No. 125 "Who we were, Who we are & Why it still matters?" The Diamond City Reunion August 2014

On August 16-17, 2014 a reunion was held at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center at Harkers Island of the descendants of those who once had lived at Shackleford Banks on and around the community of Diamond City. I was asked to offer some “keynote” remarks at a Sunday afternoon assembly of all the attendees. My assignment was to conclude the gathering and hopefully, bring into focus the reasoning behind remembering a place that had all but ceased to exist one hundred and fifteen years earlier. Time and circumstances did not allow for me to make the comments that I had prepared as had been planned. Because I had given much thought to what might have been appropriate, I offer my conclusions here and in this format for others who might be or have been interested.

Sunday August 17, 2014 - Diamond City Reunion Gathering

"Who we were, Who we are, Why it matters?"

Prior to setting out to write "Huckleberry Finn" and what was to become, in the opinion of many, the “Great American Novel,” Mark Twain mentioned some of the thoughts and emotions that came to his memory.

Welcoming sign in Hannibal, MO

"All the summer world was bright and fresh, and sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down like a benediction. The fountains of my great deep are broken up, and I have rained my reminiscences for four and twenty hours.
"The old life has swept before me like a panorama; the old days have trooped by in their old glory, again; the old faces have looked out of the mists of the past; old footsteps have sounded in my listening ears; old hands have clasped mine, old voices have greeted me, and the songs I loved ages and ages ago have come wailing down the centuries!" __ Mark Twain

The truck carrying the Joad Family

These thoughts stand in stark contrast to those spoken by Tom Joad in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." As his family looked behind them at the homes and farms they were leaving forever in the dust bowl of Depression era Oklahoma, Tom asked himself,

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?" John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

One of the many horses that still graze on Shackleford Banks

As much as I enjoy and have affection for the places and things we have seen or visited these last two days; the marshes, the dunes and the yaupons, and the horses and the birds that are still there, I am reminded that it was, it still is, the people who once lived there that mattered most - then and now.

Some of you have seen the video montage that was on display in the museum hall this weekend. As I observed the faces of those who stood and watched I noticed their amusement when they saw the old schoolhouse or the wooden bridge. I saw their interest when they noticed old faces that look so much like newer faces we still know. But I have been most aware of their genuine excitement when, if only for eight seconds, they caught a glimpse of a face belonging to someone they loved!

“Self is great thing,”my Mama used to tell me, and it is in those pictures of our loved ones that we can clearly see ourselves.

Seeing and remembering people of old photos on display

And as we talk about them, show their pictures, tell their stories, it’s not just them that we are honoring and remembering. Ultimately, it is more for us than for them, because in them we are reminded that we too are important. Even in the face of all that we see and hear and learn about the great and wonderful, and sometimes terrible world that we live in, our ancestors remind us that we really do matter because someday our children and grandchildren will tell stories and show pictures of us. And when they do they will smile and laugh and sometimes maybe even cry - with gladness or sadness, or both?

What binds us to them is not their distinct or amusing accents, or their maritime professions, or even their talents and instincts. What truly binds us is to them is that they loved one another, and a sense that some of that same love still lives in us.

If my grandchildren someday reunite to remember Susan [my wife] and me, along with their parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, it will not be because of my profession or my distinctive accent. It will be because they will remember the love they have felt when they were with us.

In the words of the Apostle Paul in 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, “prophecies shall fail, tongues shall cease, and knowledge shall vanish away, but Christ like love will never fail.”

* * *

Much more than for my children and grandchildren, mine was a generation that grew up surrounded by our past. There was no real need to have a celebration, a reunion or even a bulletin board of pictures and charts.  We were surrounded by it and by them, our common past and heritage, everywhere and all the time. It stared us in our faces and we could not ignore it, even if we had wanted to. The only way to "get away from it" was to "run away from it" and very few of us wanted to do either.

It was somewhat like the old baseball games for which the results never were reported or recorded - there was no need to because everybody had been at the game when it was played.

