No. 13 Manus Fulcher was headed home to Harkers Island

(Troy) Manus Fulcher was one of many young men from Harkers Island who either joined or was drafted into the military during World War II. Born in 1914, he served in the Pacific and spent most of his time on the Japanese island of Saipan. After the war he returned home and married Estelle Guthrie, and moved with her into a small house he built on the northeast corner of the land owned by Willie & Carrie Guthrie, Estelle's parents.

Manus was a self-trained mechanic and carpenter who in his spare time became perhaps the closest thing our neighborhood had to an engineer --- or even an inventor. After being one of the first people on the Island to have and drive a motorcycle, he fashioned his own version of that contraption by installing a lawn mower motor onto a bicycle. The sound of Manus riding his lawn mower-motorbike was familiar to anyone who spent any time at all on what we called the "Old Road."

Manus Fulcher is in the foreground of this group who
were mending nets one morning at the Landing in 1960.

Besides doing odd jobs as a carpenter on homes and boats, he was also a gunsmith and the neighborhood handyman for sharpening saws and knives, and especially for repairing and servicing small motors. Old mower engines were his specialty. It was said that he could fix any motor as long as it was still in one piece. My father once took an old "grass cutter" to Manus because he could not get it to "fire" and start, no matter how many times he yanked on the rope. The next time he saw Manus and asked him if he had been able to get the motor running, Manus' response was that not only did he get it started, he had to remove the wire from the spark plug "cause every time the door slammed (and jarred his back porch) the engine would start!"

Manus was also a talented artist who instead of a canvas used smooth boards and old paper to draw portraits – often full length – of friends, movie stars, and other well-known figures. It was not unusual to walk by a boat or wall he had been building and see a recognizable face that Manus had sketched with his "no 2" pencil while enjoying a break from his labor.

Late in his life, in the mid 1960s, he went to work for Julian Guthrie at the Hi-Tide Boatworks in Williston (less than ten miles north of the Island on US Hwy 70). Julian's crew at that time was made up entirely of his Harkers Island friends. These included my father, Charlie Hancock, Roosevelt Davis and “Danny Boy” Lewis. The latter was the son of Brady Lewis, the Island's most renowned boat-builder. Then there were the Guthrie boys, including Julian’s nephew, Will Guthrie, “Bonnie” Guthrie and his son, "Tuck", Graham Boyd “Graby” Guthrie, and Curvis Guthrie Sr. whom everyone called ”E.” All were accomplished boat-builders, but Manus was among those considered to be a "finished" carpenter who could do the fancy trim work that came after the boat had been framed and planked. When his work was done, the boat was ready for the water.

Like so many of his time and place, Manus went out of his way to avoid any kind of conflict or contention. He was humble in both personality and means, and after having faced the anxiety and uncertainty of war-time conflict, had no time at all for even the slightest of confrontations. I can say that with some certainty because I witnessed a stark example of his passivity first hand.

In the summer of 1967 Julian hired me, along with my brother, Telford, and E's son, Curvis, to help at the boathouse for the summer. One day it was my assignment to help Manus and Graby put the finishing coat of paint on the sides of a sixty-five foot "head boat". We were using an expensive brand of paint that was reserved for the final finish on boats just before they were launched and ready.

Standing on the typical staging of the time, a 2" X 12" wooden board laid between saw-horses, the three of us were hurrying to finish the job. In our haste, one of us (probably me) moved too abruptly and the staging fell, spilling us and the paint onto the saw dust flooring below. We knew we had done something real bad. The gallon of paint that we had wasted cost more than any of us, and maybe the three of us together, would have made for that day's work.

Graby and I instinctively scurried to clean up our mess, and hopefully hide the evidence of what we had done before it was discovered by Julian or anybody else. As we hastily brushed more and more saw dust and shavings over the remains of the spilled paint, Graby noticed that only the two of us were helping in the cleanup. In just a few minutes we had the scene looking as if nothing had ever happened, but before we could resume our work, we determined to find out where Manus had gone while we were “mopping up.”

Just a few moments later Graby hollered for me to come look out the west'ard window towards the highway that was only thirty feet or so from the door to our shop. There was Manus standing by the road with his right hand held out and his thumb extended, trying hard to "bum a ride". He was weary of what might be said when Julian learned what had happened, and he was not going to wait around to see or hear it! Manus Fulcher was headed home to Harkers Island.

