THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408180250
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 54 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ron Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
One of the things that has been worrying me lately, since we are planting roots in the Outer Banks, is where we'll go on vacations.
For years the dream was to find a retreat on a waterfront or an island or a wonderful place to sail, or a place where the fishing was good. Or where good restaurants abounded. Or some little village where we could get away from sirens and traffic and crime and shoulder-to-shoulder sidewalks.
Usually we found something that satisfied those dreams, like a trip to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. We ate like kings, walked isolated beaches, strolled through small towns, shopped, drank a little wine, and unwound.
Another vacation took us to the Bahamas, which provided a welcome break from the fast pace of city life. We loved both places, but the trips cost a pretty penny - and for the life of me I can't see much reason to spend thousands now traveling to relaxing retreats when we're surrounded by all those things we used to dream of.
In fact, some of my most satisfying vacations have been taken on the Outer Banks, on the lonely dunes north of Corolla, in lively waterfront hotels, in the charming offerings of Ocracoke, sometimes in cottages shared with friends in non-stop poker marathons, often when the big blues were running.
So now that we're permanently planted here, we've got to change our views of the perfect spot to get away from it all.
And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to persuade my wife that the ideal trip now would be to Nebraska, searching for my youth. Not since 1982 have I walked along Main Street in Hay Springs, chatting with boyhood friends, drinking red beer (tomato juice mixed with draft beer, the most popular drink in those parts), talking about cattle and hog and corn and wheat prices by the hour, playing a litte pool or challenging an oldtimer to a game of cribbage.
My wife has never been there, but she's sure my memories have improved mightily with each passing year. She's seen the picture of the sod house on the wind-swept prairie where my dad was born and reared, and the photos of the disastrous drought in the '30s and the terrible blizzard in '49. She knows that all my brothers and sisters have long since left, too.
Probably not 25 people a year visit overnight in Hay Springs unless they've come back to see relatives. Ron's Bar serves as the meeting place, the restaurant (buffalo burgers were big on my last trip there), the entertainment center (pool tables, cribbage boards, pinball machines), and the information hub.
It gets terribly hot in the summer, and 30 below zero in the winter. The movie theater closed decades ago. The old folks who were friends of my parents are pretty much gone now. I still have pals there that stayed on the land after high school, when many of us sought greener pastures, but you don't remain close to people when you see them only every decade or so.
The town's down to about 500 people now. So it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why the missus always voted for Costa Rica or Mexico or the Bahamas when offered a choice of those retreats or Hay Springs.
But now that we live in what many Americans would describe as paradise, maybe it's time to seek less celebrated retreats, and check out my roots.
Accustomed to the ambience of te Outer Banks, we'll both probably realize pretty quickly why I left - but it would be nice to enjoy a red beer in Ron's Bar, check out the one-room schools I traveled to on horseback, and ride the range where dad's sod house used to be. by CNB