No. 104 "Never Again!" Daddy's job in Petersburg, VA

My father, Charlie Hancock, standing by
a sign announcing his charter business.

Not long after they were married, my father accepted the invitation of his father-in-law to become part of his dredge boat crew that was then working near Petersburg, VA.  Perhaps he had grown anxious about the responsibility of supporting a family by working the water. Or maybe he was allured by the thought of having a steady income, a sirens song that called more than one fisherman’s son from the Island to a mainland job.

Daddy's initial commitment required that he be gone for six weeks, but that might not have seemed so very long to someone who had his whole life still ahead of him. So off he went, leaving Mama, who was expecting their second child, and his son, Ralph, who was still less than a year old.

When he returned home after the first six weeks of his new career it became apparent that his mind had changed as to his interest in a dredging career. If his mind was not already made up, his decision was driven home for him when, as he greeted his family, Ralph ran from his grasp to the arms of Mama’s uncle, Telford. At that very moment he made a vow never again to allow that his children would prefer some other man over him.

So it was that almost immediately he announced that he had changed his mind about working on a dredge boat, or more specifically, about doing anything that took him away from his home and family after sundown. The rest of his life he would boast, or lament – depending on the occasion, that his first trip away from his family was also his last, and that if he had it to do over, he would have skipped that one as well!

No. 103 The Tragic Story of Abram Lewis

Anytime we saw his red push cart coming down the road we ran as if to hide. He had never done anything to anybody that we knew of, but there was something scary and strange about the way he looked and moved, and our reflex action, whenever we caught sight of him coming, was to get far away, or at least out of  his path.

His name was Abram Lewis, and when I think back on my own reactions to him I am ashamed. And the older I get, the more ashamed I am. Abram suffered from a severe form of cerebral palsy that left him almost totally disabled. He could not speak, only to grunt and moan. He couldn't walk either and he moved around on an old Western Flyer cart that was worn and weather-beaten. He steered with one outstretched hand while he pushed his cart along with a leg that extended over one side. The foot that he used for pushing was usually covered only with a sock that had been worn through so badly that the bare skin of his toes was always visible.

He wore old clothes that fit poorly and that were often both tattered and torn. They always appeared soiled, or at best unkempt. His face had a bearded stubble that accented a ruddy complexion, and his deep dark eyes evidenced a sadness that still haunts me when I remember his staring into mine.

Abram was one of several children born to a family that was very poor by today's standards. But on the Harkers Island of my youth his family was no more impoverished than most of their neighbors. So it was not poverty alone that caused him to be treated the way he was. Rather Abram's decrepit appearance was caused by a lack of sensitivity and even compassion. In retrospect, there was so little of both that it could be said that his life was less a life than a mere existence. And the latter was entirely lacking of the human dignity that might have been expected and ought to have been demanded.

In my memory, because of his handicaps and illness, Abram was seen and treated not with mercy but with begrudging pity and frequently with overt derision. Even some people in his own extended family seemed to feel as if he were a burden to be endured and nothing more. Some teenagers would mock and jeer him, and even those that were not the perpetrators were guilty of allowing others to make their fun, and even laughing as the scenes played out. Most grownups simply ignored him; a response that was hardly more laudable than the pranks of their children. Smaller children just ran away, as much because of what we had been told as because of anything we might actually have seen.

It would be comforting to think that Abram Lewis was the only person I knew who was victimized by his time and condition, but there were others whose situation differed only in the degree of their disability. Very few of them had the benefit of the special treatment they needed to make their lives more comfortable and bearable. I can't accept that this benign neglect was entirely because of a lack of love or concern or even of resources. It was, I presume, much more attributable to a lack of any awareness of what should and could be done.

Abram's story had a happy ending of sorts. When he was forty years old he was placed in a state maintained training school, almost a hundred miles away in Kinston. There, he finally got the attention, therapy, and even the compassion he had been denied during those first long formative years. Gladly for him, we eventually learned that Abram's disability did not extend to his mental capacities. In fact, he had been fully aware of the life he had been compelled to live. And those of us who had either mistreated or ignored him came to understand that the victim of our neglect had not been so oblivious to our behavior as we might have hoped. Knowing that he had been aware of the indignity of his condition, as well as our apparent lack of caring compassion, has been a lasting shame to me and many others — if only because of what and how we passively witnessed.

