Hurricane Matthew delayed for two
days our departure for our almost-annual mid-October vacation in Emerald Isle,North Carolina. Our destination is on
the west end of the Bogue Banks barrier island in Carteret County, NC – also
known as the South Outer Banks or SOBX on the official oval decal. We make the drive down there in two days
stopping midway in Pocomoke City, Maryland,
a town with everything that Mars and I want for such an overnight – a Holiday
inn Express with a nice shower, comfortable bed and warm breakfast; a downtown
historic area and nature trail to stretch our legs; and a restaurant
overlooking the Pocomoke River with a dizzying variety of the “Old Line
State’s” official dessert, the nine-layer Smith Island cake. (This time we chose Oreo.)
Our
travel route is through the Delmarva Peninsula, getting off major highways
after crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge and taking U.S. Route 13 through
“The First State”, Maryland, Virginia into North Carolina then picking up U.S.
17 for the rest of the trip. Three
decades ago when we first began this sojourn these “highways” were plain old
two lane roads running through rural towns with small houses, double wide
trailers, the occasional really big white house, and farmland growing cotton,
soy beans and (in the 80s and early 90s) tobacco. Nowadays many of these byways
have either been widened to four lanes or have multi-lane bypasses around them. This year our progress through New Jersey was
slowed down by rain that was slightly less than torrential – but otherwise it
was an uneventful trip to Pocomoke City.
Day
two of our journey, as usual, found us in Ahoskie, NC around 12 noon. We began visiting SOBX in the later 1980s –
and on that first trip, and everyone since (except for last year when it was closed) we
lunched at O’Connor’s Restaurant – an outwardly nondescript local eatery with
an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, bottomless pitchers of “tea” (which from this
point southward in our travels mean iced and sweet), and Eastern North Carolina
barbecue.
We
did not know it when we first came to the Tarheel State but down there barbecue
equals pulled pork cooked in either a red sauce of ketchup, vinegar, and
pepper, (Piedmont or Western Style) or
vinegar, pepper and no tomato (Eastern Style).
Piedmont style uses only the pork shoulder whereas Eastern is said to
use "every part of the hog except the squeal". We became more familiar with this staple of
Carolina cuisine at several other dining establishments on that first sojourn
and enjoyably continue that tradition.
The
restaurant was always pretty much full. Mr.
O’Connor manned the cash only register and greeted pretty much everyone by name
– blue collar, white collar, black, white, retired seniors, lunch hour workers. He was older than us when we started eating
there and seemed even more elderly during our 2014 visit when, after we
explained our history as customers, he told us he was in the process of selling
the business. During our earlier years
we had noticed a young adult male involved in the daily operations. Then one year we noticed his photo located
front and center on the building’s only real wall – windows, waitress station
and cash-out area being the other sides.
It remained there every year since. We assumed that he would have been
the next owner-operator. This October
the place was re-opened as “Carolina BBQ and Chicken”. And the ambiance and menu was close enough to
O’Connor’s to work for us.
After
she took our order – barbeque platter with slaw and hush puppies for $4.95 –
the waitress (apparently having detected our blatantly non-Carolinian accents)
asked, “Where y’all folks heading?” We
explained where and what our route was.
“I don’t think you can get there,” she told us. “The roads are flooded. Better plan on spending the night in town.”
“Where
is the best place to stay?” I asked – partially to keep the conversation going,
partially because I wanted to know our options, and partially because I knew I
wasn’t going to like the answer.
She
paused. “The Ahoskie Inn I guess,” she
replied as if she were saying “Bates Motel”.
“Oh, and we have a 7:00 curfew tonight.”
Mars
and I decided that a night in Ahoskie would not be our Plan B. Or probably even C or D.
When
the waitress came back with our food she said, “You might want to talk to that
guy over there – indicating a work clothes clad fifty-something having lunch
with a casually dressed similarly aged man and (we presumed) his mother.”
