- And I almost got into a fist fight, so yeah.
I don't know, hazing.
You could call it hazing.
♪ Well I'm back in Carolina ♪
♪ Where I never thought I'd be ♪
♪ 'Cause home is not a friendly place ♪
♪ For a rocket man like me ♪
♪ Now the fish is on the table ♪
♪ Wine is off the shelf ♪
♪ Carolina save me from myself ♪
(gentle guitar music)
Welcome to Charleston.
It has some of my favorite things in a city.
Great architecture, a ton of history,
and Southern hospitality.
- Yeah, she lost me at history.
(chuckling)
All right, I'm already intrigued.
Across the bay there is an aircraft carrier.
I think we'll make our way over there.
(gentle guitar music)
- Oldest public building in the state of South Carolina,
built in 1713 to house black powder.
We were a proprietorship, not a colony.
So we had to protect ourselves.
Walled ourselves in, bastions with cannons.
This is where the black powder was stored.
Side walls, three foot thick.
Above your head, only two bricks.
The idea is if there was an explosion in here,
it would go up instead of out.
The hole upstairs is all filled with sand,
'cause they think that might smother the flames.
We don't know, it's still all up there.
(laughing)
We want it to stay that way.
(gentle music)
- So after some delicious South Carolina barbecue,
we figured it was only fair
to hit up the bakery right down the street.
- [Phil] Two of my favorite things, barbecue and bakery.
- All right, guys.
We interrupt this video to bring you a quick announcement.
- And that announcement is Boondockers Welcome.
If you're not using them, why not?
- Actually, what we meant to say was Boondockers Welcome
are increasing their prices on May 1st.
So if you have been thinking about joining
Boondockers Welcome, now is the time.
You can lock in the rate of $50 a year
as opposed to 70 bucks a year,
which is what they're going up to.
If you join at 50 bucks a year,
you will lock in that rate for the lifetime
of your membership.
As long as it--
- [Phil] Lifetime.
- As long as it doesn't end or lapse,
you are locked in for that price.
And if you use our code,
which I will put down in the description,
you can also save an extra 15%.
- [Phil] That's right.
- In case you don't know,
Boondockers Welcome is a membership that allows you to stay
overnight on private property.
You can stay up to five nights.
Now, technically, it's supposed to be boondocking,
meaning you're unplugged, there's no utilities,
but almost all of the Boondocker hosts now
have some sort of utilities where it's electric,
water, both, and some even have sewer.
- That's right.
I mean, you could stay in their front yard,
their backyard, their driveway, their neighbor's driveway
if they're not home.
But it's personal property,
personal land that you can stay on.
Phenomenal.
- Welcome to Chalmers Street.
People think this street was paved with cobblestones.
Where they're not actually cobblestones,
they're ballast stones.
So these stones came over to the US from England
in the hull of ships, to keep the ships from basically
flipping over out to sea.
The ships came over empty because they would come here,
load it up with goods to take back to the king.
Now, when the ships got to the colonies,
they needed to unload these stones somewhere.
And instead of dropping 'em down into the bay,
they used it to pave the streets.
(gentle music)
- 235 men, women, and children.
The oldest being almost over 100,
and the youngest being an infant so womb wet,
they weren't even named or had an age.
And the bottom would've been the offices.
The next three floors would've been holding pens
until the individuals could have been auctioned.
The other building that was on the property
was a combination of a kitchen
and something that we call a death house.
If you were elderly, infirm,
or otherwise unable to be sold,
you would have been placed there and just expected to die.
(gentle music)
All of the older bricks would have been handmade
by local plantation workers.
Most likely small children or a woman,
because it was considered less arduous of a task.
We have a old diagram
that told ship captains how to pack the cargo in.
And you can see, there's no breathing room.
It was just stacked and stacked and stacked.
- On Chalmers Street,
you'll also find one of the oldest dwellings
here in Charleston and that's The Pink House.
And if you ask anybody about The Pink House,
they'll direct you right here.