Abram lived for another thirty years in Kinston at the facility that had saved him from the indignity he had known as a child and man in the place where he was born. Friends and family who visited him there brought back stories of someone who would have been unrecognizable to most of those who once had belittled him. Thankfully, one of the ways that the Island, and the world of today is far better than the one I knew as a boy is in how we treat and interact with people like Abram Lewis.

No. 102 From Courthouse Square in Beaufort to Eisenhower Auditorium in State College

Joel Hancock Law Firm

One of my own father's earliest memories was of traveling in a sail skiff to Beaufort with his father in 1914 to see and hear the politician and statesman, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was serving as Secretary of State in the first Wilson administration and was traveling the country to shore up support for a war that had divided the country. He had twice been a candidate for President and would later earn more lasting fame as a central character and prosecutor of John Scopes in the famous (infamous) "monkey trial" in 1925.

William Jennings Bryan
"The Great Communicator"

Bryan was widely considered to be the greatest orator of his time. He must have been something special to have left such a lasting impression on a five-year-old boy who was still a year away from starting the first grade. Until his death in 2002 at just short of his ninety-third birthday, my father would speak of that experience with both pride and clarity. He would describe the setting, the excitement in the crowd, sitting atop his father's shoulders, and even the storm-tossed sailboat ride home late that evening. But what most impressed me, his tenth and last child, was his vivid recollection of what he heard said that day on the steps of the new courthouse that had recently been erected just two blocks from the docks of the bustling Beaufort harbor.

Charlie Hancock, my grandfather

"Deny a child and education," he often repeated, "and you might as well cut off his arms and legs!" And to add credence to his assertion he would add, "That's what William Jennings Bryan said when he came to Beaufort in 1914."

Though my father's own education would conclude in the seventh grade of Harkers Island School less than a decade later, he was a firm believer in the value of an education, and he did his best to make sure that his children had opportunities that he had not. He served on the local school board for a time and took a then unpopular stand in advocating consolidating the Island's high school with Smyrna to increase opportunities for local children.

And, largely because of his esteem for Bryan, he held a deep admiration for the legal profession. He viewed both judges and attorneys as the consummate professionals, and the title "lawyer" was one he venerated and respected. I think that when he himself served as a local tax-lister and registrar he may have imagined in at least a small way that he was fulfilling a role as part of the legal profession.

My father holding and reading to my son, Joel Jr.,
in his favorite easy chair

The memory of those moments and images came rushing through my mind as I watched his grandson, my son Joel, walk across the stage to accept a degree and the title of "Juris Doctor" and "Attorney at Law." I was sitting in a group that included Joel's son, my grandson, Calvin. In my imagination, I could see my father, both as a little boy on my grandfather's shoulders and as an aging old man bouncing his own grandson on his knee. I could feel for and with him a sense of honor and pride that this grandson was now entitled to wear the mantle and robe of the same profession as had the immortal Bryan.

For a few minutes, I was part of something that was as impossible to deny as it is difficult to explain. There I was sitting in an auditorium six hundred miles from the only home I have ever known, but I was smack dab in the middle of a gathering that somehow included not just my son (Joel) and grandson (Calvin), but also my father (Charlie William) and my grandfather (Charlie). And just as amazingly, there was even a special seat for the "the Great Commoner" himself, William Jennings Bryan, as he too shared in the pride of an event that he helped to inspire almost a century earlier.

No. 101 "Do you want me to build her for fishing or to go fast? "

Uncle Teff (Telford Willis) in front of his net house at the Landing.

My Uncle Teff (Telford Willis) had scrimped and saved for most of his adult life to get enough money for the boat of his dreams. He had worked with fishing crews since before he could remember, and had owned several small boats including a sailskiff. But now he was gonna have built the boat he had dreamed of and planned for during all those years of working for and with others.

Not only that, his new boat, "The Francis," named after his oldest daughter, was being built by Brady Lewis, the boat builder from the East'ard who was already a legend both on and off the Island. He had come to see Brady early one morning to tell him of yet another idea he had conjured up about tweaking "The Francis" even as it was being built; perhaps something he had seen on another boat, or even something he figured out while riding in someone else's on his way back and forth to the Banks.

