Field Trip: My Years on a Johns Island Farm: The story of why one end of Johns Island was so special at one point in time.

By Lee Glover

Change is constant. It's happening all around us all the time. At this very moment, all across America, cities, towns, and communities are changing. Populations shift, incomes fluctuate, and social norms evolve. Change is a huge concept.

And just south of Charleston, South Carolina, Johns Island was a tiny community until it wasn't. Born-and-raised Johns Island resident Lee Glover tells the story of the evolution of his home from a rural agrarian setting to a rapidly changing sea island of the Low Country. Traditionally, Johns Island produced millions of pounds of fresh produce that was shipped all across America every year. Each summer, migrants and workers of all description, and in numbers sometimes surpassing the island's total population, flocked to participate in the harvest. By August, everything was serenely calm once again. Then, in the late twentieth century, a massive change in industry from agriculture to tourism saw the once-quiet community transform into something vastly different.

Field Trip is a deeply personal documentation of this change to preserve some of the times, events, and people that are rapidly fading into history. Through remembrances and shared history, the reader will learn the trials and joys of growing the food we eat and the intricacies of working with many different people. Going deeper than just the industrial history of Johns Island, the book is a lesson on how fellowship is one of several essential ingredients to having meaningful and enduring relationships. It is a glue that helps to hold relationships together during challenging times of change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888516317

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Growing Up

1: The Island

2: Beginnings

3: Home

4: Neighbors

5: Village

6: Two More Islands

7: Church

8: Summer of '69

9: Hope

10: Camping: Hope

11: Camping: Seabrook

12: Leroy

Growing Crops

13: Tomatoes

14: Tomatoes: After the Sheds

15: Harvest Workers

16: Rolando

17: Belize

18: The Farmers

19: Farming

20: Other Crops

21: Growing Pickles

22: Selling Pickles

23: By Choice

24: Change

Appendix A: Coastal Indians

Appendix B: Tomatoes: A Brief History

References

About the Author

Field Trip: My Years on a Johns Island Farm

The story of why one end of Johns Island was so special at one point in time.

Lee Glover

ISBN 979-8-88851-630-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89112-748-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88851-631-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Lee Glover

All rights reserved

First Edition

Visit my website www.booksinspire.me

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

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It was a different place, a different time. It's almost like we were set apart from the rest of the world. We had a special kind of relationship.

—Rev. Robert Gordon

Those were the golden years of Johns Island.

—Sidi Limehouse

Those (the '60s and '70s) were the good old days. You don't see them anymore.

—Bernard Glover

This book is dedicated to the people who lived and worked on the southern end of Johns Island during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Their actions and the way they lived their lives helped to make those years some of the most memorable and special years of my life.

Preface

Two dormant packing sheds sit behind an enormous parking lot. A flat spot across the highway, overgrown with weeds, is all that remains of a once-vibrant sister facility. These peculiar Johns Island landmarks on Main Road form an intriguing backdrop to the steady stream of lunchtime diners at the Stono Market and Tomato Shed Café wedged between them.

Warning the curious are No Trespassing signs fastened to the chain-link fences that surround the sheds. Peering inside, the inquisitive can barely make out the names painted at the top of the buildings, faded by decades of blistering summer sun.

DiMare Packers & Shippers

Stonoca Farms Corp. Packers & Shippers

Both messages are flanked by images of faint, once-red tomatoes. At least sixty-five bays beckon trucks that no longer approach. Stacks of weathered harvest bins stand four high across the length of an open shed. They can only hint at a past long gone and barely remembered.

Just forty to fifty years ago, Johns Island was one of the centers of American tomato production. Lowcountry farms yielded approximately one-fourth of all the fresh-market tomatoes in the United States during the month of June. These once-bustling packing sheds received a seemingly never-ending armada of local trucks delivering their produce and tractor trailers hauling it out to markets near and far. Only a few legacies of this era remain. One is these sheds. Another is the Welcome to Johns Island sign you see after crossing the bridge from James Island. Rural Lands Rural Roads…Rural Life, the sign reads. The lone visual is a bright-red tomato.

