Newspapers / Carteret County News-Times (Morehead … / Oct. 19, 1948, edition 1 / Page 8
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1 , .TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 194: CABTERET COUNTY NEWS-TIMES, MOREHEAD CITY AND BEA1TFORT, W- C. ft.CE EIGHT A Mountaineer Fell in Love mtlivte t O 0 Goa f I i t h f And Made North Carolina's Outer Banks Famous fly Ruth Peeling North Carolina's shores may be water and barren sand but to Ay cock Brown it has become green pasture-this mountain born scribe fell so much in love with the coast that he had lo tell others about it, thereby making the area from Southport to the Viiiginia line green pasture too for hunters, fish ermen, surf swimmers, boatmen and all who delight in the romance of the coast. Charles Brantley Aycock Brown, who has the reputation of getting good publicity for anyone or any thing when all other so-called wri ters fail, was born in Happy Val lev, between l.cnnir and Blowing Rock on Oct. 7. 1004 anu never saw the ocean until he was 20 years old. Four years later on a spring day in Beaufort, while walking down Pollock street toward the water, the view across Beaufort inlet stole his heart away and he vowed he would never le; ve the coast again. On that day began his first ex perience as a reporter for the Beaufort News, published then by V. (1. Mebane. But the days and years that preceded that event were full of varied experience and m;ny trials for the aspiring jour nalist. Aycock's longing to be a news paper man supplanted a childhood desire to be a great naturalist like John Burroughs. His boyhood in the mountains where his father was supoiintendeut of the Sum Patterson estate and late overseer at Occonoonecchee Farms put him on "speaking terms" with all the birds, butterflies and animals. He kne.v the songs of birds, col lected butterflies, and even began a net stock farm where he had guinea pigs, squirrels, ferrets and half a dozen different breeds of rabbits. To catch big moths that flitted through the woods at night he'd hang a lantern on a tree to attract them and certain types he caught were brought at a dollar each by a collector in California. In his rapid fire way of speak ing the free-lance writer and pho tographer who has had more ex perience interviewing than being interviewed, said that he got most Df his ideas and urge for commu nication with nature from Gene Ftratton Porter's books such as "Girl of the Limberlost." Ho read He Called It 'Cape Stormy' with an unquenchable thirst. His four-part name, Charles Brantley Aycock Brown, was given him two weeks after he was born. The Patterson estate on which the Brown family lived was owned by the man who was then state com missioner of agriculture. One day when the governor of North Caro lina, Charles Brantley Aycock, came to visit Commissioner Pat terson, Papa Brown asked the gov ernor to come take a look at his new son. The governor did so and Mr. and Mrs. Brown decided to give their latest offspring the full name of the governor of North Carolina. Members of fie Brown family tol?led eight. Besides the parents and Aycock, there were three brothers and two sisters, two of the boys being younger than the son with the governor's name. None of the others were endowed with names of notables. Aycock later dropped the Charles Brant ley, but his oldest child, now 16, bears the full name too. Before C. B. A. Brown readi ed the age of 10. the lamiiy moved to Occonoonecchee Farms in Orange county, farms owned by the late Gen. Julian S. Carr. a Confederate general. While there, Mrs. Brown was bitten in the ear by a spider, and this, the coastal writer believes, was the beginning of illnesses which led to his moth er's death. Hoping to improve Mrs. Brown's health the family moved back to the mountains and it was shortly after that time that AycocK said one of the most impressive events of his childhood occurred. He and his three younger brothers had never been christened and it was while his mother was on her death bed that the three of tlx-ro were baptized in her presence. After the death, the familv re turned to Occonooneechee Farms and Avcock went to school at near by Hillsboro. "Tliev had onlv 11 grades at that time." he relates to the 11th grade and got stuck there a couple years, then they left me out. "Incidentally, I had the hardest time to prove that I was born and then that I was graduated from high school when I started to do intelligence work for the Navy during the war." he relates. Finally, the date of his birth in N v 1 ' ' V ti Hi county! So he went with the trav eler friend and did a story qri hunting which was published i. Jn several state papers. On his waylasked him to take her husband's At the end of the fiftli week of working on the railroad, Mrs. W. C. , Mebane went ,to Aycock and Ocracoke where Aycock went for a two-week vacation and stayed four years. a family Bible belonging to his sis ter at Leaksville was discovered, and that was sufficient, the Navy said, to prove trrt he wasn't