“You shouldn’t have any problems, except for a
place where 17 is washed out – but the D.O.T. has away around it”, he told us. “My daughter drove from here to Morehead City
[adjacent to our destination, same route to get there] yesterday to get back to
work.”
(click to enlarge)
Mars
and I thanked him, and our collective state of anxiety lowered. As we paid our bill at the register he walked
up to us to tell us, with great paternal pride, about his daughter’s
pharmaceutical work at the Hospital in Morehead. He gave us her name, in case we bumped into
her, and wished us a safe trip.
Then,
a couple of miles out of town on Route 13 we came upon a set of unguarded road
closure barriers with enough of an opening for a large vehicle to slip through. Ours is small, a PT Cruiser, so we drove between
barricades to see how bad the problem was.
The road ahead was underwater – damn!
But vehicles of the mid-sized truck and SUV variety were, one by one,
plowing their way through the 50 yard long puddle – umm? We watched a few and Mars said that we should
try it also. So we did. I couldn’t tell how far up the car the water
was – Mars said halfway up the tires – but we kept moving, downshifting our
manual transmission from 3rd to 2nd gear and came out the
other side.
Sigh
of relief! Another exhale a few minutes
later when our car was still running smoothly and braking without a
problem.
Several
more miles down the back road highway there was another unmanned roadblock –
behind which was another washout, this one (even without the benefit of other
trailblazers to show us) was clearly deeper than the roof of our tiny, red
automobile.
“I
saw a guy working on his porch back a little ways”, said Mars. “We’ll stop and ask directions.”
He
turned out to be disconnecting his generator now that power had been restored
to his home. We told him our problem –
and he had the solution. He started to
give directions for a way around the flooding, “Go backup the road a couple of
miles to Route 305..”, when Mars said let me get some paper to write this down. While she ran to the car he mentioned that
there was a 7:00 curfew.
Pencil
and paper in hand, he began again with directions to “go around the elbow” – “305
left, 4 ½ miles left Charles Taylor Road turns into Republican Road, about 5
miles. Stay on Republican, 2nd
intersection 308 left – until 17 south.”
We thanked him and headed off with hope in our hearts and faith in his
words. Thirty minutes later we came to
the flooded spot on Route 17 with the D.O.T. workaround. We drove through with a guarded sense of
comfort – and did not come upon any issues for the rest of our trip. As we drove along Mars asked “What was that
Tennessee Williams line about the kindness of strangers?”
When
we reached Emerald Isle our condo was fine, and all of the barrier island and
immediately surrounding area was fine. But farther inland on the next day, and
the subsequent ones, things just got worse as water flowed from the
non-absorbing lands into the rivers which then began overflowing, and
overflowing, and overflowing. We turned
to the Weather Channel, which suddenly had become all North Carolina flood news
all the time and quickly realized that now that we were here, we could not get
back up north if we wanted to. It took
about a week for rivers to stops cresting and roads to start clearing. Meanwhile lots of people who definitely could
not afford to, lost what little they had.
At
Emerald Isle we quickly fell into our usual routine: a half-mile walk each morning to the wine and
convenience store at the nearby trailer park to pick up the News and Observer
newspaper from the machine out front; a morning barefoot one hour walk on the
beach; golf at the nearby Silver Creek course some afternoons; al fresco
reading either on our ocean-facing deck or in the condo’s ocean front gazebo;
one meal out each day (dinner on the days we golfed, lunch on the others); junk
cable television (which we do not have it at home – Project Runway, Say Yes to
the Dress, etc.): and our annual reunion with one of Mars’ BFFs from high school
who now lives in Apex, NC. at a restaurant
equidistant between her home and our rental. (Interestingly the third member of
this Twelfth-grade Trio now lives in Albuquerque, NM – our other annual travel
destination.)
But
not everything followed that script.
One
afternoon around 4:00 as we were sitting in the gazebo, each deep into
respective books – “The Rainmaker” by John Grisham (Mars) and “Inner Circle” by
T.C. Boyle (me) – we were jolted back to reality by deep male North Carolinian
voice booming out “So you two are readers!”
