Fish House Lies and Other Matters

The weather in Atlantic Beach has been warm enough for running on most days except for occasional rainy or windy conditions.  I have generally been able to run three days a week, and on the days when I can’t run we have been going to the fitness center or to a yoga class on Saturday mornings called “Bend and Brew.”  It is held at Crystal Coast Brewing just down the road a mile or so where the “bend” is rewarded with a “brew.”  I have found that yoga, aside from its mental benefits and the opportunity to socialize over a good craft beer, helps with core strength and balance (although Martha has far better balance than I do).  Here is a group photo from two years ago taken by our instructor after a class composed of both younger and older participants.

I posted some photos of sunrises a few times, but the sunsets are equally impressive here, and as I mentioned both can be seen from the dune-top deck because the ocean is south-facing.  Here is a typical example from last week, reminding me of Emily Dickinson writing, “It’s all a common glory.”

Long after the sun actually disappears into the ocean, the light is often reflected up into the sky for as long as an hour afterward.  While preparing dinner, we often find ourselves going onto the deck and saying, “Ooo, look at it now!”

And dinner reminds me that we have also been preparing a lot of fresh seafood, as well as the occasional visit to Full Moon Oyster Bar for a taste of those particular delicacies which are now in season.  Blue Ocean Market across the bridge in Morehead City has some of the best crab cakes and Hatteras-style chowder around, and also fresh scallops that Martha has learned to prepare perfectly.  Here is an example from last week.

She posted a photo on Facebook, saying “I love it when I get the perfect sear on fresh scallops!” and there were a lot of envious comments, one of them from restaurateur Debbie Grossman, owner of Fresser’s Courtyard Café in Highlands, who said, “Perfection my friend!”  That's a new recipe for roasted cauliflower on the plate, too, by the way.

We always find a lot of interesting activities (besides eating) out here.  We are members of both nearby Fort Macon and of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.  The latter also has a presence in Morehead City in a beautiful old house on Arendel Street.  Last Sunday we visited the Harkers Island Museum to hear an interesting talk by a local character named Heber Guthrie, who regaled his small audience with funny tales of hunting and fishing on the island for “as long as he wanted to talk.”

We arrived at the comfortable “living room” area of the museum in the afternoon and found a small audience of six in attendance, all of whom knew each other and seemed to live very close to the Museum.  We learned about different types of fishing nets and different types of guns, and Heber told some amusing stories about catching “jumping mullets” and shrimp.  He also talked about shooting a wider variety of birds than I thought was possible (or legal), including robins, preferably cooked in a pie with rutabaga, potatoes, and onions.  In fact, he said he used to regularly bring a dozen robin breasts to his teacher in elementary school (to curry favor, I suppose), which she gratefully accepted and put in the fridge for dinner that night.  “If it flew low enough, it was dinner,” he said.  It was a hardy lifestyle, and money and food were scarce during the off-season.  

 Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye
Four and twenty robins
Baked in a pie.

There are eight churches on Harkers Island, he said, a small place even today, and at one time it was said to have more churches per capita than anywhere else in the country.  Wikipedia confirms that "Established churches and religious organizations on Harkers Island include the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints, Free Grace Wesleyan Church, Grace Holiness Church, Harkers Island Pentecostal Holiness Church, Harkers Island United Methodist Church, Huggins Memorial Baptist Church Parsonage, the Lighthouse Chapel (non-denominational), and the Refuge Fellowship Church (non-denominational)."  That's some diversity!  Heber said it was a question on Jeopardy one time.  “If anyone from Harkers Island goes to hell, it’s their own damn fault.”

After Heber’s talk, we went outside and took a short walk on one of the trails which wind through the shady maritime forest and around Willow Pond.

There was a "Ducks Unlimited" hunting blind on the edge of the pond, and it reminded us of the duck hunting stories Heber had told us.

Inside there were openings for the hidden hunter to watch for ducks to land, perhaps lured by one of the hand-carved decoys on display in the Museum.  We saw no ducks, but there was an egret out on the pond, which we would not have shot under any circumstances.  Although who can say what poverty, hunger, and local custom might persuade a person to eat?

On Thursday, we braved the cold rain that had moved in for the afternoon and attended another Core Sound event in a series called Parlor Talks, held at the Museum Store and headquarters at 806 Arendel Street. 

The historical house is a treat in itself, with its entry hall, high ceilings, and winding staircase to the upstairs parlor, where we spent a very amusing hour listening to Harkers Islander Chris Yeoman present “A Tribute to Fish House Liars.” 

Heber was in attendance and participated in the lively talk from time to time, and I was inspired afterward to buy two books in the Museum Shop that Chris, a retired teacher and talented raconteur (“I had to look that word up,” he quipped) referred to, written by Sonny Williamson, an old-timer who passed away a few years ago and recorded many of these stories for posterity.  Over the next two nights, I read with great amusement Fish House Lies and Jumpin Mullets and Collard Greens.  I was impressed, although I’m not sure that I can live up to Sonny and, next time we sit down to dinner, say the prayer he recorded in the latter book:

Serve up
Spare not,
Slap it in ye,
While hits hot.

