Mount Pleasant Magazine July/August 2018

63 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestOfMP.com feature N ot one to shy away from work, Donna Kay has always held more than one job and added her family’s business, Six Mile Tavern, to her résumé more than a decade ago. The small, peach-colored building sits along once-quiet Rifle Range Road and has been bringing people together over drinks, music, dancing, oyster roasts and crab cracks (depending on the season) since 1968. Mount Pleasant, she reminisces, used to be very different: “You always knew your neighbor, and you always knew families in the different communities like Hamlin, Awendaw and Six Mile. In school, you could tell the ancestral traits from the grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles because all of us have always been in Mount Pleasant.” The Four Mile community where Kay grew up has mostly vanished, a victim of the town’s progress. Towne Centre and new apartments have replaced that small community, and a Starbucks sits where her grandmother’s home once was. Kay is pleased that new folks are curious to know local establishments like hers. “They like to hear the stories we have to tell, and they ask about the food, sweetgrass baskets and your relatives. We have to adapt to what’s coming, and the newcomers can adapt to what’s been here. You don’t want to erase the past – there were good things in the past – and we’re glad to share the hospitality with everyone,” she said. Photo by Thomas Runion.