(Originally posted 19 March 2011)

(From a motel room in Pigeon Forge, TN 19-Mar-2011)

No. 12 You ain’t gonna ‘mount to nothin’

Most Islanders of my father’s generation had humble aspirations when it came to a career and profession.They assumed that they could and would make a living just like their ancestors had done for as long as anyone could remember. But in spite of what might have been seen as a lack of ambition in some circles removed from where they lived, there was a strong work ethic for many of them. This included doing all that was necessary to provide for your family without having to depend on others. No one epitomized this attitude more than my grandfather Charlie Hancock, called Ole’ Pa. His most frequent advice to his children and anyone else who would listen was that they should always be “doin’ something.” “That was,” he said, “the only way to make sure that you will ever amount to anything!”

My father, Charlie W. Hancock

My parents were married on the last day of December in 1927. Having got his “lawyer” Danky to forge my grandfather Dick’s signature on the consent form needed to marry someone who had just turned fifteen, Daddy decided to make sure no one had time to change anyone’s mind. He had approached his soon-to-be father-in-law about getting permission, but was told that Mama, just one month past her fifteenth birthday, was still too young to be married. But “Ole Pa Dick” consented by adding, “if that’s what she wants, and if you can find someone willing to sign my name, I won’t say nothing about it!”

So even though it was a Saturday he was able to get to Beaufort and back in time to arrange for a wedding. He had asked Mama to meet him at his father’s store on the main road at around 6:00 in the evening. Mama later explained that she had confided her plans to her mother, and that Grandma Bertha was not happy, but did not try to stop her. On her arrival at Ole Pa Charlie’s store, Daddy escorted his bride-to-be down the path and to the landing just to the east of his father’s home. There at the home of the Justice of the Peace, Mart Guthrie, he knocked on the door and, showing him the marriage license, explained to Mr. Guthrie what he had in mind. The magistrate expressed his willingness to perform the ceremony, but only after he had “finished his supper” that he had just started. Again, unwilling to accept any delays, Daddy offered an extra five dollars if Mr. Guthrie would interrupt his plans. The extra money did the trick and Mart’s wife Rebecca agreed to serve as the witness.

So it was that within just a few minutes of arriving at Hancock Landing, my father and mother were legally married and ready to set out on their life together. According to Daddy, they walked up the path to Ole Pa’s store and he bought her a soft drink (Coca Cola), before escorting her across the road to the home of his oldest sister, Louisa. She was called Ezzer by almost everyone, was recently widowed, and had three small children to raise on her own. Having always been like a mother to my father – his own mother had died when he was only four years old – she was willing and happy to have him bring his new wife to live with her and her children.

My grandfather, Charlie S. Hancock

My parents would live with Ezzer for the next eight months while their own home was being built just to the east of where they had been staying. It was literally less than twenty feet from the facing windows of one home to the other. Both were on the “Hancock Land” that my grandfather had staked out when he arrived at the Island from the Banks three decades earlier. And Ezzer would remain as much a mother as a sister to my father for the rest of her life. Her children, Audrey, Inez and Creston (Sno’ball) would be much more than cousins to the ten children that eventually were born to my parents.

Charlie and Margarette spent their first night together just a few steps away from where they would be for the next seventy years. But awakening the next morning in the southeast bedroom they had little time to ponder or dream about what those years together might be like. Even though it was the first day of a new year, and a holiday for almost everyone else, they were awoken by the sound of someone rapping on their window almost exactly as the first sunrise of the new year broke though the twilight sky.

Pulling the shade and raising the window my father was startled to see his father, Ole Pa, standing outside with an anxious, even a hurried and frustrated expression on his face. “I can’t believe you are still in bed this time of day,” he exclaimed to my father as he peered through the opening in the glass. “You ain’t gonna ‘mount to nothin’ if you lay in bed this long!"

Originally Posted by The Education of an Island Boy at 1:24 PM Tuesday, March 8, 2011

No. 11 "We didn't even get a chance to bat!"

With the onset of World War II life on Harkers Island began to change. One of those changes was the influx of soldiers and sailors assigned to Cape Lookout, and responsible for protecting this part of the North Carolina coast from the German U Boats. Eventually some of those military personnel found a permanent home on the Island as was evidenced by the new surnames that became a part of the Island demographic.
One of those sailors, whose name has now been lost, was noticed by local baseball players for a very special talent. This young visitor was a pitcher - but more than that, he was a pitcher who could throw the ball with either hand.
     
