Growing up we lived near the beach, about 20 miles or so. So close that it was not unusual that when my father came home from work in the fall when the fish were running we would drive down to the beach and fish for a few hours and come home by bedtime. My father having grown up in Onslow County NC it was just part of his nature to enjoy the beach since even before fast cars he could get to the beach and back in a day. My mother who grew up further inland in Duplin County, where trips to the beach were not normal because of the further distance, quickly took to beach trips and fishing. She enjoyed fishing and I enjoyed watching her fishing. Picture this, cold fall night on a pier, wind blowing, my mother wrapped from head to toe to protect from the cold, and a fishing rod in her hand. No she did not have on the latest fashion, "fishing chicks", but the pleasure to her was the same. When she would catch a fish, or if the spots were "really running" two at a time, she would pull the rod over the side of the pier for my father to take off the fish and bait the hooks again. She might have been a early female entrepreneur, but she understood where to draw the line on the messy stuff.
Anyway all this going to the beach got in my blood and the sea air got in my lungs. Sea air is like perfume to me as the beach is "home" and I am uplifted with a few days of salty air and ocean water. When we first headed to the beach the pier we went to was Barnacle Bills on Topsail Island. Understand you went to certain piers over and over since your friends went there and pier fishing was a social activity. Sorta Facebook before Facebook. Shortly after I began going we switched piers to the newest one on the beach, The Scotch Bonnet. The Scotch as it became to be known was opened sometime in the mid 1960's and was across the county border on Topsail Island in Onslow County. This area was the fast developing area of the island since the area NC legislative representative had promised a new high rise bridge on that northern end of the island and people were buying up land there. Topsail had only one way on the island at the time the old military built swing bridge about mid way down the island. Even with the development you could drive to the northern end of Topsail Island then and see nothing, no lights, no people, no power poles, no nothing. On fall nights after fishing we would drive there just to experience the total solitude and see the stars.
The Scotch Bonnet quickly drew many people from the older Barnacle Bills pier and these people became their own community as well. Some built homes near the pier, some like us took advantage of what would become the deal of a lifetime. That deal was a mobile home park right on the beach within 50 yards of the pier. Pull your "trailer" into our lot and get rent, water, and power for $250 per year for life. The purpose in this deal was to get people who would buy fishing privileges on the pier, buy from their store, and eat in their restaurants. It worked, lots of people including us took the deal. We led to us spending nights at the beach and sometime days at a stretch. When the new bridge was completed the trip to work for my father to Camp Lejeune was actually shorter than from home. So life at the pier began. Like many before me I fell in love with what many would call "the pier life". When I got my first job out of college I spent the first year living at the mobile home and frankly that might have been one of the best years of my life. The beach then had few people year round then and the people who worked at the pier and the people who lived near the pier got to know each other. We were thrilled to see Sunday nights, when the "weekenders" would leave and leave us with the solitude of the beach.
I spent lots of time at the beach even after I left my job in nearby Jacksonville for better opportunities inland in eastern NC. After my mother passed on in 1984 we sold our mobile home since my father did not go down there much anymore and I was busy building a career. I suppose somewhere along the way I forgot about "the pier life", but like something breed into you I began to long for those days again after turning 40 or so. Unfortunately in 1996 it all came to an end in the name of Fran. Hurricane Fran not only wiped out The Scotch Bonnet, it also took out most of the piers along the southeastern NC coast. Most pier owners, due to high insurance costs and building costs, did not rebuild. They sold their land to developers who wanted the ocean front land to build condos to sell.
For all intents and purposes "the pier life" was gone and is gone. There are still a few piers left along the coast, but none have the intimate social societies of the old piers. The Scotch Bonnet only exists now in some photos and the minds of those of us who loved her. On occasion I drive down to where the old Scotch was and walk out on the beach and reminisce. You can almost close your eyes and be there again, all the smells, all the noise, all the people. What is left now is a couple of posts from the pier out in the ocean about 25 yards. So close, but yet so far. I miss The old Scotch and the people there, but would not give anything for having enjoyed those days with my "pier family". It might be long time gone, but it is not long time forgotten.
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