Forest Trail to Pocahontas Street (revised)

Forest Trail begins on a rise at its merger with Ocean Boulevard, creating a consistent slope for coasting on a bicycle. The street narrows as it progresses away from the ocean, toward the intracoastal waterway. Indigenous barrier island oak, wax myrtle, and palm trees are in virtually every yard. I can still tell you who lived where, but I cannot tell you the formula for the volume of a cylinder.
The street makes a loop before spilling out onto Carolina Boulevard, and on the way were the Davis' and Reagan's houses. Dr. Morris' family and the Sullivans lived across the street from our rental home at 212 Forest Trail. The front yard was sand, and the backyard was grass. A drainage creek bordered the back from adjacent properties. Across that creek were the Gusses and the Traceys. We met the Traceys first, at a park in 1982, and have been friends with them ever since. My sister and I went to preschool and grammar school with almost every kid on the island. Though it seems cliche, this is true: no one locked their doors and everybody knew everybody.
Nearly everything was accessible by bicycle, including the new country club, Wild Dunes. Early on, we used the pedestrian passage to sneak in, and with a friend's swim team pass we went swimming in exclusive pools. Otherwise, we'd solicit a parent to watch us as we splashed in the sea. I'll never forget the taste of salt water or wild blackberries from the dunes as long as I live. Purple, almost black thunderstorms came every summer afternoon: the race home to escape them separated the tourists from the natives, because the tourists got soaked thinking the storm was headed in another direction. My friends and I would nearly be home, sand crusted on our feet and legs, sea water matted in our hair, before the first raindrop simmered on the asphalt. Everyone had a hose or an outdoor shower in their backyard, because this was and is a beach culture. We had rented another house before this one, a yellow one, which I remember only because yellow is my color. This was the life for seven years, until my folks bought a house on the peninsula of nearby Mount Pleasant [when I was nine]. A year later, Hurricane Hugo ate our former rental home by way of storm surge.

The neighborhood was very different on Pocahontas Street in Mt. Pleasant: older kids and latch-key kids milled around the street, inviting themselves to play in our backyard. My parents began locking the doors of the house and the car. We were instructed to take longer bike rides, away from those kids. Our escape was to the bay, which faces the harbor and James Island. A childhood friend would later hold her wedding reception at our favorite park, Alhambra Hall. We could go crabbing with [raw] chicken wings off the Old Bridge, but our catch had to be donated to someone else in passing [as we're allergic]. During softball games on the fields beside Mount Pleasant Academy, Dad would take us for snowcones from the snackbar. My favorite flavor was rainbow because it was everything. We still saw friends, but this required phone calls and someone to drive us here or there. The summer before middle school my mother and I got matching boy haircuts, which was a disasterous choice for an adolescent girl. These years have their own stories.

*this is the first in a series about the Isle of Palms (or is it I Love Palms? ;-))*