Just like all of my other buddies growing up in the wonders of Northeast Ohio, my world revolved around two times of year, Christmas and summer vacation. Anyone who has ever watched “A Christmas Story”, mostly filmed in Cleveland, understands this perfectly. Ralphie’s dreams were of fighting Black Bart with his Red Raider BB gun during wanderlust days of the summer. The items you placed on your Sears and JC Penny Christmas catalog wish lists were usually items that were essential to the fun you were going to have during the summer. How could you ever survive the summer without a BB gun, Estes rockets, or a new fishing pole?
If I were to give you 3 seconds to think of the most beautiful scenery in Ohio, I guarantee that as your time expired, you would still be drawing blanks. Being devoid of mountains or beaches where the water quality was safe enough for swimming, Ohioans fled the state in a mass migration to more exotic locations every summer. To this day, Ohioans are prolific travelers. The next time that you are at Yosemite, Disney World or Cape Cod, look in the parking lot. You are bound to see an unusually high concentration of Ohio license plates. These are not rental cars mind you. These are real buckeye state residents fleeing the boredom they would face at home.
Prior to the advent of the minivan in the 80’s, the transportation method of choice was the station wagon. These 5000 pound land schooners, birthed in the local factories of Cleveland, were proudly parked in every suburban driveway. Proudly named “Town & Country”, “Country Squire” and “Vista Cruiser”, they set sail upon America’s ribbons of highways as soon as school let out.
My family was no different. No sooner had the Lionel train been packed away from Christmas, my father had the Rand McNally road atlas open on the kitchen table. After what seemed like an eternity of flipping through pastel colored maps, an announcement would be made after dinner as to the destination of our next adventure. One year, a strong easterly wind carried our Chevy “Kingswood Estate” across the continent to San Francisco, with ports of call in Colorado and Arizona. Other years we found ourselves summering on islands named Sanibel and Cedar. Every destination was new and opened my eyes to the unending natural beauty of this expansive country.
I remember the year that it was revealed that we were headed to some place called Cape Hatteras for our annual vacation. I was pretty familiar with the contents of the encyclopedias on the family room shelf and I was quite confident there was no such place. My brother, sister and I knew what to expect from Disney World and the Grand Canyon. What was there to do in Cape Hatteras? Well if I can remember correctly, the answer came across something like, “well there is a beach, a very uncrowded beach”. Yahoo, I can’t wait.
The reality could not have been further from my initial, naive expectations. Yes, the Cape Hatteras of the mid-seventies did not have much to offer other than a beach. That is what made it so endearing. It meant that there was time to play cards with my family, chase ghost crabs on the beach at night and fish from the Frisco pier. The smell of the ever present salt air, the sound of the sea oats rustling in the wind and the sight of both the Hatteras and Ocracoke lighthouses, with their slow, rhythmic flashes in the distance, are all cherished memories firmly engrained in my soul.
That initial trip to Hatteras became a recurring one well into the eighties. The agenda of activities never changed. I spent many hours fishing with my father and brother from the Frisco pier. For a bunch of land-locked, freshwater newbies, we always seemed to have much better success than the other experienced fishermen on the pier. It never took long for the other fishermen to crowd around us, thinking that we had an advantageous hole. Quite honestly, we were just lucky.
The Frisco pier was badly damaged by Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and delivered a knock-out blow by Earl in 2010. It remained standing on its weakened legs for another eight years until it was determined to be too costly to be rebuilt, and was demolished. This photo was taken 37 years after the first time my father, brother and I first optimistically cast our lines into the warm Atlantic waters. It is a reminder that although we may be battered, the sun will rise again. The arrival of a new day will once again give us the opportunity to take the salt air into our lungs or in the least, be thankful for the memory.
