2024: A Small Present on Christmas Morning.

December 26, 2024January 14, 2025 bgibson135

— present day —

I was visiting Mary Ann and family down in Hubert, North Carolina for Christmas 2024. There is only one other person in the household that likes to get up and have breakfast. I’ve always loved eating breakfast and basically go by the adage that “a good breakfast is necessary to have the energy to start every day.” You don’t need a large meal at dinnertime, although I might not have faithfully adhered to that suggestion most of my life.

So, I found myself on Christmas morning, up early with no place to go… to get a good breakfast. Since Mary Ann doesn’t eat breakfast, there usually are no breakfast foods in the fridge. There usually are “left overs” from a previous meal, and sometimes that works for me. But I decided to go out for an early Christmas morning drive. Every breakfast restaurant was closed, except for a Starbucks over in Cape Carteret. I did have a hot cup of Taylor’s Scottish Breakfast tea before I left Mary Ann’s.

Looking out the Swansboro Burger King at the old farm place.

I did a brief tour around the family cemetery (QC Elementary) and then drove around the Burger King, and then on to Swansboro for a brief drive down the waterfront. Then I went through Cape Carteret, over the bridge, and on to Bogue Island.

— a memory —

Sometimes when I am crossing this bridge I think back to one of my high school proms. I think John Sharp had his dad’s truck that had a camper on the back. John, Steve Cooper and myself went down to “The Point” after our prom and spent the night, drinking “Boone’s Farm Apple” and “Strawberry” wine. I had bought brand new shiny black shoes to go with my rented tux, but they were too tight to wear for very long.

Anyway, next morning, I was planning to go see Debbie, who lived on the other side of the Waterway across the “not yet opened” bridge. The bridge was completed but it hadn’t been opened to traffic yet, so I had John drive me up to the bridge and let me out. He would have to drive all the way back to Morehead City to cross the bridge there, and then all the way back down Hwy. 24 past Cape Carteret, thru Swansboro and on even past Hubert to where he lived at Piney Green.

I was wearing my new black dress shoes, the only ones I had with me. I don’t think I even had socks on, but I started walking across the bridge. I’m not sure if I made it all the way over the bridge before I had worn blisters on the back of each of my heels. I took the shoes off and continued to walk beside the road.

They hadn’t opened the bridge yet, but they had planted grass seeds beside the road and spread straw over it and sprayed black tar on the straw to keep it from blowing away. A great idea unless you are walking barefoot, with blisters on your heels. As I walked the tar stuck to the bottoms of my feet, and then the straw stuck to my tar coated feet. After a short distance, I had a wonderful shoe made of my straw & tar coated foot. I would have walked past the Cape “C” Shopworth convenience store on my travels. This was the only store along Hwy. 24 here, nothing else but woods. I think the Circle K convenience store is either built on or on top of where the Cape “C” Shopworth was located.

I must have been a sight as I walked up the driveway to Debbie’s house. If you had only looked at my feet you might have thought of me as a perverted version of the Scarecrow from “The Wizard of OZ.” They took pity on me, but I couldn’t go inside with my tar covered feet. And, it was no easy matter to remove the tar & straw mixture. I think Debbie eventually drove me in the little Blue AMC Gremlin back to Sis’s house in Hubert. I manually pulled off some of the straw and tar, but I think we also tried to use something like paint thinner or some other solvent to remove the tar. Eventually I got the straw & tar off my feet, and could wear shoes again, but not the black dress shoes anytime soon.

— present day —

I decided to drive down to the end of the island, where an old Coast Guard Station had been located.

— another memory —

Along this route is where, long ago, when I was back in high school, I went riding with John Sharp & maybe Steve Cooper. John had a small light grey/blue VW station wagon. A nice little car for a student, but not as nice as the 1971 Pontiac LeMans mom got me for my Senior Year present. But John found himself racing someone he knew down this road. John was slightly behind whomever he was racing when he came to a sharp curve. It was here that John decided to drift to the right, around the outside of his fellow racer, instead of the inside, where he should have tried to pass. Well, the guy ahead must have looked back for John, but was looking inside to his left, and he began to drift to the right, where John was actually going. Yep. He hit John, not bad, but they hit each other. John was going to have to explain the damage to his car to his dad, but the car was still very drivable and we went on.