Brady had built enough boats that he had seen or heard, and even tried, just about everything that could be imagined when it came to what was being called the Harkers Island "flare bow" boat. Vessels built by him already lined the shoreline from Red Hill to Shell Point. But the master carpenter had actually become a little frustrated at having to make changes, even small ones, in the design of something he felt he already had perfected. Eventually, Brady dropped the block plane that he was using to shape one of the juniper planks, and looked my Uncle Teff squarely in the eye to to make sure he had his attention.

"Listen Teff," he asked with a plaintiff voice that suggested he had about reached the end of his patience, "what's it gonna be? Do you want me to build her for fishing or to go fast? You can't have it both ways!"

The old boat builder had posed a question that by then was at the heart of a quandary besetting a new generation of Island fishermen; a group that had moved beyond the subsistence “working the water” that had been their sole concern just a few years earlier. Of course they still needed to make a living in their boats, it was basically all they had for supporting their families, but by the late 1930's there had developed among many of them a love for "going fast." And the craft they looked to for that, and even for racing, were the same boats that were used primarily for hauling nets, trawls, and that day's catch.

Uncle Teff was one of those who had fallen head-over-heels for the fast boat craze, and he was determined that his new boat would never be left in the wake of other boats when hurrying along the shore.

Engine-powered boats by that time had all but replaced the sailing vessels that had been used on Core Sound for two centuries. Making use of the advantages that the new motors offered, some fisherman had built large "trawlers" with masts, boons and cabins that included bunks for sleeping. Even more of the locals opted for smaller "open boats" that were less than twenty-five feet long. They usually had an engine salvaged from an older car. It was placed somewhere to the aft of the boat's center and fitted with a straight metal shaft, without a transmission, that fed through a water-tight alley to an underwater propeller. With a skeg in front and a rudder behind it, that propeller, or "wheel" as most of them called it, could shove the smaller boats to speeds upward of forty miles per hour.

Uncle Teff with two visiting Mormon Elders standing

by his net spreads at the Landing

Some devoted speed boaters would spend hours sanding the sides and bottom of their boats hoping to make them smoother, and thus faster, by reducing the drag caused by a rougher surface. One particularly dedicated boater claimed to have given his boat such a smooth finish that it was impossible for it to sit still in the water -- continually rocking back and forth to find a balance. He said that when he pulled it up on the shore to work on the motor he was obliged to anchor it so as to keep it from sliding back into the sound.


Speed could be important when chasing schools of fish, hurrying to the dock with a perishable cargo, or getting to a channel before the tide went out completely. But it soon came to be most valued in racing against other boats. Whole groups of boaters would race whenever and wherever they were headed in the same direction. Almost every day in summer, or any other time when the weather allowed, boats could be seen and heard racing down the Island channel. Especially on Saturdays the same boats would race across the strait that led to Beaufort for the weekend shopping in town. Even when no trips were planned, Saturday mornings were race days at the Landing. The sounds of rushing motors could be heard all along the shore and swells from the speeding boats would create an almost constant flow of waves washing up along the sandy beach.

Every summer, on the 4th of July, late that afternoon and after everyone had returned from the horse penning at Diamond City of that morning, almost the entire Island population would gather at the shore of Academy field for races that would last until dark. The day's winner was awarded a small cup as a memento, but the greatest prize was the reputation earned as "having the fastest boat on the Island."

All of this in some form or another was churning in the mind of my uncle Teff as he pondered his response to Brady Lewis's ultimatum about how he wanted "The Francis" to be fashioned by the greatest boat craftsmen the Island would ever know.

But it was with only a moment's hesitation that he made his decision and blurted out his emphatic response.

"You make her go fast, and I'll fish her the best I can!"

No. 100 "Our sissy who was anything but"

If Hurricane Donna (1960) brought the erosion of the landing shore to a point that something had to be done to stop it, it also provided us with an amusement park of sorts. Several of the stately oaks that had stood there for hundreds of years did not survive the storm. They were felled by the combination of erosion at their roots and the strong southerly winds that raged at over a hundred mph as they passed directly over the Island.

Laura "Sissy" Fulcher

One of these was at the shoreline edge of the yard of my Aunt Louisa. “Ezzer” as she was called, had lived right beside us until just before the storm. But as she grew older she had given that home to her son, Creston, and his growing family, and she moved into a small home nestled in the backyard of her oldest daughter, Audrey.

