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OAK ISLAND , NC
Oak Island Drive was now open and paved all the way to Pinner�s Point. Yacht Drive was now open all the way to Pinner�s Point also, only it was not yet paved. Hundreds of connecting streets were being constructed to run between Oak Island Drive and Yacht Drive in the Long Beach area and people were buying lots and building houses everywhere. New businesses were springing up all over the place. Some of these businesses would endure the test of time, but most of them would not. One of the most successful new businesses that opened during this period of time was Luke Appling�s convenience store in Yaupon Beach. This business really endured and survived and consequently became a landmark in the Yaupon Beach area until the mid 1990�s when it finally closed it�s doors for good.
There were restaurants and service stations that came and went. There were even poolrooms and tackle stores, which lasted usually one to two seasons at the most.
Growth is a good thing, so some people told me, as long it is a manageable and controlled growth. Maybe they were right, maybe not. All I knew was that although everything seemed pretty much the same as it always had seemed, there was a subtle difference. This difference was lurking almost un-noticed, intertwined with normality so that the two seemed as one.
Nothing stays the same forever and the atmosphere of early 1960�s Oak Island was, sadly, to be no exception. Many times since the early to mid 1960�s, I have wished that I had some kind of time machine and could go back and unlock the door to that era and then throw the key away. The only big problem for that logic is that I would have to live through all of the changes again.
Change was not only taking place in Oak Island, but change of another kind was beginning to raise it�s head politically as well. This was a change that was far more ominous than any of the subtle changes that were taking place on Oak Island. No one could really understand just what an impact this change was to have on not only the Oak Island-Southport communities, but on every part of our nation as well. All across our nation the distant rumble of a far away war called for it�s mindless soul to be fed by the bravery and the blood of young men.
Many of us answered the call and went. Most of us came back home. Some did not. Some came back home mentally and physically intact. Most did not. Some returned to find that the only peace that could be found was within the protective sanctuary of their own minds. Most could find no peace there either. This world can be a very cruel place when it makes up its mind to be so.
The waves were not quite as crowded now. A lot of familiar faces were to be forever absent. These friends would be forever missed by those of us surviving and still surfing after all of these years.
The sadness from the loss of good friends can artificially be lessened by convincing oneself that they had died for a good, noble, and worthwhile cause, whatever the hell that might have been.
There was really nothing to be done except to learn to live with the cards that life had dealt us. There was nothing we could do but to surf a wave in their honor, drink a beer or two for them and ask God to ease the pain of their families and to also ease the pain within ourselves also.
As I look around all of the beaches and see the young kids, ten and eleven years of age, taking up the sport of surfing, I realize that we all should hope that some kind of lesson has been learned from all of it. If we as a people, and a country, are really too stupid for any of this hard lesson to have sunk in at all, these kids will have the same path to follow. But for now, life goes on.