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Bowen's Island Restaurant
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INTERVIEWS
Bob & Cile Barber
Robert Barber
Paula Byers
Duke Eversmeyer
Victor "Goat"
Lafayette
Jack London
Fred Wichmann
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by NC photographer, Cramer Gallimore, who has been visiting Bowen’s Island
Restaurant for twenty-five years.
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Interviews by Amy Evans.
Paula
Byers
Longtime Customer
Bowen’s Island Restaurant
1870 Bowens Island Rd
Charleston, SC 29412
(843) 795-2757
www.bowensislandrestaurant.com
It always tickles me to go over there and see Robert Barber back in the kitchen. And here’s a man with a law degree, you know. He’s an ordained minister and registered lobbyist back there in the kitchen, breading shrimp and frying them up. Of course, I think cooking is the most loving thing you can do for someone. And so that was part of it, too: the hominess. – Paula Byers
Paula settled near Charleston to be close to the ocean. Her political support of Robert Barber was her first connection to Bowen’s Island Restaurant. After they became friends, Paula started visiting Robert’s family’s restaurant often. But she didn’t go for the food; she went for the experience. Over the years her experiences at Bowen’s Island have included helping to repair the deck, late-night swims in the marsh, and hosting the rehearsal dinner for her daughter’s wedding in the dock house; Robert Barber, an ordained minister, performed the ceremony. Years earlier, Robert’s grandmother, May Bowen, was the witness to Paula’s will. Robert drew up the document for her in his tiny law office in the back of the restaurant. It’s these memories that have endeared Paula to the place and the people of Bowen’s Island.
Listen to this 1-minute audio clip of Paula Byers describing Bowen’s Island Restaurant. [Go here to download the player for free.] What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: Paula Byers
DATE: January 18, 2007
LOCATION: Ms. Byers’s Home – James Island, SC
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Thursday, January 18, 2007 and I’m just outside Charleston, South Carolina, with Paula Byers at her home. And Paula, would you please say your name and your birth date for the record, if you don’t mind?
Paula Byers: Yes, Paula Byers, and I was born October 11, 1944.
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And we’re here to talk about Bowen’s Island Restaurant
because as I heard from Robert Barber, you’re a long time loyal
good customer. But if we could first get some of your personal background,
and you were telling me you were from Tennessee and when you came here
and all that.
I was born in Franklin, Tennessee, in a very small like eight-room hospital.
And when I was in the second grade, I moved with my mother and stepfather
to Daytona Beach, Florida. And I graduated from the University of Florida,
and when I graduated, my husband and I had a choice of Charleston or Tallahassee,
and we chose Charleston because it was on the ocean and that was very
important to us.
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Okay. And so you’ve been here a handful of decades. And Bowen’s
Island has been here since the ‘40s. Can you remember your first—first
hearing about Bowen’s Island and then also your first visit to Bowen’s
Island?
Actually, I can't remember either one of those; it’s just like Bowen’s
Island was always there. But I think I didn’t really have much contact
with Bowen’s Island until Robert Barber moved to Charleston, and
he wanted to get in political office, and he knew that I’m a very
loyal Democrat, which Charleston doesn’t have a tremendous number
of, although they’re growing. And he called me, we had lunch, and
we became friends. At that point I started going out to Bowen’s
Island. I will tell you that Bowen’s Island is not, for me, a food
designation so much as it is an experience designation. But I think I
can remember the first 
time
I ate at Bowen’s Island. I went out there with a group of friends
and I—Mrs. Bowen, his grandmamma, was still alive at that time;
as a matter of fact. Mrs. Bowen was the witness to my will. By the way,
Robert’s law firm was attached—that little block building
[in the back of the restaurant], and he wrote my will and then he called
his grandmamma over from the kitchen, and she witnessed that will. That’s
one reason I’ve never rewritten my will because I hate to do away
with that. It seems like a piece of history. But a group went out to dinner,
and I’m not much of a steamed oyster person. The restaurant was
divided into the oyster room, where John or Steve—I think at that
point it was Steve because the cooks out there become part of the family,
too. I think Steve was doing the oysters then. And I wanted the shrimp.
So when I ordered I said, “I’ll have the fried shrimp.”
And Mrs. Bowen slammed my soda—those little short Cokes—Coke
on the table and said, “Then you go in the other room,” which
meant that I had to choose between staying and not eating or going in
the other room, so I just stayed and not ate. But she was very, very,
very specific about where you ate what food.
