Mid-April – Mid-June, 2021
The vagabond’s next destination is Southport, North Carolina along the southeast barrier island shoreline near the famous Cape Fear.
Our good friends Dan and Joanne own a cottage there. They have invited us to use the cottage in the past, but the timing was never conducive. Now, however, it seems like a nice place to enjoy spring and explore another new part of the country to which neither of us has previously been.
Joanne meets us at the cottage. She comes down for a week each April to gain some grounded, peaceful-time. The house is about 140 years old and she prepares it carefully and beautifully for us. It is small, but has everything we need.
Southport is a town of about 4,000. There is always a cool breeze off of the ocean, even when the air temperature is in the mid-70’s. One of the locals whom we meet describes Southport as “Mayberry meets the Florida sea coast”.
Southport’s history traces to the 1521 when the area was explored by the Spanish. By the early 1700's it was known as a pirates' harbor. During the Revolutionary War there was a fort here giving the town control of the waterway and protection against the pirates. Southport also played a part in the Civil War; there was a series of forts along the Cape Fear River which kept the Confederate supply lines open to shipments from Cuba and the Caribbean. There were also several naval skirmishes when the Union attempted to blockade the river.
Now it is an easy-going seaside resort. Many houses sport exterior plaques showing when they were built (mostly from 1870’s to 1910’s). They are typically one to one-and-a-half stories, and most are well-kept with lovely, small yards. A few grander houses were built by river pilots who were well-paid especially during the Civil War. Most of the businesses are tourist related, and locally owned. Only the main streets have sidewalks. It feels like a place from the past – maybe the 1940’s.
This is part of the Carolina low-country. The landscape is flat and sandy. There are many salt water marsh waterways, some stretching for miles.
Seafood and fishing are important here, as is bar-b-que. We find Potters, a friendly local fishmonger (run by Bobby) who gets much of his catch from local boats. The selection is limited but very fresh and delicious. We give them our custom several nights a week.
It is spring, and the azaleas are in bloom when we arrive – all red, pink, purple and white.
The streets are lined with many live oaks, some hundreds of years old. We enjoy sitting on the front porch watching the world go by, relaxing and taking life easy.
After some searching, we find the Carolina National Golf Club about 25 minutes away. It has 27 holes designed by Fred Couples with lots of out-of-bounds, roughly planted areas with undulating fairways and greens, and a significant amount of water hazards (some with alligators). A challenging layout. And long to walk; about 8 miles since there is a considerable distance between most holes. We meet some interesting people on the course including Mark from Edinburgh who attended boarding school in St. Andrews so grew up playing golf there (although he says 12-year old boys were not permitted to play the Royal and Ancient Course). We have never golfed with a Scotsman before so are intrigued. On another day we play with Don whose family settled nearby in 1747. They were mostly tobacco farmers, the main cash crop of the time. Don was in the military and was a counter-terrorist specialist traveling around the globe – throughout eastern Europe, central and east Asia, and sub-Sahara Africa - advising governments on the topic.
A short distance southwest is Oak Island beach. We walk on the wide, beautifully sandy beach that stretches for miles along the south shore of the island. There are people every so often along the beach and a 60-year old light house at one end. It is cloudy, breezy and only in the low 70’s. A few days later we return to Oak Island for a guided kayak tour of the marshland.
Another day we take the ferry to Bald Head Island. It is a sandy, barrier reef that protects the mainland coast. It is only accessible by boat, and only golf carts and bicycles are permitted for transportation (with the exception of a few construction vehicles).
Interestingly, the island has three distinct environments: the sand dunes along the coast; the marine forest of oaks and palms in a part of the island that has fresh water and is slightly inland (i.e. a few hundred yards) from the beach; and the salt marsh that has brackish water and is just a bit further inland.
We take a guided tour led by an intern, Emily, from the Island Conservancy. As it happens, we are only people on the tour that day since it is not yet tourist season. (It also turns out that most of the businesses and restaurants are also closed for the same reason.) We learn that the sand dunes are the nesting grounds for a species of sea turtle who lay their eggs in the May – August time period. It is also the deposit spot for sand that is dredged from the Cape Fear River – good for restoring both the beach and the river.
