Rx Restaurant, Wilmington, NC

We lined up for the 7:30 ferry to Cedar Island, a two hour and  fifteen minute ride that costs $15  for a car one way, and from the deck I got a last glimpse of Ocracoke from the deck. The other ferry goes to Swan Quarter the county seat of Hyde County,  a slightly longer ride to the mainland. That ferry left just before ours but you are supposed to be in line 30 minutes before your boat leaves the dock so we watched that one leave first. And then, after I fed Cheyenne her breakfast we boarded and promptly pulled out.  

That Ocracoke is part of Hyde County and not Dare County like the other Outer Banks islands is a bone of contention. It was pointed out to me that Dare County (named for Virginia Dare the first English child born in North America) is wealthy while Hyde County is not, and what wealth there is comes from the inflated property prices of little Ocracoke. The village garners 75% percent of the revenue for Hyde County but the landmass is barely one percent of the county. Also there are only a few hundred voters while the mainland has 6,000 voters eager to get their hands on Ocracoke's revenues. The island has considered annexation to Dare County, incorporation as a city or Independence as it's own county but all efforts have failed. So far. 

By the time we reached the mainland it was almost ten o'clock and we stopped in the woods on a stretch of desolate Highway 12 in Carteret County (Carteret was a wealthy colonial landowner and politician). Cheyenne went for a short walk looking a bit stiff but much improved since I had had to half carry her out of the house a few hours earlier. We determined to see a vet and make sure she was okay. She got a check up in Morehead City, an hour down the road and was pronounced healthy, given $200 worth of pills and made a great fuss of. We drove on for an hour to Wilmington, the largest coastal town in this part of the world.

We had met a rather pleasant couple at Zillie's in Ocracoke,  who extolled the virtues of their hometown to us over glasses of wine and beer, and waxed quite lyrical. Natives of Oswego, New York they enjoyed high tech careers in Wilmington, a town they said aspired to challenge Charleston's reputation as a tourist magnet. But they added, laughing, Wilmington is unwilling to spend the money to build the infrastructure. Nevertheless we were curious and we found a place to eat (my wife did, searching online) that was the creation of a chef from Charleston's New Southern cuisine hub called Husk where the boast is, if it isn't from the South, they won't serve it. 

Rx  Restaurant is located in a former pharmacy and is not easy to find even if you know it is at 421 Castle Street in Wilmington. We passed it twice and had to call to get a description of the building...Their menu changes daily as one of the two owners is also the chef and an alum of the infamous Husk. 

My wife looked at the menu, ordered a martini and invited the waitress to surprise her. She got a citrus martini that she enjoyed a great deal and was only charged five dollars for the trouble. The atmosphere was comfortable and shaded nicely on the  sunny afternoon. Lunch was served until 2:30 but we had arrived well before two so all was well. http://www.rxwilmington.com/

The walls serve as an art gallery for an eclectic display of artworks. If you look carefully in the picture below, to the left you will see a rather startling image of a man covered in orange flames. Immolation it was called and could hardly be described as appetizer.  But startling!

The Cottle sweet potato soup started things off, a thick cream with a dollop of ricotta and  pecans to keep things interesting. we wanted to share it so they gave us to separate bowls. It was more of a puree than a traditional soup but it was full of flavor and very smooth.

The next one got to me a bit and I think it was too rich for my stomach, but my wife dared me to order it so we did in fact try it. Crispy fried pigs' ears in buffalo wing sauce. I was revolted by the idea, accustomed as I am to giving pigs ears as treats to my dog, who loves them. But I cannot resist a dare and I found them to be flavored rather like pork bellies in commercial packets, found in  gas stations across the South. One plate could easily have served four and though an interesting experiment I found them indigestible later, requiring many bathroom stops on the way to Charleston.

 My main course was pork belly, a fatty pork steak kind of thing, butter soft and full of pork flavor on delicious grits and a perfectly fried solidly flavored non commercial egg on top (see that rich yellow yolk?). Breakfast for lunch as it were.

 My wife has a fresh green salad featuring lightly pickled slices of onion and a chicken-fried egg, a crunchy addition to the salad which was tart and fresh and spicy.  We even went for dessert, with coffee as my beer and my wife's martini had taken their toll. Our Italian custard (panna cotta) and whipped cream came with a perky slice of chocolate covered bacon to complete the pork meal. It was a superb end to a delightful meal.

