For those who live or love the tidal creeks and shores of the Lowcountry, the smell of pluff mud is the smell of home. Primordial and timeless, it is a cacophony of elements of the coast...salt, shells and teeming with life. And our beloved palmettos, both figuratively and literally our Giving Trees, offering welcome shade under a humid sun, and a lulling, rustling sonnet catching the slightest of breezes. This book is the stories of Charleston. Not of a past captured in history books, but of people and places not far removed, but equally poignant and remembered with a wistful affection. S. Guilds Hollowell, Jr., native son growing up at the Charles Pinckney House at Snee Farm, remembers the ribald tales that belie the polish facade of Charleston and Mount Pleasant. From Big John's on East Bay, to Sullivan's and even the "Muni", anyone who has lived in or loved the Lowcountry will appreciate with a wry smile. "Nowhere else in the world has nature been kinder to her children than in those regions where the great plantations were formed out of the Eden-like wilderness of the Low Country. Archibald Rutledge Poet-Laurate of South Carolina