What a discovery? Here was a young man who could by himself take unlimited advantage of an age-old baseball strategy. Specifically, he could pitch right-handed to right-handed hitters, and, when necessary, could switch hands and throw with his left hand to the left-handers.

An early Marshallberg baseball team - 

photo taken from "The Mailboat," 

Spring 1991, Vol.2, No.1.

Eager to take advantage of their assumed good fortune, the Island team invited their rivals from Marshallberg to a challenge match with the intention of settling an old score. Marshallberg had been on a winning streak in recent years thanks to several young players who had shown a consistent talent for hitting the best pitchers the Island had to offer. So confident were the Islanders that they agreed to play the game at Smyrna, literally in Marshallberg’s back yard. Perhaps not suspecting that they were being set up for a ringer, the challenge was immediately accepted and the game was on.

The contest began with the Island team in the field, they being the “home team” for having offered the challenge in the first place. It thus worked out that the ambidextrous Island pitcher got to show his stuff at the very onset of the contest. Unfortunately for the Islanders and their many fans who had come to witness the game, it immediately became obvious that their intended hero indeed could pitch with either hand - he just could not pitch very well with either hand!

Batter after batter from Marshallberg stepped up to the plate and swatted the ball soundly into play as if they were taking batting practice. It was even said that several of the cattle, roaming a pasture that sat just beyond the right field fence, were injured by long-balls that disturbed their grazing.

By the time the third out had been made, and the Marshallbergers headed out to take the field, the Island boys had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The first half of the inning had taken so long that the sun was already beginning to fall behind the tall pines that were to the west of the Smyrna School. Rather than take their turn at bat, they stole away to their cars and trucks that were waiting to take them home.

Seeing their foes run-off rather than continue the contest, some of the Marshallberg players and fans chased behind their fleeing opponents and heckled them with repeated chants of “we beat you, we beat you!”  Leaning out of the back window of one of the departing cars a Harkers Island player responded with the best retort  he could muster, “I wonder how you know, we didn't even get a chance to bat!”

No. 123 Brothers, Sisters, Cousins and a World at War

For a century and a half the surnames of families on the Island, and before that at the Banks, had remained mostly constant. The families that moved down the coast from the Tidewater area of Virginia might not have come as a group or at the same time, but by the middle of the 19th century they had settled down and together. Except for an occasional venture up Core Sound towards Marshallberg, Davis or Sea Level, or across the channel to Beaufort or Salter Path, the men and boys, as well as the women and girls of Harkers Island found wives and husbands among the same families as had their parents and grandparents for as long as they could remember.

The came Word War II.




Or more precisely, then came the soldiers, sailors and marines that were stationed all along the lower Outer Banks, and especially near Cape Lookout, to protect against incursions from enemy submarines and surface ships. Only a few of the newcomers lived on the Island as most were housed in barracks at the Cape, at Ft. Macon, or father north up the Sound. But Harkers Island with is "show house" (movie theater), community center (Carl' store), and several cafes and general stores, soon became the preferred weekend and evening hangout. Then and there could be found at any given time dozens of men looking for a diversion from the military service that had interrupted their lives and left them far removed from their own families, friends, and especially their girlfriends.

By the time the last of them left for home after the war, a number of them were accompanied by wives they first had met while serving near the Island. Others left behind wives or girlfriends, and sons and daughters, who were unwilling to say goodbye to their Island families, but who kept the surnames of war-time lovers for themselves and for their children.

Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, men and boys from the Island had volunteered and were serving in the Navy and Coast Guard. After the draft was enacted with the Selective Service Act of 1942, hardly a neighborhood or family was left untouched by a tearful goodbye to a son, brother, or cousin who was drafted or enlisted to serve in the armed forces of the United States at war.

Then, after the long war finally was over, those who were fortunate enough to make it home found an Island that had been changed while they were gone, almost if not quite as profoundly as the lives of the soldiers and sailors who just a few years earlier had been obliged to leave their Island homes.

Though all of this occurred in the decade before I was born, its effects were everywhere to be felt in the world I grew up in, and among the family and neighbors that made up my world.