All that came to $60 plus tip and we rolled out and got on the road in fine fettle. Cheyenne was pain free and content but we decided against the tempting the fates and taking her for a walk in what appeared on slight acquaintance to be  delightful brick and shade  city. Our waitress said people come to Wilmington for the beaches so tourism plays its role here. I'd like to come back. For dinner perhaps...

 Cheyenne, restored to full active health went for a walk in a Charleston suburb while my wife caught up with some Trader Joe's shopping. Her dinner was served al fresco as she likes it, with her bowl on a shop rag to prevent it sliding around. We picnicked in our room that night on left over meats and cheeses from Zillie's on Ocracoke, too tired and still too full to venture for more rich food into this fabled city which we haven't visited in years. Another mandatory stop sometime in the future!

It was a tiresome drive south, an accident on I-95  near the Georgia stateline forced us onto the backroads which were starting to get thick with easter traffic and commuter traffic and it was slow and tedious and made us wish for the serenity of Ocracoke once again. 

By the time we were south of Jacksonville my fleece was consigned to the trunk of the Fusion and shirt sleeves were the order of the day, at last.  Cheyenne gets tired of riding in the car but we try to alleviate her boredom as much as we can, though certainly she had spent enough time exercising her body and brain that she was pretty tired altogether by the time we got home. She slept for twenty four hours and made her space on our bed to rest properly.

Soon enough she was ready to walk her old haunts and see what had been happening while she was gone. I did the same at work and found not much had changed in Key West. Business at the police department was still booming and without a second thought the headset was back on my head and I was telling the officers once gain to go hither and yon to keep order in the little Southernmost City. Small and southernmost yes, but not as diminutive as some places I know.

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A Dingbatter on Ocracoke

Cheyenne liked early mornings on Ocracoke, a brisk 48 degrees worked for her, and once the sun was out and the rain had stopped I found it bearable though I was bundled up as though in swaddling clothes pretending I was an under dressed arctic explorer.

We stayed at Pam's Pelican, a charming B and B though as it was housed in the large tall building you see above, the flights of stairs to our room were steep and Cheyenne suffered as a result, developing a stiffness in her legs on our last morning that prompted a stop at a mainland vet's office.

Above we see the island grocery store preparing for Easter as only a tourist destination knows how: with a visit from the Budweiser truck. Looking south, the sun was clearly low on the eastern horizon to the left in the picture. The Hatteras ferry starts early in the day, around 5am weather permitting, so deliveries take place at mainland hours. Cheyenne was still walking well and she was leading the direction of travel so we didn't pause long before she took off up a side street.

Breakfast was at nine and a text message from my wife reminded me in no uncertain terms of the immutable deadline. Cheyenne was oblivious sniffing every errant blade of grass, trotting back and forth and having the time of her life. I decided to try my mapping function in my phone and miraculously it showed me exactly where we were. I thought I saw a footpath, a short cut across the back of the island to breakfast... Off we went. We passed Horse Pen Road and came to a magnificent bridge leading to...nothing. A failed development apparently and it's known by derisive locals as the Bridge to Nowhere. We plunged on into the marsh beyond. Cheyenne was in her element still, and becoming girlishly puppyish, prancing rather than walking sedately.

I don't suppose I have to point out the map was a little optimistic and the path beyond the Bridge to Nowhere petered out into the boggy morass between the two spits of dry land. Cheynne got black boots and I got some muck on my sneakers but we burst through the pine trees onto a construction site. The carpenter showed no surprise as we strolled through his workplace under the half finished house. He made friendly noises at Cheyenne as she inspected his handiwork and laughed with me as I told of our marsh crossing adventure. In a mainland situation we would have got looks of incomprehension from an imported central American laborer or howls of indignation from construction workers fearing lawsuits. In delightful Ocracoke we got to share a laugh. Nice place.

There was no one else around as we plodded back to the breakfast table. The backside of Ocracoke village looks huge with wide open marshland and pine woods.

We made it back to breakfast In time for my wife in our room to text "Where are you?" and for me to reply with some satisfaction: "At table." Modern electronics will be the death of us all.

