Oct. 12--MY FINANCIAL ADVISER -- a Lab mix -- keeps wagging her tail and telling me to look at the brighter side of this economic free fall.

Our dog, after all, is rich, with her own little blue blanket and favorite bedtime treat that looks like a miniature fried egg.

She seems to know something the rest of us have forgotten -- she has got it a whole lot better than she used to. Her life is a whole lot better than the day we brought her home from the pony ride at the WingFest.

It might help the rest of us to take a longer view of how far we've come in the Lowcountry.

A friend recently sent me a column by Furman Bisher in the Atlanta Journal Constitution sports section. It's about Hilton Head Island, a place Bisher has been visiting since at least 1969 when he covered the first Verizon Heritage golf tournament and the unveiling of the Harbour Town Golf Links.

He remembers when the William Hilton Inn and the Sea Crest Motel were the only lodging options. And, yes, he once turned down a chance to buy an oceanfront lot at half price for $4,500. That would be $3 million or $4 million today.

Bisher has been writing sports for a half century, at least, but I'll be doggone if this column doesn't contain the most accurate, succinct history ever written about our home.

"Hardly a foot of acreage has not been put to use," Bisher writes. "It didn't happen overnight, but once the developers and risk-takers began to take hold, Hilton Head Island burst into bloomtown.

"They came from all over and staked out their claim, sometimes quite adequately financed, and sometimes fly-by-nighters. Some thrived, some survived, some bit the dust and some spent time looking at life through bars."

The sense of loss during our growth is reflected in the headline to Bisher's piece: "Island has been obscured by dream of Hilton Head."

But maybe we need to be reminded that when all the stake-claiming started, this neck of the woods was better known for hookworms in children than hookshots off a manicured tee box.

School principals were more concerned about sewage backing up into the cafeteria than a rise in National Merit finalists.

Voodoo was something practiced by the county sheriff, not the punchline of an economic joke in Washington.

The health care plan was a frantic knock on the door to wake up the man who ran the ferry.

When Miz Mack heard a car go by her Roadside Rest restaurant, she would alert Mr. McKibben down by the beach because his store was the only other place it could possibly be going.

A demographic snapshot of our four-county region released last week by the Lowcountry Council of Governments does not reach that far back in time. But it includes some telling statistics for recent years.

Beaufort County's poverty rate dropped by 3 percentage points in the 1990s -- to 10.7 percent. At the same time, the poverty rate for people 65 and older was cut in half. Both rates are well below the state average.

Over the past eight years, median family income rose by at least 17 percent in all four counties -- Beaufort, Jasper, Hampton and Colleton.

Unemployment in Beaufort County over the past four years has often been the lowest in the state. But our neighbors in Colleton and Hampton counties, which closely resembled the Hilton Head and Bluffton economies before the development on the island started, continue to have unemployment rates significantly higher than the regional, state and national averages.

Any look at economic data from this region always shows blinding needs and shortcomings in income, housing, education and economic diversity. The new report is no different.

But it helps give perspective to the relentless bad news on today's national economy. It's bad. It's been worse. We've come a long way. It will get better.

And until it does, we can consider ourselves lucky in the Lowcountry. We don't mind eating grits.

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