hatch ed or that he hadn't been smuggled into the county on a rum-runner from Cuba. The high school problem was lat'.'r solved too. But a lot of water went over the dam between high school days and service with the Navy. Aycock wanted to be a newspaperman. "But I couldn't find a job. I couldn't write and I still can't," the columnist photographer laugh ed. Among the post high school jobs was one as printer's devil on the Orange County Observer which was owned by John T. Johnson. Ml the type was set by hand. Then ho had jobs at grocery stores, drug stores "I can still fill a prescrip tion . . ." he said proudly, and ". . . . then at one time 1 ran a and I got , cafe, made the best barbecue and Brunswick stew in orange county. Several experiences proved to Aycock that he was no merchan dise salesman, one of these was in Charlotte where he attempted to sell "Whispering Mouthpieces for Telephones" and the other, was in Brooklyn, N. Y., where he tried to sell magazines. The whispering mouthpiece, Ik V v i , y. Y 1 !" ,!:f.5 114 ' 111 i I I'll MI, . j u v im o vif v - ii.v' 1 i "i -s warn i iBit'.i:" ' .a1 .- w ".r vr?s; If 7 ' Yes, Bub, we mean, you! You, and your family, too, would be surprised to know how, much concern you cause the Tide Water Power Company. Yes indeed. Take hot water for instance. It's one of the great conveniences in the modern home, most especially when there are small children around. For baths, for sterile laundry, for thorough cleaning -there's nothing so handy as an ample sup ply of hot, hot water. Whether you're a gas or an electric cus tomer of the Tide Water Power Company, you can be sure of an ample supply of hot water 24 hours a day, If your present hot water heater is not up to your today's re quirements, by all means stop in and see the new ones at your local Tide Water office. And they have new ranges and re frigerators too for your inspection. Providing its customers with electricity and ga3-and the opportunity to buy ap pliances to make the best use of these ser-vices-that)s the business of Tide Water and its 360 employees. We're at your ser vice. Call on us to help in any way we can! TIDE WATER P OWE R CO MP ANY made of glass, sold for $1 and fit ted into the mouth of the phone. It allegedly magnified the voice lo such an extent that one needed only to whisper into it and he could be heard ?t the other end. "I didn't sell a darned one of those things, I went broke and lived on apples," he declared. "The Bell Telephone company soon banned them anvhow and wouldn't allow them to be sold." Aycock's frustatcd desire to be i newspaperman only made him more determined to break into the racket somehow. And finally it happened. One day as he was riding on a bus in Charlotte he saw a peach tree in bloom. He wrote a four line noem about it. "The first and last poem I ever wrote, " he declared. "I can't even j repeat the thing now. Anyhow I i sent it to Mrs. J. B. Caldwell of the Charlotte Observer who wrote a column, "One Minute Inter views." and she printed it. That was the biggest thrill of my life. When I saw it I turned hot, then cold, was embarrassed ana pfeas ed." He was more determined than ever then to be a writer. So he went to Florida. But every editor laughed at him. He had no "ex perience." So he got a job for' six months as a chauffeur, then went back to Hillsboro and finally to West Virginia on a road con struction job. He returned to Hillsboro and began to write historical features on the town. "This was easy," he explains, "because the stories were already in the guidebook." Actually, it wasn't as easy as that. There arc always those lit tle somethings which make a story the kind accepted for feature sec tions of newspapers, but that, too, was a beginning a few of the stories appeared in print. Soon, however, the desire for a real newspaper job led Aycock to Elizabeth City. W. O. Saunders, editor and publisher of the Eliza beth City Independent, had writ ten a story, "Me and My Flapper Daughters," which appeared . in the American Magazine. "I decided after reading that, that I wanted to work for Saun ders, so I wrote him a letter ask ing for a job. He took me up on it," the columnist related, "and as soon as I got in the office he be gan to siy what a fool he was for hiring me. He told me to sit down and write a story, 'My Impressions of Elizabeth City.' 1 don't know what I wrote, but anyhow I stay ed six months. "I kind cf fell in love with one of his flapper daughters and learn ed that Saunders was going to fire me. So I quit, borrowed $500 and went to New York." There the aspiring journalist entered Columbia university in hopes of learning to be a news paperimn. The first month he was there he spent the whole $500 and had to start working to stay in school. One of his jobs was; as a long shoreman. The first snip he help ed unload was a boat from Persia carrying goat hides and dates (the fruit kind). I , But the most lucrative job was shoveling snow. On dollar an hour, and an all night's work brought