They built the lighthouse on Ocracoke in the mid 18th century for half the $20,000 budgeted, but within twenty years it became less strategically useful as storms had moved the sands but it still operates today, a fixed light maintained by the National Parks Service. We hoped to climb it but the tower was locked reducing the stubby little thing to a mere photo opportunity.

The other main tourist attraction, always mentioned in guides, is the so called British Cemetery, another product of World War Two. A British armed trawler on submarine patrol sank and 33 sailors lost their lives. Four bodies washed ashore on Ocracoke, only two of them identifiable. They are buried here in a cemetery maintained by the US Coastguard and supervised by the Commonwealth Graves Commission which helps maintain British, Canadian and Australasian war graves around the world, 500 of them apparently.

It is a rather more melancholy site than the USS Maine cemetery in Key West, probably because it was a gloomy moment when we arrived under gray threatening skies. It is a modest spot, an odd thing to promote so heavily as a tourist attraction, this minature cemetery marking a forgottren incident in a distant conflict.

 

Lunch was the Mexican Food cart one more time with a retreat to our heated room to eat the tacos. For some people the "quaintness" of Ocracoke is overwhelmed by the absence of glitz glamor and activity. For us there was plenty to see and with only two full days at our disposal we determined to leave no tourist site unvisited. Long languid lunches were out of the question! 

In many respects there are similarities between this tiny village of 750 and Key West. There is one of everything on this island, and the 21st century has intruded quite successfully so there are a wide range of services. The Internet is high speed, cell phone coverage is good and the ferry connections make travel almost seamless. Residents learn that the weather can be a true source of interference with their plans, from broken roads, closed bridges or stalled ferries. Hurricanes flood the island from time to time and we traded storm stories. Winter winds close ferry services and that gets "annoying" as one resident put it. Yet the good bits include winter gatherings at the community hall or the social building of the Methodist church where people share food and music to keep the loneliness of winter at bay. The nearest movie theater is in Nags Head more than an hour, plus a 60 minute ferry ride, away.

It is emblematic of island life in a small village that one space serves many purposes:

Story telling is a big part of the island's culture, unlike the island chain to the north where the pace is a good bit faster. O'Cockers appreciate a good story well told. In the NPS visitor center these two photos tell the story of encroaching development in the village, and even though modernity has arrived the old ways are not entirely forgotten. Like Key West and many other small communities, there is a wistfulness among long term residents, a sense that the best may be behind them, that the Good Old Days are lost and irrecoverable and an element of ruin has crept into the village along with modern conveniences.

Springer's Point Preserve is also on the tourist list, a small wooded area preserved for ever and a delightful spot it is too. The trail runs through woodlands down to a beach on the north shore of the island. Bicycles are prohibited which did not prevent a group of dingbatters (mainlanders in the Brogue) from riding hell for leather along the trail forcing us to step smartly aside to let them through. They apologized as I clutched Cheyenne's collar and we stepped into the bushes. Lawlessness is part of the historic fabric of Ocracoke I suppose.

It was here that Blackbeard was finally caught and killed by Lieutenant Robert Maynard after he broke lose from his amnesty and took to piracy again  after settling in Bath up the island chain. They say his headless corpse (the head was severed for proof of death to claim the 400 pound reward), circled the ship three times before sinking forever beneath the waves after his death. Mind you a character like that will inspire all sorts of nonsense no doubt. It was a lovely spot in which to die, but all three of us made it out alive.

The walk isn't very long, a steady pace will complete it from street to beach and back again in twenty minutes but the fact that the wooded walk exists at all, far from human civilization in such a small community seems like a miracle. It's a bit like visiting the old secret garden off Simonton Street in Key West, lush greenery in an unexpected spot. I could imagine coming out here with my Kermit chair on a warm Spring day with a book and a dog and enjoying a day at the beach, or in the woods.

As you can see there is no sign of the bustling village just over the hill.

It was sunny but not at all hot, yet the modern preoccupation with water was evident everywhere. Nowadays one doesn't get thirsty, one hydrates and one hydrates even if one isn't feeling thirsty. I blame television but common sense is decidedly on the wane, as though "feeling thirsty" is too old fashioned a sentiment to be considered reliable in our microchipped and transistorized world...

