The Palmetto State is my Oyster

After breakfast in Greenville, I experienced Pickens and Woodruff before making it to Columbia, home of the University of South Carolina. The campus is lovely. The football stadium is immense. My stomach was growling and my hunger was making me quickly turn the corner into behaving like a demonic troll.

I ate a few emergency almonds from my purse, which afforded me a extra 20 minutes of human being behavior. The clock was running out.

We went to a place called Rockaways. There was no sign outside. Honestly, I like that sort of place- it makes me feel like I have an inside scoop that nobody else has. Makes me feel like I have my own reality show (incidentally, I would LOVE my own reality show. Somebody please make one for me.)

A pimento cheeseburger was the plan, since the only bite of pimento cheese I had ever had in life was a few weeks ago at The Publican in Chicago. I was handed a menu and noticed a hand-written sign shoved down the front of it- "Oysters, 50 cents each."

50 cents. Two for a dollar. Do you know how much oysters cost in Lansing, Michigan? THREE DOLLARS EACH.

I asked if this was a true advertisement, or if the menu was a relic. I didn't know what to think. I was starving and I couldn't determine whether or not this was actually happening. Guys, it was true. They were 50 cents each. We got a dozen, and we got a pimento cheeseburger, and we got pimento cheese fries.

That's a little ramekin of jalapenos on the side. I like it.

The cheese was a little much for me. I expected it to be somehow- chunkier? This cheese was creamy. I've been told that mayonnaise is mixed into it. A miracle occurred and I haven't gained 78 pounds in the last week, and I'm not really sure how that happened. I did my best to outgrow all of my clothing.

The real showstopper was these little guys. I ate almost all of them. There was no mingonette, which I thought was odd. But I found some later in the day, when I ate another dozen oysters.

I wonder if pimento cheese fries are typically crinkle-cut? Probably. Makes sense that crinkle-cut fries would hold more cheese, right? Again with the science. Maybe that will be my next degree.

As we continued on our statewide tour, we got back in the car (me with my personality fully restored and acting as nice as I can be expected to) and drove to Charleston. When we got there, we went to Pearlz. I, being the pig that I am, ate more oysters.

I was full and happy and could be my usual charming Yankee self. I proceeded to talk to people from Ann Arbor, in Charleston on vacation (she was a lawyer), a woman with a Spartan coozie on her beer who is from Grand Rapids and lives in SC, and then it got really real and the singer at the next bar we went to announced that was going to play a song by a group from Detroit, since it's "so close" to his hometown.

His hometown? Mason. I used to swim dual meets in their pool. I was tickled. Right after he and I discovered our Mitten State commonality, two middle-aged men in the crowd stood up and announced that the live in Bath, just north of Lansing. Ahh, life. You get me every time.