My wife and I were living in Mt. Pleasant in 1978. She was working on her masters degree at MUSC. I was a sales representative for a wholesale heating and plumbing supply house. One Friday my wife's sister called and asked us to come over for a quail supper that night. My sister-in-law and her husband lived in downtown Charleston in a very small carriage house. The temperature that January day was hovering around 32 degrees. There was also a slight chance of wintry precipitation. We left around 5:30 pm for our 6:00 dinner engagement. It had already started sleeting as we approached the old Cooper River bridge. When we reached the top of the bridge we realized that the descending side was covered in ice. We stopped at the top and watched as the car ahead slid down going from side to side and was bouncing off the concrete abuttments. I was petrified but finally reached the bottom. I looked back and the cars behind me had started backing up - stranded on the bridge.
While we continued our slow trek downtown it started to snow very hard. We saw on TV when we arrived for dinner that they had just closed the bridge. The snow and ice had made it impassable. We however did have a wonderful supper. The problem was that it snowed all night and more ice accumulated. Then the power went out. The bridge was our only way home. It remained closed for two more days. We remained guests for breakfast, dinner, supper again, breakfast and dinner again. We were finally able to leave Sunday afternoon. We ate everything consumable in those three days and finally ran out of food. Not to mention we had to wear the same clothes for three days and sleep on the floor for two nights. That was the last time I ate quail.
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