My photographer’s wife did a good job getting us safely into Columbia, South Carolina, and she did an even better job finding a parking spot in close proximity to the South Carolina State House. It was 2:15pm on April 30, 2024 and downtown Columbia was bustling with people on that Tuesday afternoon.
I was excited while Tom carried me along the sidewalk as we made our way around to the north side of the State House. For Vicki, this was just another State Capitol Building on a long list of ones we’ve seen over the years. As a matter of fact, it was the third State Capitol we’d visited on this trip. But to my cameraman and me, that beautiful building had a Presidential connection. Or should I say “connections”, as two Presidents have addressed the state legislature in the General Assembly. Richard Nixon spoke to the legislators on February 20, 1973 about a peace settlement plan for Vietnam. And George W. Bush addressed the state’s representatives on April 18, 2005 to discuss strengthening social security in South Carolina.
Upon our arrival at the north side of the State House, I posed for several images around the exterior of the impressive structure, which featured a 180-foot-tall copper dome. During our walk around the outside of the building, we saw evidence of what Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops did to the State House, which wasn’t yet fully constructed, during the General’s famous ‘March to the Sea’. There were six bronze stars affixed to the granite walls of the building – each of the stars marked a spot where light-caliber cannonballs from the United States Army had hit the State House.
While the stars marked the scars of war, there was one additional and lesser-known wound left by the North – and I saw that when I stood on the bronze statue of George Washington, located in front of the State House. Purchased in 1858 and originally installed inside the State House, the statue of our first President was damaged when Union troops threw bricks at Washington, which broke off the bottom portion of George’s walking stick. Since the Northern troops were only supposed to destroy property that would aid the Confederacy’s war effort, the South left the statue unrepaired as evidence of Yankee evil.
Once we made it through security and were inside the State House, there were three places my photographer and I wanted to visit – the area beneath the dome; the governor’s office; and the House of Representatives chamber where both Nixon and Bush had delivered speeches. After we found our way through the catacombs of the interior to all three significant spots, I was left underwhelmed and disappointed.
The interior of the dome turned out to be a false dome. That’s right – fake news in Columbia. Although the false dome looked impressive, it wasn’t the actual inside of the copper dome we saw from the outside. To create an illusion the dome was centered over the Main Lobby, architectural engineers designed a false dome – and most visitors can’t tell they’ve been duped.
When Tom attempted to take me to see the outside of Governor Henry McMaster’s office, the hallway leading to the office was blockaded by what seemed to be a security checkpoint. I thought it would’ve been an interesting area to visit as the previous South Carolina governor was Nikki Haley, who was Donald Trump’s main challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination for President.
My photographer saved the best for last – the Presidential site where Nixon and Bush 43 had each addressed the state’s legislators. But when we arrived at the area just outside of the House of Representatives, we discovered the place was crawling with politicians. With the House chamber in session, even though the men and women representatives were on a break, there was no way Tom and I were able to access that historic room. We were left on the outside looking in – and that was very disappointing.
As the three of us headed back to the Jeep after our 45-minute visit at the South Carolina State House had concluded, it was a bitter-sweet moment for me. While I was able to somewhat replicate Richard Nixon’s position near the Confederate Soldier Monument in front of the State House, not having access to the House of Representatives chamber was a huge disappointment. I didn’t expect to stand at the lectern and deliver a heart-felt speech, but I had hoped to get an unobstructed view of the entire chamber – and that didn’t happen. From the moment we set foot inside the building, there was a sense of unbridled chaos everywhere we went. Perhaps someday in the future I’ll have the chance to return to Columbia and hopefully on that trip, the House of Representatives will not be in session.
The second of our four Presidential sites in Columbia was only a short five-minute drive north from the State House – and that’s where we found the Executive Mansion where Governor Henry McMaster and his family resides. While I don’t give two resin dookies about McMaster, I do care about the breakfast hosted by Governor Olin Johnston on December 5, 1939 at the mansion. During the middle of Franklin Roosevelt’s second term as President, FDR came to Columbia to speak at the State House. Prior to his speech, the 32nd President was invited to a breakfast hosted by Governor Johnston and his wife Gladys at their mansion.
As soon as Vicki pulled our vehicle into a spot along Lincoln Street, which was directly in front of the Governor’s Mansion, my photographer jumped out of the Jeep before it came to a complete stop. It turned out Tom saw the front gate to the property was open and he wanted to take full advantage of the situation. Just as my camera guy hurried to get across the street, however, his attempt at getting onto the grounds was quickly thwarted by security, who insisted the two of us remain on the opposite side of the street until the gate was closed. To me, it felt like Mar-a-Lago all over again.