At the southeastern tip of the island is Cape Fear itself. The ocean is very shallow (3 to 10 feet deep) from Cape Fear south for some 20 miles; it is called the Frying Pan due to its shape. In the 1700’s and 1800’s there were a lot of ships that ran aground here. As a result, there were many pirates in the area preying on these ships. It was also a major shrimp-fishing area until a hurricane wiped out the shrimp beds in the mid-1950's.
The Cape Fear River channel is the only navigable path up the coast (inland from the barrier islands) to Wilmington. Boat captains would lookout for arriving ships and row out to help them navigate the tricky river passage. It is still a busy shipping lane.
Mary’s brother and sister-in-law, Skip and Sharon, are vacationing in Myrtle Beach, an hour’s drive south of here and come up one afternoon for a visit. They both retired from their jobs at the end of April. We drive / walk around the river coast, have conch fritters at Provision Company along the marsh, and chat.
We tell them about our research into obtaining a Hungarian passport for Mary. She is eligible by virtue of her grandparents, Andrew and Mary, being Hungarian citizens. We need to assemble documents to show that they were born in Hungary and Mary’s lineage to them. She will also need to go to the Hungarian embassy for an interview – conducted in Hungarian. But the effort is worth it to obtain a passport of an EU country. And once we have the documents, other members of the Liszak family can also use them to gain a passport for themselves.
When our time in Southport is up, the vagabonds meander west and north. The first stop is Watkinsville, Georgia to see our good friend Matt for a few days.
Rick has dinner with Claire and Marc in Atlanta too. They are chatty and happy. Claire has just secured a full-time position at the library where she has been working; life is good.
Next we drive to Annie’s in Cosby, Tennessee. She is excited to see us, and appears to be much more rested and less stressed than last spring when we lived with her and she had several cabin maintenance projects and animal shelter issues to manage. Dean, Karen and Nick come over too. We play games (Rummykube especially), eat and chat.
Annie brings out old letters from the early ‘80’s that she wrote to Dean and others. They are teasing, sly, and wickedly funny.
Then we drive north to Columbus. We have rented a house – ½ of a duplex. The major objective is to empty the storage locker where have kept various antiques, artwork, clothes, books and keepsakes with which we didn’t want to part when we sold our house four years ago. We sort through the various boxes and find many things that had passed out of our memories. Reluctantly, we pass on much of it to Goodwill, place the furniture with consignment shops, sell other things on eBay, give some items to friends and family, and digitize precious letters and photos. The few remaining boxes we store in Skip and Sharon’s basement. It is the right decision to rid ourselves of this “stuff”, but it is stressful and emotionally difficult as well.
We make time for fun too. This month is Mary’s 65th birthday so we have multiple celebrations! First is a two-day party in Cleveland with Mary’s family. We dine together at a local Hungarian restaurant, then attend a pool party the next day hosted by Dar and Fred in honor of Skip and Sharon’s retirement, as well as Mary’s birthday. It is a warm, sunny day with plentiful food. Sharon outdoes herself in setting up an elegant tiki bar with various summertime mixed drinks. Bessie is impressed.
The next week Steve and Carol host a second birthday party for Mary at their home in Columbus for family and friends living there. Carol and Steve knock themselves out in preparing scrumptious foods and grilled tenderloin. The weather is lovely and we spend the evening on the outdoor patio.
As a special treat, Erik, the keyboardist of our favorite jazz group Flippo, joins us to help create a festive mood.
Mary’s good buddy Harry takes his annual motorcycle trip with his friend John This year they are touring southeastern Ohio, and we meet them at Old Man’s Cave state park in the Hocking Hills for a hike.
We are able to catch up with many other friends whom we have not seen in 18 months too, including our sister Vickey and Dave. They sell their houseboat at Buckeye Lake while we are in town. After several years of not being able to use the boat (due to repairs on the Lake’s dam and Covid) many of their Lake neighbors have moved on so the experience is no longer as satisfying as it once was. They invite Rick out to the boat for a last beer on the deck.
Observation: There has been an amazing shift in public behavior regarding masks and distancing in just the last month. People now feel that the virus is essentially defeated. Suddenly restaurants are fully open, few people wear masks, family and friends gather freely, handshakes are offered, and most signs of the pandemic disappear! Of course, it isn’t this way in Europe, Canada and most of the rest of the world. But in the US the caution, fear, and protective behavior is now virtually gone!