— present day —

So 2024, and I am driving down this road, past various colorful beach houses, and almost to the end of the road, either a turn around, or drive onto the beach. I saw a couple of people, a man and woman, walking beside the road. I saw they were each carrying some kind of “walking stick.” But, I had never seen a walking stick like these.

The one stick that I could describe from only a few moments as I passed the man, was it had a small round shiny metal head, with what appeared to be a large chain link net. I had never seen something like this before and I looked in my rearview mirror before I turned the corner to see if they were carrying any bags. My quick thought was that maybe these sticks were actually used for scooping up dog manure, but if that was the case the couple would have had a “doggy bag” to put the feces in, and they didn’t have a bag, that I could see.

I was near a turn around and this was surrounded by several beach homes. I stopped by an uninhabited house and took my phone to google for “walking stick with a shiny metal net on one end.” I had no clue what to call it so I just tried to describe all the distinguishing features I had seen. Nope, what came up looked nothing like what I had briefly seen. They were all normal looking walking sticks. I said to myself, “I will be wondering about this all day. What were those sticks.”

I turned around to retrace my route, and kept looking for the couple with the strange walking sticks, but they were no where to be seen. I figured they either lived or were renting one of these beach homes and had already made it back home. I did a circuitous round through the neighborhood and forgetting them turned to continue back the way I had come. It was then that I saw the couple, about to get into their parked silver colored Dodge Ram extended cab truck. *I’ve owned a blue & silver, Dodge Ram 1500 extended cab truck, so I know what they look like.

I first started to pull into the parking lot, but saw a Exit sign so I quickly whipped back onto the road and around to the Entrance. I was rushing to try and get to their truck before they were safely inside with their doors closed. If that had happened I wouldn’t have stopped to bother them.

But no, the man still had his driver’s side door open and I called out to him, “Excuse me sir, but I noticed that you and your wife were walking along the road and you had some unusual looking walking sticks that I’ve never seen before. One seemed to have a shiny round metal net on one end. I’ve never seen a walking stick like that.” He laughed and walked around to the rear passenger side door and brought out the two sticks they had been carrying and brought them up closer to my car window. He then explained that they were “shell scoops,” for digging shells. His wife’s scoop had an aqua colored plastic scoop that looked a lot like a large spaghetti fork. I said I had never seen anything like these, but I had grown up in the Swansboro area. I asked for clarification, “So you scoop into the sand to dig up the shells,” and he replied, “yes.” He told me these scoops were available at the local hardware store. I thanked the both of them, and said loudly, “Merry Christmas,” to which they both replied the same, “Merry Christmas,” and I heard them both laughing as I drove off. *This shell scoop has a telescoping handle, so you don’t have to bend over much to scoop.

What a pleasant interchange on a Christmas morning. Meeting a friendly couple willing to share their knowledge to satisfy my curiosity. A small present on Christmas morning.

After I left the couple, I drove on and down by the Islander Hotel that we had our 50th Swansboro High School Reunion a few years ago. Instead of driving through the hotel parking lot, I drove around the Public Beach Access parking lot next door.

Next I went down to the parking lot at Bogue Inlet Fishing Peer. *I’ve probably been down there several times through the years, and many times on cold Christmas mornings and I’m always reminded of a Christmas morning long ago.

— a memory —

My mother had gotten a co-worker of hers, “Rip” Jackson, to buy fishing “stuff” for my Christmas present. She was working at the Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory in Building 66 as a Clerk Typist. Rip Jackson lived in Sneads Ferry. He had also gotten my dog “Lassie” for me some years earlier. Mr. Jackson worked with the test animals at Building 66.

For my Christmas present, I had gotten a rod, and a No.9 Penn Peerless fishing reel, a copper colored fishing tackle box and several lures, hooks, weights, connectors, and even some fish bait oil (that smelled sweet & maybe like almonds).

The one lure I recall was a pearly white shrimp, that had two three pronged hooks attached. I’ve thought this lure would probably scare away more fish than it would attract. The lure shown to the right is close to the shrimp shape and the double three pronged hooks, but my lure was a solid pearly white with no other colors.