The oak that fell in her yard must have been at least seventy-five feet tall. Once the foliage and small limbs fell off or were removed, the skeleton the remained was not all that different from a high adventure climbing apparatus in a modern amusement park. Soon it was laced with ropes that served as both ladders and swings for the neighborhood boys and girls who met there almost every day.

One of those who gathered there to play was a girl we called “Sissy.” She was a year younger than me, but she was nothing at all like what her nickname might imply. Her real name was Laura, and she lived just to the west of where the giant tree had fallen. Perhaps for that reason, she became the unofficial caretaker and curator of our newfound playground. She could climb and swing between the branches like the “Tarzan” characters that we watched on Saturday morning TV shows. Not only that, she had a “tarzan yell” that could be heard for a quarter mile in every direction.

           Laura "Sissy" Fulcher

Sissy’s prowess was not limited to the gymnastics and trapeze moves she performed on the oak tree at the landing. She was just as talented and physical as any of the boys she played with every day. In fact, when the older boys were choosing sides to be play baseball in “Rennie’s Field,” she was one of the first ones picked. Without any discussion or direction she would head out to shortstop where everyone knew she belonged.  Not only could she play ball, she could shove a skiff as fast as any of us, and she was often busy working on nets and trawls beside her father and brother.

As might be expected for one of only a handful of girls in our neighborhood that was so dominated by boys, Sissy was sometimes at the center of tussles and even fights for her attention. But in her case, it was because of disagreements over who might get her on their side for whatever game was starting.

As time went on and we all grew older, “Sissy” eventually went back to being one of the neighborhood girls, like her younger sister, Cheryl. But a whole generation of Island boys grew up with a special appreciation for the skills and talents of the “weaker sex” because of our experiences with a “sissy” who was anything but!

No. 99 Breakwaters, Junk Cars & Net Spreads

My father used to talk about playing baseball on ground between his home at the landing and the shoreline to the south. That was hard for me to imagine even then, since the waterline was no more than thirty feet from the south porch of Ole Pa’s house. As Daddy described it, the grassy back yard he had played on extended out as much as fifty yards or more towards the Banks. But that was before the Storm of ‘33 had cut an inlet at the Cape, and the much stronger tides that resulted began to eat away several feet of shoreline every year.

The clutter on the shore in the 1970's

Even at that, it is tempting to remember the south shore of the Island as an almost unbroken ribbon of golden sand — but that’s not how it was. Skiffs and smaller boats were pulled up all along the landing, but they were temporary and often moved from place to place. And there were twenty or more raised walkways that led out to private or commercial docks or moorings. Still, those were not the only or main obstructions, and some of the others actually disfigured the shoreline.

In the early 60's the state installed tons of granite rocks in groins running perpendicular to the shore. The jetties were intended to stem the rapid erosion of the shoreline that had intensified after several powerful hurricanes of the previous decade. For the most part, these seemed to work, at least to the point that the waterline now is not all that far removed from where it was when the “breakwaters,” as we called them, were first installed.

An example of the clutter and waste that accumulated on
 the shore at the Landing in the 1960s. 

Even more than the jetties, the expanse of the shore I knew as a boy was blocked by piles created when the landing was used as a combination junkyard and community dump. I guess it was assumed that the sound was a natural recycle bin that had no limits. Refuse along the tide lines ranged from household garbage to abandoned cars that were placed on or around the breakwater jetties. It was assumed that metal frames would somehow augment the work of the solid rocks, at least until they corroded completely away from the natural effects of the salt water that washed over them several times each day.

But there were other stationary structures that dotted the shoreline; and these ones actually added to both the beauty and the function of the spot they sat on. These were the “net spreads” that were used by fishermen to dry and mend their cotton nets. The spreads were framed of wood, either of rough cut lumber or sometimes of small trees that were trimmed with a hand plane to smooth the knots that could snag the net. The cotton mesh of the nets was prone to rot if not dried out soon after to being used, so almost every day, before heading up the path for home, the Island fishermen would spread their nets over the raised platform so they could thoroughly dry in the sun and breeze.

