Beaufort Candlelight Tour

Other than the Crystal Coast Christmas Flotilla (see last Saturday’s post) we have not attended any events here this year.  Had we stayed in Highlands over the holidays and had there not been a raging pandemic underway, we would have enjoyed the annual Christmas Reading by the Highlands-Cashiers Players, perhaps a concert or two, and Advent and Christmas Eve services in a church.  Here on the coast we would have found Christmas programs, too, and enjoyed attending the First United Methodist Church. 

Martha had learned about the Flotilla, and yesterday she identified two more events for us:  the Christmas Parade in downtown Morehead City and the Christmas Candlelight Tour in Beaufort.  Our own parade in Highlands had been cancelled this year, so we were looking forward to seeing all of those humble elements of a small-town parade, from decorated floats to high school bands trying earnestly to play in tune.  Years ago we stumbled upon such a parade in Clayton, Georgia, and it lasted an hour or more.  There were even dump trucks festooned with Christmas lights.  We may have been the only spectators because the rest of the population of Clayton seemed to be taking part in the parade.

I went to the post office and grocery store and rushed back to the condo, and just as we were preparing to leave and were discussing where to park, Martha learned that the parade had been cancelled by Morehead City’s Mayor.  Of course, like so many other events, that made perfect sense.  If it was anything like our parade in Highlands, the sidewalks would have been packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and even with face masks it would have been worrying.  We have been adopting the attitude that everyone around us, in stores and sidewalks, could be asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19, and behaving accordingly.

The other event was a Candlelight Tour in Beaufort organized by the Beaufort Historical Association.  We have been to their events before and discovered that there are many, many well-informed docents and volunteers here who love the history of what was named “Best Small Town” by USA Today several years ago.  Tickets were limited and instructions to wear a mask and social distance were posted everywhere, so we thought it would be safe, especially if we avoided crowding into small buildings. 

Beaufort is indeed a pretty little town, and never more so than at sunset along the waterfront on Taylor’s Creek, where sailing boats and yachts from around the country were docked.  It was a mild, pleasant night, in the 60s.  We had arrived early and walked down to the waterfront, then back into the historic district where we sat in rocking chairs on the front porch of the historic Josiah Bell House (ca 1825) waiting for it to become dark.  Then we walked down Ann Street, where several of the homes were decorated and the sidewalks were lined with luminaries in places.

We had never been inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (ca 1857), which was nicely decorated for the advent season, the third candle already burning in the advent wreaths in the front of the sanctuary. 

Some of the historic inns were on the tour, too– the Beaufort Inn, the Inn on Turner, the Ann Street Inn – but we did not feel comfortable going inside them.  Farther down Ann Street in the other direction was the First Baptist Church (ca 1851), which we had been told had an “Amazing Nativity Scene.”  But we saw only a small one set up in the narthex, and a woman told us that the live nativity scene had been cancelled due to Covid.  But she let us walk to the front of the beautiful sanctuary, where a young woman began playing carols on a grand piano.

“This is interesting,” the woman said, and pointed to what I took to be a small crib in front of the church.  She opened it and revealed a small keyboard, that is, one having smaller keys, as a child would play.  It was indeed a child’s treadle organ.  She said that after the last hurricane it had been thrown out in the street, taken for trash apparently.  A local woodworker had seen it, rescued it, rebuilt it, and returned it to the church, where we presume small gifted hands still play “Away in a Manger” this time of year.

I was surprised when, as we left, the woman asked me to put my name and phone number on a piece of paper “in case we need to track you down because of Covid.”  I was both reassured that they were setting up potential contact tracing, but worried about handling the pen, but I dutifully signed my name, the first on the list, and used my hand sanitizer.

Next to the church is one of the most famous historic sites in Beaufort, the Old Burying Ground, dating from the early 1700s.  We have toured it more than once in the past and been fascinated by some of the graves and stories associated with them.  “Have you been here before?” a man in period clothing and carrying a lantern asked us at the gate.  ‘Oh yes, many times,” I said.  “We’ve seen the soldier buried standing up, and the girl in the barrel of rum.”  Both true, and subject of a poem I wrote many years ago about this ghostly place. 

The girl in the barrel of rum is a particular favorite of locals, who often decorate the grave with flowers, shells, coins, and other trinkets, thinking it might bring them luck.

 
The girl begged her father to take her to London, the story goes, and her mother agreed upon condition that he return the girl to her again.  She died on the voyage home.

And her father, true to his word, as fathers are,
Brought her back in this barrel of rum. 
Her rounded little grave is piled with tokens,
Coins, flowers, metro passes:  trinkets from the future.

This is a burying ground, I learned, rather than a cemetery, because it is not connected to any church.  It was very dark, and footing is treacherous in the burying ground even by daylight, so we decided to leave the tour early and return in the daylight of another day.  

By now it was completely dark and luminaries had been lit all over the district.  We saw some dazzling displays of lights on the way back to the car, here on this unseasonably warm day, the day before the third Sunday in Advent.

We re-crossed those bridges, leaving that place
Of silent death, returning to another shore.
Were we changed by wandering among silent graves?
Dry oak leaves were slippery underfoot,
And the shade under those trees was lovely and dark,
The churches tall and comforting, storm-weathered,
Wanting the good hard work of scraping and re-painting.

So many of the events that we have enjoyed during this season of the year have been cancelled.  So much of our lives have been cancelled.  But Martha reminded me that not everything is cancelled. She found this quotation and posted it in the condo so we could remember that this is the season of hope.