Once the entrance gate was closed after a black SUV was allowed onto the grounds, Tom carried me across the street and held me between the thick iron bars where I posed for a couple of pictures. Unfortunately for the two of us, the mansion was a couple hundred yards away; plus, from our vantagepoint, the building was partially hidden by trees and bushes.
While I listened to my photographer as he grumbled to himself about not being allowed to get onto the property for a closer glimpse of the historic mansion, I thought about the history of the large building behind me. The Executive Mansion was originally constructed in 1855 as an officer’s quarters for a state-supported military academy. But when Sherman’s army came through and ravaged Columbia, the entire complex was destroyed – with the exception of that mansion. Three years after the Civil War ended, Governor James L. Orr designated the building as the official state governor’s mansion. Since 1868, only three governors have opted to live in their own residences in Columbia instead of the mansion.
As Tom held me up and I posed for the pictures, I saw the black SUV parked in front of the white mansion. But in my mind, it was the Sunshine Special – and President Roosevelt had just been taken inside the building to have breakfast with Governor Olin Johnston. Then it dawned on me – just two years and three days from that moment in time, FDR uttered his most-famous words, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
The sky grew darker, and the threat of rain was in the air as Vicki drove Tom and I towards our next Presidential destination in Columbia, which was located a little over a mile east of the Executive Mansion. As a matter of fact, there were sprinkles on the windshield of the Jeep just as my photographer’s wife found a parking spot along Hampton Street in front of the only home ever owned by Woodrow Wilson’s parents. My photographer carried me along the sidewalk and through the unlocked front gate. Although we made it onto the grounds, which was a surprise because the historic home wasn’t open for public tours on Tuesday, we had no time to waste as there was a good possibility Tom and I would get soaked.
The two-story, wood-framed home in front of me was built in 1871 for Rev. Joseph Wilson, who moved his family to Columbia from Augusta that same year when the elder Wilson became a professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary. Young Tommy was 14 years old when they arrived in town, and the future President lived in the home with his parents for four years before they moved to Wilmington, North Carolina in 1874 after Joseph was hired as the pastor of the Presbyterian church there.
The historic home had changed owners a countless number of times over the years until Historic Columbia purchased the building and property in 1967. Shortly thereafter, the home was opened to the public as a museum and was called the Woodrow Wilson Family Home. But like a lot of places around the nation, whose leaders have bowed to the recent pressures of the inclusion movement, the directors of the home decided to transform the focal point of the Wilson house to the time of the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, rather than solely showcasing the house as a Presidential boyhood home. Today, the historic site is known as the Museum of the Reconstruction Era at the Woodrow Wilson Home, which focuses on how South Carolina and the rest of the nation shifted socially, politically and economically to adjust to the new freedoms for previously enslaved men and women following the Civil War.
As Tom carried me around the property where I posed for a handful of photos near the exterior of the Wilson house, part of me was happy the place wasn’t open – even though the bed where the future President was born was located on the second floor of the museum. Since the interior was designed solely as a cultural museum and not as the home where Woodrow Wilson lived during his late teenage years, there’s no doubt in my mind I would have been disappointed.
By the time Tom carried me back to the Jeep where his wife was waiting for us, my face was wet, and I noticed my photographer’s glasses were speckled with water droplets. I overheard my companion mention to his wife we were only three miles from the last site in Columbia and he hoped the rain would let up by the time we arrived. At the same time, I was mentally preparing myself to get drenched. At the end of the day, it was only water – the only thing I had to fear, was fear itself; and the possibility of the spring in my neck becoming rusty.
When we arrived at our destination, which took us through the affluent Columbia neighborhood of Heathwood, it was 3:40pm and there didn’t seem to be an end in sight for the rain. Tom and I waited for about five minutes, and when the rain seemed to subside slightly, my photographer quickly made his way to the driveway entrance of the James F. Byrnes House.
The Byrnes House was where the former South Carolina governor lived, and it became a Presidential site on May 3, 1969 when Richard Nixon arrived there to help Byrnes celebrate his 87th birthday. Throughout his political career, James Byrnes was a staunch Democrat and became allies with FDR and Truman. As a matter of fact, it was Byrnes who informed Truman about the Manhattan Project after Roosevelt’s sudden and unexpected death. Although Truman appointed Byrnes to the position of Secretary of State in July 1945, the two butted heads over policy and Byrnes resigned two years later.