Drinking water is available everywhere in Ocracoke with vending machines and stores competing for your hydration dollar. I watched these visitors struggle to wobble their bicycles, read their maps and not get run over, just like their counterparts in the Southernmost City, though motorized traffic was negligible here.

In order to prevent claustrophobia from forming in the confines of the village we drove the thirteen miles back to the north ferry landing. Most of the road is straight as a die but there are a couple of curves through a small pine forest. There is an airstrip and a campground on the way out of the village, both run by the Parks Service, there are the pony pens a few miles out of town but most of the road is a stright srip of black tarmac bisecting the sand dunes. We parked in the empty lot next to the Hatteras ferry terminal, a dock with no homes next to it, just a toilet and a vending machine and went for a walk on an almost deserted beach facing distant Hatteras across the sand and water.

There was a breeze, the tide was out and the sand was firm and we were alone, and it was lovely. Even Cheyenne found stuff to hold her interest. What it was I know not and none of us looked too closely at the animal remains. There are other problems with these beaches apparently:
http://villagecraftsmen.blogspot.com/2013/04/barefeet.html

Of course the Park Service prevented me from attaining my ambition of standing next to a sea marker on dry land. They were out there, stark little eiffel towers waiting for the tide to return and wet their feet.

When I got home on Saturday to the Keys I was seized by an unfamiliar sensation. Usually a trip to the mainland produces the feeling of relief that I am back in my small town surroundings. This time the trip to Ocracoke had me comparing the Lower Keys as though they were the vast metropolitan agglomeration by comparison. Granted it was low season but the absence of cars, the long empty beaches and the cheerful greetings from islanders after only two days in their midst made me wonder waht is so laid back about my home town.

Our last morning on Ocracoke as we packed the car with bags and a stiff legged dog and I watched the sun come up one last time. I felt like I was leaving Shangri La. How odd.

 

 

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O'Cockers

 

Cheyenne at the old life saving base at the north end of the island. This is the wilderness I expected to find on Ocracoke.

 

I did not expect to find a full blown yuppie food store on the little island of Ocracoke. But there it was, Zillie's, offering 300 craft beers, mostly bottled but several on draft, with wine, cheeses, salami and even designer soaps...but don't get mommucked or let it make you quamish. It's just the way of the world in the twenty first century.

This island has never claimed to have seceded, like Key West, but unlike the Southernmost City it has a claim to enjoy a separate and distinct culture.

Unusual brogue of Ocracoke, N.C. islanders threatened with extinction

The traditional grocery store on Ocracoke doesn't have a fancy name but it stretches for several aisles and includes everything you might need. I thought it looked weird with its low ceiling and dozens of aisles packed with supplies.

Aha! I thought to myself, it's Bilbo Baggin's pantry and I've landed in a world of Hobbitts.

Similar to Key West Ocracoke acknowledges the outside world and offers a version of most of what is out there. Like Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Store in Lake Wobegone, if it isn't on the island you probably don't need it. Or at least you don't need it right now!

If you get mommucked by ferry service being closed by weather then you are getting harassed and if you think Key West's island time means something you should study and learn from Ocracoke's style of being laid back. They work like crazy between Memorial Day and Labor Day but winters are long and very quiet. Like Key West you know there are visitors when cyclists ride with helmets and brightly colored joggers appear on the Island's sole bicycle path, between the village and the National Park campground a few miles up the only road.

Ocracoke boasts its own special folk artist with samples of his carvings on display in the National Park visitor headquarters in the village. Frank Fulcher's work reminded me of Key West's own Mario Sanchez.

They also had a pair of snowshoes on display which the military used to walk in the rashes to spray insect killing DDT, during the war years.

I forget her name but she exemplifies the sturdy peasant stock that grew up on this ten square mile island. I was told there are still a few old timers on Ocracoke, where natives are called O'cockers (no sniggers please. It's what they call men and women) who claim to have never left the island. Imagine that, because I can't.

Islanders say they re often mistaken for Australians or residents of southwest England where their peculiar dialect originated.

Ocracoke Brogue excerpt - YouTube

 

We saw them line up for food at Eduardo's Taco Truck the youth of the island. Whether they were incomers or O'Cockers we couldn't tell as they seemed to suffer from apartness produced quite likely by terminal shyness. The food was good in any event.