In fact, three homes there in a small enclave of our neighborhood, all in a row, epitomized how the war both affected the people, and influenced life on the Island for decades to come. In the northeast corner of our neighborhood family was the home of Willie and Carrie Guthrie. Just to the south, less than a hundred feet away but across the path we called the "Old Road," was the home of Aaron & Annie Moore. The two houses were connected by more than a property line and a path. Aaron Moore was Carrie Guthrie's brother, and Annie Moore was Willie Guthrie's sister. One house farther south and up the path towards the Landing was the home of Vannie & Lula Guthrie. Vannie was Willie and Annie's brother.

By the time the last shots were fired in the Europe and Asia and the last solder and sailor left his barracks near the Cape, four sons from those three houses has served either in Europe or in the Far East. Just as significantly, four daughters from two of those houses had been married and started families with soldiers or sailors who were stationed in our area. Within just a few years all but one of those husbands had gone back to his native home, and two of the three had left behind their Island wives and children.

As those children grew older, kids on the Island became familiar with new family names. In our neighborhood those names were Irvine, Craver and Beamon but elsewhere on the Island there were lots more that became just as commonplace. By the time a generation had passed and the “baby boomers” started their own families, the younger Islanders assumed that these names had been here all along --- just like the Fulfords, Guthries, Moores ... and even the Willises.

No. 122 Making Christmas Traditions

Making Christmas Traditions
Joel Hancock

The Mailboat Christmas (1991)

Christmas Eve has always been the biggest day of the year for my parents. All of their children, with their families, would gather at Mama and Daddy's for the big Christmas party and to retell the story of the Nativity. When I was younger, the brothers and sisters, there are ten of us, would exchange our gifts, but as we grew older and the crowd grew larger, that became impractical. So eventually we just enjoyed each other's company for a while before watching Mama and Daddy as they opened the presents they had received from their ever expanding number of progeny.

Our house in Sheldon's Woods during the Christmas
snow of 1991

Eventually the group grew so large that neither my parent's home, nor any of their children's, could accommodate us all. With spouses and children, our group has surpassed one hundred persons. So for the last several years we had met at the Rescue Squad Building or at the Church. Then the great Christmas snow storm of 1989 caused us to miss our "night before Christmas" for the first time since my parents started their family. Though it was still enjoyable to be with everyone two days later than usual, one of my sisters observed that a party held four weeks early seems to have more of the Christmas spirit than one held a single day afterward.

Then again last year, my niece had a baby just a few days before Christmas and we decided to wait until she was able to come home with her "Christmas present" to have our party. (Susan and I could sympathize with how she felt, having had three of our children born in December, and another in late November.) Again, the gathering was fun, but something was missed in waiting until after the traditional time.

But if something was lost, something also was gained. After meeting together with my parents' family it would usually be 10:00 pm or later before we could all disperse back to our several homes. Only then could we gather in our own smaller families for a final portion of that day's Christmas spirit. That was too late to do much more than say "goodnight" to our smaller children.  But these past two years I have enjoyed being at home for the entire evening with just my wife and our six children, and starting our own Christmas tradition.

For just after sundown, Michael, our youngest, began to ask how much longer before we could begin to open presents. He asked the same question at least fifty more times before we finally satisfied his impatience. But before we did, we gathered around the dinner table for a candle lit Christmas Eve dinner. With beautiful music playing in the background, each of us took turns in giving thanks for the blessings we enjoyed, the most special of which was the birth of the Savior. Thankfully, not very far down each one's list was their appreciation for being a part of our family, and for the love and happiness we share in our little home.

A few months later after after Spring had brought back the green. 

After dinner we went into the living room, around the tree, and shared in reading the Christmas story from the scriptures. Finally, before going to bed, each of the kids was allowed to open some of the presents that had enticed them for a week or more under the Christmas tree. Then began the long process of trying to get six children asleep in time to allow Santa to position what they all had been awaiting since even before Thanksgiving.

As we watched them sleeping on Christmas Eve I was reminded of what my mother has told me repeatedly in the past several years; "You're eating your white bread now, and you'd better enjoy it!" She is trying to impress upon me that NOW is the best part of my life. I suppose she is right. The kids are all still at home, and even though the two oldest are in High School, I'd like to think that our family remains the center of their life, if not of their expectations. Others warn us that everything will get much more complicated once the children begin to fashion lives beyond the confines of our little world.