I still have the Penn Peerless rod in my bathroom, above the medicine cabinet.

Neither my mom nor I were fishermen. Not a clue. But we bundled up and drove down to the Bogue Inlet Fishing Peer on the cold, slightly windy Christmas morning. I might have been about 14 or 15 years old at the time. We got out and went onto the pier. There were just a few fishermen out that morning. There was one old fisherman, near where the waves were breaking far below the pier. He was pulling in one fish after another, and we were catching nothing. At some point, mom suggested that we move near this old fisherman. We did, and in a little while, he moved away from us. I think we moved close to him once again, and since we were probably scaring the fish away from him, he moved again. Eventually, we left, having caught no fish. But now that I think about it, “What a mother I had!” Maybe that is what mothers do. Get up on cold Christmas mornings and go out with their child onto a fishing pier in the Atlantic Ocean.

— present day —

After Bogue Inlet Pier, I drove back over the bridge that crosses the Intracoastal Waterway, and then turned to drive by the house where Debbie had lived. I think her address was 305R Holly Lane, Cape Carteret, North Carolina. The present day address shows as 305 without the “R.”

Where the current garage is located, was just an open car port when Debbie was living there. I think her bedroom was in the front right (facing the house) of the house, but I think I only went in there once.

If you look closely below at part of Holly Lane, you may be able to see that the street widens slightly, and there is a middle portion of discolored asphalt. When Debbie was still living down there, there was a tree growing in the middle of the street. It was there for many years.

Eventually, I drove back to Mary Ann’s in Hubert, but before I did I did a brief detour through the old part of Hwy. 24 that went through Hubert proper, glancing at where the Gurba’s used to live, and to my left as I passed where Rafe Williams’ barbershop was located.

— a memory —

The aside regarding Rafe’s barbering was that I had gone to Rafe for probably at least 15 years, and even while I was living down in Alabama (at age 29), I went without a hair cut for about three months. I came all the way back to Hubert, a very shaggy young man, and got another haircut from Rafe.

So, after I returned permanently and was living in Jacksonville again, I drove down one morning (probably a Friday) to Hubert and went in to have a haircut. Rafe didn’t even turn on the lights in his shop. I sat in his chair as I had so many times before, as he went through his barbering motions and finished, and I think I paid him $2 for the haircut. I walked out to my car, got in and as I began to back out, I looked in my mirror. I immediately saw that my right and left sideburns were very different. I put a finger at the base of each sideburn and realized that they were at least 2 inches different. One side I might call “high and tight” and the other was regular length (what I normally had). I turned around and drove back up to the front door of the barber shop.

I went inside and told Rafe that my two sideburns were very different and would need to be corrected. As we all know, or should, you can make a sideburn shorter, but you can’t make it longer. Rafe cut the regular sideburn shorter to match the other “high-n-tight.”

Later that morning, I had to go to the Baptist Association to have a meeting regarding the next year’s Youth Camp. All during the meeting I kept griping about how my barber had ruined my hair and I started saying that I was going to cut it all off. Rev. Jim Kelly, my best friend at the time, was also at the meeting. He told me not to cut my hair off because it would make him laugh, if he looked up while he was preaching and saw me bald.

It may have taken me a day of griping to finally get serious about it. But Saturday night about midnight I finally decided to get serious about removing my hair. Then you have to figure out how to do this. Do you shave it all off with a razor?

I went to my bathroom, looked in the mirror and cut a very small portion of hair off about where my “cowlick” came to a point. I looked. I hadn’t gone so far that I couldn’t stop, and no one would notice. But after a short while I got serious about cutting it all off. I cut the long parts off with my scissors, and then when it was short enough, I finished the job with my razor. I went to bed bald, on a very cold January night, and woke up with my shaved head under the covers the next morning. Let me say this. A person loses a lot of heat without hair, so don’t cut your hair off in the winter.

I showered, and went to church and sat where I normally sat in church. After the service I came up to talk to a friend. He told me that his wife had kept telling him to look at Bill Gibson, and he kept looking around the bald guy to see where Bill was. Funny, huh? It took several months for my hair to grow back, but it did grow back, and I still have most of it, to this day, but strangely, I never went back again to have Rafe give me a haircut, and I’ve had several good barbers since… and another careless one too.