Oriental

Thursday, we enjoyed lunch in an Oriental restaurant.  That is, a restaurant we have visited many times in the past called The Silos, which is located in Oriental, NC.  Oriental is a pretty little Town on the Neuse River, which is billed as “North Carolina's Sailing Capital,” where they say “the boating season never ends.”  It is pretty quiet this time of year, although I have no doubt that boating does occur in every month of the year one way or another.  You can drive to Oriental in a roundabout way by going through New Bern, but the shorter and far more interesting way is to drive to the Cherry Branch Ferry Terminal and take the ferry to Minnesott Beach, on the other side of the broad Neuse Rivere, another kind of “boating.”

 
The ferry is operated by the N. C. Department of Transportation and there is no cost, which always surprises us.  Crossing the Neuse every half-hour by ferry is a normal commute for many, but for us it is always a treat.  While commuters sit in their cars, we normally stand outside (unless the cars are stacked bumper-to-bumper as they were on our return trip), watching sea gulls draft behind the ferry, suspended with motionless wings above us, or sometimes resting on a lifebuoy.

In 2019, we took a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin that dwarfed this tiny one.  Once the largest in the world, it crossed the Irish Sea, a distance of 70 miles, in three hours and 30 minutes.  It seemed more like a shopping mall than a ferry, with bars, restaurants, and shops.  It was so large that we were not even aware of any movement, unlike this little ferry across the Neuse, which on a rough day would have made us a little queasy.

The Silos, AKA “Oriental’s Favorite Joint,” was constructed within two grain silos, features mostly Italian food, and does not have an Asian item on the menu,  nor (surprisingly) any seafood, although there may be seafood specials during the season.

What we like best is the hand-tossed pizza, with a delicious marinara sauce made fresh daily.  And, of course, the unusual décor.  Climb upstairs and you enter a cozy little space with a ceiling  completely covered in record album covers, most of them from our own era and many of which I recognize as having owned at one time or another.

“This brings back memories!” I told the young waitress who took our order, first pulling two pints of very good local beer for us from Shortway Brewing in Newport.  “I think I owned most of them at one time or another.”  She laughed, and I realized that she was probably born at least two decades after most of this music was made.  There is a small stage and a lot of impressive amplifiers and accessories, and musical groups perform regularly during the season in keeping with its description as a “Joint.”

The pizza was delicious, as always, and after lunch we drove back to “downtown” Oriental to one of Martha’s favorite shops, Nautical Wheelers, before taking the ferry back.  There had been a mere three cars that morning, but by the afternoon, some 25 or so cars were lined up waiting to cross.  We thought some of them might have to wait for the next ferry, but they somehow managed to squeeze all of them aboard in four narrow aisles, bumper to bumper. 

This was a day of rest for both of us.  I had run four miles on Wednesday, including a set of four “Picnic Area Intervals,” and was planning to run six miles on Friday.  So it was nice to take a day off from training for the 5-K race coming up next weekend, enjoy some good pizza and beer, and let ourselves be ferried from one sunny shore to another.

Clam Chowder

Clam chowder:  any of several chowder soups in American cuisine containing clams. In addition to clams, common ingredients include diced potatoes, salt pork, and onions. Other vegetables are not typically used.

Corn bread:  a quick bread made with cornmeal, associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States, with origins in Native American cuisine. (Wikipedia)

Combine these two Southern specialties and you have the basis for an event that we have enjoyed for a number of years, the Clam Chowder Cookoff, a fund-raiser for the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.  The 12th Annual Cookoff took place as usual in the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, a roomy boatbuilding facility on the waterfront that showcases the art of boatbuilding.  And, Friday night, the art of clam chowder and corn bread building. 

 
As in past years, we arrived early and picked up our ballots at the door.  The building filled up fast as chowder aficionados with keen appetites circled the watercraft center to sample four chowders and four corn breads in color-coded bowls to make judging easier.  

The doors were open to the harbor outside, and the sun was setting over Beaufort harbor, a picturesque backdrop for the evening.  Dawn Freeman was sitting closest to the open doors (corn bread by her friend Michelle Stout, set up across the room).  Her chowder was our Number One choice last year and, as it turned out, this year too.  

Dawn makes classic “Downeast” or Hatteras-style chowder (as opposed to New England or Manhattan), with a clear broth and the simple ingredients of clams, bacon, onions, and potatoes, but it is flavored perfectly.  Last year, one of the chowders was so thick (New England style) that a plastic spoon could nearly stand up in it.  That was not the case this year.  Although some of the chowders had extra ingredients (like corn), all of them were variations of the classic Hatteras-style.

I did not take a picture of the ballot - Martha took all of the pictures in this post except the Watercraft Center building - but that's Dawn's chowder in the blue cup, and Michelle's scrumptious corn bread (the loaf-shaped one) in the blue paper.  As of today (Sunday), no winner has been announced.  I suppose it takes awhile to count all of the ballots.  But I can assure the reader that it will be a free and fair election, and nobody will challenge the results.  Downeasters are honest people.

It was a wonderful evening, and we drove back across the bridges to Morehead City and then to Atlantic Beach with the western horizon still faintly red from that spectacular sunset.