The Redneck Riviera - Myrtle Beach/Charleston, SC

My last night in 'The North' was spent with Sebastian Hove in a town called Bayonne in New Jersey. Sebastian and I had been friends for around 15 years and he was, without doubt, a true and unique character. He was a Dane by birth who had misspent most of his youth around here getting wasted and throwing eggs at houses.

I remember when we met all those years ago that I took to him almost instantly. He exuded a kind of breezy charm that was as disarming as it was refreshing. Spending time with him was like hanging out with your favourite childhood TV character. Kind, loyal and a total pain in the ass when he wanted to be.

His kindness extended far enough to lending me his beloved old Ford Focus for this two week endeavour. He owed me absolutely no favours and I was incredibly touched by this gesture.

In the morning we gorged on a hearty roadside breakfast of pancakes and omelettes in a Bayonne diner. We hugged goodbye at his office in the docks, presided by the soaring cranes of the New Jersey Port. Soon after, I was on my way. Gracefully sounded off by ship horns and groggy, road worn teamsters.

It didn't take long for the darling old Ford to make her little idiosyncrasies known. Almost instantly, it became apparent that her break disks were warped in the extreme, which meant that the whole car vibrated uncontrollably when the breaks were applied. It was like driving a paint mixer.

She was also bereft of a catalytic converter that simultaneously gifted her the acceleration of a continent and the rumble of a low flying B52 bomber. The noise was an issue almost all of the time, especially at low speed.

After 5 minutes on the road I tried to adjust my rear view mirror and it promptly fell off and couldn't be mended. During motorway lane changes, she would frequently and uncontrollably wobble, as though all four wheels wanted to go in separate directions at once.

It felt like I had borrowed my own funeral casket as opposed to the Millennium Falcon I'd hoped for.
Sebastian's words echoed in my ear.
"She needs a little bit of work, but ultimately she's solid as a rock."
She really needed to be. My journey was over 3000 miles long, taking me all the way past the Bible Belt to New Orleans and back again through a dozen or so states. It was time to start praying.

I had learnt with some delight that, unlike most states, New Jersey still has a legal requirement for someone to pump your gas for you. I stopped at the last gas station in the state and asked a rather forlorn looking gentleman to "fill 'er up with regulah please."

Petrol here is worryingly cheap. A full tank was just shy of $20. Which meant a 10 hour drive cost all of $50. It's little wonder that public transport here is woefully depleted. No one really needs it as even people technically classed as below the poverty line can still afford a car.

After a few hours, I stopped for lunch at an industrial park in Herndon, Virginia. A former colleague was based there and I always relished a chance to catch up with him. Anthony Doherty was the kind of Irishman that everyone should have on their Rolodex. He was gifted with an ascorbic wit that was dryer than a nun's crotch. I wondered what on earth they made of him here.

Buoyed by our lighting quick catch up, I hit the road to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A place widely referred to as the Redneck Riviera. It's very much a well earned monicker. South Carolina was the first state to secede from The Union and one of the most deeply Republican in America.

The black population there were governed by the deplorable Jim Crow Laws that were widely enforced until the early 70s, well after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These laws essentially enforced a second class status on blacks in America. In every possible facet of their lives they ensured that no black person would have the same rights and opportunities as whites.

Even in the 70s a black person could be confronted by impossible and often ridiculous test when they turned up to a polling booth. One such example included asking them to guess how any marbles were in a jar. They also imposed literacy tests on black voters brave enough to show up. I had a go at one online and can attest to the fact that they were created with the sole purpose of being utterly incomprehensible.

Those in slightly less enlightened states would just be beaten senseless or lynched for entertaining thoughts so above their station.

The journey was notable for its complete lack of any scenery at all. This starts to grate on one a little after 6 hours. Sadly the famous Route 1 down the East Coast had been replaced many years ago by the hulking juggernaut of Interstate 95. A monster of a road that slices 2000 miles down the coast from the Canadian border to southern Florida.

This is what every Interstate East of the Mississippi looks like

I'm not exaggerating when I say that in 600 miles of driving in 6 different states, the landscape barely changed at all. It's something of a testament to the sheer size of America that this could be possible. In Britain, no two hours or even minutes are often the same on a motorway journey.