But that wasn’t the end of James Byrnes’ political career as he was elected governor of South Carolina and served from 1951 to 1955. The funny thing was – Byrnes remained a Democrat, but after the fiasco with Truman, he supported Dwight Eisenhower for President in 1952 and Richard Nixon in 1960.
In May of 1969, Richard and Pat Nixon were headed to the Kentucky Derby in Louisville when the President made a stop in Columbia to visit his old friend and supporter James Byrnes at his Heathwood home. Nixon not only wanted to help celebrate the former governor’s birthday, which was the previous day, but he also wanted to celebrate the Byrnes’ 63rd wedding anniversary, which was only three weeks away.
During the tribute held in the house in front of me, Nixon made a short address to honor his friend. When the President had finished speaking, the 87-year-old former governor said to his friend, “I address you as Mr. President because last fall I told you that I hoped when you came again to South Carolina I could greet you as “Mr. President.” I do so today. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your honoring me by coming to visit my home. I will never forget this day; I will never forget you.”
During the time Tom and I stood in front of the James F. Byrnes House where I posed for photos, he stayed beneath the canopy of a couple of large trees. At first, I thought his intention was to keep me dry, but the fact of the matter was, my photographer didn’t want his camera to get wet. Not knowing whether or not the home was a private residence, Tom still managed to get me fairly close to the front of the building. We were lucky because the historic house was situated close to the road, plus my photographer figured the owner wouldn’t venture out in the downpour to yell at us. Ironically, seconds after Tom had finished taking pictures of the house and was carrying me back towards the Jeep, we heard sirens blaring in the distance. Were the cops coming because of us? While the noise of the sirens grew louder and seemed to be getting closer, Vicki didn’t stick around long enough to find out! It was time to leave Columbia.
For the next one hour and twenty minutes, and with my photographer’s wife once again behind the wheel of the Jeep, we headed north towards the border between the two Carolinas. It didn’t take long after we left Columbia before Vicki had driven out of the rain system, and that was good because I heard Tom tell his wife he’d pull the plug on the next site if it was raining when we got to the border. While it would be disappointing should my photographer be forced to abort our plans to visit Andrew Jackson’s birthplace site, it would be even a bigger tragedy to miss a chance to see a Sasquatch.
In late July 2020, I made my first visit to the Waxhaw area of North Carolina with Tom and Vicki where we saw the two birthplace sites of Andrew Jackson. That’s right, there’s as much dispute over where Jackson was actually born as there is about the existence of Sasquatch. The seventh President was either born at the George McCamie cabin in North Carolina, or at the Crawford Plantation in South Carolina. The two sites are located about four miles from each other, and the funny part is – Jackson believed he was born at the Crawford Plantation, while his mother, Betty, claimed the birth happened at the McCamie cabin.
But on that hot July afternoon four years earlier, just after I posed on the monument which marked the McCamie cabin site, I heard what sounded like an enormous tree crash to the ground somewhere in the densely, wooded area that surrounded us. The ground shook so violently, Vicki felt the tremor while she sat in our rented vehicle. When Tom’s wife asked my photographer what made the ground shake, he told her in no uncertain terms, “To be honest, I think a Sasquatch just pushed a huge tree over.” Of course, Vicki thought his reasoning was pure nonsense, but I agreed with Tom. We were on a dead-end road with no other civilization anywhere close to us; we were surrounded by a thick, forest-like covering; the air was completely still with no wind that might have blown a tree over; and the area was completely silent after the event – not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. In my photographer’s mind, as well as mine, what would be the odds that a huge tree would suddenly crash to the ground, unaided, during the twenty minutes we were at the site? And if something or someone did push the tree over, he or she had to have been extremely strong – like Bigfoot.
At roughly 5:07pm, we crossed the border into North Carolina and luckily, the sky had cleared with no rain in sight. Our mission to see Jackson’s birth site, as well as our quest to see an elusive Sasquatch, was on – and quite frankly, I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a rocking chair factory. My resin body trembled with anticipation as Vicki drove past the Mount Zion Baptist Church towards the dead-end roadway where the Jackson site was located. Once we arrived at the site, Tom asked his wife to park in the exact spot where she had parked in 2020.
As Tom carried me towards the four-foot-tall granite monument which marked the George McCamie cabin site, everything seemed eerily similar to our first visit in 2020. With each passing minute, I waited with bated breath, wondering if I’d hear another tree crash to the ground. As I stood on the marker, which had been vandalized in the past by anti-Jackson thugs, I scanned the forest around me – just in case the large, hairy beast lurked nearby and was watching us. Once again, as it was four years earlier, the silence was deafening. The three of us were in the middle of nowhere, and we were all alone. Or were we?
