No. 131 "There's twelve months in a year ..."

Ole' Pa (Charlie Hancock)

The northeast winds of the last few days have reminded me that fall was the best (most profitable) time of the year for the proggers who worked the waters around Harkers Island. Long-hauling, sink-netting, floundering and roe mullets combined to allow local fishermen to make up for the leaner months that had culminated in the dog-days of August.

When the bigger shares were paid out, usually on Saturdays, it was tempting for some crewmen who worked with Ole' Pa to splurge just a little and spend money on things they had been obliged to pass up in the preceding weeks and months. Observing that, and understanding that the sparser times would someday come again, my grandfather would dispense some advice along with the paper money that he handed out to his crew.

"Remember now," he would warn them as he grudgingly let go of their pay, "There's twelve months in a year, and you've got to eat in every one of 'em."

Horse Penning at Shackleford Banks (1950s)

Horse Penning at Shackleford Banks in the 1950s

No. 130 "The handsomest man who ever lived!"

In the 20s, 30s, & 40s, Mormon missionaries roamed the paths and shoreline of Harkers Island freely, spending their time at the homes of the various Latter-day families. By then a second generation of members was reaching its adolescence including several dozen young "Mormon girls" who couldn't help but notice the handsome young visitors from the west. Not only did they speak with a "funny accent," but those young elders were always dressed in store-bought suits, with clean shaven faces and well trimmed hair.

One afternoon, hearing her daughters and their friends talk about the two elders who then were serving at the Island, Gertie Willis decided to chime in on the conversation. Specifically she had noticed that each of the young girls had chosen a recent visiting missionary to label as the " handsomest man she had ever seen! "

After each of the girls had described in detail their choice and why he was chosen, Gertie decided to end the conversation with her own definitive choice of the handsomest man she had ever seen.

"Every afternoon, just before supper I look towards the Landing, and  eventually I see a tired, often wet and sandy fisherman walking this way, usually with his worn out pants rolled up to below the knee, and smelling like fish. But even from a distance, and especially when he grabs me by the shoulders and kisses my forehead, your daddy, Telford Willis, is the handsomest man who ever lived!"

No. 129 "Little Rungs for Little Legs"

When Leah and Tiffany were very small, even before kindergarten age, they used to pretend that  the upstairs of Tommy's shed was a playhouse. The only problem for them was that the steps up to the loft were twelve inches apart, and their little legs had trouble trying to make the climb. Seeing what was happening, and how hard it was for the little girls, Tommy carefully added an extra rung between the standard ones, cutting the height of each step to only six inches -- and accessible even for tiny little legs and feet.

Now, almost three decades since either Leah or Tiffany have climbed those stairs, the extra rungs are still there, and actually make it quite tedious for longer legs and bigger feet to make the climb. When I asked Tommy why, after all these years, he had not removed the inserts that were no longer needed his response was simple. 

"Every time I walk up those stairs," he said, "I am reminded of the little feet that used to step on them."

No. 128 "The Path to the Landing"

I can still see in my mind the big black hearse that carried Ole’ Pa’s body up the path to the Landing on a warm Indian Summer’s afternoon in late September of 1957. It had large letters on the side showing the name of the funeral home that sent it, but I was too young to read them, and I knew that what really mattered was what was carried inside of it.

It was a dirt path; actually as much shell as dirt, and it was dissected by a long row of jointed grass that was able to survive and even thrive between the tire tracks on either side. It was no more than two hundred feet from the paved road to Ole' Pas' house where his body was to lay until his burial the next morning. Our house was at the edge of the road, and then there was the home of my Uncle Louie, whom everyone called Big Buddy, and finally the big white house that Ole' Pa had built for Aggie, my grandmother and his first wife, when finally they moved from the Banks in December of 1900.