For thirty years, farming was my life. That was the Johns Island I knew. I was born to a farmer and became a farmer, living on the southern end of the island among the people who worked the land. I grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and other produce I thought I could sell. Nearby Kiawah and Seabrook—now private, affluent, barrier islands at the end of Johns Island—were then wild places dominated by maritime forest, unspoiled beaches, and a few sandy roads that begged someone to explore them.

Time brings change, and Johns Island is seeing its share of change. This sleepy farming community, close to but worlds apart from Charleston, is rapidly being transformed into one of the city's many bedroom communities. People who call the island their home form a diverse blend. There are the binyas like me, whose families, Black and White, have been here for generations. There are the comeyas from Charlotte, Atlanta, the Northeast, and Midwest, who've come here to live a life with good weather, low taxes, and natural beauty. They call home new developments along Main, River, and Brownswood roads; Kiawah or Seabrook for a golf-oriented lifestyle at the beach; or Kiawah River for the Lowcountry's nature without the golf. And there are the tourists who may barely notice the island except as flyover territory until they reach their ultimate destination, Kiawah or Seabrook, where basking in the sun, playing golf, or dining in one of Charleston's many acclaimed restaurants await them.

The Johns Island I knew was different. It was a mosaic of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics working the land together. Two of my closest boyhood pals, who became lifelong friends, were Leroy, who lived next door, and Rolando, a migrant crew leader. Leroy, Rolando, and I knew each other so well, through deep, abiding relationships, that racial and social distinctions didn't matter. We knew who we were, and we liked each other. That's what was important.

The relationships I formed with Leroy, Rolando, and lots of others were set against a national backdrop of racial strife, civil rights, and Vietnam. Those of us who lived at the southern end of Johns Island were aware of the bigger picture, but we chose a different way. We accepted each other for who we were. It was that simple.

A longtime White resident of the island has told me that the 1960s and 1970s were the golden years of Johns Island. A local Black pastor added, It's almost like we were set apart from the rest of the world. We had a special kind of relationship.

People are intrigued when I tell them stories about my farming days on the island, on lands that are now subdivisions and golf courses. That's why I'm writing this book. It's a recollection of experiences, remembrances, and perceptions from a bygone era when living on Johns Island was living in the country. There were no Harris Teeters or Food Lions, only acres and acres of tomatoes and cucumbers. There was no Black, White, or Brown, only relationships built on trust, acceptance, and respect. This is the story of those times and how they came to be so special.

Acknowledgments

Casey Hurst

Charlotte Glover

Clemson Extension Service

Ethel Morrow

Guerry Glover

Holly Brady

Lish Thompson

Louise Bennett

Pat Luzadder

Paul and Lori Porwoll

Ruth and Thomas Johnson

Sidi Limehouse

The staff at the Charleston County Public Library

The staff at the South Carolina Room

Vanessa Kauffmann

Virginia Bartels

Zack Snipes

Numerous other people who contributed in their special way

Part 1

Growing Up

1

The Island

Just the word island conjures good thoughts. Perhaps from a person's past experience or the hope of a future adventure, the thought of an island evokes a little excitement, a little something special. And just as a beautiful mosaic is the embodiment of many colors, efforts, and elements all in one place, so it is with the mosaic that was Johns Island in the 1960s and 1970s. Many elements—natural and human, tangible and intangible—came together to make this island a very special place. What were they? First, I will provide a little background about the island.

Johns Island, where a Geechee can still speak Gullah, is surrounded by rivers and creeks with names like Bohicket, Stono, and Kiawah, which are the names of Indian tribes that long ago once inhabited the island. It is the fourth largest island on the eastern coast of the United States, after New York's Long Island, Maine's Mount Desert Island (home to most of Acadia National Park), and Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard. It is less than a thirty-minute drive from Charleston. The island has, until fairly recently, remained mostly rural. Like Charleston, Johns Island is steeped in history. The island was the site of Indian skirmishes, Revolutionary War conflicts, and Civil War battles. As far back as the 1700s, important commercial activity existed on the island, especially near the waterways. Johns Island also has a rich agricultural history that includes growing indigo, cotton, beans, tomatoes, and many other crops. Those crops were sold and shipped across the country and to Europe.