This building actually started off as a bar.
It was built by a pirate, and today, it's someone's house.
The top floor, it's only about five and a half feet high.
So if you're tall and you're living in that house,
you're gonna be doing a lot of ducking.
♪ What a perfect ♪
♪ What a perfect way to spend the day ♪
♪ Just dreamin' ♪
♪ Way to spend the day ♪
♪ Just honeydew, baby boo, sugar bee, love me ♪
♪ Way to spend the day ♪
♪ Just hoping you feel the same ♪
♪ I'm falling way over the moon ♪
♪ Like spring in full bloom ♪
♪ Ba dum ba dum boom boom boom ♪
While you're here in Charleston,
there are some small museums
I recommend everyone go through.
The first up is here is the Slave Mart.
Now this was actually an indoor market
where they sold slaves.
And let me tell you, when you walk in,
it's gonna have a real profound effect on you.
- Yeah.
- The other two is the Magazine and..
- The Provost and Exchange Building.
- So they're small museums
that were really hit hard by COVID.
So make sure you pop in, give 'em some love,
share 'em on your social media, and you really,
I think you'll enjoy all three of the buildings.
Phil's been so good since we've been in Charleston.
(laughing)
- I'm always good.
- Going to all my historic places.
So today is his reward.
- Yep.
We're gonna do what I love to do best, go tour a ship,
a US Navy ship.
- Yeah, you think he'd be over it by now.
I mean, he was on, he does have what?
13 years of sea duty?
12 years?
- 12 years of sea time, but who's counting?
- Yeah, so you think he'd be over it, but nope.
Let's go check out the Yorktown.
- That's right.
We're gonna go aboard, the USS Yorktown today
and compare how good a living I had on the USS Midway,
my first carrier.
(gentle orchestral music)
- Well that brought back some memories.
- That it did, especially the picture of the shillelaghs.
- Yeah, so the Pollywogs actually are sailors
who have never been across the equator.
- That's right.
- And then once you go across the equator,
you're considered a Shellback.
- After you go through the ceremony.
- Yes.
Now I am a Shellback.
Phil is a Shellback.
- Yep.
- And we usually joke with our son-in-law,
because he is a Pollywog.
He's a builder, so a Seabee.
- He's a Seabee.
- So he'll probably never go to sea.
So we always joke that I have way more sea time than him,
even though he's been in the Navy longer than I was.
- That's right.
And just seeing those pictures and the Pollywog flag
brought back all those memories.
- Oh my gosh.
- Going through the garbage shoot.
- The shillelagh.
Now let me tell you what a shillelagh is.
That's actually an old fire hose that they, what,
I don't know how they make it hard.
I don't how though.
- No, they just cut off a three-foot section of it.
And they kind of wound the end up with some line
to make a handle out of it.
And then they hose you down, so you're wet.
And then you come through this line, a gauntlet,
and they whack you on the backside with the shillelagh.
- I got my butt beat that day.
It was crazy.
And then, you saw the picture with the baby.
- The royal baby.
Yeah, with the peanut butter on his belly.
(laughing)
- Now, all they did with that was
they got the biggest belly.
So usually a Chief.
I'm gonna say that, 'cause it's true.
Usually a Chief with a big old belly,
and they put something in his belly button,
like ours was lard.
- Ours was peanut butter and lard.
- No ours was lard.
And then they shoved your face into it.
- Yeah, you had to get the cherry.
They put a cherry in the royal baby's belly button.
- No, we didn't do that.
- So the royal baby sat on the King Neptune Rex's court,
if you will, or thrown with him.
- Whatever.
- I don't know, it's been so long.
But it was a ton of fun looking back on it 30 years.
It wasn't fun when we went through it.
- It was so disgusting.
We had to put our clothes on inside and out.
So my, I mean, it was so bad at the end.
We had to take off all our clothes
and we had to throw it overboard
because your clothes are trash.
You're never getting 'em clean.
It was so bad.