There was hardly a bend in that path then and now, although it wasn't really strait – shifting just a little from due south to the southeast as it approached the shore – but not enough to notice unless you were trying to look from one end of it to the other. And it inclined down just a little, no more than a foot, as it approached the old house and the shoreline where it ended. But it dipped just enough to give little boys like me a boost when we were running or riding our bike and wanted to go real fast. At the corner between our house and Big Buddy's there was a small oak tree, one we would later call "Denny's tree" after my nephew fell from one of the limbs and broke an arm while trying to retrieve a baseball lodged in a bough, but that would be a few years later. And there was another larger oak about midway down the path that shaded both Big Buddy's side porch on the west'ard side, and Tom Martin Guthrie's side porch on the east'ard. A few yards further, and just inside Big Buddy's fence, was a persimmon tree that hung over the path and that late every summer covered it with fruit so that you couldn't walk barefooted to the Landing without having a hot and juicy persimmon squashed between your toes.

Then, just where Big Buddy's fence ended, and Ole' Pa's place began, there was the tall oak tree that had been the main landmark of the site since long before Ole' Pa even thought about building right beside it. My daddy used to tell me that he had heard that when Ole' Pa's house was being built, the workers would shade under its branches while they rested from their labors. Now, more than half a century later it still dominated the landscape so that the silver maples that ran almost from its roots to the shoreline were dwarfed by its stature.

That giant old oak, and the big white house that sat just to it's southwest had marked a gathering place for more than three generations of Hancocks and their relatives, especially the Willises, Guthries and Moores. Together, within sight of both the oak and the roof of Ole' Pa's house they had established a neighborhood of homes and families that was so closely connected by blood and the everyday routines of life that most of us didn't even bother to acknowledge what our blood relation really was. All of us, especially the young ones, just knew that somehow we were kin to everyone else, and that what affected one of us mattered to all of us. And for as long as anyone living could remember, nothing and no one else mattered more than Ole’ Pa.

No. 127 Telford, Gertie and the births of their children ...

Telford & Gertie Willis

Under the watchful eye of Harkers Island’s resident midwife, my great-grandmother, Margaret Willis, whom everyone called “Aunt Marg,” new mothers were encouraged, even expected, to remain in bed with their babies beside them for at least a week, and sometimes longer. Aunt Marg held that a new mother needed at least that much time to recuperate from the stresses and pains of delivery. Further, she claimed that this made it easier and more natural for the newborn baby to adjust to its new world and environment.

Aunt Marg’s only son, my “Uncle Telford,” not only made certain that his wife, Gertie, complied with the regimen prescribed by his mother, he took it one step further. In his mind, if a new baby could bond with its mother by staying close beside her for a week or more, he reasoned that the same also must apply to building a relationship with its father as well.

The home of Telford & Gertie Willis

So, in his house and for each of their six children, as soon as the new baby  was cleaned and readied for its first nursing, and Gertie was revived enough to be returned to her newly made bed and linen, Telford would assume his own place right beside his wife with their new baby snuggled closely between them.  And he stayed there, not just on the day of delivery, but for the entire time that his wife and baby remained in place.

Telford & Gertie, with five of their six children

Visitors to their home, one of the nicest and largest on the Island, who came by to see the new baby and to check on Gertie would find not just the mother and child, but Telford as well, clad in pajamas to match the bedclothes worn by his wife, and sprawled out on the big bed that covered most of the front-facing bedroom that overlooked the road and the landing.

The only difference in his demeanor and that of his wife and child would be that while they remained prone on the bedding, he would jump up to greet every visitor with one of his full-body hugs before returning to his place on the bed.

It was accepted by all that Uncle Telford’s ritual at the birth of his children was entirely appropriate in view of the nurturing attitude he assumed toward each of them from the very moment of their conception. As much as their mother, or any mother for that matter, he was a constant source of attention and affection. Long after he succumbed to a heart attack at only fifty-one years old, he was mentioned as the standard of comparison for both mothers and fathers in caring for their children.  

No. 126 A "Harker" as well as a "Hancock" - with a little "Franklin" on the side ...