Willie Guthrie's net spreads at our landing (@ 1962)
Photo by Tommy Hancock

When not being used for their purpose, they had another, and even more fundamental use, at least for us children who saw the landing as our own “public” playground. The spreads were the closest we had to the fabricated gym-sets that might be seen in the parks and towns of the mainland. Many hours were spent balancing on the upper boards and even walking their full length with arms extended for balance. At other times we used the longer planks for “skinning the cat” and similar exercises that might now be labeled as gymnastics. Even when the spreads were in use and covered by the white cotton nets, they were a safe haven when playing “tag,” “hide ‘n seek,” or the much more intense, “old bears.”

By the later part of the decade cotton nets began to give way to nylon, polypropylene, and other fibers that were not nearly so susceptible to the ravages of salt and moisture. Eventually the old net spreads were not needed, and no longer maintained by the ones who had used them. The top boards broke or were pulled off. Then the posts either rotted away or were washed up by the encroaching tides. No new ones were built and within a decade they were gone completely, not so very different from the way of life of which they remain a pleasant memory.

No. 98 Hollering for (not at) your children!

D E L M A S  L E E e e e e    a a a a!

It’s hard to spell out just how it sounded. But it was a sound and a voice that everyone recognized, and knew what it meant. When you heard that sound ringing through the oaks and cedars, it meant that Rowena was ready for her son, Delmas Lee, to head on home.

Rowena’s call was distinctive, and so were the sounds of all of the mothers in our neighborhood. We came to recognize each of them as they stood on their porches and hollered at the top of their lungs; calling for their sons and letting them know that supper was ready, their father was home, or that it was time to call it a day.

Rowena & McCravey Guthrie with their pride & joy, Delmas Lee

To a generation that has grown up around whole house heating and cooling, with windows down and compressors roaring, it might be difficult to imagine just how quiet the outside could be, and how much could be heard by a listening ear. In fact, you had to be careful of what was said, even inside your own home, as anything spoken in a normal voice could generally be heard by anyone near an open window or door.

Sunrise was announced by the crowing of roosters and the cackling of hens, and depending on the time of the year, by the sounds that came from the Landing. When fishermen and shrimpers tied up at their moorings or at the dock, seagulls would circle overhead awaiting the scraps that were thrown in the water. The squawking of gulls, and the level of that sound was a sure indicator of just how successful that morning’s haul might have been.

There were other mornings when the prevailing sound was not of birds, but of the crewmen of shad boats that were working a haul in the Island channel. Their chants and chatter echoed across the water so loudly that we could hear them through our bedroom windows as we awoke on calm summer mornings.

But in the later afternoons and evenings, even if the wind was blowing so as to squelch the echoes, you could still hear the sounds of mothers as they gathered their children in for the day. My mother was not much of a screamer, and seldom took part in the chorus of voices that rang through the neighborhood. But there were some that you could count on hearing almost every day.

Besides Rowena, there was Esther hollering for Cecil Arendell (Rennie), Vivian calling for Manley and "Brother," Elva rounding up Kenny, Robert, and Kyle, and Ollie telling Dallas Daniel it was time to come home. And there was my Aunt Mary (actually, she was married to my cousin Norman, but since they were a generation older, we grew up calling them Uncle Norman and Aunt Mary). Mary had been raised at Chincoteague Island on Chesapeake Sound, and she maintained an accent, even when she hollered, that set her voice apart. When she called out for her son, Paul, the name rolled out in several syllables that sounded like “P a a o o u u l l.” Her house was just across the road from ours, so we usually got the full force of her yelling as it bounced off our front porch.

Every neighborhood had its own set of boys and their mamas. And each one had at least one so distinctive that everyone else, including those that lived far down the road, knew of it, even if they had not heard it themselves. None was more celebrated throughout the Island than that of the children of Luther and Lettie Guthrie. Although it was before my time, it was still so well known that most people could mimic the sound and the rhythm of Lettie’s daily call to all five of her sons, letting them know that she wanted them home.

Standing on her porch, she would take a deep breath and then bellow out in one long and loud verse: " L u t h e r   M e r r i l l,  M a r i o n   L e e, C h a r l e s  C u r t i s, C u r v i s   L e e!" And then without taking a breath, she ended with a final flourish that was almost French in its final accent of  “J a y   P e r r y´.”