Every day we were confronted with expressions like:

The original Harkers Island Bridge

Take this to Ole' Pa's house, find him on Aunt Gracie’s porch, or go play games in “Rennie’s field.”
Somebody is broke down there at the end of “Ferry Dock Road.”
He rode his bike all the way to “Shell Point.”
We were swimming on and off of “Danky’s dock,” and played baseball on “Johnson’s cow pasture.”
We walked and played games on the “Old Road” and pulled tin cans in the middle of the “New Road.”
Every time we went to the Landing we looked across to Bell’s Island, Whale Creek Bay, Wades Shore, Sam Windsors Lump, the Horse Pen, or Whitehurst’s Island. Every time we crossed the bridge we noticed the lump of cedar trees on the very edge of what we called Brown’s Island, or stared in the other direction at the vines of Harkers Point.

But it wasn’t just places or things that had names with a story.

Billie Hancock, the fastest man on the Banks

A tall man was “longer than Lonzo Lewis.”
A heavy man was “bigger than Bull Hunter.”
Someone else might be smarter than Charlie Nelson, or could oar faster than Luther Willis, or told more lies that “Lying Willie,” or throw a baseball harder than Moe Willis, or play and sing like the Rose crowd, or loved loon more than Loch, or could run faster than Billie Hancock.
And the ultimate question I was asked when it appeared that I was succumbing to the peer pressure that was just as much an issue then as it is now, was this - “If Jonathan [my nephew but was five years older and my most often role model] jumped off the Lighthouse, would that mean you had to jump off the lighthouse?”

Many, if not most of us were called by two names because everyone was named after someone else. You couldn’t just say that something happened or belonged to Mary. You had to be more specific.

Was it Mary Ann, Mary Francis, Mary Catherine, or even Norman’s Mary, Weldon's Mary, Tommy Lewis's Mary, or Iddy's Mary.  There was also Luther's Mary, who when she was married became William's Mary, and who had a son called Mary's Michael. He lived almost next door to Elsie Mae's Johnny William, who was not be confused with Johnny Lane, Johnny Wayne, Johnny Michael, Johnny Manley ' the son of Johnny Boo, or Johnny Vann - the son of Alena's Johnny.

If mama sent me to get something from Ollie, she had to be more specific - was it Big Ollie or Little Ollie?

* * *

Everyone was part of a crowd that meant more than a last name.  You could be part of more than one crowd, depending on your mama and daddy. I was one Charlie Hancock's crowd during the week, but on Sunday I was part of the Bertha Willis's crowd.

In a hundred ways every day I was reminded of who I was and what our crowd had been. Knowing those things made me feel that I was part of something special and something that mattered. It gave me a reason to do my best to avoid bringing shame or pain to the others who shared that name and feeling with me, and who were a part of my crowd.

If I could propose a remedy to the sadness, the neurosis, and the discouragement that appears to be so prevalent in younger generations of the same people who once seemed so contented with their lives, my first suggestion might be to make them part not of a “gang” that shares nothing but a lack of connections to anything other than themselves and their cravings, but instead a part of a “crowd” that is defined and even edified by their connections to their own heritage and what they mean to each other, and what others have meant, and still mean to them.

“Be careful and don’t get hurt” my Mama would remind me whenever I left our house. But with my father it was a little different. “Remember who you are,” he would remind me with more than a little bit of a plea and a caution about the possible consequences whenever I set out for anything away from our family and neighborhood. With all due respect to my mother, my father’s warning was the one that kept, and still keeps, ringing in my mind. Trying to avoid bringing shame on him, on our crowd, was and is something that has constantly reminded me to consider long and hard the consequences of my life decisions - big and small.

The “prodigal son” of the New Testament reaches an epiphany “when he came to himself” as he was reminded of what he had left. (New Testament Luke: 15:17)

We all go through a stage when we want to "fly," and sometimes even fly away, but there usually comes a time when we are reminded, either gladly or sadly, of what and where and who we came from. There comes a time when, like the prodigal mentioned by Luke, we “come to ourselves.”

Most of us hunger for real “roots” and foundations.  Over the years, when decoy carvers are asked why the started (or started back) practicing the art of carving, they mention their father, their grandfather, or their uncle, and conclude, “I’m just doing what I saw them do.”

The Harkers Island Display at the Museum

It might be said that the grand purpose of this museum (Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, Harkers Island), and of events like the "Diamond City Reunion" that are at the heart of the museum’s mission, is to remind us that we have roots, solid roots, that have withstood storms equal to any we are facing today.

When the "crowds" left the Banks they assembled in their new found communities as families. Reports of census takers for the next fifty years give the appearance of having been “sorted” by some key field in the census-taker’s handbook. Instead they are merely listing the names in the order they found them, one extended family, or more especially one “crowd," following directly after another.

