Photo: Pinckney holding book cover courtesy of Sporting Classics Daily.
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
In Burning The Days, James Salter wrote of his fellow fighter pilots after Korea vanished from his gunsights. “Once in a while in a locker room or bar I would hear a remark that someone, a name from those days, had been killed in a flying accident, but like Conrad’s shipmates on the Narcissus, I never saw any of them again.”
In my life people scatter never to be seen again or die. Friends become unfriends. Good riddance to some relatives, and adios work colleagues. I’m a hex. Real writers come with expiration date. To the roll call of deceased writers I add Roger Pinckney the 11th.
I met Roger just once. That convinced me he was a “care-actor” as Dad used to stay. We stayed in touch and collaborated on a feature he was writing for Atlanta Magazine. He had the gift. Consider this excerpt from “Blue Root Real Estate.”
“I slept on the beach last night and saw the new moon over the dunes at sunrise, a crescent coasting above a casual slurry of pink and blue, like God got up late and slung color over his shoulder before stumbling off to make coffee. Plovers and sanderlings skittered up and down the backwash and shrimp boats were working Grenadier Shoals. Way offshore, the sea buoys flashed red and white and faithful, while the sunlight gathered and the colors faded and the moon disappeared into a great glory of morning.”
Roger relished the isolation of bridgeless Daufuskie Island.
“Easy and unlimited access has been the death of many wild places, not just islands.” He wrote of his island paradise as “beautiful, remote and sparsely settled. Quiet, lovely, no serious crime, many working artists, neighbors helping neighbors. Absolutely wonderful . . . Ah yes, we have a rum distillery and a winery. The fast food here has fins, fur, or feathers. The shrimp man comes regularly with seafood and produce. The water is clean enough now for our own oysters, clams, crabs, and you can always catch fish. Deer hunting is fantastic. We shoot local wood ducks and get some migrants if the winter is cold enough . . . “Peace and quiet, natural beauty, no traffic, nobody bothering me. I’m easy to find, hard to get to. Tourists are annoying at times but nature and historic tourism is our number one business. We say, ‘Take pictures, leave footprints and money.’”
Forget rattlers, copperheads, and gators, Roger saw developers as the danger. In 2001 Pinckney and comrades met on a shrimp boat and signed papers to become non-profit Friends of Daufuskie Inc. “To the woods,” they toasted with good champagne in Dixie cups. Friends of Daufuskie fought development.
“After about eight years, one litigant brokered a compromise. No lock harbor marina, 100s of acres into conservation easement and a brackish wetland/rice field to enhance habitat protected by a weir that would allow only kayaks, canoes etc., not powerboats. As a bonus, the controlling partner granted me a 1,000-acre deer lease for the benefit of the community. Friends of Daufuskie became the Daufuskie Hunt Club and we have been hunting it ever since.”
Roger, who knew all about hexes and haint blue, wrote, Got My Mojo Working, A Voodoo Memoir. He saw juju in action. In the 1980s, a realtor put a sales office and reception center on a slave graveyard.
“Unnamed locals went to Dr. Buzzard II and things went entirely to hell — $250,000,000 lost, boats afire, boats sunk, CEOs sickened and dead.”
People wore haint blue to Roger’s memorial on Daufuskie. We remember him as an unapologetic conservationist and colorful advocate for the wild, tidal Lowcountry.
As for my hex, forget it. Writing takes so long to get any good, by the time I get to know a real writer, the end is near. It’s that simple. RIP all.
