Hilton Head Living

Hidden treasures await at thrift, consignment shops

SECONDHAND NOW CHIC AROUND THE LOWCOUNTRY

THE-CHURCH-MOUSE The Great Recession era has been generally awful for housing values and job prospects but has resulted in a boon for secondhand stores across the country. According to the National Association of Resale Professionals, the number of resale stores increased seven percent in each of the past two years. Much of the recent growth can be attributed to young shoppers, many of whom are passing on trips to the mall in favor of thrift stores. About 20 percent of people shop in thrift stores regularly, compared with about 14 percent in 2011.

At some point during the recession and its lingering aftermath, Gen Y, the youth demographic burdened with huge student loans and an awful job market, realized that perhaps paying $30 for a new T-shirt was unwise. It certainly was not sustainable. Young shoppers may have first turned to thrift stores out of necessity or desperation, but by now, they’re more likely to view secondhand shopping as sensible — even cool.

Protectors of the Trees

SALLY KREBS AND ROCKY BROWDER: MEET THE PEOPLE BEHIND HILTON HEAD’S TREE REGULATION

Those trees jutting skyward in shopping center parking lots around Hilton Head Island and the tree shaded neighborhoods which, together, make the town so appealing are a result of a determined effort by the island’s official family since soon after its incorporation 30 years ago to keep it a place of beauty.

The intervening years saw immense development, but it wasn’t unbridled and, through it all, Hilton Head Island zealously protected its trees.

The first guardian and tree guru was Sally Krebs, a biologist by training and self-professed nature lover, who oversaw the writing of the tree ordinance in 1986 as her first job as the new natural resources administrator for the town, a post she held for 25 years.

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Radiance

TAILBIRD OAK MAY NOT BE THE HILTON HEAD’S OLDEST

The Tailbird Oak, just inside the back gate to the Hilton Head Plantation, has long been regarded as the oldest oak tree on Hilton Head Island. Or is it?

Not so fast, says Sally Krebs, for 25 years the town’s natural resources administrator in charge of protecting the island’s trees. She suggests other, larger oaks, may be older.

The Tailbird Oak stands on what used to be the Tailbird plantation on Skull Creek that was given to Lt. John Tailbird, of the Patriot Militia, by his father Henry Tailbird, as a wedding present when he married Many Ann Ladson in 1778.

SANTA IS COMING

“ Proof of Santa will come on Christmas Day, offline, in real time”

When I was a kid, Santa became real to me every Christmas morning with a simple kick of my foot.

I don’t know how it all went down at your house, but in ours, Santa would fill our empty stockings in the living room and then leave them at the foot of our beds to find in the morning. The stockings had been crocheted by my grandmother using a grandmother’s generosity and some sort of elastic yarn, so each elephant trunk stocking easily stretched across the width of a twin bed. (“Favorite Grandmother” status: Secured.)

How to move a 45-foot live oak

The biggest tree Lee Edwards ever transplanted with his landscaping business was a Live oak that was 45 fee T tall and 40 fee T wide.

Edwards, president of The Greenery, on Hilton Head Island, said he picked up the tree at the farm of a tree grower in Orangeburg, and trucked it to its new home in the Sea Pines Plantation. The crane that lifted the tree had a built-in scale which showed the tree weighed 47,000 pounds, Edwards reported.

Asked how he managed to transport a tree of that size, Edwards said his crew carefully wrapped the branches to compact the tree to 22 to 23 feet wide. “That’s the widest load allowed on the highway,” he explained, “and that’s the widest it could be to get through the Sea Pines gate.”