No. 97 The smell of salt marshes at the Banks

A salt marsh has an aroma all its own. Throw in the odors of the feral horses, cattle, and sheep, that once populated the Banks, and what you remember is a smell unlike anything else you have ever known; and one you will never forget --- and especially not Mary Willis!

Mary had been born and raised at Diamond City. She left with her family and all the others after the storm of 1899. Arriving at Harkers Island with all the possessions she had left, Mary carved out a life on the south shore of the Island, less than a quarter mile from where I would later grow up. I knew her, but only as an old woman who wore a bonnet and walked with her shoulders leaning sharply forward.

After experiencing that first exodus, Mary was blessed never to need to pull up stakes again. For the next seventy years she remained at or near the very sport where the skiff carrying her family had landed early in the fall of 1899.

At first, she often was drawn to the Landing where she looked across to the southeast, and to where she had spent her childhood. It was less than five miles distant and on clear days in the spring and fall she could still see clearly the hills, and even the marshes that dotted the landscape there. Many of her family and friends, especially the men, often went back to fish or hunt or dig for clams, or just to reminisce. But for Mary such a time never came. She soon was raising a family of her own and may never have had the occasion, or the means, or maybe even the yearning, to go back to a place she knew had changed so dramatically from what she remembered.

Time passed, and old routines gave way to new ones, and none of them ever drew or sent her back to the Banks. Years turned into decades and eventually so much time had passed that she no longer gazed across the water to imagine old sights and sounds.

Then, for some reason never fully explained, when she was in her seventies, Mary went back. Her son, Willie Guion, convinced her one day to climb into his open boat, so that he could carry her again, just one more time, to what had once been Diamond City. It was a calm, almost “slick cam” Summer Day, as the two of them headed off for the half-hour boat ride across the channel and shoals, and into a small cove that was called Bells Island. From there they wound their way westward through a maize of marshes that eventually gave way to Banks Bay, and finally to the “horse pen” that marked the shore of where her home had once stood less than a fifty yards distant.

As the mother and her son moved slowly through the marshes, one more time Mary saw sights, heard sounds, and sensed aromas that she had not known for more than half a century. And as she did, the years came rushing back, and for a moment at least, she was a young girl once again; running on the shore, throwing shells in the wind, and watching horses and cattle make their way through vines and rushes.

It was there that Mary stood up in the slow moving boat and took a deep breath of the salty air that hangs like a mist around the summer marshes. Then, with a broad smile and voice that almost shouted, she turned to her son and asked, “Hon, don’t that horse piss smell good?

[p.s. When my children are coming home after having been away for extended periods, they sometimes mention that they lower the windows in their car as they approach the North River Bridge, just so they can smell the marshes!]

No. 96 ... a clam shell all the way to the lighthouse!"

Throwin’ a clam shell was a measure both of skill and of strength!

Skill was involved in making it skip, and the more often the better, either on ‘cam water or on gentle waves. But it took just as much talent to properly throw one for distance as it did to cause it to bounce on a smooth surface. Unless it was released at precisely the right angle it would catch the wind and either bend or fade to one side or the other.

In fact, the latter became a feat in and of itself as we would “chunk ‘em” into the face of gale force winds. Then we would watch intently as they boomeranged back over our heads into the sound, or onto the beach, depending on which way the wind was blowing. We sometimes used scallops for this, but since they were so comparatively light they were much less exciting than the heavier shells.

Nevertheless, the ultimate skill was one of strength, and that was most clearly displayed by throwing clam shells long and far. As much as lifting weights or climbing a rope, throwin’ a shell into the far horizon, so far that eyes were squinting to see the splash, was an ultimate test of strength.

It was against this backdrop that my oldest brother, Ralph, listened closely one morning in his Sunday School class. His teacher was explaining to his pupils that God was not just kind and merciful, but was also wise and powerful. To make his lesson both more interesting and more relevant, the instructor offered examples to illustrate the points he was making. When he got to teaching about power the teacher explained that God was not merely supremely strong, He was “omnipotent,” and could could lift or handle anything that the minds of his young students could ever imagine.

Reflecting on what he was being taught, Ralph determined to make an inquiry, the answer to which he hoped would put the matter in a context that even he, himself, could understand. He raised his hand to get the teacher's attention, and waited until he got the required nod of approval. Then in thoughtful reverence for the subject being considered, he stood and posed what he assumed to be the one question that could put everything he had learned in a full perspective.

