26 Years Online
••• The International Writers Magazine - Lifestyles & Culture- Spring Break Memories

A Travel Tale from a Yuppy-Named Girl • Madden Tolley Suddenly I was five years old again ...

The security guard handed us our parking pass with scornful eyes sizing each one of us up, then cautiously waving us into the parking lot of the condominiums. My spring-breaking friends and I entered the gated condos, ready for our vacation.

Bags, beer, boogie boards in hand, we walked into my grandmother’s remodeled condo in Hilton Head, South Carolina, as I gave my friends the run-down on my grandmother’s house rules:
“We need to respect Mamaw’s wishes, guys. Drink responsibly.” 

The remodeling was minor: a few new couches replaced the worn 90s sectional– although no amount of wear and tear could dull the bright coral and teal fabric. Facing the new couches sat a 65-inch living room TV that actually worked now, and a more modern white wallpaper lined the kitchen, one that didn’t peel up at the baseboards (and also matched the coral and teal couches). Everything else was pretty much exactly how I remembered it. 

It had been several years since I had returned to the shoe-shaped Hilton Head Island, so nostalgia hit me like a pound of sand, as I had roamed these hallways and boardwalks every summer for years until the world around me became so busy, and my family and I drove here less and less.

The week ahead of us spring breakers was mapped out in gray clouds and raindrops on our Weather Apps, so we had to be creative on what our vacation could look like without sunshine and beach days. We had a few “staycation” nights filled with playing Mario Kart and watching movies we all slept through (day-drinking inhibits one’s circadian rhythm). When, though, we were exhibiting symptoms of cabin fever, we decided to pack in the car and drive to Hilton Head’s main city, Harbour Town. 

A ten minute drive from our condo, Harbour Town–as I remembered it in my childhood–was the perfect tourist spot scattered with stores selling t-shirts with a lighthouse on it and over-priced restaurants overlooking the yacht basin. Believing it was a rite-of-passage for my friends to go here, I felt I needed to force nostalgia onto my friends any chance I got. 

Following the pull of nostalgia wafting past my every step, we made it to the old Liberty Oak tree, the epicenter of Harbour Town. I was transported back ten years, when my family and I would sit under the ever-enduring tree and watch as the blues singer Gregg Russell strummed his guitar for swaying sunburned children cradled in their moms’ laps, singing along to a song about green alligators and lock-neck geese, humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees.  Since 1977, Russell, a local celebrity, has been bringing in large crowds of children under the oak tree several times a week. At the end of his shows, he would sell his CDs, and our signed copy still lives in a cabinet tucked away back home, collecting dust. Russell starred in a few low-budget movies, all of which my sister and I would watch in the car ride to Hilton Head. So to my family, he’s a pretty big deal. To my spring-break companions, he was just an old man with a guitar, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, under a tree.

 

I sat my friends down by the oak tree, giving them my insight on this iconic face from my childhood.  Right there, under that oak tree, I was back to my fifth birthday holding up Gregg Russell looked at my poorly handwritten sign–illegible from the abuse of glitter glue–and welcomed me on stage. I handed my poster to my sister sitting next to me and sauntered toward the shining old man, ironing my pink skirt with my hands for a last chance to look stage ready. a sign saying, “It’s my birthday. Let me sing with you.”

“I see that it’s your birthday. How old are you today?” the singer asks, handing me his microphone. I took it with a steady hand, as if I were born for the stage, and turning toward the audience, like a veteran at the Oscar’s, I proudly announced to the audience: “I’m five!” I say with the highest pitched voice in all the land, but booming with confidence.

“And what is your name, birthday girl?” the singer asks me.

“Madden.” 

“Madden? That’s a little yuppy name!” Russell laughed, bearing his sparkling veneers, his gray hair shining under the fairy lights inhabiting the oak tree’s branches. 

Everyone in the audience laughed with him: kids younger than I, teenage boys, ice-cream-licking grandfathers. My face turns all shades of red–not from a sunburn.

“Now what do we sing when we hear yuppy names?” He asked the audience, pointing the microphone out to the crowd.

The performer and all the audience members under the oak tree began to sing “Yuppidy-Doo-Dah” to the tune “Zippity-Doo-Dah” 

I took it all in. The singing voices poking fun at my “yuppy” name while my parents were looking as proud of me as if I had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, filming this entire interaction on the video recorder–making sure that even 21-year-old me won’t be able to live this moment down. 

When he handed me the microphone, I cleared my throat and belted out “Amazing Grace,” messing up the lyrics terribly, of course. No amount of preparation could’ve saved me from switching the chorus and the bridge (and I prepared heavily; my parents as my audience and my hairbrush as my microphone). I headed back to my parents, satisfied with my singing debut despite the lyrical hiccups. They had never been happier, their dream had finally come true–Gregg Russell calling their kid’s name “yuppy.”

As my spring-breaking friends guffawed at my embarrassing yet formative story, I gave them a “Yes, this did really happen” face.

My friends and I walked around Harbour Town as I acted as their criminally uninformed tour guide telling stories about where along the path I fell off my bike in fifth grade, pointing out where you can get the best cotton candy, and laughing about my yuppy name. 

It was an odd “I’m getting old” moment where I was now the one leading my friends. I felt a longing for those days spent under the oak tree where my only worry was if I had enough room in my stomach for ice cream after I had stuffed it with hushpuppies and crab legs from the locally famous Hudson’s Seafood House. 

Back at our spring-break oasis, we told each other funny childhood memories. Sipping red wine in the same chair I used to sip grape juice boxes, I listened to the words of the past that were translated and half-forgotten from the memories deep in my friends’ minds. It was sweet hearing the inner children of all my friends sitting at the dinner table. I never met their six-year-old selves. But through these stories, I felt as if we were all kids again, talking over one another about what we did that day, where we fell off our bikes, where we could buy the best cotton candy, and which one of us has yuppy names.

© Madden Tolley April 2025
Madden Tolley is a graduating senior at the College of Charleston majoring in English with a minor in Writing, Rhetoric and Publication. 

More life moments

Share |