— present day —

When I got back to Mary Ann’s she was still the only other person downstairs.

Original: Outer Limits – The Premonition

January 11, 2024October 31, 2024 bgibson135

I’m watching a re-run of the old Outer Limits episode called, “the Premonition.” The intro to this episode included video clips from the actual X-15, and the B-52 used to lift it into the sky. I recall, at the time, that there were ice cream/popsicle trading cards which included airplanes, the X-15 and I think things like rockets such as the Nike Zeus. *Although the name “Nike Zeus” stuck in my mind, the image I recall was apparently called “Nike Hercules.”

But the realization I just had was that I never thought, as a boy, “I’d like to be a part of that, maybe fly that aircraft,” or, “help build that aircraft, or whatever the next best thing is.” I never thought, “I’d like to work for NASA.” And, that’s something that I think a boy should think, or be taught to think, whether they grow up to work for NASA, or become a ditch digger, or policeman.

I understood many things, and thought of many things in a more “worldly” way, that I attribute to having watched a good deal of television when I was growing up. I didn’t think about being a farmer, or growing tobacco, although my family (mother) owned “the family farm,” and tobacco, corn & soy beans were grown on this land, by “the Fat Farmer,” Frank Howell. I came up with the name, “Fat Farmer” because he drove around in a big truck to the various farms he had leased from different people, and he had a big belly that flopped over his waist band. I think we received $3,000 a year for his leasing our farm, and the majority of that amount was due to the Tobacco Allotment. I’m guessing the Tobacco Allotment was determined by the Federal Government, and based upon the amount of tobacco that could be grown on our farm that year. The Fat Farmer would combine these tobacco allotments from the various farms, but would actually grow this combination of tobacco on one or more of these farms. That would make sense, to grow a crop on land that would produce the most. You could concentrate your equipment & workers, and raw products, seeds, fertilizer & pesticides on a few acres, not have to actually move them from small plot, to small plot on many farms.

[NOTE 10/31/24]: Last week when I was visiting Mary Ann we met at El Catrin. There were a couple of ladies from her group that were already there. I didn’t catch the name of the woman sitting next to me but we talked for quite a bit during lunch, but at the end she mentioned that Frank Howell was her father. I had never met her. She had moved from the area and worked as a Cooperative Extension Agent (I think.) for 30 years before retiring. This was down in South Carolina in the Clemson area. When she said that Frank Howell was her father I asked her name and it was Nelda Howell. Mary Ann said she never married. I told her we called him the “Fat Farmer” and she laughed because she had never heard that name before. I also told her the story of once they were hauling large bales of tobacco (the cured leaves packaged up like a big tobacco doughnut and tied up in a large square burlap sack) on the back of a small pick up truck. There was a young teenage black boy sitting atop about 5 bales which put him fairly high in the sky. There was nothing tying these bales to the truck, and it was moving slowly and turned up Hwy. 24 where Queens Creek Road meets 24. As the truck turned, the bales of tobacco swayed slightly. The boy on top would have been severely hurt if the bales had actually fell. [end NOTE]

For years, mom paid taxes on the family farm based upon the size being 70 acres. But, when the farm was finally transferred to the New River Baptist Association (many years after her death) and the land actually surveyed, the total acreage was 79 acres.

Mom worked as a Civil Service Clerk Typist for over 40 years, most of that time was aboard Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base. She worked at Building 66 – Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory for a few years. I think two of her co-workers there were Barbara Brainerd and Robin Short. There was also a Robin Short, a daughter of mom’s co-worker, that attended Swansboro High School, and was a few years older than myself.

Not my tackle box, but exactly like the one I had.

At Building 66, mom had a co-worker named, Rip Jackson, who lived down in Sneads Ferry. One year, mom had him buy fishing gear that she gave to me as a Christmas present. I don’t recall, but there had to be a fishing rod, and I still have the Penn Peerless No. 9 reel. There was a copper colored tackle box and inside were some lures and fishing hooks & lead weights. I do recall one lure which appeared to be an ivory white hard plastic shrimp with a couple of 3 pronged hooks hanging down. I think there was also a bottle of fish ointment, meant to attract fish. You were supposed to put a little of this oil on a lure. I think it smelled like almonds, but maybe not.