in $10 which was a lot of money then. A magazine selling job was a fizzle. His homes in New York were in Greenwich Village at the Hotel Al bert and then in an attic sort of place on 12th street. The dime subway fare each day up to Colum bia university on 116th street and back was too much, he soon de cided, so he moved to a hallway bedroom on 115th street. After about 11 months in New York, the native Tar Heel -blood rose to the surface and he came back to North Carolina where he stopped in at The Raleigh Times. There Oscar Coffin, then editor, said he couldn't hire him, he still didn't have enough experience, but advised him to write ' feature storiss. , So again he went back to Hills boro and started turning out stuff that was printed in the Durham Herald. Then the Herald called him up and asked him to come work for them as proofreader. "I didn't even know what a proofreader was," said Aycock, "but I went. The job lasted two nights. I couldn't spell or Co any thing a proofreader is supposed to know how to do." But then, of all things, they handed him a job as cub reporter. It looked as though maybe he would be a newspaperman after all. The rriuilar police beat re porter on the Herald was assigned one day in l'27 to cover the com mencement at Duke university, the lirst commencement since the name was changed from Trinity college. So Cub Brown was hand ed the police beat. The first day he turned in 32 stories. "It was simple," he said. "I can write a story about anything I sec." home through Little Washington, he suddenly decided to go to Oc racoke. ' He had been there the year be fore, the spring of 1927, on a house party and told Capt. Bill Gaskill, owner and manager of the Pamlico Inn, that he would do a story and publicity for him in re turn for a two-week vacation. Ay cock left Ocracoke four yers later. "I've been on vacation ever since 1928," he said, "because what I'm doing isn't work. I love it." During the days on Ocracoke, which if being spoken of in a bio graphy of Aycock 100 years from now, might be called the Ocracoke Period, he wrote "Hunting and "Fishing and All Outdoors" for the Greensboro Daily iIews and The Beaufort News. He didn't start supplementing his work with pho tographs until 1938. In 1933 he left Ccracoke and went to Wilmington, Del. In the meantime he met and married Es ther Styron, of Ocracoke, and to them a son, Charles Brantley Ay cock Brown, Jr., was born. At Wilmington he worked on a dredge but left after about eight months and returned to Ocracoke. In the late autumn of 1934 times were bad. "I was so broke I didn't know where to turn next," he said. "At that time Dr. C. W. Lewis and Dr. C. S. Maxwell, of Beaufort, asked me to come to Beaufort and Fishing in North Carolina," a col umn carried by three papers, and put out propaganda to retain the railroad line into Beaufort from Morehead City. Norfolk and South- I ern was going to discontinue it. "I wrote about everything I could think of, about every tie in the road, working up sentiment for the retention of the line." It worked. The line was con tinued but was later bought by Beaufort interests and is now the Beaufort and Morehead Ciiy railroad. Slice while Mr. Mebane was in the ospital, - "He had cancer. I didn't know that," cpmmented Aycock, "and When he came back, he was a corpse. Then. The Beaufort Newt went into hands of receivers and I remained as editor. But I fol- $p Ill -la. A Brantley lowed the wrong policy tha of flaying people. It's not good for a small town, if you expect people to talk to you on the street." He remained on the job after the paper was bought by William Hatsell and just before Pearl Har bor started a semi-monthly, The Ocracoke. Island Beacon. He sold about 500 subscriptions and this helped restore his faith in his abi lity to give people something they wanted to read. His column, Covering the Water front, which he still writes today, was begun in 1934. He has had stories in sports magazines, among them, "Hunter, Trader, and Trap per" and "Sports Afield," but the big story was one on Ocracoke, "Cape Stormy" which appeared several years ago in The Saturdw Evening Post. One of the editors from the Poi Wesley Stout, decided that wanted color pictures of Ocraco, Hatteras, and all the outer ban and requested Aycock's assistan in shooting them. AycocK sugge: ed a story to go with the pictun Stout agreed and told Aycock write it. Three davs before the. deadlii stnnt wired the North Caroli columnist, who had apparently fd fiotten all about the story, and trt him that if he didn't get the arti to Philadelnhia darn soon, the p tures would run without a story one of the magazine's staff write would handle it. So Aycock down at his typewriter and in sli Hours pounded out the articfc which three months after it w published brought him 1.406 lc ters inquiring about Ocracoke fro Asia, Europe, and every state the Union. Soon after the story rnn, B( Thompson, friend of Aycock's, ail now editor of the High Point F. temrise. ohoned him and sai "The