And then later Robert started running for political office, and I helped him do a number of fundraisers, one here at my house, and two on Bowen’s Island. At that point in time there was not—I’m sure there must have been a deck out there at one point in time because shrimp boats used to dock there. But I’m assuming that over time they had collapsed or gone away, so it was just the—the block building. And then they started to build the deck out there. So for one of his fundraisers, I went out. They were going to do it on the deck and they were way—there is not a sense of urgency on Bowen’s Island. It’s—things will get done as they get done. Things get thrown out on the ground sort of, and they’ll get picked up eventually. And I don’t mean to say it’s trashy. It’s just that it’s kind of eclectic in that way. So we had to get that deck done, so I went out there with a carpenter, Richard, and started helping to nail down decks—nail down boards. We didn’t have a compressor gun; we were just nailing them. So the ones with the bent nails are probably mine. But eventually, we did get it finished, and we had the big fundraiser. And I think he was running for US Congress that particular election. Robert should have been elected every time he ran, but for some reason in this state we just weren’t ready for someone who, while being a very traditionalist at heart, still has a huge heart and compassion for acceptance of people who are different. And I think, as I told you the other day, when I think of Bowen’s Island—.
Well, here is another example. I got promoted to a Regional Manager with
my company and—but there was a month’s time in there where
I didn’t have to work. So I went out to Bowen’s Island every
day. I knew Steve, the oyster cooker and knew some of the ne’er
do 
wells
out—that were living out there because it was a lot—lots of
old trailers. Most of that is gone now. I jokingly say, eventually they’re
going to gate it but—let’s hope not—but people just
coming running out there to you. And Steve was still living out there
and the dock was finished, and I’d go out and climb up on the pilings.
I couldn’t do this now; this has been probably fifteen years ago.
And we would dive off those tall pilings at the end of the—the dock
and swim across the river. That was the only way you could be in the club,
and it was kind of like Wendy and the Lost Boys. So we’d go out,
and I’d have lunch or we’d cook lunch out there or something.
So for about a month I swam off that dock almost everyday.
But there’s just this real sense of,
you know, a US Congressman, a Federal Court Judge would be treated no
better, no worse than an alcoholic living in a trailer out there. The
whole island seems to have this acceptance of—and maybe it’s
Robert—of people who are down on their luck; they’re just
as worthy as everybody else. I guess that makes sense.
So when my daughter got married, we were looking for a place to have the
rehearsal dinner. And Bowen’s Island is not only funky, it’s
absolutely gorgeous. I mean it’s got the most incredible view. And
so we decided to have the dock out there. And there are two docks. One
is a fishing dock, which is the honor system, I believe, that if you want
to fish off that dock, there’s a can you can put a dollar in or
something. And then there’s the big dock with the roof and all.
So we had her wedding party there, and people came from all over the country
to the wedding, and they were just enthralled with this place and the
graffiti all over the walls. And there’s still signatures from my
daughter’s wedding out there and—and we shot fireworks off
from the other dark at the—at the end of the rehearsal dinner. We
did have it catered. We didn’t—[Laughs] Bowen’s Island
didn’t provide the food.
But—I’m trying to think of what
else about Bowen’s Island. We talked the other day on the phone
about just not memories but feelings, because I think sometimes there’s
a difference between a specific memory and how you feel about something.
And I think—and I remember when I found out about the fire, I felt
like I had lost a family—I get choked up talking about it because—and
I know they’re going to rebuild, but this was a place people went
to—like I say, they went there for the experience, not necessarily
the food. And there was a continuity about names on the walls and the
stuff, and people could come back after being out of town 30 years and
it was the same. And they could go find the signature they had written
on the wall as a Citadel Cadet, like a lot of Cadets go out there. So
I think that—that feeling of it provided a home, when maybe your
own home was no longer there, because people are very transient now, and
the home we grow up in is now somebody else’s house they’re
living in. So I have this really warm acceptance feeling about Bowen’s
Island. So yeah, the fire really hurt. And I went out there and—to
a—Robert called a press conference the next day and all his friends
went out there and—and everybody at first was saying this was kind
of like a wake and Robert said, “No, we’re going to make it
as joyous an occasion—we’re going to rebuild this restaurant.
It’s—it’s not going to be different. We’re going
to salvage what we can.” And I haven’t seen the restaurant
since the fire; so—.
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You mentioned the other day that Robert married your daughter, and
I want to hear about that and then also your daughter’s experience
at Bowen’s Island and how old she was when she first started going
out there.
Well Robert was the Minister at my daughter’s wedding, and that’s
another story, too. I told someone that Robert married my daughter and
they say, “Oh my God, what happened to LaNelle?” [Robert’s
wife] I said, “No, he didn’t marry my daughter [Laughs]. He
was the—he was the Minister of my daughter’s wedding.”
