Go East Young Man

Dear Uncle Jack,

You wrote a column a while back about the broadening effects of travel and I was wondering if you have ever been to the far west.

Juan Tjese

Wanchese

Dear Juan,

It depends on how far west you are talking about. Uncle Jack has been over to Greenville a few times which is quite a ways west of the Dare County Sanitary Landfill which is fairly far west itself if you come right down to it, even though it is in East Lake.

If you are thinking about going west yourself, though, Uncle Jack thinks you would be better off to save your money and go south instead to some nice place like Frisco where you can at least get a nice plate of ribs.

The only cultural attraction he ever ran across out west was Simp’s Barbecue which was on 64 just this side of Plymouth where you could still get Coca Cola in those little eight-ounce glass bottles they used to have when he was a kid. He can tell you that a Simp’s barbecue sandwich with slaw and a couple of those little cokes made a real gourmet breakfast but after you burped a couple of times you might as well have turned around and come home because there was nothing west of Simp’s worth bothering with as far as he could tell.  And now that Simp's is closed forever there is absolutely no point in driving over there any more.

Back when he was in the navy a long time ago he did get to a place called the Far East and he was single at the time so he enjoyed meeting all the friendly ladies and he thought it would be nice to go back there and live forever but that is not the way it worked out.

Nowadays when he feels nostalgic for the sights and smells of the Far East he just goes over to the Wal-Mart and stands in the women’s clothing department for a while but he has to admit it isn’t quite the same.

Sayonara,

Uncle Jack

                            Modern Maturity

Ever since he had to have his gall bladder forcibly removed Uncle Jack has been thinking about what it means to grow old and he is happy to say that he is moderately optimistic about it at this point. He has had to take it easy this week while all the little holes the doctor punched in his stomach healed up so he has had a lot more time to read than he usually does and he really enjoyed it.

He started working his way down through the magazines that always pile up next to his barcalounger because he never has time to read them. He is now caught up on his National Geographics, Smithsonians, Atlantic Monthlies and New Yorkers and he feels so well informed he can hardly stand himself.

Anyway Uncle Jack got a good taste this week of what it would be like not to have to go to work every day and he has to say he can see some real merit in the retirement lifestyle. In fact he got so interested in retirement there for a couple of days that he actually read a couple of issues of Modern Maturity which he forgot to throw away at the post office which is what he usually does with them.

If any young persons are reading this he will explain that Modern Maturity is the magazine you get every month if you belong to the American Association of Retired People, better known as AARP, which is a good thing to be a member of if you are over 55 because they have terrorized motel owners all over the country into giving old people a 10 percent discount on their rooms.

He usually hates to read Modern Maturity because it is full of ads reminding vigorous old people like himself what is in store for them down the road such as motorized wheelchairs, Alzhimer’s pills, Medicare supplement plans, Florida mobile home developments and Viagra. The people who put out Modern Matuirity really knock themselves out to make old age sound like fun but the ads tell the truth.

He has to admit he really enjoyed this month’s issue though because it is full of articles about how computers can enhance the quality of life for older people---even more than Viagra in many cases. This was very meaningful to Uncle Jack because he has only recently embraced the computer and he can honestly say that he loves it and he knows that it will be a great comfort to him in his old age if he lives that long.

The single most depressing paragraph he has read in any magazine in the past five years is in Modern Maturity this month and he would like to share it with all those who threw their copies away at the post office. It is in an article about Martha Stewart who is described as “the woman America turns to for clever tips on how to…revitalize discarded lighting fixtures…” and this is what it says:

Stewart has 30 telephone and fax numbers and more than 40 separate phones as well as seven cellular phones….She owns and uses five Macintosh desktop computers, two Mac Power Book laptops, an IBM Thinkpad 770 notebook computer, and carries a laptop at all times…Her cars are equipped with fax machines and VCRs and her Chevy Suburban is a rolling office outfitted with a telephone, a laptop computer and a fax that doubles as a photocopier.

Uncle Jack’s advice to Martha Stewart: Get a life before you run over somebody with that Suburban and they lock you up for good.

                        Wiring the South

Uncle Jack was very happy to read in the paper that the President came to North Carolina last week to talk about a subject near and dear to his heart and his pocketbook. Uncle Jack’s heart and pocketbook that is. What he talked about was the internet.

The President is a superb politician so you can never be sure what he really thinks about the internet or anything else for that matter. Whether he meant them or not, though, he surely did say all the right things in his speech down in Columbus County the other day.