I'll worry about that when I have to. As for now I am content to enjoy the gifts I have been given. And as I do I will have a better understanding of why my parents are so insistent that Christmas is not the same without their children close by on Christmas Eve. After just two years of being alone with mine, I can appreciate how the tradition became what it is. Under- standably, I enjoy those things that remind me of Christmas past and how it used to be. But at the same time I recognize that what happens here and now can become equally as special in our hearts and minds. As early as next winter, this year's Christmas will be just such a memory, and part of a tradition.

No. 10 "Has there been a blow or something?" The Storm of '33

Originally posted March 3, 2011

As an insurance agent these past twenty-two years I have been keenly sensitive to the barrage of hurricanes that have pummeled this area since the last era of storms began with Hurricane Bertha in 1994. Because of the time and effort involved in reporting and responding to the claims that result, each one of them has a special niche carved into my memory.

My father who lived to be almost ninety-three years old experienced several periods of intense hurricane activity, and he too had stories to tell about what those storms meant to a waterman who supported his family with a boat tied to a mooring at the shore. But although he had memories of each of them, there was one storm that stood out far beyond all the rest. It occurred when he was still a young man, but married with three small children, and living in a new white frame house that was less than two hundred feet from the shores of Back Sound.

He sometimes called it the “Storm of ‘33", but more often he referred to it by the name of the downeast fisherman who lost his life in the storm, Jimmy Hamilton. Every blow, every nor’easter, every tropical storm and hurricane, was measured against the “Jimmy Hamilton Storm,” and always, in his mind, paled in comparison.
     
He would tell vivid stories of the howling winds that caused the walls of his house to shimmer; the rising tides that surrounded his father’s and his brother’s homes, and that reached his own back yard; the rapid ebbing of the water that he eventually learned was the result of an inlet (later called Barden’s Inlet) having broken through near the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.

But for some reason, at least to me, none of those stories resonated as much as the account of what he saw and heard when the winds finally died down, and the people of his neighborhood ventured out to see what had been wrought, and especially what had been left, by the monster storm. The humor, the irony, the serenity that is evidenced in that tale captures for me in one simple story much of what made life for the people of our Island so special (and so memorable.)

As told by my father, the winds began around sundown, and shortly after midnight abated enough that he took Mama and the children (Ralph, Ella Dee & June) across the path to the home of Cliff & Cottie (Carrie) Guthrie. Even though Cliff’s house was even closer to the shoreline, it was bigger and higher off the ground. When he got there he found that several other families had the same idea, and a group of over twenty gathered on the chairs, around the table, and on the floors of Cliff & Cottie’s living room. Soon thereafter the winds returned and for another three hours the storm-weary group looked, listened and worried.  

Finally, just before morning, the winds died out and left an eery calm as the sun rose over Eastard Banks.  The new day shed its light on the damage left by what would prove to be the biggest storm for more than half a century. What they saw when they stepped out on the south-facing back porch of Cliff’s house was as follows; trees including mighty oaks, had been uprooted, boats had been torn from their moorings and were lodged in the brush and thickets near the shore; livestock from the Banks, including horses, cows, and sheep had been drowned as they were washed across the channel such that their carcasses dotted the shoreline; porch posts & planks, shingles, and siding that been blown or washed off homes were strewn in piles on almost every  sound-front yard.
Yet amid all of this, what my father and the others recalled the best, and told about most often, was what he observed standing on the back-door stoop of the home of Hinckley & Polly Guthrie. Their home was at the Landing, and between the shore and Cliff’s porch where the storm-weary group had gathered. Indeed, Cliff and Polly were among those who had assembled next door. But left behind in their home had been “Tom C”, Polly’s aged father who had gone to bed as usual the night before and no one had heard from since.
   
As he stepped out on his porch that early “morning after,” of the greatest storm most of them would ever experience, he paused for a moment to observe the desolation that surrounded him, including a silver maple tree that had fallen at the very foot of his porch steps.

With his thin white hair gathered in the middle from a long night on a pillow, and wearing nothing but the faded burgundy union suit (longjohns) that had been his night clothes, “Tom C” rubbed his eyes to wipe-away the sleep, and make sure that he really was seeing what had at first appeared to him. Then looking to the north and the group of family and friends that were staring in his direction from across his back yard, he asked, “Has there been a blow or something?”
Posted by The Education of an Island Boy at 5:37 AM

Thursday, March 3, 2011

No. 9 Ole Pa's House

Originally posted Wednesday, March 2, 2011

[Pictured above left: Ole Pa with five of his grandsons; my brothers Ralph and Bill standing to his right, and Creston (Sno’ Ball) Gaskill, my brother Tommy, and Louie Hallas Hancock on his left. Pictured above right: A photo of Ole Pa’s house taken just three years after his death and following Hurricane Donna in 1960.]

