Cross That Bridge When You Come To It

I made a big, fast journey down to, well, I keep wondering if the whole area has a name. I started near the SC border and made my way up through Carolina Beach. I gotta figure out where I was because I need a name for the book. Anyway, after my first stop, I made it quickly to the old pontoon bridge that used to cross the intracoastal waterway to Sunset Beach. I planned to stay just for a bit, take a few pictures, then get on the road, hit the other spots I needed to, meet up with someone I planned to meet, and get in to Southport early so I could shoot a little, eat a good dinner and go to bed early.

No such luck.

Actually, my luck got a whole lot better. The pontoon bridge had a volunteer there that happily spent the better part of an hour telling me old stories about the bridge and all the people who got to cross it, or wait to cross it. I missed out on a lot of other places, but I got so much out of that stop. Sometime, you just have to roll with it, and something good comes out of your time.

The pontoon bridge was a very simple design, meant to do the menial job of letting cars cross the water to the newly developed Sunset Beach, while at the same time, letting boats go through the waterway it spanned. The bridge itself was a low simple design, separated by a floating barge of sorts, on pontoons, so that it rose and fell with the tide, that swung out as if on a hinge to open a breech in the bridge for boats to go through. On the hour, two ramps lifted up, and then a big diesel engine would work a winch to pull the floating part open for boats to get through. Because the bridge was so low, pretty much every boat had to wait for the bridge to open to get through. It opened on the hour and closed when the line of boats got through. If a boat came by late, it either tried to run the closing gap, often catching the closing wire on the winch that shut the bridge, or had to wait until the next hour. Because of this, many people traveling the waterway had to plan their visits according to the time of the bridge's opening. It's 15 minutes til? We gotta go!

Of course, when the bridge was open, the road was closed. Traffic would stack up, cars would turn off their engines, and people got out to watch. No use sitting in the hot cars. You weren't going anywhere. You just hoped the bridge got closed before your cold food got warm, or melted.There was no shopping on the island, so people had to take everything in.

Now, this seems like one of those idyllic old timey stories from back long ago when people piled into the big station wagon and traveled to the beach, their only toys a towel and maybe a bucket and shovel. Which would be true. Except that the bridge was used up until January of 2011. And it wasn't like the bridge was even 1950s technology when it was built. This thing was pretty much thrown together to make things work, to get people over to the island.

So there are lots of stories about waiting for the bridge. Lots of stories of being stuck while the bridge was open, or closed. Or broken. And I got to hear them. I can't wait to put them all down in my book.

The bridge was picked up and moved to preserve it, along with the bridge tender house. It;s now a bridge over land. And a lot of history.

Fort Fisher Hermit

I'm going to start out by saying, if you want to know more about the Fort Fisher Hermit, please read the chapter in my first book, Did You See That? A GPS Guide to North Carolina's Out of the Ordinary Attractions. It contains a fairly complete, yet concise, tale of Robert Harrill's life and times, as well as information on his tragic death. Harrill's story is pretty amazing, and it was the reason my once short little book of weird places in NC became the much longer behemoth that it is now. After learning about Harrill and his life, I just couldn't write about him in a few paragraphs.

For those of you that don't know about Harrill, I'll give you a quick synopsis. He lived near Charlotte as a child and young adult, but after several bad turns for him, most which were not really his fault, he decided to run away to the coast, south of Kure Beach to the uninhabited shores past Fort Fisher. He was 63 years old at the time. He lived for 17 years in an old concrete bunker, and became known as the Fort Fisher Hermit, a celebrity on the coast for tourists and locals alike.

Sadly, not all people liked Harrill. Often, people would go down and harass the old man. It was something people would do "for fun." Ultimately, the "fun" probably cost Harrill his life. Some boys went down to see him in June of 1972, only to find him dead, tossed on top of a pile of junk in his bunker, with the signs of a struggle all around the sand outside. Police and the medical examiner ruled his death natural causes, essentially saying he died when his heart failed from being an old man living alone in a bunker on the beach.