The issue was mainly the result of a thoughtful effort to minimise the visibility of the interstate by shrouding both sides of it in an endless wall of trees about 30 feet high. It felt much more claustrophobic than any road I'd driven on. Not quite the open road of my wild imagination.

The trees were only disrupted by a grimly curated succession of chain fast food restaurants and mediocre strip malls. Not a single chrome plated, linoleum floored diner in sight. Just another Arbys, Dennys, Dunkin' Donuts, KFC, Burger King, Olive Garden and so forth.

I'd had a rare moment of foresight and downloaded an audio book before the journey. It was the only thing that stopped me from going completely insane. My car's little idiosyncrasies weren't exactly helping matters. The vibration from the break disk was gradually turning my wrists into the consistency of jellied eels.

Google maps sensed that I was near the end of my tether and took me off the interstate and into an altogether different world. Within minutes, I was in the deep rural south of my imagination and I couldn't be happier.

Without hesitation, I switched off the air con and threw open all the windows. An immediate rush of dense, humid tropical air flooded the car and I realised why it was all worth the effort.

It was that perfect, magical evening light where the clouds were completely saturated with dying pink rays of the sun. The sound of crickets filled the air. Passing me by on both sides were the unmistakable homes of middle America. Perfectly rectangular, Woden and adorned with trees thick with Spanish Moss.

Outside of them were men in John Deere hats diligently mowing their lawns while their children played in lush, verdant gardens. Rusted, leaning metal post boxes with names like Cherry Grove, Honeysuckle and Moonbeam Park lined both sides of the road.

In the distant horizon were thick curtains of rain waving gently in the gentle southern airs. I took in endless lungfuls of hot, sweet air and smiled like an idiot as I made a wing shape with my hand and held it out of the window.

Compered with New York it was like being on Neptune. It felt like this landscape hadn't changed for an eternity. This was The South of literature, poetry and cinema that had been such a big part of my imagination and I was bang smack in the heart of it.

In a less tangible sense it felt like a homecoming. My grandfather was born in Lynchburg, VA and his father was from Tennessee. I had cousins in Both Carolinas and Georgia. There was therefore a sense that somewhere, this part of the world resided deep in my DNA.

I was so breathlessly happy that I pulled over to take it in and to top up on fuel. The gas station felt like it belonged in a Norman Rockwell painting. The pump dial still revolved and made a satisfying ping when you had reached your fill. I shared quiet communion with the heat and the crickets and made my way to my great friend Jessie in Myrtle Beach.

We only saw one another on average once a year and I began to look forward to a warm and loving hug after a testing day on the road. Although by now the thick South Carolina airs had subdued me somewhat, and I felt a great deal more human again.

I'd known Jessie Washington for over 18 years and could happily testify (as others would no doubt) that she was a true force of nature and a real wonder of a human being. Her great gift was to see the world through what my mother calls 'Gods Glasses'. It's that magical ability to be able to make light of life and laugh at just about anything, no matter how tough things get. It's the quality I search for most in people.

Despite having a Danish grandmother her father was a black reverend from Arkansas and she had spent most of her life in the South, having moved there from New York. She graduated from Harvard, has an MBA and attended Juilliard as a viola player. Throw this all together and you get a recipe for one of the most interesting, fun and lovable people you (or I) have ever met.

We spent the day pottering around the various diversions of Myrtle Beach. I tell you, without any restraint, that Myrtle Beach is where taste goes to die. Redneck Riviera was a well deserved moniker. This is what Miami would have looked like it it had been built by a bunch of drunk hicks. But I sort of loved it. It was all just so delightfully average and free of airs and graces.

A local Wal Mart the size of Stanstead Airport

I noted with a touch of glee that, unlike New York, smoking and drinking are both cheap and barely frowned upon here. This is the kind of place where I could happily get hammered on a beach wearing a string vest and a Hawaiian shirt and no one would bat an eyelid. So we set about it.

The trucks and cars here were just that little bit more chromed and muscular than their northern brethren. More often than not they bore one or more 'Trump' stickers. Although the lawns mostly seem free of attempts to designate one's political leanings. This is no surprise really as there's more chance of me shagging Jennifer Lawrence than this state voting for a Democrat.