- Yeah, it was really bad.
And the garbage shoot alone,
the smell and the stench of old food.
- People throwing up in there.
It was so bad.
Oh my gosh.
- And you might think, oh, that's kind of hazing, isn't it?
But it was a rite of passage back then.
- It was hazing.
- It was, but in a fun way.
I mean, I remember it fondly.
- But we had two broken arms on our ship.
I was on the Acadia and we ended up,
two people had ended up with broken arms
and I almost got into a fist fight.
So yeah, I don't know, hazing.
You could call it hazing.
- Sensitive ones over here.
- Oh no.
- Fist fight.
- Oh no.
- It was fun.
- Well, they were off limits.
So when you go to the bathroom,
if somebody gangs on you in there
as you're coming out of the toilet,
some places are just off limits.
Obviously, me and that chick didn't get along.
- We didn't have any of that on our ship.
I was on Midway when I went through,
and I've also been on the other end
where I got to help initiate
those Pollywogs into Shellbacks.
And it was just as fun on that end too.
- So Andrew, like I said is a Shellback,
but he went through the kinder, gentler Navy.
So he didn't even know what a shillelagh was.
So I don't know.
I think we should take his Shellback card away.
- His Shellback has an asterisk by it.
That's for sure.
- This is the Knot Challenge Board.
Let's see if Phil can remember
some of the knots he used to tie
as a Bosun's Mate all the time.
- So I'm gonna try to do the bowline,
and how I remembered it is the rabbit comes out of the hole.
Goes around the tree.
Around the tree.
Wait a minute, hold on, let's back it up.
(Stacy laughing)
The line got caught here.
All right, so, start over.
Here we go.
Rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree,
back in through the hole.
Boom, your bowline.
- All right.
So we'll give him that one.
Even though he had to do it in two attempts,
not the first attempt.
- I got caught up.
- Yeah you got caught, uh huh.
He got tangled up.
- I got tangled.
(gentle guitar music)
♪ Oh I'm out in the waves ♪
♪ And I'm hoping and praying ♪
♪ Please let this wind blow me home ♪
♪ And night after night ♪
♪ There's an empty horizon ♪
♪ My God do I feel so alone ♪
♪ Oh I'm out in the waves ♪
♪ And I'm hoping and praying ♪
♪ Please let this wind blow me home ♪
♪ And night after night ♪
♪ There's an empty horizon ♪
♪ My God do I feel so alone ♪
♪ Sometimes life ♪
♪ Most times I feel just like a sailboat ♪
We're standing right next to the number three wire.
So when a aircraft's coming in,
you'll see the tail hook down behind me.
The goal is to grab the number four wire,
or the first wire aft, catch it, and come in at full power.
And as soon as they hook, somebody lets them know
that they've hooked it, and then they power down.
But in theory, they wanna grab the first one
and the other ones are there
just in case they miss that one, they have,
this one would've had, it looks like four.
So they would've had three others to try to grab
before they had to take back off again.
(gentle orchestral music)
- We have really enjoyed our time here in Charleston.
It has been a lot of fun,
and the campground here is pretty sweet.
- It is.
It's a little small compared to some
of the FamCamps we stayed in, but it's well maintained.
It's in close proximity to everything.
This was a really nice day.
- And the cool thing is, we are actually,
the row we're in is first come first serve
or overflow, whatever you wanna call it.
So they do hold some of those,
and in the back is where the reservations are.
And you're right beside all the MWR activities.
There's a tennis court, playground.
There's a trail that you can walk or bike.
So it's just really centrally located.
- [Phil] Yeah, and you're a mile to the backside gate,
I guess, of the base to take you out into North Charleston.
Really, really nice spot to hang out in.
- [Stacy] So if you're military
or if you have access to the MWR,
this is a great stop along the way.
- Yeah, it's a nice little hidden gem.
♪ And we've only just begun ♪
♪ The best is yet to come ♪
(upbeat music)
♪ Never found my ♪