I was just five years old in 1957 when my grandfather, Charlie Hancock - called Ole Pa by his family, passed away. Just three months shy of his 88th birthday, he had been hospitalized only a few days in Morehead City where he succumbed. His body was brought back to the large living room of his house at the Landing, where the southwesters kept the rooms cool and the curtains fluttering, even in the heat of the late summer afternoon and evening. Even more than usual, the path beside our house that led to his was filled with people; mourners and well-wishers who promenaded up and down it to pay their homage to his memory and to comfort his family.

Not too long after his passing, his majestic home that he had built for his first wife, Agnes, and that overlooked Back Sound with an expansive view that stretched from the Cape Lookout Lighthouse to the mouth of the Beaufort Bar, with its large white pillars and squeaking stair steps, with its four upstairs bedrooms and a long kitchen that could seat a dozen or more people at the wooden table; that monument to an earlier time and place, Ole Pa's house, was left to time and the elements.

In part it may have been inevitable. The rising waters of Back Sound soon began to encroach on the steps of the porch and wash out the sand from around the foundation. The wooden shingles of the roof were either blown off or rotted away. The bright white paint that had glistened off the cypress sheathing, especially when looking for home from the Banks, faded and then chipped away, until at last the big and stately white house became a crumbling gray shack.

Finally, and less than a decade after Ole Pa had laid in state in the carpeted and brightly-lit living room of what had been his very own castle, neighborhood boys, hiding away to conceal their mischief as they smoked the stogies they had found along the path or shore, apparently left one smoldering in a mattress that had been drug in from a trash heap. Within what seemed like just a few minutes, billowing smoke gave way to a raging fire at the Landing; and Ole Pa's house was gone forever.

No. 8 "Prince" and the fudgesicles

Orignally posted Monday, February 28, 2011

Perhaps no story is more telling of the gentle nature of my “Uncle Calvin” than of his relationship with his dog, Prince. Late in his life, Calvin adopted a beagle and sooner mix named Prince, that had belonged to his nephew, “Peter” (Weldon Edward Willis). Peter was just then starting to work and go courting, so he found little time for his pet. Since most water work was done in the early evening or just before day break, Calvin, on the other hand, had plenty of daily time to shower attention on what became almost like his "only child."

Soon Prince could be seen everywhere Calvin went, sometimes even in his boat, and was almost always under his feet or around his legs. As time went on, Calvin and Prince would go to the neighborhood stores together. Thus it was that there evolved a routine wherein Calvin would buy a malted ice cream, called a "fudgesicle," and holding the stick in his hand, would feed it to Prince as his dog licked on the bar until it melted - literally in his mouth.

Prince grew to love fudgesicles so much that when Calvin was gone fishing, the dog would hang around the only places where his favorite treat had ever turned up - the neighborhood stores. Everyone knew why he was there, and they soon began to tell Calvin about how often his pet would come by the stores, alone, whenever Calvin was gone. Eventually there developed an agreement between Calvin and the storekeepers; namely Dallas and Dallas Daniel at Dallas's store, Norman at Norman's store, and Mart, Edith's husband, at Edith's store.

The terms were as follows; if Prince came by the store and hung around as if waiting for his treat, the store clerk was to prepare a fudgesicle for Prince, and hold it out long enough for Prince to enjoy it. The store would keep a tally of how many fudgesicles they had provided, and every Friday evening, after the fishermen were paid for their weekly catch, Calvin would settle with them for any debts that Prince might have rung up during the preceding week.

Thus it happened that Prince became known as the only dog on the Island to have a charge account of his own - and at three different stores.

No. 7 "... if you wait until tomorrow morning, most of 'em will be gone!"

(originally posted 27 Feb 2011)

This is another of the classic "Charlie Claude" stories, as related by him to my brother Mike and me one evening while we were clearing fish at Clayton Fulcher's fish house.

"The Seven Brothers," Mike's trawler, sitting at Clayton
Fulcher's Fishouse on Harkers Island

Beginning each spring at and around Easter, and speeding up rapidly after Memorial Day, the population of the Island can sometimes double on weekends and holidays. The infusion begins at mid-day on Friday, reaches its peak from Saturday to Sunday afternoon, and then all but disappears between Sunday evening and Monday morning. 

