Perilous Beginnings

Having appreciated all the benefits that aviation afforded, my father obtained a student pilot’s license in November of 1955. In October of 1959, he had accumulated enough solo flying hours to get his pilot’s license. By the time we had moved to Westport, he had become obsessed with buying a plane for family trips. He finally realized this dream in January of 1962 when he purchased a 1950 Bellanca Cruisair. I remember meeting him at the airport when he arrived flying his own airplane. He was so excited! Admittedly, the plane, being 12 years old, needed some work. The nose cone on the propeller was missing, and the bare metal arms where the cone attached reminded me of the mandibles of some gigantic insect. It seemed very strange to me, but I was soon to become very well acquainted with the “good bones” of this airplane. From that time forward, we flew everywhere. My father was put in charge of exploring and developing a phosphate deposit on the Pamlico River in North Carolina, and he took frequent trips there in his new plane. By April he was transferred there to more closely supervise the development of a large deposit he had discovered. My parents rented a large antebellum farmhouse on Archibald Point, three miles outside of Bath, North Carolina. It was on a bluff overlooking the Pamlico River, surrounded by tobacco fields, barns and outbuildings, a paradise for any kid who liked to explore. We moved there in July, and my father commuted by outboard motorboat five miles to the project site on the opposite side of the river near Aurora, North Carolina. Living on Archibald Point was certainly an idyllic life for me and my sister, and my father seemed to relish the opportunity to build the mine for a deposit which he had discovered. In July and August of 1962, we made no less than four trips by plane to the Outer Banks, usually flying into Ocracoke, spending the day playing on the beach and returning home the same day. On July 4th, not long after we moved there, my parents received an invitation to an Independence Day celebration at Hawkins Beach, a little over a mile upriver by boat. My parents dressed up and left us with a sitter and then went by outboard boat to the party. I was very disappointed at not being able to go and I remember crying as they left. They arrived at the beach and found that it was a family affair, so they returned to bring us to the party. There were kids running everywhere with ice cream and sparklers. This was where I met Jess Hawkins who would become one of my best friends. I stuck close to him all evening and I remember one of his cousins taking his sister’s ice cream cone and turning his back to her, he slid a live frog in the cone under the ice cream and handed it back to her. We weren’t around when she got to the bottom of the ice cream, but I couldn’t help imagining the shock. The evening was capped off with a fantastic fireworks show, shot from the shore out over the river. It was a slice of rural americana, like a Norman Rockwell painting, which is permanently etched in my memory. That winter, a large flatbed semi showed up in the field, and it had an old shack on the back. They unloaded it in a small meadow within sight of our house. It was the home of the Linton’s who were to sharecrop farm the land around the house that we rented. It was a very small four-room shack, and they had a large family. The youngest, Wayne became my other best friend while we lived there. As I recall, he had eight siblings, most were grown and gone, and the oldest was serving time on the chain gang. There was a hand pump well out back and an outhouse, and a wringer washer on the back porch. I loved visiting there at lunchtime. Mrs. Linton had no running water and cooked on a wood stove, but by my measure, she made the best food I had ever eaten. I remember her boiling fresh picked black-eyed peas. She took a slab of salt pork and sliced it thin down to the rind but not through. She laid the salt pork with the slices dangling from the rind on top of the peas as they boiled. When the peas were done, she removed the salt pork and cut through the rind laying the slices to fry in a cast iron skillet. She served us the black-eyed peas and fried salt pork with collard greens and corn bread. I still fantasize about that food.