governor would like to something for vou." "What for?" asked "Cape SU my's" author. "For what you did for Nor Carolina in that story on Oci coke." reolied Thompson. "He about a week's cruise on the Ha teras?" "I can't." Avcock told him. "M wife's going to have a baby a day now. I can't get away." "Bring her and a doctor along insisted Thompson. So Mr. and Mrs. Brown, the son. Brantley. Dr. Laurie Moor Beaufort, and the Brown's ne door neighbor, Mrs. Gray Hassell "who has always been wonderfu to us," remarked Aycock, went 1 a week's trio along the out banks. II, ! Read on Friday of Aycock'! experiences during the war, how Tony Seamon has figured ir bis career: and meet his prctt) little 20-month-old daughter, with! the oicturesque name, Stormy Gale. Aycock covered the police beat about six months, making $35 a week. "There was an old fellow there at the time. Managing editor I guess, making about $65. But every week he came over and bor rowed money from me. I finally decided that I wasn't going to be come an old broken-down manag ing, editor some day, so I wrote three letters. One to Southport, one to Mantco, and one to Beau fort. Just three places I picked out on the map. I heard from Beaufort and went there to work on The Beaufort News for W. G. Mebane at $20 a week." That was soon after the bridge to Beaufort was built. After three months on The Beaufort News, Mebane fired his new reporter, probably. Aycock says, "because I didn't agree with his political viewpoint. I thought the paper was independent, but it had de finite Republican leanings," com mented the man who was later to become editor of Beaufort's week ly- From there he went to The Car teret County Herald, Morehead City. "I was drinking pretty heavi ly in those days," explained Co lumnist Brown, who reformed two years ago by unswervingly substi tuting coffee for whiskey in his diet. At a party on a boat one night he fell overboard and it was .then that his friends decided he should be sent to some sort of institution' to cure his desire for liquor. Instead, the owner of the boat, Bayard Hall, a writer, asked to take Aycock north with him. Ten days later, the reporter re turned to the Carteret Herald of fice to pick up in his portable typewriter. He apologized to the editor for leaving him in the lurch and ask ed if he could do anything to help him out. "That you can't," roared the edi tor. "Get your stuff and get out." With thit, Aycock took the job as publicity man for the Atlantic Beach syndicate, which in those days started to put Atlantic Beach orf the map with his help. - Everything on the beach was free. .Only a toll was charged to cross tke bridge. The Pagoda was the beach dance hall, and though ttill a firm friend of the bottle. Aycock made the Pagoda and fea ture attractions of Atlantic Beach known all over the state. During Al Smith's fight for the presidency, he went back upstate and worked with the Democratic party. Made money, but lost it all i 01 bets that Al Smih -would win. , "I had a chance to go to Cuba then with the Johnny Jones Shows, but I decided to return to New York and look for something to do. But when I got there I didn't have the nerve to ask an editor for a lob, so I, went over to Ruther ford, N. J., to see Colonel Dickin son," continued the columnist. The colonel, who was president of Becton, Dickinson, and Co., manufacturers of surgical Instru ments, offered Aycock all sorts of jobs, but Aycock decided to keep on following the weary trail to ward a newspaperman. The colonel gave him money to o home ind on the way Ay- ock met a man on the tram wno as going bear hunting in Hyde ifilklSvy.Jiilvi mm GENERAL ELECTION: TUES. NOV. 2 HOURS: 6:30 Ait TO 6:30 PJ1 REGISTRATION DAYS: Saturday, Oct. 9lh Saturday, Oct. 16th Saturday, October 23rd PLACE: THE PRECINCT POLLING PLACE (The Registrar can enter your name on any day from October 9th lo October 29th. He sure to see him). Ho Registration Can Be Entered After Oct. 29 CHALLENGE DAY - OCTOBER 30th Absentee Ballots: (An Absentee Ballot Can be cancelled on Election Day, by the Registrar, if the Voter has' changed his plans and wishes to vote at the Polls.) . Tor any voter in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, or Merchant Marine. For any voter who wiU he onto! the county on November 2nd. For any sick voter unable to go lo the polls. A bse n 1 e e A p p 1 i cat ions: Voter can apply to this board by letter or Father, Mother, Broth er, Sister, Son, or Daughter may apply lor the voter. ' Application must Estate Precinct of voter. Men or women in the Services will be registered by this Board. AU others must be registered on Precinct books. No application can be received alter October 33th. Register or You Cannot Vole! Apply For Absentees How! Every Citizen Should Vote! Carteret Ccunty Board Of Elections EIACTC3T, It C
Carteret County News-Times (Morehead City, N.C.)
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Oct. 19, 1948, edition 1
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