As Boomers look back on a life full of memories, certain places – special places – stick out. For me, one of those special places was the beach – Atlantic Beach, NC, not far from Camp Lejeune. My Aunt Anne and Uncle Sidney had a small cottage in Morehead City, just across Bogue Sound from Atlantic Beach.
Every June, after school let out, we packed the family Pontiac sedan with suitcases and kids and headed south. We tried to visit as many relatives as possible since all lived in North Carolina. We stayed a day or two with Grandmother Eagles, Daddy’s Mom near Wilson, then went to Clemmons to see Grandma Brewer and all my aunts and cousins. Mama Ida joined us in Raleigh and were beachward bound.
We usually arrived late in the evening and the mosquitoes were waiting. Before we could get the 20 feet from the car to the cottage, they nailed us. It never bothered me that much, a little itching for a day or so, but it made my younger siblings swell up like balloons at the State Fair.
The next morning brought a promising day of crashing in the waves at Atlantic Beach, and they always had big waves, unlike the ripples at Virginia Beach and Nags Head. Arriving at the parking lot, I remember scampering across the blazing, hot blacktop road to get from the car to the sand. This was before flip-flops. We always went barefoot at the beach. We caught sand fleas, built giant castles, scoured the beach for shells and dared the waves to knock us over.
After we were totally exhausted from a day in the sun and bright pink with sunburn, we went back across the sound to Morehead City, where Daddy took us to see the deep-sea boats coming in and also to make a strategic purchase of fresh shrimp for fishing. I remember him haggling with the fish mongers about the steep price – 49-cents a pound, as a recall. But we came home with several pounds of fresh shrimp. Some we ate, some we used for fishing.
My Uncle Sidney had built a nice pier on the edge of the sound where we fished and crabbed. We caught spot, pinfish, hogfish, oyster toads and an occasional croaker. We saved the fish heads for crab bait. If the tide was running, we caught crabs, bushels of crabs. Daddy often steamed one batch and made crab cakes and a crab casserole, but one bushel was enough. The lady across the street would sometimes take a few crabs. She boiled them and gave them to her cats to eat. Jumbo, male crabs today are about $25 a dozen, and we fed them to cats?
I also loved to fish on the pier at Atlantic Beach. Sometimes, Mom would drive me over in the morning and pick me up later that afternoon. “Just one more cast,” I begged when she came. I usually caught a lot of bluefish, as well as some huge spot and croakers. I dearly loved to fish from that pier.
Another great activity was flounder gigging. Daddy wouldn’t take me until I was about 12, then on a dead low tide after dark, we fired up a Coleman Lantern and patrolled the shallows looking for flounder buried in the sand. You always looked for the eyes, and woe to any young flounder gigger who missed. That was absolutely unacceptable to Daddy George.
At the end of a great week, we packed our things and headed home to West Virginia when I began counting the days till we could go again.