Most of the visitors here expect and appreciate the low-keyed and sometimes even “slow motion” way of life that native Islanders maintain. But for some of them, especially when lines are slow and the temperatures are high, the slower pace of the natives can be frustrating and even annoying.

Such was the case one hot August Sunday afternoon at the checkout counter of Cab’s (The East’ard Variety Store). Most likely having been delayed at the marina, in the gas line, and then while waiting to check out, one exasperated visitor shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, “There are the most ignorant people on this Island that I have ever seen at one place and at one time!”

Just a few steps away, leaning against a drink cooler, Charlie Claude (Jones) both saw and heard the weary and impatient visitor to the little Island that had been his lifelong home. In a feigned effort to calm the irritated vacationer, Charlie slowly approached him with the consoling assertion, “You know you are probably right. But if you wait until tomorrow morning, almost all of ‘em will be gone!”

Sunday, February 27, 2011

No. 6 "The closest I ever come to having a job."

No. 6 "The closest I ever come to having a job."

(Originally posted 27 Feb 2011)

Late in the summer of 1976 I returned home to Harkers Island with my wife and my little girl (Emily). I had spent the previous six years in Greenville at ECU, in graduate school, and teaching and coaching at J. H. Rose High School. Coming home meant more than finding a place to stay. Even more importantly it meant finding a place to work. We were welcomed to live with Mama and Daddy until we could arrange to get our mobile home moved from Greenville to the lot we bought from my Uncle Earl here on Lewis Street, and on which we have remained ever since. But finding a job was not quite so simple.

Every morning I would head into town and check out leads I had read or heard about. Days turned into weeks and I was getting a little discouraged as the pittance I was making mowing lawns and clamming (both Susan and I) was not nearly enough to keep us going. It was in that mood that I returned home one afternoon to find my father and my Uncle Louie working together in our back yard. The two were hanging a shot of mullet net they planned to use a  few weeks later when "big roe mullet" season began. As usual, I reported to Daddy about how the day had gone. Listening to our conversation, Uncle Louie interrupted to say, "Let me tell you about the time I went to Ocracoke to work on the dock."


My uncle was already eighty years old, seventeen years older than my father, and daddy deferred to him as if he were his own father. In keeping with that, our conversation immediately gave way to his story. It went as follows:

Louie Hancock, called "Big Buddy"  by my father and most of his family

"During World War II we got word that the Army was building a dock at Ocracoke, and that they were paying a dollar an hour to anybody who would work on it. So I got in my boat one Sunday morning and headed up Core Sound and into Pamlico Sound to get there before the sun went down.[The trip was at least sixty nautical miles, and his boat was powered by a five horsepower air-cooled engine. It would have been a trip of at least eight hours.]

"When I got there, they had already started building the dock, so I tied up to it and tried to climb off the gunwale of my boat onto one of the piers that was already finished. Well, as I was doing that my leg hit a nail that was left sticking out the side of one of the pilings, and started to bleed real bad.

"Well, seeing that, I decided that the best thing I could do was get back in my boat and head back home. That's just what I did and I got back at the Landing about 4:00 the next morning."

With that he had finished his tale and went back to his needle and twine and attaching corks to the line on my father's mullet net. A little confused as to the intent of what I had just heard, I asked him, "Big Buddy, that was nice, but what was the point of that story?"

"Oh," he said, shaking his head as he realized that he may have lost his train of thought as he told his tale. "I just wanted you to know that was the closest I ever come to having a job." He wasn't just joking. He was telling the truth! He had lived his whole life and supported a family of five children without ever having worked a single day for someone other than himself. His was the life of a "Back Sound Progger" who went after fish, shellfish, or shrimp, depending on the season, in his own little boat or as part of his own father's crew. Indeed, he was never wealthy in financial terms, but neither did he appear impoverished in any way. In fact, he could always pull out a few "bills" of different denominations from the crumpled wallet he carried in his back hip pocket. And, when showing those "bills" he always held his wallet up to just below his nose, so as to hide the rest of the contents from anyone who might be looking too closely.

So it was that my Uncle Louie taught me a lesson that I have never forgotten on a fall afternoon when I was looking for a job but found something that has served me even longer; an understanding that a job is not a life --- it's just one of many ways to make a living.