After I had posed on the monument for a few photos, without hearing or seeing any signs of the elusive creature known as Bigfoot, I heard Tom tell his wife it was time to lure the Squatch to the site. Armed with techniques he learned from the Animal Planet show ‘Finding Bigfoot’, Tom took me into the forest where he banged on a tree with a large stick. My photographer told his wife that “wood knocks” were a popular form of communication used by Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) founder Matt Moneymaker. After several minutes of listening to Tom bash the bark off a tall oak tree, the only sound I heard was Vicki chuckling in the distance.
Disgruntled, yet determined, my photographer took me to another spot in the woods where his wife was looking at dozens of exuviae left by a recent brood of cicadas. Suddenly, and without warning, Tom cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a loud howl – much to the chagrin of his wife. Although my fat friend’s vocalizations didn’t sound as convincing as the bellows and loud shrieks made by James “Bobo” Fay on the show ‘Finding Bigfoot’, they weren’t terrible. Then out of nowhere, seconds after Vicki rolled her eyes at the sounds coming from her husband’s mouth, I heard a loud howl come from the forest. Tom looked at Vic and said, “Did you hear that? I heard a distinct howl – and that didn’t sound like dog.” While Vicki admitted she heard the animal vocalization as well, we never heard the sound again; even after my camera guy let out several more Sasquatch howls. We stood in complete silence for another ten minutes or so, but we never heard another sound from the woods.
During the entire time we spent at the Andrew Jackson birthplace site, there was an eerie uneasiness so thick I could brush it from my painted resin face. For the second time in four years, we heard evidence of a possible Bigfoot near the North and South Carolina border. But alas, while the secluded area where Old Hickory was likely born on March 15, 1757 seemed very “Squatchy”, we once again left with no photographic evidence whatsoever of the elusive beast known as Bigfoot.
Throughout the entire half-hour we explored the desolate cabin site where Andrew Jackson was born, I felt as though we were being watched everywhere we went. That intense feeling was likely just my imagination, which had been fueled by the sound of the large tree that had hit the ground during our visit in 2020. But when my photographer’s “Squatch call” was answered with an unknown creature’s howl, that was the moment I realized we weren’t alone.
Back in the Jeep, I noticed the time was 5:44pm when Vicki headed down the long, desolate road and back into South Carolina. Twenty minutes later, we crossed back into North Carolina near the town of Pineville. It was in that town of just over ten thousand people where my photographer’s wife had made reservations at the Fairfield Inn & Suites. And the best part of all, at least for Tom and me, was the fact we were spending the night less than a mile from where President James K. Polk was born.
While Vicki registered in the lobby, my photographer once again unloaded all of their belongings onto a luggage cart and hauled it into the building. It was about 6:15pm and I knew Tom was hungry because I heard his stomach growling as we weaved in and out of both Carolinas for nearly twenty miles.
My two companions were tired, and I heard them say they didn’t feel like sitting in a restaurant for dinner. After Tom suggested they get a couple of large salads from a grocery store, the three of us headed to the nearby Food Lion, which was where we were greeted by a primate riding in a shopping cart. No, Sasquatch didn’t follow us to Pineville. Instead, the critter was a well-dressed spider monkey named Selena and the primate let Vicki shake her hand.
After my companions had finished monkeying around in the grocery store, Tom and Vicki left the Food Lion without a pre-packaged salad for dinner. Instead, Tom purchased a container of sliced watermelon chunks he planned on having with his fresh salad from Firehouse Subs, which was where we headed next.
Shortly after seven o’clock, the three of us had returned from our hunt for food, and Tom immediately placed me alongside the television set where I watched him devour his salad and watermelon chunks. For me, the day was a rollercoaster of emotional stress. It began with a possible ghost sighting at the Partridge Inn in Columbia and ended with a possible Sasquatch encounter at Andrew Jackson’s birthplace. But sandwiched in between those supernatural escapades, however, were a couple of tours led by two very decent docents – Erick Montgomery at the Wilson Boyhood home, and Ransom Schwerzler, the proud member of the Daughters of the American Revolution who led us through Meadow Garden.
Once Tom had extinguished the lights in the room at 10:00pm, I stood in the darkness while a million things ran through my mind. And while I did my best to think about the fact I was within a mile of where James K. Polk came into the world on November 2, 1795, there was one thought that kept filling my resin head. It was that blood-curdling howl at the birthplace of Old Hickory. Was it a dog; or a coyote; or even a wolf? Likely. But there’s a chance, at least in my mind, the sound we heard had come from the undisputed Hide and Seek Champion of the World – the elusive Sasquatch!
