Charleston - April 27

We had lunch yesterday at Jestine’s Kitchen, a place we had heard about from a local. There always seems to be a line outside and around the corner waiting to get in, but it goes fairly quickly. We only had to wait about 15 minutes. While waiting we checked out the specials and menu. Darrell had one of the specials, fried catfish and Beth tried another, fried shrimp salad. They were both very good. Every table received a small bowl of homemade pickled cucumber upon being seated. It was very good. Darrell tried their local Palmetto beer and liked it.

Jestine’s Kitchen is named in honor of Jestine Matthews, who was born in the Low country in 1885. Her mother was a Native American and her father the son of a freed slave. In 1928 Jestine became a housekeeper to the Aleck Ellison family and that was the start of a lifelong friendship. The owner of Jestine’s Kitchen is the granddaughter of Aleck Ellison and the restaurant is her way of sharing the wonderful style of home cooking and warm atmosphere that Jestine provided. Jestine died in 1997 at the age of 112. Jestine’s Kitchen is included in the book “1000 Places to see Before you Die” and we do agree.

They have a very interesting menu with extremely reasonable prices. Southern food ---- fried, of course! Beth took a picture of the menu and if you enlarge it you can hopefully read it. One item is the Blue Collar Special, Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwich, with potato chips….$2.95. The inside is fairly small, but very homey.

While walking to the restaurant we saw some very beautiful homes. Some had ivy climbing on the brick. There were many ‘hidden’ treasures in the narrow area between the homes, including a brick wall that looked like it had trees growing flat against the wall. We don’t know what type of tree it was or how they did it, but it was very pretty. Almost every home with a porch has it on south side of the house. It doesn’t matter which side the front door is on, the porch is always on the south.

Beth went to Redeemer Presbyterian Church this morning. It must be a start up church because there is a building drive taking place and services are held in what was originally a Lutheran Church. There was only 1 service and the congregation was almost entirely made up of young people and young families. The children were unbelievably good during the service.

The service was much different than that of the Presbyterian Church Beth attended in Punta Gorda. This one started out with almost 25 minutes of singing, with the congregation singing along with the choir. The choir was composed of about 10-12 young people singing and playing piano, guitars and flute. There was also an extremely beautiful song played by a bagpipe, guitar and mandolin.

There was a baptism during the service and it is much different from our Lutheran baptism. However, afterward, the mother of the baby baptized sang a solo. She had a beautiful voice. Hopefully singing a solo after your baby is baptized is not a requirement of that church!!

The one thing that was very puzzling was that The Lord’s Prayer wasn’t said anytime during the service.

Darrell changed oil on the boat today and took care of many other chores. We got many parts of the boat put back together and tools put away. For how long, who knows? The day was beautiful, sunny and breezy.