That Christmas, mom & I drove down to the Emerald Isle Fishing Pier. She nor I had any idea about how to fish, in the Atlantic Ocean, or anywhere else for that matter. This was way before the Internet, where I could now go online and watch YouTube videos and read about fishing, and then at least have some idea of how to fish. But, then, nada.

Rip Jackson was also the guy that got me Lassie, my dog, which was to be one of the test subjects at the Lab. *This time period would have been during the Vietnam War, and I recall some story about one of the tests at the lab being putting an actual cadaver foot in a combat boot and blowing it up to see the effects of the blast on a human foot. I never actually saw this, but that is a mental image that has stuck with me ever since I was told it, when a child.

Not sure if I was going fishing, but one time during cold weather, seems like it was also on the Emerald Isle Fishing Pier, the Atlantic Ocean was dead calm (no waves at all, glassy, unusual), but the steam was rising off the water, almost like smoke.

There were a few people on the fishing pier, Christmas day, that year. There was an old guy, near where the waves were breaking below, near shore, and he was pulling in fish, one after another. Mom and I would move close to him (probably causing the fish to move away from him also) trying to get some of his “luck”, but we didn’t catch anything. And, shortly after we moved close to him, he would move away from us. Not sure that I went fishing ever again with that equipment. Years later, I did go fishing with Ervin Wilkins (Aunt Pete’s long-time boyfriend.) in his small boat. He looked kindly on a fatherless boy, and we went out from Aunt Pete’s dock, in front of her house at 521 Riverside Drive in Portsmouth, VA.

I recall that once, we left the dock almost too late. The tide was going out fast, and we came close to being stuck in the mud, a short distance from her dock. Not sure if we would have tried to walk back to shore, in the deep mud, or just wait for hours until the tide came back in. But, we got out. And, not sure if it was this time also, but we were in the James River, between Portsmouth & Norfolk, and both Ervin and I had our lines in the water. We both snagged something at about the same time, but on different sides of his boat. We started reeling our lines in, and after a while it became obvious that our lines had become tangled together. And then, our hooks had snagged the same Toad Fish, an extremely ugly fish, and not good for eating and the lines had wrapped around each other, to the point that Ervin just cut both lines, instead of trying to unwind them.

Lassie loved to chase cars, and one morning, she chased her last car. Seems like the car had those large fins on the back, maybe a Plymouth Fury. The car had turned down Queens Creek Road from Highway 24, and heading toward Queens Creek and Lassie chased it. I did not see this at first, but heard Lassie yelp as she was hit by the car. I think I looked out from our kitchen window, and maybe that is where I saw the car briefly, and saw Lassie as she ran from the side of the road, and past the kitchen and around the back of the house (where our smokehouse was located). I ran out of the kitchen and off the back porch and found her dead (I say her, but I honestly don’t recall if lassie were male or female.) in the back yard. Painful, but that’s what happens if you chase cars. *Oh, the car did not stop, and I didn’t expect it to. And, having seen the dog run a good distance around past the kitchen, the driver may have never known that they had killed my dog.

[NOTE]: The photo of my Penn Peerless No. 9 above also shows three carved wooden fishermen. I bought several, maybe 10 or 12, of these carved wooden figures more than 30 years ago. I think they were $1@ and I got them at the specialty store in New River Shopping Center. I was living at 204 Johnson Blvd. which was a short distance away.

Several times through the years, I’ve thought about trying to buy some extra carved figures in order to make a complete “fisherman” themed chess set. Haven’t found any figures that are about the same size, and each one is now too expensive to make a chess set. There would be a problem with how to color the two sides, but I like the shape of the fisherman in the yellow rain slicker & hat, to be used as a Bishop. There were no female carved characters. Last year, I came up with the idea of using carved pilings with a perched sea gull as a Rook.

I was trying to recall the name of the specialty store, in New River Shopping Center, where I bought the carved figures. The store location was where the old Sears had been located. I also bought a set of dishes there, made by Gibson Company, and I have used them, and continue to use them to this day, for about 30 years.