Johns Island is a large sea island accentuated by farms, marshes, creeks, and canopies of majestic live oaks, by alligators, great blue herons, and raptors of every description. Dirt roads and family compounds are common. Two-lane paved roads weave through the island. Traffic lights are few and far between, although traffic is getting heavier by the day. It remains somewhat rural, despite encroaching residential development. On a map, the island is rather oddly shaped, looking like a giant question mark.

Of all the natural beauties of Johns Island, two are exceptional. Best known among the natural flora is the Angel Oak, the largest live oak tree east of the Mississippi River. Estimated to be over 450 years old, this massive tree is sixty-six-and-a-half feet tall and twenty-eight feet in circumference. Its longest branch measures 187 feet and provides shade for over 17,200 square feet. Angel Oak attracts more than 400,000 visitors a year.

Best of the fauna, Atlantic bottlenose dolphins live in abundance in the island's many rivers and creeks. They have a unique feeding technique called strand feeding that's found in only a few other places in the world. Working together, a pod of dolphins will surround a school of fish and drive them onto a sandbar or mudbank. Once the fish are stranded, the dolphins thrust themselves ashore, eat their catch, and slide back into the water. Pelicans and other shorebirds often follow them to share in the catch. Strand feeding is an astonishing sight to behold.

Only seventeen thousand people occupy Johns Island's eighty-four square miles. The 1950 census, taken not long before I was born, counted only four thousand people on the island. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. If you saw a blue Buick on the road that you didn't recognize, you could ask someone at church on Sunday and find out who owned it.

Commercial activity has existed on the island, especially near the waterways, as far back as the early 1700s. Much of this commerce involved agriculture. For many of those early years, Johns Island farms augmented operations for larger Edisto planters. Here farmers grew indigo, cotton, and many other crops, which they sold and shipped by boat to markets across the country and across the ocean.

Goods were transported down the rivers and creeks, but people also needed a means to cross over them. Ferries over the major waterways proved more practical than bridges until the first part of the twentieth century. The bridges became an integral part of the island's transportation network. Two large bridges, both crossing the Stono River, link Johns Island with James Island and West Ashley respectively. A smaller span over Church Creek leads to Wadmalaw Island.

In addition to ferries, prior to the late 1920s, a series of bridges, in various locations at various times, were used to link Johns Island and James Island. The first permanent bridge to James Island was a long wooden-plank toll bridge completed in 1929 very near the location of the present-day bridge. People have told me that the old wooden bridge not only sounded bumpity bump but it also sounded rickety rickety, so much so that some were afraid to drive across it. The old wooden bridge was replaced by a swing bridge with a bridge house that protruded over the side. This bridge didn't rise very high over the water, so it seemed to be open to water traffic as much as it was open to road traffic, which wasn't a problem unless residents were in a hurry to go somewhere. Opened in 2003, a much higher bridge, the Paul J. Gelegotis Bridge, named after the man who founded the emergency medical service (EMS) system in South Carolina, has accommodated traffic on Maybank Highway onto and off the island.

The other important entryway to Johns Island is the John F. Limehouse Bridge, on Main Road just south of Savannah Highway (US 17). For years, a ferry operated across the river near the present-day bridge. The first permanent bridge, also made of wood, was completed in the mid-1920s, shortly before the bridge to James Island. In 1958, a low-level swing bridge that connected the island to the mainland was opened and named after Limehouse. Crossing that bridge was a gamble. Would it be open for cars or for boats? Once when I was returning to Johns Island, the bridge was opened for boat traffic, except there were no boats to be seen. When several of us left our cars and walked onto the bridge, we heard the bridge tender singing away in the bridge house, located in the top of the center of the bridge. After some time, not quickly, an employee from the highway department arrived. The bridge could be manually opened or closed by inserting a T-shaped instrument into a gear, and I'm not sure of all that the gentleman did to remedy the situation, but eventually, we were on our way again. The modern-span bridge that also debuted in 2003 retained the name Limehouse Bridge, and it came without a bridge house!