“I don’t care if you don’t have a college degree. I don’t care if you never finished high school. You need to figure out how these computers work. You need to figure out how to get on the internet. You need to figure out how to do this because this is the future of America,” he said. And Uncle Jack says “Amen”.

As far as he knows the President did not specifically mention eBay but he is pretty sure that must be what he had in mind. Uncle Jack does not need any convincing that eBay is where it’s at in the future department and he will explain what he means in a minute.

The President and the Governor talked a lot about the “digital divide” between urban and rural parts of the country and the Governor unveiled his plan to wire up the entire state, urban and rural, for high-speed internet service within the next three years. He said the big telephone companies had agreed to help which is a good thing because they own all the wires, but he did not say how he would get them to do any more than they are already doing.

The paper said that only 20 percent of North Carolinians are hooked up to the internet now and our great state ranks 46^th in the country in that category. Presumably we have been saved again by Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia which have traditionally rescued us Tarheels from total ignominy in so many areas of human endeavor.

And this brings Uncle Jack back to eBay where his chief stock in trade is old maps of Civil War battlefields in---you guessed it---Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and other parts of the South where not too many years ago politicians were touting indoor plumbing with the same fervor they accord the internet today. He is doing so well with only 20 percent of his potential customers hooked up that he can only imagine what riches may accrue when every rural hamlet in the South boasts high-speed internet access.

He agrees with the President that the future of the rural South lies in the internet, or more specifically eBay. He is convinced that one of the greatest untapped sources of wealth in America lies in the back (and front) yards of dilapidated houses all over the region. Those hitherto worthless accretions of discarded trucks and automobiles, appliances, farm implements, furniture and God knows what else now have a market. Ebayers will buy anything. Uncle Jack knows.

         Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Uncle Jack read in the paper last week that Town of Nags Head officials are agonizing over how best to preserve the town’s “historic district”---the mile-long row of old cottages on the ocean front opposite Jockey’s Ridge. The recent issuance of a CAMA permit to demolish one of the old buildings because it is considered too unstable to move has reawakened interest in trying to find some way to preserve the historic character of that defining part of Nags Head.

According to the newspaper report “the board is considering entering the long and arduous process of creating a commission to regulate what can and cannot be done to the town’s historic homes”, which determination Uncle Jack applauds. But he is not sanguine about what such a commission could accomplish over the long haul. He says this because Mother Nature is one of the players in this game and she is likely to make up her own mind about what will happen to those delightful old buildings, regulations notwithstanding.

By pure coincidence Uncle Jack came to Nags Head for the first time in 1969, the same year that the National Geographic Magazine published in its September issue a comprehensive article about the Outer Banks. One of the illustrations for the piece as an aerial photograph of the old cottage row from the Arlington Hotel at the south to the First Colony Inn at the north. The photo was taken seven years after the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 by which time many of the surviving cottages had been moved back from the ocean---some for the third or fourth time. (Part of the substructure of one of the cottages is clearly visible at the edge of the surf at its previous location).

The venerable Arlington juts out like a sore thumb in the picture. Too large and ungainly to move, it stayed put until destroyed by a storm in 1973. Prior to its demise Uncle Jack ate many a delicious lunch and dinner in the Arlington’s superb dining room as the waves rolled under it and shook the building. For a while the Arlington was possibly the most exciting dining place in America---in more ways than one.

He once interviewed the owner, Mrs. Phoebe Hayman, who reminisced about the extremely wide beach that fronted the hotel when it was built in the early 30’s. It was so wide that she had to nag the lifeguards to carry their umbrellas and chairs all the way out to the water’s edge rather than setting them up halfway as they were wont to do.

The First Colony Inn was saved---not by declaring it a national treasure (which it is for no other reason than that Uncle Jack was the manager for two summers) but by cutting it into three pieces and moving it to a new location between the highways---far from the waves that were pounding it to pieces every winter in its last years on the oceanfront. But for its rescuers, the Lawrence family, it probably would have gone the way of the Arlington, or the Old Nagsheader which was deliberately torched in 1977, or the Croatan Inn, demolished in 2006.

Since that historic photo was taken in 1969, most of the old cottages have been moved backed yet again as storms have relentlessly chewed away at the beach in front of them. Nearly all have now been moved back as far as they can go---in effect their fate sealed by the building of the Beach Road in the early 30’s. Ironically the Beach Road caused them to be built in the first place and now, along with the ocean, it is their nemesis.

Some, like the First Colony, have been moved back across the road and more could follow, but it looks to Uncle Jack that in the foreseeable future, barring massive and endless expenditures for beach replenishment, the erstwhile “historic district” could be history.

