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OAK ISLAND , NC
To summarize the situation, I met a girl upstate while visiting with my parents in High Point. We went out five times, she got pregnant, and my life went to hell in a hurry.
During the short duration of our dating experience, I took her to the beach with me once. That was a real mistake. She did not like the beach area at all. In fact she did not like the sand, ocean, people, or anything associated with the beach. She said the beach was the dirtiest, most disgusting place she had ever been to. She also said that the people who lived there were practically nothing but trash. I told her that I was one of those people too and to never say that again. I should have ended it all right there at that point, but sometimes my strongest human trait is complete stupidity. So, I began to make plans for a wedding and a marriage that was doomed to fail before it even got started.
We got married in High Point in November of 1966. After surviving the wedding, we went to some fancy place for the reception. She and her mother were really into fancy stuff. In other words, acting like they were some sort of socialites. Needless to say, I felt like a fish out of water.
I didn�t think that damn reception would ever end. I only knew a couple of people who were there. Except for Bobby, my mom and dad, and one other friend, everyone there was there by invitation from the bride�s family. I did not say two words to my new bride during the reception. She and her mother were too busy mingling with their friends with their pinkie in the air drinking champagne. Bobby and I made friends with the bartender who turned out to be from Wilmington. We all three broke out the beer and got plastered as we talked about home.
My dad had reserved my new wife and I a very nice room at the Caravelle in North Myrtle Beach for our honeymoon and quite frankly, I could hardly wait to get back to the coast.
Finally that damned reception was over and we departed for Myrtle Beach. We arrived at the Caravelle around eleven o�clock that night and checked into our room. It was then that I proceeded to initiate the demise of our marriage. I got my rod and reel and went fishing until about seven o�clock the next morning. Hell of a way to start a marriage, don�t you think?
When I got back to the room the next morning, she was really upset. But we managed to get through the next three days without doing any really bad things to each other.
It was a blessing that the marriage only lasted for three years. During that short period of time, which seemed like an eternity, we each must have found ten thousand ways to torment each other into some kind of living hell. She felt that I had robbed her of her goal of becoming a theater actress, and I felt that she had separated me from my real love, the sea. Due to the unbearable tension between us, we tried to stay away from each other as much as possible. We had two children now, and there was a lot of acting to do for our parents. We had to pretend to be happy around them, or they would freak out if they knew that this marriage was coming to an end.
Life had become bad enough with us having to put up with each other, and, not being around the ocean certainly did not help the situation for me at all. So I would leave High Point every Friday afternoon and go back to Oak Island to continue life as I felt it should be until late on Sunday afternoons when I begrudgingly made the four-hour drive back to High Point. This was always a long, rough ride back to High Point, but I always had a stockpile of memories and a little sand in my shoes to get me by until the next weekend when the journey would be repeated.
This scenario was repeated almost every weekend over the next year or two. Until I found out that she was having an affair with her uncle�s chauffeur. I knew the chauffeur very well also, and it really did not surprise me at all that this had been going on. In fact, this was the opportunity I had been looking for. It was a sound reason to get out. Neither of us really gave a damn and that was the end of it all.
We separated, and I was ordered to pay child support. She kept the house and one car, and broke off the relationship with the chauffeur two weeks later.
I could not move back to Oak Island right away. I had a support obligation to fulfill for the next sixteen years and there were no jobs at that time in the Oak Island area paying enough to cover the support obligation and have much left for living expenses.
Since I knew my ex-wife�s boyfriend, he and I moved into a house together and split the expenses while I worked for my Grandfather�s company in High Point.
During this period of time, I also got a part time job as a lifeguard at Ocean Drive Beach, South Carolina. This was not only for extra income, but it was also a way that I could get my required fix of salt air each week in order to delay the complete erosion of my sanity.
One thing was certain; I was totally and completely out of place in High Point. I had to get back to the coast, and back to Oak Island.
While I was living in High Point, we had rented our house at Oak Island. But I guess that we rented the house to the wrong person.
The man that we rented the house to was a drunk who ended up burning the house to the ground and burning himself up with it. There was absolutely nothing left at all.
I really feel that a big part of me was destroyed in the fire also, a part of me that to this day is still missing. Personal items, peaceful refuge, tranquillity, all totally destroyed by a damn careless drunk.
I suppose that is a big part of the reason that even now I have very little tolerance for drunks and alcohol abuse.
I went to the site of the fire about a week after the house had burned and picked up small pieces and items from the house, all blackened and burnt and nothing much larger than a quarter but at least I had something to hold on to. I still have these items after all these years.
After all of this, I really didn�t give a damn about anything in High Point any longer. People, family, job, none of these things meant anything to me any longer at all. I knew that I had to get back to the coast and try to replace the pieces of me that were missing. So I said to hell with it all and moved to Wilmington, got an upstairs apartment on Dock Street, and got a job at Colorcraft of Wilmington. The job did not pay very much, but at least I was close to home.
I could surf everyday after work and on weekends at Wrightsville Beach or Carolina Beach and it was only a thirty-five minute drive to Oak Island. There I could surf with old friends again, and make new friends with kindred spirits. I could also begin to restore some peace to a wounded soul and visit the vacant lot where at one time my home and my world had stood and privately shed a tear in the understanding company of God, the south wind, and the sea.