I'm not sure I last spent a night here, on this island where we had a couple of homes -- first a single-wide mobile home, then a custom built double-wide on the inland waterway, true luxury. The family and I had passed through here at least once, either in 2009 right after we came to NC or sometime later, each time when we were spending the weekend at a hotel up the way in the Atlantic Beach/Morehead City area. At any rate, it has been a while. Nor surprisingly, things have changed and are more built up. More stores and restaurants. More and bigger houses.
As Mary, Graham and I walked on the beach this morning, I pondered first and foremost this latter fact, the more and bigger houses, which reflect not just greater wealth concentration than was the case 35-45 years ago, in the heyday of our visits here, but also greater aggregate wealth. There's just more money in North Carolina.
Then again, the towns between Route 70 and the beach, Trenton and Maysville, also seem more hollowed out, less viable, just sadder in general. Passed over by history.
I was very happy to see that the T&W Oyster Bar, in Peletier (I think it's the only thing there) is still open. Some of my happiest memories are of inhaling obscene quantities of fried seafood there.
coda: the next day we went back to our old neighborhood, which had been all mobile homes. I was happy to see that it still was. There were more boats, maybe, and the mobile homes seemed to be very well-tended. Here and there a stick-built house had been built, probably by the original owners of the lot. But it was nice to see that there's still a place down there for people who aren't made of cash.
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