We chose Robert because we’re not very traditional churchgoers,
so we didn’t have a regular Minister, but I wanted someone who wasn’t
religious but spiritual. Now Robert is probably both, but I see him as
a very spiritual person, and I see him as a very grounded person, so we
asked Robert if he would be the Minister at Sandy’s wedding. And
he did. And halfway through the service he started talking about the seven-year
itch, which kind of like everybody is stunned but—but the truth
is, it really was well spoken because he talked about how marriage is
a real commitment and how in this country 50-percent of marriages breakup,
so marriage is not an easy thing to do. It has to be worked out every
year, and everyone, at some point in time, might be tempted to stray from
their marriage, but it’s the commitment within the marriage that
makes it—that makes us reject that and go back to the one that we
chose. So he was the Minister, and she was married in an old plantation
house in Hollywood, South Carolina, which is also gone now. And then Sandy
and I—I don’t—I think we just feel like Robert has always
been kind of an extended part of the family. We’ve known him forever.
He has a huge Cinco de Mayo party every year on Bowen’s Island,
which we’ve been going to for years. It started off as absolutely
an enormous thing; the police were out there directing traffic. It would
be interesting because everything from the cooks in the kitchen to Fritz
Hollings, the US Senator, would be at this party together, and Sandy has
always gone with me. And then when my grandson was born, he’s gone
with me.
And Sandy and my grandson and I were in Robert’s commercials for his—now they cut his out; you didn’t see us on TV, but we were out there when they filmed the commercials [for his campaign for Lt. Governor of South Carolina] and one of the interesting things is a new show on the Food Network came out there. Do you know about that—the Hungry Detective? But he cut Bowen’s Island out when he showed the show because—I don’t know why they cut it out because one of the restaurants he showed in Charleston I never heard of in my life and—but it was after the fire, so maybe—maybe that’s why he did it, figuring he couldn’t recommend people to go there. But we did go, and he had some people out there eating and, you know, it’s a place where I’ve gone in the afternoons just to sit out on the dock and read a book. People can do that—to just go out and visit.
And so I think Sandy would—Sandy is probably
not as close to Robert as I am, but I think 
she
would reiterate the fact that it just seems like—I hate to keep
going back to family place, but I think that’s really what it evokes
in people is kind of a family place to go to. And I think Robert’s
grandmamma would be really proud of his continuing this tradition. My
guess is the land is worth a whole lot more money than the amount of food
he serves in that restaurant. I can't imagine he’s getting rich
serving food in that restaurant. And the dock itself, I can't think of
any non-profit that has asked Robert to let them use that dock for a fundraising
event that he’s ever said no to. So everyone, there’s some
kind of group out there having an oyster roast or something for—for
their non-profit. So ask more questions. I’ve run out of things
to say. Ask more questions.
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Well I want to know if—and I don’t know if you can put
this into words or not—but Mrs. Bowen, being kind of the matriarch
of Bowen’s Island and being this female head and kind of minding
all these misfits on the island and oyster pickers and—.
Well I—I didn’t know Mrs. Bowen very well, and from what I
understand that she did allow a lot of misfits to come live on the island,
and I’m sure that’s where Robert got it from. There’s
a certain degree of sadness because I think that’s leaving the island,
by the way. I mean and I love Robert’s family but his brother, Cas,
has built a gorgeous home on the island—or I guess Cas is his brother-in-law.
But more and more really lovely homes are being built out there, so those
kinds of misfits are not really present on Bowen’s Island anymore.
But I think she must have—I wish I had known her better because
I think she must have been a very—what would be the right word,
you know, businesswoman. I mean kind of what we look at as businesswoman
today—at a time when there weren’t a lot of business women.
She obviously kept the place going, and from what I’ve read, it
wasn’t always easy. But she made the decision to keep it going.
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Can you talk about when you mentioned that there were trailers and
things collected on the island and it had a different look and feel about
it in the early days when you started going there? Can you talk about
the changes that have happened over those years?
Well at one point in time when you came onto the island the road went
straight and then it made a loop, and at high tide you couldn’t
make the loop because the road was underwater. And the road if—if
you envision Bowen’s Island today where—where Robert Barber
and his brothers’ houses face out, there was actually a road in
front of their house. And eventually, the road came straight down through
the island as it is now. But at one point in time, 90-percent of the place
was old trailers or mounds of oyster shells or a piece of equipment that
got left somewhere and then never got moved again, and some of that is
still there—a boat dock with abandoned boats. I think mine was one
of them one time, an old rowboat, and but people lived in these places.
