As noted in my previous entry, I’m not able to drive to North Carolina for my annual family reunion at Oak Island, NC, due to having recently contracted COVID. It was a tough decision but my negative test was just to close to the scheduled trip. Like I did in 2006 in a similarly-titled blog (when I was not able to go due to having just purchased a new house), I’m spending the day today looking at memories from previous years.
I’ve felt the sand between my toes at Oak Island, North Carolina almost every Summer of my life. The beach, Long Beach, NC in particular (later reincorporated as Oak Island) means a lot to me. It’s my happy place. I can’t say for sure when my feet first felt the foamy ocean water, but it was pretty early. I was born in June 1974 — it was likely no longer than a year before we traveled there.
My first cousin once removed once said that we Ferrells have the coast in our blood. She, and my other cousins on my Dad’s side were lucky enough to be born and raised at the coast in Wilmington, NC. But when I visited, I felt that pull to sun and sand, boats and piers, like they did. When I was at the beach, it felt like home.
As I wrote in the FAQ about my Dad, who passed in 2000, the Ferrells indeed do have deep roots there. Born and raised in the NC Coastal Plain, Grandpa Ferrell volunteered to help the residents of Oak Island, NC rebuild their homes after Hurricane Hazel destroyed most of the beach in 1954. After that, they lived there full time with my Dad (Frank). Soon after, Grandpa (Willard Franklin Ferrell Sr.) established a local convenience store and the “Surf’s Up” mini-golf course at Long Beach.
Ferrell Real Estate followed in the 1970s — that company, run by my Grandpa and later my Uncle Terry, built homes and served the island with rentals through the 1980s. Before I was born, my Mom & Dad lived on Oak Island for a few years. Dad’s siblings lived nearby – Uncle Don in Wilmington, working on boats for a living, a regular Jimmy Buffett. Uncle Terry lived at Oak Island until he passed away (as did Don) in 2010. Aunt Margie also lived in Wilmington until she passed away in 2005. Several of Frank’s sibling’s kids (my cousins) still live there.
I was raised in the northwest foothills of North Carolina, where Dad moved after being in the Navy. Almost every year from 1975 on, my Mom & Dad, and I traveled there in the Summer, sometimes twice a season. First staying at one of Grandpa’s oceanfront properties called the Anchor Inn, then later renting larger homes as the family grew on Mom’s side to include four more cousins, and later, their families.
Long Beach was and still is, mostly a family beach, although there are a lot more (big) houses on Oak Island these days and a few more stores, it’s not overly commercial. Not a lot changes there, and that’s part of the reason I love it.
Here’s what I remember most about the beach:
The Weather
Scratch my back with a lightning bolt
Thunder rolls like a bass drum note
The sound of weather is heaven’s rag-time band
–JB, “Barefoot Children in the Rain”
I grew up in the woods, so the weather at the beach was unique because you could see it coming. I was fascinated by the different sunsets and storms I saw there. I was always interested in weather, which eventually led to my career in meteorology, but the Beach made me fall in love with the weather all over again. I measured the extreme heat and humidity and photographed (and later, videotaped) the clouds, sunsets and storms. Lightning is something to see over the ocean!
Not surprisingly, Oak Island has taken on a number of Hurricanes over the years, but none that have swept the island clean like Hurricane Hazel in 1954. The most damage at Oak Island is done when storms hit closer to South Carolina. That’s when the storm surge comes in, as it did during Hurricane Hugo in September 1989, wiping out the garages, decks, and first floors of oceanfront homes. In 2020, Hurricane Isaias did similar damage.
I’ve never seen a landfalling hurricane at Oak Island, though Hurricane Charley was approaching as we left on the last day of our yearly vacation to the coast on August 16, 1986, and Hurricane Alex spawned off the coast of southeast North Carolina during our Beach week in 2004, dropping a waterspout I saw from a distance as we left on August 7th. Isaias made landfall during our normal Beach week, but we had already moved the week up to mid-June due to scheduling conflicts, then COVID canceled our plans to go down.
The MTV Years
My first cable TV experience, and my first glance at MTV, which drove my interest in music, happened at the beach in the early 1980s, when Grandpa “hooked up” the neighbor’s TV cable into the Anchor Inn. I discovered many of my favorite bands watching MTV at the beach, including Erasure, Dire Straits, and Information Society.
The Island Music
Well I’m a tidal pool explorer
–Jimmy Buffett, “Coastal Confessions”
From the days of my misspent youth
I believe that down on the beach
Where the seagulls preach
Is where the Chinese buried the truth
And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
Maybe invent me a story or two
I’ve got coastal confessions to make
How ’bout you?
They say that time is like a river
And stories are the key to the past
But now I’m stuck in between
Here at my typing machine
Tryin’ to come up with some words that will last
When I was in college in the early 1990s, a friend of mine and I stayed at Uncle Don’s house in Wilmington one Summer. His house was littered with Jimmy Buffet CDs. I listened to a few and from then on, I identified Beach trips with the entertainer. For the next 30 years, I couldn’t arrive at the Beach without Jimmy on the radio. I even read a couple of his books.
The Cheeseburger in Paradise
And The Eighth Deadly Sin Is… PIZZA!
–JB, “Bank of Bad Habits”
Living 10 miles from the nearest town, I didn’t eat a lot of food that wasn’t from our garden. The Beach was a break from the monotone meals. One of my favorite places to grab a burger, fries and ice cream was Strawberries, a grill on the second row that still exists today (as Pepperoni Grill).
And of course, there’s Bob’s Pizza Shack, established in 1989. It’s literally a shack on the island but has amazing beer-battered crust pizza that you just can’t get anywhere else in the world. Hot or cold, it’s a staple breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I’m at the Beach.
The Mini-Golf
The aforementioned “Surf’s Up Surf Shop” that was run by the Ferrells came with a custom-built Mini Golf course, a predecessor to more commercial versions of mini-golf that you see today. From a very early age, that became a yearly tradition for me and, later, my cousins, when we came to the Beach. In the late 1980s when Ferrell Real Estate was sold, the course was eventually closed, but we still played additional Mini Golf locations on Oak Island.
The Hawaiian Shirts
I was inspired to wear Hawaiian shirts all year round in the early 1980s thanks to the likes of Jeff Spicoli and Thomas Magnum. That really never stopped, but I refuse to wear anything but Hawaiian shirts when I go to the beach now.
So, now you know why I’m missing the beach this year. Hopefully next year, I’ll be back.