This practice was evident not just on the rolls of the ten years census lists. For several generations Promise Landers were first called “The Crowd from the Banks,” by their Morehead City neighbors. Folks from Salter Path even today are lumped together as that “crowd of Salter Pathers.” Over the years I have been reminded more than once that I am one of that "crowd from Harkers Island." Standing before you today please know that I have never been ashamed that you are my crowd, and I hope that you and yours will never be anything but proud of our shared heritage - and that those who shaped that heritage, both living and deceased, might always be proud of us.

Most of us cannot live right beside each other like once was the norm, but space doesn't mean the same thing now that it did to my mother, who when she married my father in 1928 and moved to where I grew up [near the mid-point of the Island, Hancock Landing] would sometimes walk out to the road and look towards the West'ard, toward Red Hill, and she would cry with homesickness. It's not the physical space that separates us now. Rather it is the emotional space that we have allowed to creep into our lives and our relationships.

* * *

Charlie Hancock, my grandfather, with some of his older grandsons

My grandfather, Charlie Hancock, moved from the Banks on Christmas day of 1900. Fifty-seven years later he died and was brought to lay in state in his own living room on the shore and facing the Banks he had left more than half a century earlier. My father along with my aunts and uncles took pains to make sure that his grandchildren understood and appreciated my grandfather's legacy.

And so now, fifty-seven years after his passing, and on this special occasion, I offer a goodbye to him that I was too young and immature even to think of on that occasion. Goodbye Ole’ Pa, Goodbye again. I hope that you can be proud of me and mine and that we are still your crowd. 

All of us gathered here for this reunion have an Ole' Pa and/or an Ole' Ma. And one of the very best ways that we can honor them is in the lives we live here and now today.

* * *

The Old Testament ends with the words from Heaven recorded by the hands of Malachi, an Old Testament prophet.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Old Testament Malachi 4:5-6

As I have grown older, and hopefully in understanding and in wisdom, I appreciate better what the Prophet Malachi was trying to say. To feel that we have been removed from the hearts of our fathers or our children would truly be a curse!  And just as profoundly, to be turned once again to our fathers and to our children can truly be a blessing.

And so my friends of the Diamond City crowd. Goodbye and Godspeed. Thanks for being a part of our past, our present, and hopefully of our shared future.

No. 124 Thomas Rose "I want everybody here to listen to what I am about to say!"

Thomas Rose (b. 1887), called just Tom by almost everyone, was a legend in his own time, and has remained one ever since. He was faithful and strong, sired a large family, and his children and many of their children have been musical prodigies. "That's the Rose in 'em coming out" is an expression still heard on the Island when we listen to one of his progeny play or sing the hymns of their evangelical faith.

Lewises Creek, now part of the the Cedar Island bird sanctuary

 

But in his own day, Tom Rose was one of the many watermen who worked in the ocean and the sounds to forge a living for his family. So it was that late one year, just a few days before Christmas, he and his crew were in Pamlico Sound just to the east and ocean side of Ocracoke Island. They were trawling for flounder with more than a dozen other Harkers Island fishing crews. They hoped to make enough money to buy Christmas gifts for their families, and most of them, including Tom, had been successful. So, late on Friday evening they pulled in their trawls, boards, ropes and tickler chains, and headed south and back home to Harkers Island.

Because the fishing had been so good they had lingered longer than planned in Pamlico Sound and as they left the sun was already going down. That made it even harder than usual to navigate the shoals and channels of Core Sound for the thirty-mile stretch that would take them home. Thus they decided as a group to put up for the evening in Lewises Creek, just at the end of Cedar Island for the evening and then to make their way homeward early the next morning. By late evening as many as twenty boats were moored close together in the creek, so close that they could talk to each other without shouting as they secured their boats and wares for a long night as winter approached.

Early the next morning, before most of the others were even up and getting ready to set out for home, all of them heard the bellowing voice of Tom Rose as he stood on the bow of his boat, named after his youngest daughter, and lifted the anchor.

"I want everybody here to listen to what I am about to say. The 'Norma Lee' will never again drop anchor in Lewises Creek, or anywhere else that you have to beat off mosquitoes in the middle of December!"

With that he started his engine and headed south and towards home. As far as anyone can recall, he never did spend another evening or night at Cedar Island.

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!”