A map of eastern NC in the colonial era

Most of my almost entirely English ancestry must have had at least some wanderlust in their spirits, or else they might never have agreed to make the long and arduous journey across the Atlantic to find a new life in a what they all viewed as a new world. But for much of my direct for-bearers that wanderlust was all but spent by the time they landed on the southeast coast of Virginia in the early 1600s. It would take them another two centuries to make their way just two hundred miles south. Their route was mostly down the barrier islands that lined the North Carolina Coast to Cape Lookout, a nexus point where the outer banks turn from a north-south direction to one that, at least for a stretch of thirty miles, follows a route that is almost entirely east-west. Once they settled near the base of the lighthouse, the first one having been completed in 1812, most of them never moved again – unless of course you consider it movement to build a small home on another patch of acreage within easy walking distance of the shacks or huts they had grown-up in.

Sibsey in Yorksire County, England - home of the Harkers

But at least one of my forefathers followed a different course when he arrived in Massachusetts Bay as part of the first great wave of settlers in Puritan New England. Anthony Harker had been born in 1606 in the town of Sibsey in Yorkshire in the northeastern corner of England. But by the time he was thirty years old he was married and living in Boston, where he his wife, Mary would raise a family of two sons and four daughters. Their third child and second son, John Ebenezer, remained in the Boston area and in 1680 married Patience Folger, whose sister Abiah would become the mother of the renowned Benjamin Franklin (my first cousin – nine times removed.) John and Patience were not so fortunate, at least in terms of historical recognition, but their son Ebenezer, born in Boston in 1689, would do something to make the family's name enduring if not famous.

As the second of his father's sons, and barred by the rules of primogeniture from inheriting any of his father's estate, he chose to look farther South to find his fortune. Like several other of his neighbors in the Boston area at around the same time, he decided to come to the vicinity of Beaufort, North Carolina where a fledgling shore-based whaling industry had begun to take hold. The others were named Chadwick, Whitehurst and Pigott and those surnames are still everywhere to be found in eastern Carteret County. Ebenezer and his descendants would spawn far fewer “Y” chromosomes than did those of his friends, such that eventually the lone reminder of him in the place where he settled would be that place’s name.

That came to be because in 1730, when he was forty-one years old, he purchased an entire island from George Pollock of nearby Beaufort for £400 and a twenty foot boat. He soon settled there with his wife, a local girl named Elizabeth Brooks, and their six children. The island had earlier been known as Craney Island, but from that time on it has been known to residents and visitors alike as Harkers Island, and with no apostrophe as the concluding “s” was intended to denote plurality even more than possession. Seven generations and five surnames later I arrived on the scene on an Island named for my intrepid great grandfather and less than two miles from where he had built his large home. And at the same moment, my parents could look from an upstairs window and get a clear view of the towering lighthouse that overlooked Cape Lookout and the remains of a village where the greater part of my other ancestors had made their homes.

What happened to all (most) of my pictures?

Thank you to a reader for the following note that pointed out an issue with the blog. My response and announcement is posted below.

11/17/2014

Hi Joel,

Winter arrives early at Sheldon's Woods (17 Nov 2014)

As a Carteret County native and avid reader of your blog, The Education of an Island Boy, I was wondering what has happened to the photos that accompanied the stories? On my computer they only show up now as a circle with a slash. I hope they do return, as it helps give a good depiction of what it was like during that period. 

Thanks again for all your wonderful story telling.

S. R.

Hey S. R.,

Exposed roots of a pine tree on the shore
 at Shell Point

Thanks for the note, and especially for your interest in my blog. I had noticed the same thing a few weeks ago but as of yet had not searched to find the reason. Your question spurred me to action.

From my research it appears that the culprit is that I recently cleaned up some of the old photos that I have edited (and thus stored) using Google's Picasa photo editor. Picasa backs up all of your photos to your cloud (google drive) storage. So, when I went online and cleaned up (moved and/or deleted files) on my google drive, it removed the link that Blogspot (a google product) uses to match the photos with the blog. So as far as Google is concerned, the photos are no longer there.

Of course they are still there, but in another place (and on my local drive), so I will set out to re-attach them in the next few weeks. It may take a while but I'll eventually get it done.

But thank you for noticing and reminding me that some people really do follow and enjoy the blog. I am getting closer to putting it all together, with lots of other narratives, into the book I have planned and intended for most of my adult life.

Joel Hancock 19 Nov 2014