We
acknowledged our guilt. “Well so am
I. Y’all mind if I sit down?” He joined us just about every afternoon for
the rest of our stay. We also saw him
several mornings driving his red pickup truck on his way to breakfast at
Hardees while we were returning from our daily newspaper walk.
His
name was Billy. He quickly told us that,
in addition to an avid consumer of books, he was 78 years old and (with his 72
year old wife) owned an oceanfront condo on the other side of the same building
that we were in. Billy was big, like a
former football player, and made solid eye contact with one or the other of us
while we were talking. He also had a
speech pattern where he periodically deepened his voice and spoke louder in the
middle of a word or phrase – as in the name of his inland hometown Clay-TON. He was born there and never lived more than 3
miles from his original home. Clay-TON
is a cotton-farming town with, when Billy was growing up there, a shirt factory
at each end of town. “Then the factories
went somewhere else.” I pointed to the
horizon out beyond the adjacent Atlantic Ocean and he nodded.
Without
our asking or any prompting Billy told us his finances – this was his third
condo on the barrier island having sold each of the first two at a profit that
allowed him to upgrade ultimately to this two bedroom one. He gave us all the
numbers. His wife says she would like
more rooms for when their son’s family visits – but at his age he doesn’t feel
like fixing up another place. Billy says
they’ll just rent another condo for the overflow when that happens. We did meet his wife one time as they were
heading off somewhere.
“North
Carolina is a ‘battle GROUND state’”, and Billy, who says he is a moderate
Democrat that opposes North Carolina’s anti-LGBT HB2 law is a Trump
supporter. “He says he is going to bring
back those factories.” He said as he
swung his right arms towards the ocean as if scooping the jobs back from
Europe.
Billy
was a plant researcher at North Carolina State University specializing in
azaleas, rhododendrons, and similar plants who retired for five years and then
went back on a part time basis. One of
the perks of the job was an unusual yellow azalea, which he has at his Clay-TON
home. People stop by to see the
bush. He hopes that his pension and
social security will support his wife after he passes on. “Oh, and then there’s the farm.”
Billy
actually died once already in the Operating Room during a heart stent procedure
that cut an artery. “I was looking down
at the doctors working at the table. But
I didn’t see myself lying there.” The
surgeon told him about it after he was saved.
He is the first person that Mars and I met in person who has experienced
that.
On
our last full day in Emerald Isle we went for both a morning and an afternoon
walk on the beach – barefoot in shorts
and tee shirts. Billy dropped by to say
good bye and say he hoped to see us again next year – “If I’m STILL here.” When
we left for home around 8:00 am the next morning the cold air had moved in and
the temperature was in the low fifties. Because
it wasn’t yet lunchtime when we arrived in Ahoskie we fueled up at the town’s
Duck Gas Station and drove on to within 5 minutes of the Virginia border at our
new favorite barbecue spot that we discovered on last year’s trip back – Doris and
Roger’s Kitchen in Gates, NC. (At least
we think its Gates – town lines are a little vague on these country roads with
nothing but pine trees and swamps as landmarks.)
Along
the way back we had spotted several camo-clad, orange-hatted hunters pulled off
the to side of the road. There were a
couple more on lunch break at the “Kitchen” and another group of them eating
breakfast at the Holiday in Express in Pocomoke City, MD the next morning – one
of them wolfing down an overflowing plate of biscuits, sausage gravy, and handfuls
of bacon.
Mars
and I were eating our more modest meal.
We both were wearing our pale gray hoodie sweatshirts with the red logo
of the alternative public radio station at which we volunteer. The female half of a couple sitting nearby
looked over at us and slowly said
We
explained what it was, and its affiliation with the college.
“Those
are very nice looking sweaters,” she told us.
I
wasn’t all that enthusiastic about ending our vacation, but this unexpected
compliment from someone we had never met reminded me of one of the things that
Mars and I enjoy doing as part of our every-day retirement life at home – and
made that day’s ride more tolerable.
What
was that Tennessee Williams line about the kindness of strangers?
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