Steve lived in a little house with some kind of funky three-legged cat
or something. A lot of these people had substance abuse problems I think;
I mean I can't swear to that, but that would be my guess. And at one time—point
in time he had to kind of ne’er do well Citadel Cadets that had
a house out there, and they came and spent time in it on the weekends.
And he had a woman named Susan who was one of the chefs—chefs—[Laughs]
cooks in the restaurant, and I remember going to the doctor and Susan
was in there, and Susan had fallen from the very top of the Morris Island
Lighthouse down the stairs but she didn’t remember it because, I
guess, she was so inebriated at the time.
So a lot of the people that have come through
there—but you know that’s just—that was just their lifestyle
but those things are leaving now. When you go out there now, you know,
there’s three or four gorgeous homes on the left, and now they’re
building nice homes on the right and the trailers are disappearing and
the dilapidated houses are disappearing, which, to me, is a little sad.
I mean how can someone say, “Well it’s sad to see an old 
dumpy
trailer leaving?” But it’s—it’s like everywhere
I go there is—we’ve built another beautiful generic looking
home. They all kind of look the same to me, and everybody that lives in
them is kind of like the same and we’ve just—. So as I told
you a minute ago, I expect one day to go out there and the whole island
is gated. [Laughs] I told them, I said, “Don’t you ever gate”—which
I’m just joking. I don’t think they would ever do but there’s—there’s
a huge change in the past couple—20 years at the way Bowen’s
Island looks. It looks much more like, you know, Kiawah-ish [Kiawah Island,
which is a high-end planned community not far from Charleston], if that
makes sense. Robert may not like me saying that, but it’s—but
it’s very valuable land. I mean it’s extremely valuable land.
Anything on the water in Charleston is extremely valuable land.
What about the restaurant itself, the physical space?
Well one of the biggest problems the restaurant always had was bathrooms
but [Laughs] it was not a place you’d ever want to go to the bathroom,
I can tell you that. And I think he’s improved on that. But as you
walked in the front door there was a painting on the wall of Steve and—Steve
[Shroyer], Mrs. [May] Bowen, and John [Sanka], I think…But then
when you went in, you know, on the porch there’s—there was
lots of collected furniture, none of which would be found in a fine furniture
store, you know. It was just whatever, like abandoned furniture…The
left-hand side was where you ordered your food and—and you know,
there’s a counter and behind the counter is where they were cooking.
And on the right-hand side, the front room was a, I guess, the room that
you would eat your fried shrimp or fish on and lots of old jukeboxes and
TVs and graffiti, where people had written on top of each other on every
available space. And then behind that was the oyster room. And then I
don’t know how they cook oysters now, but what they did then is
they, you know, would have a big open grate where they’d pour the
oysters, and they’d put the like burlap bags and pour seawater over
it and steam the oysters open. So now my brother, Jimmy, who lives across
the street from me, he goes by James—I call him Jimmy—my brother
with Downs Syndrome calls him Jimbo, but he loves to take people from
out of town to Bowen’s Island because it’s so unique. So he
had his picture taken with Mrs. Bowen, and it was on the wall, and we
understand it burned in the fire. But he’s got a copy of it, so
he’s going to take it back to Robert. And one thing I think that
indicates people’s commitment and loyalty to this place existing
in the world is after the fire instead of just saying, “Well that’s
too bad. Bowen’s Island burned,” people started bringing things
to Bowen’s Island—pictures or memorabilia to put back in the
restaurant. And I know they’re rebuilding it—to put back into
the restaurant to rebuild and recapture this particular place. So—and
there was lots of old political campaign stuff in there that I guess got
burned, too, unfortunately.
Did you have a favorite part of the restaurant or a place that you
always sat or anything like that?
Well I always sat outside. I mean I prefer to sit on the—the little
outside dock and there’s always been an outside place to sit because
the view from this restaurant is just—it’s just magnificent.
You face out across the river there into the marsh, and then in a distance
is Folly Beach. And, believe it or not, we live in a city with a zillion
restaurants, very few of whom have any kind of gorgeous view of the water.
So it’s just a very—it’s a very peaceful place just
to go outside and eat, so I would rather eat outside. Now oysters I don’t
eat, so I don’t go there in the cold weather and sit inside and
eat oysters, but lots of people do so that—that wouldn’t have
been my style.
Do you have a memory of an unusual event or happening or fun memory
from your days going there?
