Newspapers / The Nags Tale (Nags … / July 23, 1938, edition 1 / Page 1
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The Nags Tale VOLUME 1 NAGS HEAD, N. C., SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1938 NUMBER 2 THE LOST COLONY By Ben Dixon MacNeill One of the accepted folk fictions of the country is that if you take a stance at the intersection of two improbable streets on Manhattan Island and remain thus for thirty minutes, somebody will come along and greet you as a long lost broth er. It probably happens just often enough to keep breath in the legend. It happens a good deal oftener along this beach or over on Roa noke Island at this season of the year. Or at almost any season of any year. Or would happen except for the ghastly habit people have formed about dark glasses. You don’t know anybody any more. People have become mostly just ambulant frames upon which these ghastly disguises are hung. But even so, it does happen often enough. Oftener probably than anywhere. There are enough peo ple to make it happen, and not so many that you don’t notice any body as individual persons. I don’t get around too much, but it happens often enough. Not being addicted to darkglasses I’m still recognizable, and the worst part of it is that I don’t know more than one out of a hundred people who come up and speak to me. Or I don’t know them until I take their glasses off and look at them. By now I do it automati cally. When anybody comes up to me, with exclamations, I just reach for their glasses and take them off. If I know the person then. I put the glasses back. If I don’t,—well, I usually know them, or can make reasonable guesses about it. This morning I recommended the procedure to Jim Boyd when a flock of people came and greeted him with large enthusiasm. He didn’t expect to see anybody down here that he knew. It is a long ways to Maine, or to Southern Pines, or to Palm Springs, in which three places he spends most of his time. When they started yelling his name across the theatre, he looked for a little as if he were going to take off like a fox. Or maybe go and put half the width of Roa noke Sound between them and him. But he went, finally, and peeped behind their glasses. He was in college or somewhere with one of them. They were jointly surprised and delighted about the matter. They put on their glasses and went on sight-seeing. Jim Boyd—more formally, James Boyd, novelist, author of Drums, Marching on. Long Hunt, and Roll River and of a new novel that we have been three days trying to figure out a name for—hadn’t seen Nags Head before, nor The Island. He came to stay 24 hours, and spent that, or most of it, and the next succeeding 48 hours, arguing with his conscience. He could think of three dozen reasons an hour for leaving immediately after he had seen “The Lost Colony.” There were things to be done in Philadelphia where he had been in negotiation with the Saturday Evening Post about the new novel, which Mr. Wesley Stout had bought for serialization in the Post beginning in October. There were further negotiations in New York with Scribners who will publish it in December. And there was his family somewhere in the neigh borhood of Bar Harbor in Maine. But also the dishes had to be washed. Insofar as I have enumer ated them there are six servants in the Boyd house and a good many more down at the stables where he keeps ten horses with saddles and a pack of 80 foxhounds. But I don’t have any servants. Nor anw hounds and horses, either, for AT BEACH CLUB VAN KEYS AND HIS 14 MUSICAL KEYS now playing at the Beach Club. Kays’ organization stands out as being one of the foremost attractions ever to appear in this section and are attracting the largest crowds nightly ever to attend the Beach Club. :LARK GODFREY BACK AT CASINO Clark Godfrey, who for the past several weeks has been in New York, will once more take up his baton at the Nags Head Casino. This will be Godfrey’s first appear ance with the band since returning from the big city and it is rumor ed that it will be an improved out fit with a group of new numbers. Lovely Honey Lane, CBS and NBC artist, will be at the mike to sing in a manner that has already won her praise from her many friends she made while here in June. Godfrey’s band is from Norfolk originally but his men come from hither and yon. They are all talented musicians and can really strike up a tune. Many of the lads have played with Jack Denny and several other famous bands. For an evening of fun and frolic go to the Casino and join in with this band of swing. that matter. Not much but Martin Kellogg’s house down the beach a ways. The first, second and third nights we sat up naming the book and improving “The Lost Colony” until it was time to get breakfast. I got breakfast and Jim Boyd said that he was hell with a dishpan. He rolls up his pants for no very ob vious reason when he starts wash ing dishes. He devised a system of disposing of garbage by not having any garbage. I don’t know how it works, but it works. He does it with a small trowel. Which, to be sure, isn’t here nor there. What I set out to say and then got shunted off into this meandering, is that you are rath er more than likely to see every body you know down here and when you see them they are either disguised with glasses and you don’t know them, or when they get settled down and quit arguing with you and themselves that they ought to go home, they begin do ing unpredictable pleasant things. It is now time to go and see if I can figure out what Jim Boyd did with the garbage and to assure him that there isn’t any chance of getting away from here today, which will make, him very happy, I (Continued on Page Three) POTPOURRI By Woodrow Price It’s getting so you can tell the natives from the tourists on the Island and at Nags