Brittie Edge, 69, watched her 70-year-old husband, Davis Edge, toss lounge chairs into the pool of their motel on Third Avenue South.

Although the talkative grandmother may smile at her customers at the Venture In, her determination in the face of a storm hides behind her eyes. She has weathered Hurricane Hazel and Hurricane Hugo, so Charley is child's play.

"Usually when they say evacuate, (my children) hound me to death because they know I won't leave," Brittie Edge said. "The only reason we left for Hugo is because the police made us, but even then we only went to Conway."

Since 1966, their small motel has faced numerous hurricanes -- and yet always came out nearly unscathed.

While Charley may have been just another storm for the Edges, for others, it was an inconvenience. Sipping coffee at 6:30 a.m. at the Comfort Inn in Surfside Beach, Veryl Brown seemed oblivious to the weather reports on television. Two days from his 90th birthday, he left his mobile home at the Lakewood Camping Resort to spend time with his family during the birthday celebration, which had to be postponed for the storm.

"What happens will happen," Brown said. "I guess we'll celebrate tomorrow."

Forty-five minutes later, Ann Westmoreland pulled up to the shore two blocks from the Venture In. She wanted to see the waves before heading to her job at Auto Body Works, Inc.

"It's beautiful like this," she said. "There's no reason to be afraid. Every time I see the ocean coming in and see it going back, I know God is watching us."

Anxiety turned to exhaustion for dozens of Irish college students who huddled in Carolina Forest Elementary School on Carolina Forest Boulevard. About 15 blocked a hallway around 9 a.m., snuggled with blankets as they tried to sleep.

"Unfortunately, it's not the most comfortable sleep for them," said Melissa Spearman, who had just taken the job of principal five days before. "The lights in here don't shut off, and most are having to sleep on the hard floors."

The students have been living east of U.S. Highway 17 for the past three months as they worked jobs at various shops. With nowhere else to go, they retreated to Carolina Forest on Friday night, one of the many shelters set up in the area.

"This is some vacation," Claire Smith of Leitrim, Ireland, said sarcastically. Like the rest of her friends, Charley was the 20-year-old's first hurricane experience.

Would she venture outside during the storm? "Maybe if she holds on to a tree," one of her friends quipped.

The students moaned when Spearman said they might have to remain one more night.

"Is the storm over us yet?" one of the students asked Spearman.

"When it's over us, you'll know it," she replied.

On U.S. Highway 501, employees at Thrifty Car Rental boarded up the business' windows at the last minute. One of the employees, Florea Mihai, had arrived in the United States from Romania two months ago.

"I've never seen anything like this," Mihai said, "But this is the life sometimes."

By 11 a.m., Ocean Boulevard was barren of all but police cruisers as Charley's wind and rain pounded the streets, trees and buildings. Those who stopped their cars close to water to catch a glimpse of the hurricane's might were quickly shooed away by officers.

Dan Bell was the sole pedestrian near the Firebird Motor Inn, where he was putting in extra hours as a supervisor, making sure there were no problems at the motel.

"I was trying to cross the street, and the wind just lifted me into the air," Bell, 37, said. "I was carrying a sign and woosh! It went down the street."

A few blocks away at the Holiday Sands North Hotel, Allen Burke and several buddies chugged canned Bud Light in the parking lot and howled with glee at the wind surges between the hotel's two buildings. The group cheered wildly whenever a large piece of debris blew past them. The group of golfers from Virginia had no intentions of canceling its plans because of a storm. They watched as three hotel employees tried to take a garbage bag of clean towels from one building to the other.

"Watch this, this is going to be funny," Burke said.

Sure enough, the wind knocked one of the men off his feet, sending the others off-balance and the towels scattering into the gusts. The employees scrambled for the towels as the onlookers howled with laughter. One of the employees yelled angrily at them to go back inside the hotel.

After they retreated indoors, a large, airborne trash can slammed into a nearby mini-van that Burke's crowd had watched to see if it would flip over in the wind. The rear left window of the vehicle shattered.

An hour later, as the hurricane's eye passed over and people emerged from their shelters, a weathered warrior stood in the front office of the Venture In, chatting with customers. Brittie Edge pointed to the damage around their motel: a fallen sign at a next-door burger joint, downed power lines across the street, an overturned trash can from who knows where. She noted the Venture In's only casualty--a fallen rain gutter.

"I guess it just had enough," she said.

Phillip Caston can be reached at 937-5550 or pcaston@postandcourier.com.

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