Well it wasn’t the restaurant itself, but I was always very amazed
that I could climb on top of those pilings and dive into the river. And
Robert may not even know this, but some of us used to go back to the restaurant
in the middle of the night and go out on the dock after we left the Sand
Dollar at Folly Beach and go swimming in the water of his dock. Because
there’s phosphorous in the water, so we’d all go skinny dipping
off his dock in the middle of the night, although he probably would have
joined us, if he had known we were there. And I just dearly loved Steve,
who was the oyster cooker. I mean he was just a great guy and fun just
to sit and talk to and so other than that—.
Well I will tell you, one night I went out there and—no, when I sold legal research, the Public Defender’s Office were having their annual party there, and Robert would say, “I don’t know how I’m going to handle them because there’s so many people.” So I went out there and played waitress for a night. I just knew them, and I went out there and acted as a server and, you know, waited on the people from the Public Defender’s Office. It was just kind of fun. [Laughs]
Lot of people have come and gone through that
restaurant. It always tickles me to go over 
there
and see Robert Barber back in the kitchen. And here’s a man with
a law degree, you know. He’s an Ordained Minister and Registered
Lobbyist—back there in the kitchen, you know, breading shrimp and
frying them up. And I just think—of course I think cooking is the
most loving thing you can do for someone—to prepare someone a meal
and sit down all together. It’s almost becoming a lost art, too,
because families don’t eat dinner together anymore, and so that
was part of it, too—is just like the—the hominess…
…So but it’s also—I don’t
know if the oysters are especially good or is the shrimp is especially
fried well, but there’s something about the ambience of a place
that compensates for that. And now when I went out there to film the commercial,
the shrimp were wonderful. I don’t know what Robert had done to
them, but the shrimp were wonderful. But like I say, for me it was never
about the food; it’s always been a destination place to go for the
experience. And it’s a place you took out-of-towners because there’s
nothing like it anywhere else that I know of. I mean it’s just so
funky and the continuity of the same state—like I say, it always
amazes me every time I’ve been in there to watch people looking
for the name they wrote in there in the ‘50s. And, of course, then
the dock started getting all the graffiti on it, too.
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Well what do you think it will be like when it opens again?
I think that in five years we won't even think there’s been a fire.
The graffiti will be back on the walls; the—the stuff will be back
in there; people will continue to bring remembrances of Bowen’s
Island. And it’s kind of like Hurricane Hugo [in 1989]. When it
came through this town, we thought we’d never be the same again.
It was horrible. I couldn’t get to my house; I couldn’t find
my way home for trees and all, but now there are very few remnants. Of
course it’s not quite like Katrina. But I think it will—it
will all come back and be fine.
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How would you describe Bowen’s Island Restaurant to somebody
who hadn’t been there and what to expect?
I would tell them it’s just this funky very eclectic place. Don’t
expect five-star dining because it’s a really—it’s a
dining experience—not just for the food but it’s an incredible
view, and it’s a place you almost can't visualize until you’ve
been there. And then once you go there it hooks people. People come from
around the world. Every travel digest, every, you know, travel guide,
all tell you to come to Bowen’s Island. And it’s not because
they’re telling that it’s got the best food in town, but they’re
telling you because it’s a very unique Southern experience. It’s—it’s
a South Carolina experience. There is no other place like it that you
can go to this little funky concrete block building, get your supper,
sit within a gorgeous view, talk to the owner who is interesting as can
be, really have an experience with the people cooking the kitchen, very
casual, bring the kids, let them run around and 
scream,
and so I think it does hook people. I think after they’ve been there—when
they come back to Charleston from 1,000 miles away, they want to go back
to Bowen’s Island.
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Well and that has been such a profound kind of underscoring to the
work that I do, when we’ve been talking about doing this project
for a year and then it burned—the restaurant burned—and so
now we’re thinking, you know, more than ever, it’s time to
get the story while it’s still—even though it’s burned,
it’s still alive.
Exactly. I think that’s a wonderful analogy is Bowen’s Island
still exists. It may be burned and you maybe not—can go eat there
right now, although he’s having parties on the dock, but it didn’t
kill the restaurant. It defaced it or scarred it, but it didn’t
kill the spirit of the restaurant. That has lingered, and I think that
it will—I think it’ll—it’ll—who was it that
rose from the ashes in—in mythology? Well I think Bowen’s
Island will rise from the ashes and go back [Laughs] and—and be
a destination. But I do think it is sad that so many small local places
disappeared, and we don’t value them until they’re gone. And
if Bowen’s Island were gone, I think people would suddenly feel—well
I think that’s what the fire did. I don’t know if people thought
he’d rebuild. But it’s all people talked about is the fire
at Bowen’s Island.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.