It is possible, of course, that the geological processes which have shaped the Outer Banks over millennia could suddenly reverse themselves. And wouldn’t Uncle Jack have egg on his face if that happens!

                          High on the Hog

This was the week for the Nags Head Surf Fishing Club’s annual Pig Pickin’ and Social Hour so Uncle Jack does not have to tell you what kind of a week this was for him. As far as he is concerned this week ranks right up there with Thanksgiving in the eating department every year.

There is no way he can tell you how good the pig was this year except to say it was just as good as last year. If you were at the pig pickin’ last year you will know what he is talking about but if you were not there you are out of luck. Words fail him sometimes and this is one of them. While he was working on his second plate it occurred to him that this is probably where they got that old saying about “eating high on the hog”.

Actually it is hard to tell if you are eating high on the hog or not because they chop it up pretty fine and one piece looks a lot like the others by the time they get through. But no matter where it came from, high or low, it was all good and that applies to the fixin’s too.

As far as Uncle Jack is concerned the Spring Pig Pickin’ is one of the premiere events on the Outer Banks social calendar and he could tell that a lot of other people feel the same way because practically everybody there was wearing shoes, including Senator Basnight. Uncle Jack tried out his brand new state-of-the-art Pro-Keds which have the Velcro tabs instead of laces. He is pleased to tell you they held up very well and gave him good traction even late in the evening when the floor started getting fairly greasy in spots.

Just about everybody who is anybody was there including numerous political leaders who were easy to spot because they were trying to talk and shake hands and eat pig all at the same time so they tended to look a little more awkward than they really are.

Anyway it made Uncle Jack feel good to think that a person like himself who never even saw a bluefish until he was forty years old could be a member in good standing of a high-ranking organization like the Nags Head Surf Fishing Club. Only in America.

This was a big week in the eating department for another reason, too. Uncle Jack’s only begotten son came home from college for a few days and he brought several friends from China home with him. One of these friends insisted on doing all the cooking so being a gracious host and everything Uncle Jack did not argue about it for more than a few seconds.

He is glad he was gracious, too, because he wound up eating three of the best Chinese dinners he has ever had and he has had a lot of them. He got his share, too, because he ate with a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other which gave him quite an advantage over his guests who were doing the best they could with chopsticks. It is hard for Uncle Jack to figure out how there ever got to be a billion Chinese people when all they had to survive on was what they could get in their mouths with chopsticks. One of these days somebody is going to get very rich by taking a lot of forks and spoons over to China and calling them “high tech chopsticks”.

Anyway he hopes his son will come back soon with those same friends because he really enjoyed their visit and also he is hungry again already.

               Requiem for Snug

Uncle Jack has seen a lot of changes along the Beach Road (a.k.a. N.C. highway 12) in Nags Head since he first used it back in 1969 to reach the First Colony Inn which was on the oceanfront in those days near the 13 milepost. Some years ago it was cut into three pieces and moved to a new location between the highways near the 16 milepost where it is enjoying a second life as an upscale boutique hotel.

While being sliced in thirds and trundled down the road like a wagon load of used lumber may seem a bit undignified it was a far better fate than most of the Beach Road’s older hostelries have met in the past 35 years. The gracious old Arlington of lemon chess pie fame collapsed in a storm in 1973. The Old Nagsheader, which stood in all its white wrap-around glory across the street from Uncle Jack’s Yellowhouse Gallery, succumbed to arson in 1977. More recently the Cabana East, the Olde London Inn, the Carolinian, the Beachcomber, the Sea Oatel and several others whose names he has forgotten have been demolished to make room on the ocean front for more of the giant particle board palaces which now dominate the rental market almost everywhere on the Outer Banks.

Uncle Jack has fond personal memories of most of these departed hostelries but it was the least of them, and by far the most eccentric, that he remembers best. It was a rooming house known to the general public as Snug Harbor but more often to its denizens (and the police) as Bug Harbor, Drug Harbor and Thug Harbor. The sagging three-story structure stood next door to Uncle Jack’s gallery near the 11 milepost and for over 20 years until its demise in 1999 was an almost constant source of both irritation and entertainment for him and his customers.

Living with Snug was like living next door to several TV shows simultaneously. Episodes of ER, The X-Files, Miami Vice, Studio Wrestling, and Sanford and Son could have been filmed in the parking lot. Many a dull day on the Beach Road was enlivened by the arrival of what seemed like half the armed forces of Dare County bent on apprehending some scraggly, shirtless, shoeless miscreant who had found temporary shelter within the sagging walls of what was probably the least discriminating hostelry on the entire East Coast. Uncle Jack often thought that moving in shackles from Snug Harbor to the county jail had to be a step up for many of its inhabitants.

