandcourier.com (Post and Courier)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2025-06-16 01:36:27

Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

Not Fort Sumter, but Castle Pinckney on nearby Shute’s Folly, owned by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Public tours aren’t offered, but the flag is swapped out from time to time.

Admittedly our first look at Fort Sumter would’ve been cooler if they’d flown us overhead instead.

Sumter’s pier awaiting our arrival.

Fort Sumter slightly closer upon our disembarkation, with the flagpole empty for the moment.

The official welcome sign down by the breakwater, which was moved farther out from the fort walls in 2019.

(As of 2023 its historical parade ground was just four feet above sea level. Flooding becomes an issue with any confluence of high tides and heavy rainfalls. Fortunately this was a sunny day in the immediate vicinity; storm clouds to the southeast kept their distance during our visit and for the rest of the day.)

Birds frolicked on the adjacent sandbar. Hopefully that isn’t oil.

A diorama of Fort Sumter’s full design, had it ever been finished and left unharmed as planned, including barracks and hospital that do not exist today.

The main building inside, with exhibits, bathrooms, and gift shop.

(The men’s room was out of order at the time of our visit. The gift shop posted and strictly enforced a max capacity of 15 people — not necessarily because of the recent pandemic, though, as it was also awfully tiny. A much more spacious shop awaited us back on the mainland.)

Most of the pentagonal fort’s square footage is just grass, with all the special features along the walls.

Roughly the same vantage but facing the other way.

Same field as seen from the main building’s second story, facing toward the main entrance.

The requisite historical marker, erected in 1932.

The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who commanded the South Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War. As is taught in your finer American schools, the Civil War officially commenced when the first shots were fired at the First Battle of Fort Sumter in the wee hours of April 12, 1861. The takeover came three weeks after the infamous “cornerstone speech” given by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who outlined the CSA’s various grievances and other differences of opinions with the Union, in which he referred to slavery at least eleven times.

The rangers in charge of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park do not pretend otherwise. Upon our arrival they conducted the daily flag-raising program in which volunteering guests can assist in hoisting the 33-star flag up the pole to replace the losing side’s own. (They carefully noted this was a “program” and not a “ceremony”. Legal flag-care reasons, one presumes.) Their accompanying speech, though enlivened by the ranger’s own lighthearted remarks, unambiguously hammered on the blatant slavery aspect of South Carolina’s intentions.

The program commences.

Fellow tourists respectfully follow flag-handling directions.

The flag journeys upward, culminating in our lead photo.

After the program we were allowed an hour to wander the grounds and see what we could see before the ferry would take off. Sumter marks our fourth visit to an American fort (I think?) after previous road-trip stops at Fort Niagara, Fort McHenry, and Fort Ticonderoga. It’s the smallest of the four, yet arguably the most significant, except maybe to Francis Scott Key groupies.

Grass also covers a selection of higher areas around the perimeter.

Features inside the casemates (read: alcoves for cannons) included eleven 100-pounder rifled Parrott cannons that were installed after the Civil War.

One of the Parrott cannons. Note all the embrasures (read: holes in the wall for cannons to shoot through) were all sealed up, so we couldn’t look through them and pretend to target stuff.

One of the more decorative cannons higher up and away from the walls.

Sample deteriorating bricks, some 160+ years old and counting.

Among the few original pieces is the inland-facing Gorge Wall –what’s left, anyway, after so much early shelling before it was fortified with sandbags and cotton bales.

Artifacts and relics were exhibited inside the main structure and in the museum proper, back at the ferry dock.

U.S. Army regulation artillery hat.

Springfield 1842 .69 musket and ammo box.

Fuses and primers of the time, for explosives-history buffs out there.

Model of the USS Keokuk, an experimental Union warship sunk by the Confederates off nearby Morris Island on April 8, 1863.

Vintage flags on hand included another Stainless Banner (a.k.a. the Second National Flag of the Confederacy, as we saw earlier on arrival) and the 35-star American flag as of February 18, 1865.

Remnants of the Palmetto Guard Flag, the first flag raised when the Confederates took the fort. The better-known Star and Bars came later that same day.

Cotton! That critical Southern product, for us Yanks who don’t see much of the stuff unprocessed.

