Ice Cream

My father (born in 1911) enjoyed telling me about eating ice cream when he was a boy growing up on Ocracoke. At that time Mr. Walter O'Neal operated a general store where the Silver Lake Motel is located today. Periodically in the summer Mr. Walter would churn ice cream. Then he would hoist a flag high up on a flagpole as a signal to the villagers that he had ice cream for sale.

Mr. Walter, standing on the porch of his store

According to Fred Mallison, in his book To Ocracoke!, by the 1930s Capt. Bill Gaskill, owner of the Pamlico Inn, provided a "special import service." Mallison writes that "the Sunday night boat always brought a heavy, smoking, wooden box for the Pamlico Inn. A truck from the Maola Ice Cream Company in Washington [NC] delivered it just before sailing time. The box traveled wrapped in quilts in the hold, and it was filled with blocks of ice cream packed in dry ice. Cap'n Bill stored the box in a cool place and sold all of it that was surplus to his hotel guest's needs."

This month's Ocracoke Newsletter is a recording of Rex O'Neal telling about the time he fell overboard when he was gigging for flounder. The story was recorded for Coastal Voices, an oral history project about the maritime heritage of the Outer Banks and Down East region of coastal North Carolina. Click here to listen to Rex telling his story: https://carolinacoastalvoices.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/rex-oneal-gigging-flounders-2/.