The island is full of surprises. My wife found two places that offer the latest massage techniques though we lacked the time for her to indulge herself. She also located two public gyms and a car mechanic neither of which we needed in our all too brief stay. We also enjoyed Eduardo's food truck - twice! Mexican food cooked by an actual Mexican person. Apparently Eduardo is popular enough that he has ordered a new and more luxurious food truck for delivery soon. His food was excellent and inexpensive... Three tacos for nine bucks for instance.

Daily deliveries are made by the UPS guy who drives from Nags Head every day. Grant's impending retirement after 29 years was posted in the grocery store and everyone was invited to leave a message on a t shirt as gift for him. It's that kind of Mayberry town. But I did take the time to taste a few exotic beers at the only place resembling a gathering place for adults.

I think Ocracoke needs a nice Irish pub, like Finnegan's say, with a dark comfy room, preferably with a roaring fireplace a dart board and a pool table and Smithwick's on draft. Of course changing Ocracoke is not what anyone wants, supposedly, and until someone changes the village enough to open a proper pub Zillie's will do fine, with outdoor tables and propane fires and friendly staff.

We sat and listened to the O'Cocker on the right tell stories to the incomers on the left, who were learning to be locals. They discussed the practice of tossing out beer cans from cars. The O'Cocker made the very rational point that getting caught with empties in the bed of the truck garners a severe penalty. Better to ditch the empties roadside. There is a Hardy County Sheriff's substation on the island and the sole deputy lives just across the street. In summer state troopers come to help with the crowds "and we have to behave when they are on the island, " one resident told me with a wink.

We had a date with Philip Howard a descendent of the Howard family that gave its name to Howard Street, a supremely picturesque unpaved winding lane through the middle of the village.

He was quick to point out that he wasn't born in Ocracoke but visited every childhood summer vacation. It sounded idyllic. He walked half a dozen of us around the village for ninety minutes ($12 ) and told stories in the best Ocracoke traditions of story telling.

Some were ghost stories, others were tales of village life, others were brief and fascinating history lessons. We learned about the widow who lived with her coffin in her home for the last seven years of her life and stored her fig preserves and cutlery in it. We heard about Mad Mag haunting island cemeteries, and also the story of the woman buried alive. We stared at her grave in horror, and later at the tombstone of the Green Ghost of Howard Street.

Philip told the story of the Ocracoke sailor drowned at sea in World War Two and whose Mariner's License and the name board of his ship washed up literally at his family's doorstep. They made a golden wooden cross in his memory. The cross is in the Methodist Church next to the school. The story is told at the Park Visitor Center.

Check it out:

The dapper sailor at the bottom right of the picture is one of four British sailors whose bodies are buried on the island from that time. They also have funny headstones in Ocracoke's 80 separate family burial plots, just like they do in the Key West cemetery.

We went to the hemp store and met wild Frank Brown. He's the long time incomer driving the yellow truck plastered with Libertarian slogans. We had a nice debate while my wife got some gloves and I got a shirt. I think I won the debate but Frank is sure he did. Government sucks he said. Not so I said. Finis.

Philip Howard ( a nutter according to Frank Brown because he agrees with my politics...) also told us about the beach jumpers led by actor Douglas Fairbanks. They used guile and noise makers to fool the enemy into believing an invasion was imminent to distract the defenders from the location of he actual invasion. They practiced their craft on the miles of empty Ocracoke beaches.

Ocracoke was a busy place in World War Two defending the coast from submarines and also practicing deceptive invasions. Howard told us where to find the beach jumpers old base.

We took a bead from the monument just outside the village and found abandoned old cement buildings in the dunes. Very evocative.

Kids make field trips to Ocracoke from the busy mainland to get a taste of island life. They get off the chain of daily regimented life for a while and play the way kids were supposed to play.

My wife the teacher heard a little about teaching island style. It seems they got a new young and enthusiastic principal for the all-grades school. Some high schoolers got into a prank that year, something involving hay she believes. The principal suspended the architects of the prank...an action that took the island by storm. Suspended? No student had ever been suspended in Ocracoke. The culprits didn't even understand what "suspension" meant! A dozen kids got suspended that school year, sealing the principal's fate. Not everyone manages to integrate themselves into island life. Especially at this level of intimacy with only 750 year round residents. And their offspring.

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