BRACK: Remembering a special place

By Andy Brack  |  I’m a little empty these days because of the recent sale of a place that’s been meaningful for many years.

Middleburg Plantation in Berkeley County has been a sanctuary since I arrived in Charleston in 1988. Featuring the oldest wooden house (1697) south of Virginia, Middleburg transferred last week to a businessman who is expected to breathe new life into it, just as the Charleston family of a college friend did after buying it in 1980.

This past Saturday, a few days after the 325-acre plantation sold, I returned a key to the front door that I thought was lost, but found on a key ring on a last visit on May 31. I showed my daughters the window where a British general scratched his name when his troops occupied the plantation during the Revolutionary War. I showed them an upstairs room where a girl about their ages etched a window to show she lived in the room from 1898 to 1902.

I took a picture of my daughters sitting at a round, leather-inlaid table where I wrote a never-published mystery novel in 1996 when I spent months living at the plantation. In between writing and editing back then, I cut lots of grass around the house and the then-guitar shaped garden left over from the 19^th century.

I took another photo of my wife smiling and leaning on a porch column, just as she did 15 years ago in a wedding dress before our June wedding. In the background was the field where caterers set up a big tent for our reception. (Boy, it was h-o-t on that day.)

Looking toward the Cooper River with the rice mill chimney at left.

The four of us walked a grassy path to the Cooper River, where we saw hundreds of dragonflies darting this way and that in big, open fields. After a pond came a decaying toll house where owners used to collect fees from other farmers who processed rice in a mill designed and built by resident Jonathan Lucas almost 200 years ago.  He made a fortune building similar mills all over the world. Now, all that is left at Middleburg is a big chimney and rusting iron machinery near the water’s edge.

For years, Middleburg has been a place of respite, a place where I was fortunate enough to be able to visit periodically, relax, sit on a porch, drink a beer and get away from development. While it was very quiet from things like cars, sirens, planes and modern conveniences, there always was sound — the buzzing of bugs, the bleats of frogs, the whoosh of wind through massive oaks.

One evening in 1996 when I was living at the plantation, I saw a pair of headlights coming down the long driveway along the oak allee. It was dark. It was kind of creepy. By chance, all of the lights off in the house because I was watching TV in the dark.

The whole thing seemed odd. People didn’t stop by after dark without phoning I hadn’t ever had nighttime visitors. And they certainly didn’t chug-chug-chug along slowly.   The folks in what turned out to be a battered brown pickup truck just looked like they were up to no good.

Middleburg Plantation

The only weapon I had was surprise. So when they rounded the driveway almost at the front steps, I flipped on every light in the place. The truck stopped abruptly. I saw two good-ole-boys in the truck.

“Evening, may I help you fellows?” I asked.

“We looking for our deer dogs. You seen ‘em?” the driver furtively asked.

“Nope, but if you give me your phone number, I’ll call …”

I didn’t even get to finish the sentence. The man said, “That’s alright” and headed out. He reached the roadway much more quickly than when he arrived.

I went back inside the old farmhouse where the lights were blazing. I sat down. I took off my ball cap and scratched my head, wondering what in the world had happened. Then I looked down at the hat, which had been a present. It had a big white star on it and said, “Department of Justice” above the star and “United States Marshal” below the star.

Yep, the boys must have thought I was a fed. The word must have spread pretty quickly, too, because I got no nighttime visitors for the rest of the year that I lived at Middleburg.

Make sure you have a quiet place that you can visit and center yourself. If you’ve got a suggestion for a new one for me, let me know.