A small bridge on the other end of Maybank Highway connects Johns Island to Wadmalaw Island at Church Creek. It is the only road access point to Wadmalaw. When I was growing up, we called it the hump or the bump bridge because it ascended and descended so quickly. If a car was traveling too fast, it could go airborne, with the driver and passengers getting a pronounced bump. Unknowing and unsuspecting drivers were sure to feel the hidden secret of this little bridge. Once when I was a boy, I met some friends from town at St. John's Church, which is a quarter mile before the bridge, to ride with them to a birthday party at the end of Wadmalaw. I was sitting in the back of a station wagon when the mom driving the car went over the bridge too fast. Not only did all of us get bumped, the boy in front of me promptly discharged his lunch over the people in front of him. Fortunately, it was a swim party. At swim parties in the country, we swam in a river, not a pool. Thankfully, the highway department has since replaced the bump bridge with one that is much more amenable to smooth riding.

While water and bridges have helped shape Johns Island, agriculture was king. After the Civil War began, planting crops was all but abandoned. Once the war began, those who could afford to leave the area evacuated to safer places, leaving mostly the poor and militia behind. Unlike other sea islands, such as Edisto and James, Johns Island never had Union forces set up a lasting headquarters nor did they occupy the island's plantation houses for very long. Local Confederates constantly skirmished with Union troops.

One side or the other would burn plantation houses so that neither could use them. Most notable was the August 1864 burning of Legareville, a summer retreat bordered by the Abbapoola, Stono, and Kiawah Rivers. Union forces had been pilfering the timber from more than twenty houses there to build their camps. Under orders from Maj. John Jenkins, Confederates torched all but a few of the buildings. Very few plantation houses on Johns Island survived the war.

After the fighting ended, islanders had to confront a new way of life. Many men had died in battle or from other causes or returned home wounded. The large agricultural engine that had driven the island economically was decimated. Some people remained as sharecroppers or were given land of their own through the Freedmen's Bureau. Some moved North.

The rich soil continued to provide opportunities, and over time, farming stabilized. But the scale of those farms was different: there were more of them, and they were smaller in size. Later, many of the lands were passed down from generation to generation, often without clear title. The heirs' properties are found all over Johns Island. They present a challenge for builders trying to acquire multiple tracts of property for development, which has, unintentionally, helped to keep the island rural.

It wasn't until 1965 that one of the first subdivisions on rural Johns Island appeared. (By contrast, Riverland Terrace, the first subdivision on James Island, was begun forty years earlier.) Located at the corner of Maybank Highway and Main Road, the subdivision was named Dunmovin because the developer pitched the notion that a home there would be the last one the owner would ever want. Thus, he would be done moving.

Other modern conveniences helped shape Johns Island in the mid-twentieth century. The first post office I remember was a small one-room building, located near the railroad tracks on Main Road, just before drivers crossed the mainland onto the island. The building eventually became too small, and with great fanfare, a new post office opened on Maybank Highway near River Road, across from the Masonic Lodge. About twenty years ago, a new post office was opened on Maybank just a few hundred feet from the old one. The old post office is now the home of a laundromat.

Telephone service was another relatively new amenity for islanders when I was a boy. We had a three-party line until a two-party line became available. When we picked up the phone, we never knew whose or what conversation we might hear. The telephone repairman for Johns and Wadmalaw islands attended our church; and I remember, on more than one Sunday, my mother telling him about some problem with the phone. He was a good, patient man, as my mother wasn't the only one to share phone issues with him. We may have been one of the first on the island to receive a modern princess phone complete with a lighted number pad.

In different ways and at different times, two forces positively impacted the island: one was Esau Jenkins; the other was the Ryder Cup.

Esau Jenkins was a noted civil rights leader. Born on Johns Island in 1910, Jenkins dropped out of school in Legareville, the small community located off River Road that had been torched during the Civil War. When he was in the fourth grade, he went to work on his father's farm. Years later, Jenkins had his own vegetable farm on the island. He learned to speak Greek so he could better trade with Greek businessmen in Charleston. He also owned several other businesses, including a motel in downtown Charleston.

In 1948, along with fellow islander Joe Williams, Jenkins founded the Progressive Club. The club's mission was to obliterate ignorance, to promote health, social, civic and educational welfare, combat juvenile delinquency—to secure a more rich and abundant life for ourselves and for posterity. In 1957, Septima P. Clark, another civil rights leader, visited the Progressive Club. Together, Jenkins and Clark opened the first citizenship school to focus on, among other things, helping African Americans learn about government, the Constitution, and voter registration. This school was the first of more than nine hundred citizenship schools established across the South. These schools became a foundation for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence movement, and many students from