Summers at Atlantic Beach

When I was about five years old, my parents made the decision to move my sister, brother, and myself from Cincinnati to Washington, North Carolina. Never heard of it? Not surprising. Washington is a little town on the Pamlico river, about fifteen miles east of Greenville and about an hour and a half north of Atlantic Beach. Washington has two claims to fame, the first and most touted being that it was the first town named after George Washington. The second, less known feature is that Washington is located near Chocowinity, home to Fountain Powerboats—a company that specializes in luxury powerboats bought by drug dealers and law enforcement agencies alike. But that is neither here nor there.

When I look back at my childhood, the memories that remain the most clear and the most sentimental center around family trips to Atlantic Beach. Even when we moved back to the Cincinnati area five years later, my parents still loaded us all into a car for the thirteen hour trip back to Washington and the Atlantic Beach every summer. It was a family tradition that could be waylaid by nothing.  No financial difficulties, nor surly teenagers, nor forces of nature could keep the five of us from our yearly trek to the beach.

When we lived in Washington, the trip to the beach was  regular affair. We would often spend long weekends at the Whaler or one of the other many ocean-front hotels. These trips were fun of course, but the highlight of the season was always the week long stay that would occur around late August. My mother was a teacher and my father an accountant, so this vacation was always a last fling before the encroaching advent of the new school year and the fall tax season. My parents would book a week at the Whaler Inn, whose amenities included a fully equipped kitchen. This was an important feature for a family of five; it allowed my parents to bring a car full of groceries along, negating the need for expensive restaurant trips. Over the years, my family established a list of sacred destinations and activities that filled the week with adventures that have remained vivid in my mind for the past twenty years.

One of the days was always devoted to a trip to the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. As aquariums go, this one wasn’t terribly impressive—at least not compared to some of the amazing glass structures that I have seen in larger cities. But it didn’t matter that this building wasn’t state of the art; it had the coolest feature of any museum or aquarium that I have visited since: a tank that was filled with sea creatures you could touch and pick up. These days it seems like the tactile features of children’s museums are not terribly interesting. They tend to be plaster casts of objects or animals that are meant to reproduce an experience rather than to allow the plausibly dangerous situation of actually participating in a tangible event. But this tank, which was presided over for years by a large, friendly man in an eye patch, was full of crabs and other water dwelling creatures that children were actually encouraged to reach out and touch. Imagine as an eight-year-old being able to grasp a hermit crab and pick it up out of its natural environment. And, even more enticing, being encouraged to reach out and pet a horseshoe crab. For those of you who have never had the opportunity to pet a horseshoe crab, you’re missing out. These creatures have remained my favorite sea denizen from the first time I saw them at the age of five. Cool and smooth to the touch, they nevertheless maintain an adorable feel as they wag their pointed little tails. And trust me, they do wag their tails. In fact, that same rakish man who guarded the kids tank had an astonishing rapport with the horseshoe crabs; he could simply waggle his fingers in the water and they would come rushing toward him, wagging their spear-like tails as they butted up against his palm. It was a marvelous sight for a child and a rather unbelievable memory for me as an adult.

One of the other places that we absolutely had to visit every year was Fort Macon. Like the aquarium, Fort Macon was fascinating to a child because of all the things you could DO and TOUCH without being yelled at by an adult. There were rooms to explore that were once used as jail cells or as army bunks. As you entered the fort itself, you are greeted with a titillating sign: “CAUTION! Fort Macon was made for war not safety. Please be careful.” As a classical humanities major, I have always been interested in history in general. Usually, though, my interest is restricted to events that occurred at least a thousand years prior to present day. To my recurrent embarrassment and chagrin, I have little knowledge or enthusiasm for American history. Regardless, this fort managed to capture my rather overactive imagination. I think it was the fact that by the time it was converted into a state park it had become overgrown with grass and moss. The five-sided structure was created of brick and stone that have aged over the past two centuries in such a way as to give the fort a castle-like feel. You can stand on the second level and look out over the battlements to the trees and ocean beyond, with little but the wind and surf sounding in your ears.

There are so many things about Atlantic Beach that I will never forget. There was the ferry ride to Ocracoke Island, a small island you could walk across in a day with ease. There was the trip to the Channel Marker, the only restaurant we ever visited on a regular basis. Here you could eat a dinner of crab legs as you stared enthralled at the sea gulls playing hopscotch on the deck supports outside the restaurant windows. There were evening walks on the beach with my mother and siblings, singing Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz at the tops of our lungs. And there were the trips with my father to the Adventure Golf across the street, complete with the requisite ice cream cone on the way back to the hotel. All these memories make up my childhood, and I am eternally grateful to my parents for the experiences they worked hard to give me and my brother and sister.

Tags: aquarium, Atlantic Beach, beach, Fort Macon, North Carolina

This entry was posted on January 26th, 2009 and is filed under Memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.