We had a vacation in Charelston SC.

I only remember taking one vacation while we were living in CT. Dad was out on his submarine and ended up for an extended stay in Charleston SC. Mom packed us all up and we got on a train to go visit for a few weeks. I remember very little about the train ride down, I think most of it must have been really boring. I do remember my brothers reaction when the porter came to our 'cabin' though.

The porter came in to get our tickets and see if we needed anything. He was the biggest, blackest man we had ever seen... EVER. I would compare him to Michael Clarke Duncan from the Green Mile... or maybe even bigger. Then again, as 6 and 8 year olds, he might have only seemed that big to us. He could have been much more normal in size but he was still the blackest man we've ever seen. My brother backed himself up against the wall, stood straight as a board and just stared, his eyes as big as saucers... You have to remember that this was the mid 60's and in our day to day lives, us kids hardly EVER saw a black person. Mom was very embarrassed and apologized to him and they laughed. I guess she had had her own fair share of staring, being (usually) the only Japanese woman at any social function that my parents went to.

We had a small house to stay in while we were in Charleston. It was near the water and we would go out crabbing almost every day. I actually don't remember doing anything else while we were there... Crabbing for us consisted of just going to the shore with a length of string, tying an old, smelly, people-can't-eat-this chicken leg to it and throwing it out into the water. We let the chicken sit out there for a few minutes them we s-l-o-w-l-y pulled it in. Usually there were 2-3 crabs following the chicken and noshing on it's nastiness. Then we just waded in and grabbed the crab and threw them into a bucket. I don't remember ever eating these but I'm assuming that mom cooked them. lol!

The train ride back to CT was non-eventful. I only remember almost freaking out because on one stretch there was a wall of rock on one side of the train and the other side was the ocean... and the ocean was hundreds of feet down a cliff. Sometimes you couldn't even see the ground that the track was on on that side... I didn't approve of that.