For many years Uncle Jack shared a dumpster with the thirsty denizens of Snug Harbor and he was not surprised that the bottom of that sturdy steel receptacle rotted out in less than half the normal time. Now that he has seen what beer can do to the bottom of a dumpster he can only speculate on what it might be doing to his own innards.

Snug was mortally damaged by a fire in the attic during the winter of 1999 (the last of many fires over the years) and a few months later was demolished and carted off to the county landfill where it joins the remains of its spiritual cousins---the Foosball Palace, the Casino, the Aladdin and all the other slightly disreputable establishments that once gave the Beach Road its funky character. A huge frontloader accomplished in one week what the tenants had been trying to do for decades.

The lot still stands empty seven years later but Uncle Jack is sure that one of these days some cash-laden Yankee developer will come along and build another 10 bedroom, ten bath (9 more than Snug ever had) “cottage” on the premises but it won’t be the same. Blandness thy name is Beach Road.

                          Road Rage

Uncle Jack has had a slow leak in the left rear tire on his pre-rusted Plymouth Voyager for the past couple of weeks so he is starting to think it might be time for him to get a new car. It has almost 40,000 miles on it and the light bulb in the glove compartment is burned out so he thinks maybe the time has come.

Ordinarily he would just go over to Junior’s Chrysler place and trade it in on a new Voyager or Caravan or whatever they are calling them now but these are not ordinary times any more. As he has often said he spends most of his time now waiting to make left turns on the bypass and he has been thinking it might be smart to move himself into something a little more macho and aggressive in the car department.

It seems like most of the cars on the Outer Banks these days are either monster pickup trucks or what they call SUVs which are these big gas-guzzling, four-wheel-drive car/trucks which are apparently what the average housewife needs to get to the grocery store and back safely these days.

They all have names like “Expedition” and “Range Rover” which makes it sound like going to the Food Lion is like going on safari in Africa which is probably not too much of an exaggeration come to think of it with all those Mustangs and Cougars and Impalas and Broncos out there. Uncle Jack would rather tangle with a herd of wildebeests than some of the drivers he has seen on the bypass this summer.

Anyway he has been fantasizing about which car to buy but he couldn’t make up his mind until he read in the New York Times last week about this car called the Hummer which the General Motors company will be making from now on and which it hopes will be a big seller in years to come. (GM’s slogan, remember, is “What’s good for GM is good for America).

In case you are not quite up to speed on the latest developments in automotive science Uncle Jack will explain that the Hummer is a civilian version of the HumVee which is an army vehicle that looks like a Jeep on steroids. By “civilian version” they mean that the rocket launcher is an optional extra but Uncle Jack is willing to bet that within a couple of years all the HumVee armament will be standard equipment if driving gets any worse than it has been lately. When it comes to “road rage” we have not seen anything yet, he fears.

If you have not yet been frightened by a Hummer he will tell you that they are really big---over seven feet wide with nearly a foot-and-a-half of road clearance and weighing more than two Jeep Wagoneers put together, so you can see why they would appeal to the average American driver. The only reason they are not already stalled in traffic everywhere so you can get a good look at one is the $100,000 price tag which pretty much puts them out of the range of everybody except dot.com millionaires and timeshare salesmen right now.

Uncle Jack was reading the Hummer article in the New York Times the other day while he was waiting to make a left turn into the ABC store and there was this quote from a Mr. Schwartz of Bellevue, Washington who said “I love the fact that the Hummer is a tank, it’s like a tank with fashion, it’s like having your own war toy. I like something where I can look down into another car and give that knowing smile that says ‘I’m bigger than you’. It makes me feel powerful”. Mr. Schwartz is only a high school student but Ernest Hemingway could not have said it better if you ask Uncle Jack. He is not sure why Mike Tyson and Arnold Schwarzenegger feel like they have to drive Hummers because it seems to him that they would be fairly intimidating driving Honda Civics which they could pick up and throw at somebody if they had to.

As much as he would like to put himself behind the wheel of a Hummer Uncle Jack is probably going to have to settle for another wimpy Voyager which could not even take on a Suzuki Samurai in ordinary road combat. He simply cannot bring himself to buy a car that costs almost as much as a week’s vacation in London.

(P.S.  If you have been paying attention for the past year or so you know what he actually bought)