“Does that mean he could he throw a clam shell all the way to the lighthouse?”

No. 95 The “Old Man of Red Hill”

But the fool on the hill 
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round
"The Fool on the Hill" Lennon & McCartney (The Beatles)



Red Hill is the highest spot on Harkers Island. “Hill” might seem a strange name for a location that is less than twenty feet above sea level, but it was the closest thing to a hill that we had. The “red” part of the name came from the way the sands on the shoreline dunes glistened in the evening sun when viewed from the waters to the south of the Island, especially when coming up the channel from Wade’s Shore. In fact, those shining dunes were the landmark we used to stay safely in the deep water between Middle Marsh and the Cockle Shoals.

Red Hill was home to the largest grove of native oak tress on the Island. Rising more than a hundred feet in the air, the mid-day sun shining through the tops of the trees still can create a marvelous light show that is so picturesque and serene as to evoke almost a spiritual setting. In a few places, thick vines at the feet of the tall trees created such a jungle that it was a favorite place for childhood adventures and games. Wild grapes and briar berries were there for the picking. There was even a monkey living among the thickets for a while. No kidding, but how that came to be is another story all together!

The people who lived under those oak trees; the Guthries, Lewises, Yeomanses, and especially the Willises, were what really gave Red Hill its character. Tom Lewis, Stacy Guthrie, Luther Yeomans, and Maxwell and “Tookie” Willis were all larger than life characters, and anyone who remembers them has many tales of them to tell. Except for Maxwell, who helped to start and then ran the local REA, they each left large families with many stories that preserve their legacy.

But it was perhaps the humblest of the people on Red Hill who carved out the largest part of my memories for that special place; one so indelible that it has often been a frame of reference for me in sharing life lessons.

Sometimes, thankfully not very often, when my children would bemoan the things they “didn’t have,” I would reply in wistful frustration, “I wish that just for five minutes I could take you to Boo’s, and let you see how some people had to live!” Then just as fast, I would regain my bearings enough to know that even were they able to see it, they still could not fully grasp the image that colored my mind.

When I was a boy, at the top of Red Hill there was an old wind-bleached and battered shack that was the home of Boo (1883-1971) and his wife Mary Anne (1894-1971). Boo’s real name was Louie Larson Willis, but hardly anyone knew that, as Boo was the only name they had ever heard him called by other than his family. They knew him as “Poppy.” He and Mary Anne (Guthrie), were the parents of three children; a son Johnny “Boo”, and daughters Nita and Fammie Lee. The two girls eventually built homes on the same plot of land that was home to their parents.

Nita’s son, Carl, married my oldest sister, Ella Dee, and since I was so close in age to their son, Jonathan, I often was with him when he made his way to the west’ard to visit his Grandma Nita. But what I remember most was the time we spent next-door to her in and around the home of his great-grandfather, Boo.

If the Island that I knew growing up was two or more generations behind the rest of the world in social and economic changes, then the little world of Boo and Mary Ann harkened back at least another generation further. Their house may once have been painted, but by the time I played hide ‘n seek in his side yard, nothing could be seen but the bare wooden sheathing and the orange lines caused by rusting iron nails. The roof was covered with wooden shingles, and the foundation was an open breeze-way, hardly a foot off the ground, and held up by thinly scattered piers made from pine, poplar, or cedar.

The hand pump on the back porch was the family’s only source of water, and a small wooden shed, no larger than five feet square, was the family’s privy, or “outhouse” in our vernacular. There was a small porch and a stoop by the front and back doors; one had a rusting metal glider, and the other a wooden swing hanging from sisal rope.

Their home had three rooms; a combined kitchen, dining room and sitting room, separated by a thin partition from two small bedrooms at the other end. Their only furnishings, other than the kitchen table and beds, were two wicker chairs in the den and an oil painting depiction of Ben Hur’s chariot race that hung on the wall.

Inside, that part of the clapboard floor boards not covered by cracked linoleum was so worn that it had a shimmer from the thousands of footsteps that had sanded them smooth over more than half a century of shuffling. Staring at the walls you could see beams of sunlight peeking through the cracks that, in the late afternoon, seemed to move and dance as the boards shifted from the movements inside.

