30 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com For 95-year-old Tootsie Altman Watkins, life on Pawleys Island looks a lot different today than it did when she was growing up along the picturesque shoreline. When she was a little girl back in the 1930s, there wasn’t electricity, air conditioning, refrigeration, running water, a grocery store or beach traffic. As one of eight siblings, Tootsie rode the bus to a one-room elementary school house. In the afternoons, she completed her homework and chores before searching for shells on the beach or going for a swim in the creek or fishing for crabs and oysters to eat there on the spot or take home for supper. Her mother, who tended a 2-acre garden, was a talented cook who enjoyed preparing seafood and preserving the yellow plums that she grew. “We took advantage of what was local, what we could get easy and cheap. We ate good food, lived a clean, simple life, went to bed early and got up early,” Tootsie said. “Plus, we spent a lot of time outdoors – the salt air is a preservative.” Tootsie’s father, who worked as a carpenter, helped build the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base in the early 1940s, towards the start of World War II. She remembers waving to the hundreds of military trucks and jeeps zooming by on their way to the base. During the war years, Tootsie’s mother hung blankets on the windows every evening to darken the house, as German vessels were trolling the coast off of Pawleys Island. But Tootsie wasn’t afraid. “Life just went on as a kid,” she said. “Time was everywhere and nobody worried about what to do from day to day.” When Tootsie was a senior at Winyah High School in Georgetown in 1947, her family’s home was wired for electricity for the first time. In the years that followed, Tootsie married Newt Watkins and they had three children, Bucky, Glenn Age is just a NUMBER BY SARAH ROSE Tootsie Watkins still cooking and creating art at 95
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