BERCHADOR: A Special Place to Live and Work

Berchador

For two decades, I've lived in a region made up of three counties: Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester. Grouped together, they’re comparable in size to the U.S. State of Delaware, and I bounce between the three throughout the day, every week, month after month. With things like property research and the organization of our local school districts, it’s three distinct areas. However, in my work life dealing with contractors, real estate agents, banks, and vendors, it’s one unofficial region. If I’m within these three counties, the conversation flows routinely, but if I venture into neighboring counties such as Georgetown, Colleton, or Orangeburg, it’s as if I’ve wandered out of bounds. And when I’m outside of our triad of counties it’s common to hear, “Sorry, but that’s too far.” As I describe my life and renovation career in this tri-county region, I simply call it Berchador.

This pleasant-sounding montage created from the first three letters of each county is not something I came up with on my own. Although it’s uncommon, it’s been used by others. There was once a popular teen hangout in Berkeley County named the Berchador Coliseum, and the local technical college, Tri-Dent Tech has campuses in all three counties and was ini-

tially called Berchador Tech. And over the years, some tri-county businesses have used Berchador in their names as well.

    On my first visited to Berchador in 1996, I felt like I had stumbled onto a big secret, but I would learn that this exotic and semi-tropical region oozes with contradictions. Here there are saltwater dolphins and freshwater alligators, majestic egrets and blue herons, but also anoles and skink lizards. This area is a spiritual place in the buckle of the Bible Belt with the Holy City of Charleston as it's crown jewel. But it's also inhabited by haints, boo hags, and the plat eye who all own the night with ghosts, some three centuries old. And the BCD is an incubator of tolerable fibs, where cockroaches are called "palmetto bugs," wharf rats are known as "river dogs" or hate is called "heritage" and the Civil War has been tagged "The War of Northern Aggression."

    Here, in this humid haven of South Carolina's Lowcountry, brilliant flowers, leafy palms, and ancient gnarly oaks draped with Spanish moss grow abundantly next to swamps and abandoned rice fields. And these three counties bewilder English speakers with streets like Huger which is pronounced "Hugh Gee," and where the Cooper River is called "the Cupper." And finally, Berchador has unique meals like shrimp and grits, Frogmore stew and chicken bog, with sweets like pralines and benne wafers.

 

Berchador is my tri-county part of the world. It’s unique in ways that I’ve grown accustomed to, and it’s a special place that I’ve been fortunate to live, work, and call home for the last twenty years. It wasn’t home when I got here, but it is now. Since I’m not a native, I have a fresher perspective than folks who have lived here for their entire lives. And this setting is noteworthy in the context of this blog since it has enhanced my home renovation adventures.

Rewritten February 28, 2021

Trent
bloodsweatandpigsears@hotmail.com