Day 11: Sunday trip to the beach…Part 1

As I said on Day 3, Daddy didn’t drink on Sunday and several times in the summer we would go to the beach. We would skip Sunday School and Church and Mama would pack a picnic lunch and we would head out.

We always went to Fort Macon beach. You will notice I said this was Part 1 because there is just too much to tell in one story and it starts with my favorite topic…Geography. Maybe you have never met a Geography Major, well here I am, so forgive me while I geek out a little.

If you look at the map I’ve included, you will see the Gulf Stream current in Red. Why is this important? Well, hurricanes live off of warm water, that’s where they get their strength. Every summer storms build up off the African coast, follow the current down to the Caribbean, and then in August and September, most of the time follow the Gulf Stream current up the East Coast, and as you can see it slams into North Carolina. Some storms will veer off into the Gulf of Mexico, also warm water, or go inland through Florida or Georgia. But hurricane season was a regular event for us in North Carolina.

From Wilmington in the south, up to Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, and Fort Macon Beach, it looks like someone took a scope and carved the coast out…those were the hurricanes that did that damage. In fact, Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, and Fort Macon sit on a sandbar island formed by the hurricanes depositing sand before they went up the coast to hit Cape Hatteras, Nags Head, and the Outer Banks.

The North Carolina coastline is AMAZING. Inlets, bays, rivers feeding from inland, nooks, and crannies everywhere, that’s why Black Beard the pirates and many others loved this area. It would take forever to find them if the military didn’t know their way around…and unless you grew up there…you DON’T know your way around.

The Outer Banks is also a huge sandbar formed by hurricanes over the years, but back to our trip to the beach.

We would drive back roads (that was all we had in North Carolina back in the day) until we get to the New Bern area. Just past there was a park where we would stop. It was only about an hour to New Bern, so we didn’t stop because we needed a break. We stopped because this is where we had our picnic lunch at the “Kicking Machine”.

What??? Do you mean you grew up without a “Kicking Machine”? Well, here is the history… “Have you ever thought that you could kick yourself? Tom Haywood, of Croatan, knew that feeling and figured other folks might sometimes feel that way, too. So during the summer of 1937, he and local handyman Wilber Herring built a contraption that would deliver a good, swift kick to the seat of the pants of any willing recipient.

The simple machine consisted of a hand-operated crank connected by a belt and pulleys to a wheel. Four spokes, each with an old shoe attached, jutted out from the wheel. To get the boot, the operator just bent over and turned the crank.

Craven County commissioner, Haywood said he intended the kicking machine for his personal use, “to perform the needed rebuke to my conscience.” He kept it behind his house. But so many folks heard about the machine and wanted to use it that Haywood finally moved it to a shelter in front of his general store. The shelter stood at the roadside on U.S. 70, about ten miles east of New Bern.

According to old newspaper accounts, the kicking machine got a good workout on Sunday afternoons from motorists going home from the beach. But at nighttime, the machine really got cranking. “A lot of folks don’t want people to know they need a kick, so they wait until I close up at night and then come around,” Haywood said. “Late at night, I can hear the machine just a squeaking outside.”

Well, that’s enough for today, I’ll pick up tomorrow. Enjoy your day and if you need to, go find a Kicking Machine.