Loaf, Swim, & Fish

The following is from a June 10, 1955, Collier’s article titled “20 New Budget Vacations” by Norman D. Ford:

 “If you’ve ever yearned for an escapist isle peopled by descendants of shipwrecked sailors, where life moves with the tides and time has stood still for the better part of a century, head for Atlantic, North Carolina. Garage your car ($5 a week) and take the daily boat to Ocracoke Island. Three hours later you bump alongside a jostling shrimp-boat fleet and clamber ashore in a new world of Elizabethan English, rolling porpoises, barefooted bankers, lighthousekeepers, skeletons of once proud ships and 16 miles of almost deserted beach.

Wreck of the Carroll A. Deering (Courtesy, M.R. Dixon)

"Beside the harbor, fishermen’s white homes rise picturesquely from the live oak and yaupon. Among them are small lodges, hotels and cottages. But there is no jail, no police officer, no bar, and you cannot buy a drink. What you can do is loaf, swim, fish (best channel-bass fishing in the Atlantic), clam, crab, slide down majestic sand dunes and explore wrecked ships. Don’t go with advance cottage reservations –accommodation is limited – and bring your own linen."