Now, obviously, there is more to this story. As I recommended at the beginning, please read my chapter on Harrill in my book for more information. I've just got to say that this has always preyed on my mind some ever since I wrote the chapter. Who killed the Fort Fisher Hermit?

It should have been easy to figure out. Harrill had told some visiting locals that there were people out bothering him the day before, in a VW Beetle. A popular car, sure, but just how many were there around Carolina Beach at the time? I just got suspicious. I mean, it most likely was someone from the area, maybe as far as Wilmington, sure, which would really enlarge the search, but still, probably younger, probably male, probably more than one person. And as I learned more and more, probably known by other people as the likely suspect. I even remember an interview with a filmmaker, I believe, who was asked if he could discover who did it, and his response was something to the effect of, "I still have to live here."

Harrill's family even wanted to know, They were sure it was murder, or at least not natural causes. As it turned out, several people knew who the alleged attackers were. Michael Edwards, who headed the Fort Fisher Hermit Society, was told by other locals of overhearing the men who did the crime discussing it many years later. Four young men went to hassle the Hermit, pulling him out of his sleeping bag, and chasing him into the marsh, where Harrill then fell and went limp from a heart attack. The men put Harrill back in the bunker and left. Edwards went on to explain that it was more likely a bullying gone horribly wrong rather than an actual murder, and that the people were known in the community, and that they know that others know.

This is all alleged in an article in the Star-News from 2001.

And what bothers me? What just kinda creeps me out? Aside from the death, the bullying, the sad history? I'm surprised after all this time that nothing more has been done. I can understand letting the dead rest in peace, but it it just feels really creepy to know that there probably, possibly, allegedly, are a few men, now in their 60s, still walking around, knowing they caused the death of someone. And there are people who know who they are. And they are satisfied with the way things are like that. The horrors of the conscious... 

Let's Go To The Beach!

I was really impressed by all the neat stuff I found at Carolina Beach. There is so much to see and find in the area. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of the coast and Wilmington area. I'm heading out there this spring to do work on a new book.

You stayed WHERE?!

Once I was married, I learned quickly to spend the money on a decent hotel. Oddly, my wife was more of the cheaper, it's just a bed and shower, kind of person. I was somewhat keen on a decent place to stay, later a nice place, but I always wanted a good location. My idea of a good room was that I could sleep in a hammock, wake up, fall out and land on the beach.
I have stayed at a few less than hospitable places, and it seems like quite often they centered around trips to Las Vegas. Go figure. Our first trip we spent the night at the Bun Boy Motel, cause we just couldn't make it all the way there in one day. Windy and hot, it was 99 degrees at midnight, I saw a leaf scuttling in the wind outside our room. Wait, nope, that's a mouse. Inside the air conditioning wasn't turned on, and the heat had killed a roach in the bathroom.
Other trips included a stay in Barstow, at a cheap room. It turned out that clean sheets were extra. We slept in sleeping bags. I thought of sleeping in the tub, but figured it wouldn't be any cleaner. I would have complained, but I didn't want to see the innkeeper in her nightgown again.
So we spend the money.

On our second trip to Carolina Beach, we stayed at the old Beacon House B&B. It has that nice and cozy look to it, just what you expect from an old beach house. The rooms were a little small, but it was in a nice little quiet end of the island. We were able to get up and walk right out to the beach. Plus, someone cooked breakfast for us.

Nowadays, it's less of an option. B&Bs sometimes aren't as suitable for families, and with dietary concerns, it's tough to get someone else to cook for us. Still it was a groovy little place.

We had stayed at The Golden Sands before, and really liked that place, but they not only pushed their rates up just too much, but they have some weird minimum stay thing, where we had to spend three nights there, for a weekend. Once again, good location, but I just figured we can do better. 

I write this mostly as a reminder for myself. I'm planning a new trip down to that area this spring. And I was thinking of sleeping in a tent, since it was just going to be a quick photo trip. 

Spend the money, Joe. Spend the money.