The house was heated by a tin heater. On cold mornings it bellowed smoke through a metal flue that stuck out through the wall as it burned the scrap wood that had been scavenged from among the oaks and cedars. It was told that during one especially cold spell when wood alone was unable to keep the house heated, Boo traded off a corner of the land the house sat on for a fifty pound bucket of coal. The home was soon much warmer, but when Mary Anne found out how the fuel had been purchased she ran him into the yard.

My friend and contemporary, Karen Willis (Amspacher) who lived less than a stone’s throw away through the oak grove, has memories of that setting that are just as stark as mine.

 “I remember them both .. Uncle Boo and Aunt Mary Ann ... remember going in that side door off the porch that faced the East'ard and Uncle Boo’s overalls. Their yard was pure white sand and Aunt Mary Ann raked it all the times. You could see the rake tracks in the sand. Her kitchen had curtains under the sink for doors ... Cabinets were just shelves with jelly glasses to drink out of. Don't remember much about the living room except it being small and dark ... That my friends, was Red Hill  ...”

The home was not just at the very top of Red Hill, it was at the vortex of the sharpest curve anywhere on the Island Roads. Coming at the end of relatively long straight stretches — heading either from the Bridge or from Shell Point — the curve caught so many drivers by surprise that it came to be known as “Dead Man’s Curve.” (See No. 23 Some unforgettable lines that may someday be forgotten ...) On more than a dozen occasions Boo and Mary Ann were awakened after midnight to the sound of screeching tires and the collision of metal into the trunk of an oak tree.

Eventually they grew weary of the excitement and frightened that one of the cars might get through the trees and into their home itself. Not willing to move from where both of them had spent almost their entire lives, they instead decided to “pivot” their house on it’s foundation so that it was several feet father from the road, and behind a somewhat bigger and more protective grove of hardwoods.

But to dwell on the primitive and humble circumstances of his surroundings would be to do the couple, especially Boo, a disservice. In all my time with and around him, I never heard the old man, he seemed like the oldest man in the world to me, even hint at anything that could be considered a grievance. On the contrary, he seemed grateful, kind, gentle and patient almost to a fault.

He was smaller, even shorter, than his wife. And if he was the epitome of meekness, Mary Anne could sometimes be entirely the opposite. She had suffered from what was assumed to be epilepsy since her childhood and at times was given to rushes of anger and emotion. Those outbursts were usually directed at her family, and most often at her husband. But her husband seemed never to respond with anything other than submission, as if he accepted that whatever were her problems, they were completely of his doing.

Once while oystering at Middle Marsh one summer afternoon, Boo and his small sailskiff were caught in a violent summer storm that swept in from the west’ard. Knowing he could not outrun the thunder and lightning, he wrapped himself in the sail and laid in the bottom of the boat hoping to weather the wind and rain. But despite his efforts, the lighting hit the mast, splitting it into pieces, and some of the electrical charge streamed into Boo and caused him to lose consciousness for several hours.

It was well after midnight before he was able to regain his senses and his strength and point his skiff back toward Red Hill. When he finally reached his home he was greeted not with joy and relief, but by the angry questions of a wife who seemed more frustrated and hungry than worried about what might have happened. As was always the case, he offered his apologies and promised to head out again as soon as the sun was up the next morning.

Through all that, and the endless frustrations that his life presented, Boo was never heard complaining. He accepted the fits of anger, the drudgery of his work in the water, and the poverty of his surroundings, as his assigned lot in life, and that there was little if anything he could do to change it.

The physical harshness he knew as a waterman showed in Boo’s form and shape, even if not his demeanor. He seemed even older than his years. He bent forward as he walked, and his steps were more a shuffle than a pace. Watching him closely as he sat and told stories, we couldn’t help but notice a steady shake in his hands, and he sometimes struggled to hear and understand our young voices. But still he pressed on and seemed never to change in any way from one occasion to the next.

Once, while sitting on the sun-bleached planks of his small porch, talking to Jonathan, his great-grandson asked if the old man ever thought about dying, and if that thought caused him any worry.

“Oh, no!” he responded with a gentle smile and a beam in his eyes. “Well, of course, I think about it but it don’t worry me none. You see, I figure with what I’ve had to go through and put up with these past sixty years, anywhere’s I go is gonna be a whole lot better than this.”