Jessie and I spent much time discussing the state of race relations in America. Until Obama become president, race simply wasn't anywhere near as openly talked about by white folks in America. Or at least, not with the kind of fervour it was currently experiencing.

People were even talking about a 'Post Racial Society' before 2008. It was clear now that Obama's election had, tragically, been a catalyst for a the unearthing of a pre-existing, insidious undercurrent of white Racial hatred.

This discourse was mostly the preserve of disenfranchised whites. A group of people who see their country, their old industries and their very way of life running away from them thanks to progressive values and globalisation. Myrtle Beach was very much a ground zero of this kind of person.

To me the Trump 'movement' feels very much like the death rattle of these sorts of folks. The white working class make up a smaller percentage of America than at any time since the industrial revolution. And they weren't going down without a fight.

The venom, anger, hatred and vitriol makes so much more sense when you get down here and see that these people just want things to pretty much stay as they are, and maybe go backwards, just a little.

I have a deep reverence for the imagery, music and literature of The South and how it had come to occupy such a large part of American collective consciousness. But from an outsider looking in, many of these people needed to wake up and smell the waffles.

America is the most powerful and wealthy country in the world because it has always been a pioneer or an adaptor and has thrown its doors open to the rest of the world. Closing borders and propping up dying industries isn't going to help anyone in the long term.

In fact the poorest people in America are likely to suffer the most. Unfortunately, explaining the economics of isolationism to a hillbilly is like trying to describe the virtues of eating bacon to an Islamic fundamentalist.

That evening Jessie and I went to The Broadway at The Beach. An enormous and completely artificial seaside promenade. In every way it was a celebration of consumerism and conspicuous consumption. An orgy of flashing lights, fairground attractions, fireworks, shopping arcades, bars and food. Flagons of food. It was about as tacky and American as it gets and we loved it.

Only in America could find such pleasant and diverting ways to satisfy your every unknown craving so totally. It never ceases to amaze me at how little time it takes you to find a source of food here. I don't think I've gone more than 20 minutes without encountering a host of options offering the same shitty, nutritionless and undeniably tasty food.

Myrtle Beach specialised in this sort of eatery and we were a little desperate to go somewhere with a menu that wasn't laminated. So we took ourselves off to Charleston for the day in search of better food, architecture, culture and fewer rednecks.

Before heading off, we breakfasted at the local Waffle House. One of The South's most venerable institutions. For $7 you can get the All Star Special. A combination of waffles, bacon, hash browns, toast, butter and whatever else you can force past your overstimulated taste buds. I note that the clarified butter here gives you the added benefit of showing you exactly how your arteries will look after one too many trips here.

Charleston didn't fail to deliver. A gently captivating peninsula jutting into a bay, it contained some of the finest examples of southern colonial architecture in America. Little wonder then, that it's the premier wedding destination in the country.

The houses were so old here that on some you could still see the harrowing sight of fingerprints from the slaves that formed the individual bricks. Outside of New York this had been the largest slave port in America. The first shot of the civil war was also fired from Fort Sumter, just a few miles down the road. In American terms, thats about as historical as it gets.

Last year, a 21 year old man called Dylann Roof walked into the Emanuel African Episcopal Church here. He sat for an hour as he prayed with the black congregation during a Bible study session. Without warning he pulled out a gun and brutally murdered nine members of the congregation.

We went past the church itself and it was a powerful reminder that this was a country in the midst of a racial crisis. The saddest part is that no one seems to have an answer for how to fix it. It was an interesting time to be in a place that was in the process of asking itself a great deal of very difficult and searching questions.

In spite of its dark past and recent horrors, Charleston was still an utterly charming and genteel city. It felt much more like a large town really, and was so laid back that it was practically horizontal. It was also quite prosperous and finding a menu that wasn't laminated and didn't have pictures was very easy.

After much pottering about and some rampant pulled pork and oyster abuse, we left with full stomachs and happy hearts. It was a perfect contrast to Myrtle Beach and a reminder that The South is, like America, a place of stark contrasts and full of mostly pleasant, well meaning people.

Tomorrow I would spend the day exploring Georgia and looked forward to the adventures it might bring.