Cream Puffs & Stories

My daughter Amy called last night. She & two off-island friends wanted to come by about 9:30 with cream puffs they had made. We sat around the dining room table, our fingers sticky with chocolate and cream filling, sharing island stories.

I think the one that captivated them most was about the tragic death some years back of an Ocracoke resident, Dave, who loved a good story. In an unfortunate accident he drowned at the South Point. His girlfriend/partner had planned for a flotilla of boats to go out into the sound after the funeral to scatter his ashes.

Sometime during the post-funeral meal one or both of Dave's two ex-wives (I can't remember all of the details), who had come to the island to bid him farewell, decided to "take matters into their own hands," literally. They surreptitiously gathered up Dave's ashes and absconded with them. To my knowledge, the ashes were never recovered.

Perhaps Dave didn't get to mingle with his beloved salt water, but at least Ocracokers got one more story to share, and Dave is definitely a part of that.

[Our current monthly Ocracoke Newsletter is the story of Kunigunde Guth Howard, published June 30, 2005. You can read it here: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news061505.htm.]