But, this reminded me of some of the other stores that had been in NRSC in my years growing up. There was the Colonial Store (they had Gold Bond Savings Stamps – equivalent to S&H Green Stamps) on one corner & the Center Theater was in the same block, on another corner. One Saturday, Rick Tash, a TV personality from a Wilmington, NC TV station came to the Colonial Store in Jacksonville and gave away Balsa wood airplanes. I don’t recall, but this little airplane glider might have had had a red plastic propeller and a rubber band set up that, once wound up, would propel the plane a short distance. *I show you the glider here because it seems so close to my memory of what I actually had (several times) as a child. The nose had a metal clasp to protect the nose of the toy when it hit something hard. And, the plastic wrapper seems so familiar, and only 10 cents.

There were also dishes with a wheat pattern. I think you could purchase a dish item (cup, saucer, dinner plate, bowl, etc.) if you had bought a certain amount of groceries, but I don’t recall how many groceries, or if you had to pay for the wheat patterned item.

There were also the Golden Book Encyclopedias. I think there was one volume available, not sure if it was every week, or every month, so you would purchase Volume 1 and take it home and wait until the next volume was available. There were 16 volumes total in the set. I bought a set of these, as an adult, that also included about 5 or 6 extra books that were geographical specific. I still have them. They were small volumes, but had lots of colorful pictures to illustrate the various topics, and the volume covers were each distinctive. Not sure how much each volume cost.

Roses Department Store was a favorite visit. Ron-Cor was a hobby store that at one point had a large slot car track. Bill Rollis’ Steakhouse was on the corner down from Ron-Cor, and across the parking lot from the Center Theater. I think I took a date (maybe even Debbie Sutton) there once, and we both had steak & lobster dinners for a total of $20 (not each, the two). *I had almost forgotten that next to Ron-Cor (or thereabouts) was Peck’s Bakery. I don’t know that I ever went in this bakery, but I always equated the phrase, “Peck’s bad boys,” with this business. Years later, and maybe from something online, I realized that the bad boys were sons of a different Peck, not this baker, in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

There was a “red-haired” girl that was interested in me, and her brother worked or managed the Center Theater. Seems like I/we went, for free, on a couple of Saturday mornings to the serials they were showing. Not sure if the serials were a Western or maybe Flash Gordon (SciFi). I think movies only cost 25 cents.

Down from the Center Theater, there was a jewelry store, and that may have become a Men’s Clothing Store, or was next to it at a later time. I bought a nice Herringbone “London Fog” Overcoat from this clothing store, when I was a college student. I kept this coat for over 20 years, maybe 30, and then when I looked closer, I saw moth holes in the sleeve. And then I threw it away, but it was a very nice, classic men’s overcoat.

Perhaps the men’s clothing store was around the corner from the jewelry store, or it seems that was the location of the entrance to the clothing store. And, the clothing store might have been owned by a Popkin (Jewish).

On the inside corner of the building, next to the men’s clothing store, was a little enclosure, with a cross-hatch wooden ribbing & I think it had some glass. I never went into this little cubicle, but each year, at Christmastime, Santa would make this place his connection to a long line of kids & their parents who waited to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas.

In later years, just around the corner from Santa’s hut, and facing (across a large parking area) the old Sears location, was a health foods store. I have a vague image of looking at a large plastic bottle of some kind of vitamin or supplement in the health foods store.

Down, and around the corner was a drug store. Don’t recall which one or if it was just local. And next to it was a small US Post Office location. Next to the Post Office was a Peebles, which I recall had clothing, and maybe some household goods. Not sure if Peebles had taken over the old Colonial Store (which had been closed a long time) location, or if it was next to it.

Oh, and across the street from the old Center Theater location, there was a local grocery store built (I think built years after the Center Theater was no longer a movie theater.). Not sure if it was an IGA grocery store location, could have been a Piggly Wiggly, but definitely had a “country” vibe to it.

There was a bank near where the old Sears location was, and across the parking lot from the Post Office was a building that was a washerette. And, this reminds me of a gas station & mechanic that was next to the washerette, on the corner. Just down the street, about a block away was the New River Baptist Church. I started attending NRBC about 1977 and mom started going there also. She eventually helped tend the children’s nursery.