Head. The na tives wear shoes. Immediately after crossing Wright Memorial Bridge, the tour ist reclines back on the cushions of his car, inhales deeply of the salt sea air coming in off the ocean and right away concludes that the pieces of leather, or rubber, adorn ing his or her feet, are entirely out of place and not in keeping with his surroundings. He takes them off and to use his own language “goes native.” He sticks his toes in the hot sands, and then • cools them off in the white surf and if he is in a parti cularly unoccupied portion of the beach probably comes out of the remainder of his clothing and plunges on overboard. But that single item of lacing himself out of his shoes has distin guished him as a visitor at Nags Head. He has absorbed the beach atmosphere, immersed himself deeply in the cream of Nags Head life and made himself eligible to travel in the most exclusive of the “sets” if there are any such on the beach. The few fishermen and the rest of the people who just live on the beach all the year around, and so have acquired the veneer and the name of “natives,” are in the min ority in summer. So are the shoes. Some few of the natives, to use their own term, “go tourist” and take off their own shoes. But most of them keep them on, simply because they know that hot sands will not feel nearly so hot through leather soles. And soles with just a strap or two to hold them on are cool enough to the upper part of the feet. If chronologists were able to trace the development of the trend toward barefootedness at Nags Head, they might go back a matter of a hundred years or less and dis cover that some visitor to the beach had accidentally outfitted himself with only a single pair of shoes for his stay, and that pair of shoes too expensive to be worn in sand. Penuriously, perhaps, he decided it Beach Civic League Gives Contest Rules MUSIN’S By The Sandfiddler For the first time in the history of the Dare County beaches, resi dents, businessmen and landown ers alike will unite next month, in a concerted drive for beautifying and cleaning up the beach. Offering prizes of five, three and two dollars, the recently establish ed Beach Civic League of Dare County, which its backers hope will soon be boasting a membership of most everyone along the beach, is sponsoring the clean up drive. Formed several weeks ago, and headed by Mrs. Russell Griggs and a group of outstanding beach citi zens, the new organization is plan ned to serve as a sort of Chamber of Commerce for the beaches of Nags Head, Kitty Hawk, and Kill Devil Hills. Entrants in the League’s clean up drive must be registered with the secretary before August first. Selection of prize winners, to be made by a specially appointed group of non-partisan judges, will be based on removal of trash, re pairing of driveways and walk ways, and the tearing down of un sightly signs. In order to raise money for the prize and for League stationary the organization is sponsoring a membership drive. Membership fee is one dollar, and the mem bership committee is being headed by Miss Marie LeRoy. would be far cheaper to wear out the hide on the bottoms of his two walking props. Or perhaps it was entirely accidential that the cus tom became a custom. Maybe sand mixed with pebbles in the interior of a shoe occupied by a tender foot, and socially and specifically the shoe in question became painful to the occupant. Perhaps the foot was chafed, and the owner had to walk back in his bare feet, liked it so much that he took off the other. Fashions are made in just such topsy-turvy manner. Why couldn’t Nags Head have inherited its atmosphere in just such a man ner? Far more likely, it is, how ever, that the visitors just went wading and kept on walking (Continued on Page Two) Observant readers may notice that Musin’s author has changed his pen name. First it was The Beachcomber. Now it’s the Sand- fiddler. Next we’ll be pealing potatoes for Chef Morris at the Beach Club. Reason for the change is evi dent to all who read Vic’ Meekins Dare County Times. Until recently Ben Dixon MacNeill has been do ing a piece for the Times and printing it under the heading of the Beachcomber. Careful scrutiny of the heading will show that be side the name of column and au thor appears a picture of a bottle of rye and a glass. We changed our name from Beachcomber to Sandfiddler because of Ben Dixon MacNeill’s column. Whether this change was made because we felt a twinge of conscience over mooch ing popularity through the use of Ben Dixon MacNeill’s head, or whether we didn’t want our writ ings connected with anything that contains a picture of a gin bottle and a half filled glass of the fluid we won’t say. But we’ve changed the pen name, and we’ve stopped beachcombing and begun sand fiddling or doing whatever it is that sandfiddler’s do. A lot of the fellows have been, griping lately because their girl’s weren’t mentioned last week as aspirants for the mythical title of Belle of the beach. In order to make the thing fair for all con cerned, and at the same time keep from getting shot, we might men tion that Phylis Gatling, Jean Armstrong, and Hilda Gooch are right nice too. The reader might wonder who Hilda Gooch is, and to set his mind at ease we’ll let him in on a secret. Miss Gooch is a ficticious character. She was in cluded in the above catagory simply to take care of future complaints. We know that there are still some boys who’ll argue with us about not including their girls in the list. So to take care of those we offer a simple way out. Just take Hilda Gooch and add it between your girls first and last name. Folks will (Continued on Page Four)
The Nags Tale (Nags Head, N.C.)
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July 23, 1938, edition 1
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