(As captains of the cotton industry, the South thought they wielded more sway over the federal government until the anti-slavery movement and subsequent laws necessarily upended their antiquated inhumanity. In 1860 America’s cotton earnings were $191,800.00, a good 57% of our total export revenue. Prices further escalated during the war due to scarcity — as of 1863 a 500-pound cotton bale could go for $953.00, which converts to over $24,000.00 in today’s bucks…dependent on the perpetuation of slavery for production. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of casualties later, they eventually learned to do without.)

To learn more about the Civil War, check out your local library or museum gift shop for such books as Jack the Cat That Went to War.

(No, I didn’t buy it, but some online reviewers who read it when they were kids hold it in regard. Apparently it’s the story of a cat who Forrest Gumps his way through life during the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter and doesn’t judge his slave-owning owners. Readers reportedly do not have to endure scenes of Jack watching nightly slave-whippings with feline disdain while pondering in Garfield-esque thought bubbles, “Wow, sure glad I’m an adorable cat and not a Black person granted pretty much the same rights ’round these parts!” Rumors of a Jack the Cat/Solomon Northup crossover remain as yet unconfirmed by Bleeding Cool.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

2026-02-13 03:18:49

Our 2023 Road Trip #17: Columbia Pictures

Mandatory George Washington statue.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…but the time came to leave Charleston at long last and begin heading northwest toward home. We returned to I-26 toward Columbia, where we’d stopped on the way down for just a bit, and would stop again. There was much more to see in and around their state capital’s capitol.

[CAUTION: The following entry contains Confederate stuff. We are not fans. Viewer discretion is advised.]

A few sights along the way and/or around the corner:

On the road again.

The tallest roadside forests we’ve seen since Yellowstone.

We stopped in Bowman for gas, where our choices were an overpriced BP station or an overpriced Exxon station. Flip a coin, pick a disaster.

TOTAL ROAD TRIP MILEAGE AS OF GAS STOP #3: 948.4.

Special features around our paths included decorated lightboxes.

Granted, we’re bigger fans of lightboxes hand-painted by artists rather than being covered in photos approved by chambers of commerce, but still.

Fleeting glimpse of “Miracle for Columbia” by MILAGROS Collective.

A tribute to journalist Narciso Gener Gonzales, founder of Columbia’s newspaper The State, who was murdered by Lieutenant Governor James Tillman in 1903.

Northern mockingbird!

So, the South Carolina State House, then. Capitol buildings have become one of our recurring themes in recent years — the interiors where we’re allowed, as well as the public art and historical tributes around each statehouse’s lawns. Some of the personalities they celebrate were, um, not exactly folks we Yankees would’ve put on a pedestal.

The South Carolina State House and some of the last palmettos we’d see as we got farther away from the ocean.

The African American History Monument is in the backyard. Sculpted by Ed Dwight, same artist as the Denmark Vesey statue back in Charleston.

Alternate view of the left side.

Alternate view of the right side.

The requisite soldiers’ monument, resembling ours back home in Indy.

There’s always a cannon in these sorts of collections, but this one’s a remnant from the Maine. Remember the Maine?

Related: their Spanish American War monument, sculpted by Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson, the only female artist represented on the grounds.

James F. Byrnes, who held various state offices all the way up to governorship; also served as Truman’s Secretary of State and spent a year as a Supreme Court Justice.

Monument to Robert McNair, the governor in office when this complex was designed.

The Jefferson Davis Highway marker, courtesy of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The South Carolina Monument to the Women of the Confederacy. Fun trivia: the Daughters of the Confederacy fought against its installation.

Also brought to you by the UDC but not a Confederate monument: this one’s for Revolutionary War Generals Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens.

Benjamin Tillman, Governor and US Senator, whose white-supremacist platform and demeanor were virulently pro-lynching. The murderer of the aforementioned Mr. Gonzales was his nephew.

Confederate General Wade Hampton — white supremacist group leader, rich plantation owner with thousands of slaves, and [checks notes] a governor.

Strom Thurmond, last known survivor of the French and Indian War.

…so, uh, then we went inside. To be continued!

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on BlueSky if you want to track my faint signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

Our Road Trip Checklist

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 …

^{Randall A. Golden (Midlife Crisis Crossover!)}