THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512270243
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WANCHESE LENGTH: Long : 217 lines
At the age of 90, Slim Hayes can't fish pound nets like he used to. His back aches when he bends to untangle croaker from the hand-woven mesh. And he no longer has an appetite for roast Canada goose.
But on cool mornings, shortly after sunrise, he still steps into worn white rubber boots on the back porch, and pickles spot in a ceramic pot in the garage. His wife, Billie, still rolls the fish - which their grandson now catches - in home-made cornmeal batter before frying them to a delicious brown in her heavy iron skillet.
And if you sit awhile, in their century-old home, she'll serve you some of the best fish found on the Carolina coast - with a side of sweet potatoes and shy smiles - while Slim dishes out a main course of Outer Banks history in his slow, endearing, islander drawl.
``I was borned up jus' this side o' the old radio station, on government grant land. My kinfolk owned clean from one side o' the island to the other,'' Slim says, pointing through his living room window across a swampy marsh between Skyco and Wanchese, Roanoke Island communities filled with cattails and fluttering birds.
``My grandmother came ashore with her father - swam onto the beach from a shipwreck somewhere off here when she was 12. I think they were coming down from New York or something. But when they landed up here, her father, he went to Virginia Beach. She stayed here and ended up marrying one o' the Hayes. She stayed with different people 'til then. Women didn't like to stay by themselves at night, while their men were out to the fish camps.
``The men'd move over there New Year's. Stay all week and fish. That was jus' shad they were catchin','' says Slim. ``All these ol' houses were built out o' shad. Shad is delicious. It's like no other meat. Locals, they say when God got through makin' all the other fish, he had some real good meat and a whole lot o' bones left over. So he threw them all together. And off swam shad.''
Many of Slim's stories revolve around fishing - and food. Although he moved to Hampton Roads during World War II to work in the Naval Shipyard for four years - and stayed for 15 more, living in Norfolk while serving as a tugboat engineer - this tall, ruddy-faced, laid-back man says ``I hated it - the whistle and clock o' those city jobs.'' So he kept his old Wanchese house all the time he toiled in the shipyard. And when he retired, he moved back to the Outer Banks.
``I missed the fish,'' Slim says simply, his silver-streaked moustache rising above a slight smile. ``I never thought I was old 'til I passed 85. But I got to where I was worned out when I got the boat back in. So I finally sold my boat to my grandson.
``I can't do it any more anyway because there'r so dern many laws. You got to examine each fish and check yer lawbook to tell if you ken keep it. That's not fishin' - not to me.''
With no bridges to the island and no roads even connecting the Outer Banks villages, Wanchese was an isolated community shortly after the turn of the century, when Clarence ``Slim'' Hayes was growing up, even more than it remains today. Twenty-five ``fish camps'' were interspersed among duck blinds on the Croatan and Roanoke sounds. A handful of residents worked for the U.S. Lifesaving Service or federal Lighthouse Service. Other than that, employment opportunities were as scarce as outsiders.
``There were two stores that sold general merchandise, everything you could buy in Wanchese,'' says Slim. ``Owned by E.R. Daniels and Clary Pugh. They'd make nets for people. Then those who didn't have their own boats'd fish for them - like sharecroppers. You bought what groceries you needed from them and fished their nets from their boats. I don't imagine most families ever got out o' debt.''
Like most Wanchese natives, Slim's father fished full time and took whatever other work he could find. During the summer of 1910, Slim says, the federal government decided to hire a keeper for its Oregon Inlet Lifesaving Station. Slim's dad helped the keeper from his home across the marsh. ``Then he'd get on the boat after Christmas, carrying quilts and bedding to the fish camps. They'd work from daylight 'til dawn, pulling pound nets. Didn't get nothing to eat 'til after. Sometimes, Papa'd get to ride with a load of fish clear up to 'Lizabeth City.''
Slim remembers running with his dad into a remote field behind the family house after dark one night, where Slim's dad, Isaac, hoisted his young son onto his shoulders. ``We watched Halley's comet ,'' says Slim. ``It was 1910. I was 5. You could see it right plain.''
Money might have been tight. And times were hard. But Slim says he never remembers being hungry. Salt herring was a breakfast staple. And his mother canned everything she could get her hands on.
``Papa'd go to the store at the end o' each fishin' season. Get us a barrel of flour, 100 pounds of sugar and a tub o' lard. Didn't have to buy nothin' really. We always seemed to have plenty with what was just all around.''
Slim's dad gathered wood that washed onto the beach from shipwrecks. His mom cooked the family's supper on flames from the salvage. The family kept chickens and turkeys on the sand flats at Oregon Inlet. When they needed one to roast, Slim's dad rowed across the creeks, fetched a plump bird, and returned with dinner still squawking in the bow of his boat.
Slim's mom had a garden in their swampy backyard. She raised cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, potatoes - you name it. ``You can't imagine the 'skeeters we had out there,'' Slim says. ``Mother'd put long stockings on her arms and cut the fingers out just to pick beans. They'd cover her 'til she was black all over.
``Then, the green flies would come. We had a barrel for rain water beside the house. That was filled with 'skeeters, too. Had to dip 'em off the top before you could get any water out to wash or drink.''
In another barrel, behind the kitchen - which was a separate building - Slim's dad kept food scraps and dirty dishwater.
``Mostly, he fed it to the hogs, that smelly stuff,'' says Slim. ``But he also caught snapping turtles in traps 'round the swamps. He'd put turtles in that swill barrel and let them get fat. Then he'd stew 'em up if he didn't need the money. He could sell the stew for 25 cents a pound down at Mill Landing. Did it 'til 1970. He loved the stuff.''
Fish, however, provided the family's protein - although ``you could always go out there in the woods and shoot a cow or hog if you were hungry for that,'' Slim says, explaining that livestock ran free and were, pretty much, fair game.
His father kept on hand a half-barrel of salted herring that lasted all winter. He stored a half-barrel of salted drum or spot in the salt house. His mother nailed the small fish onto the house to dry a day or two in the sun. ``Then, she'd bake the ones we didn't salt down,'' says Slim. ``They were some kind o' good.''
On the sandy floor of Slim's backyard garage, there's an old Frigidaire freezer that's missing a door. Slim salts his spots in a brown ceramic pot inside. ``Never trusted that old freezer anyway,'' he says. ``Just soak 'em in water overnight, and they're fresh enough to fry up the next mornin'.''
Salted herring, salted spot and salted mullet all were staples of Slim's diet, he says. His family also kept a dairy cow when he was young. His mother made cheese and stored fresh milk in a net-covered hole his dad carved out of the base of a big cedar tree growing in front of the kitchen.
``There was no such thing as ice when I was a boy,'' Slim says. ``First ice I remember came by boat from 'Lizabeth City. I was a growned man when a feller built that first ice plant down by the harbor to pack fish on.''
Slim attended school in the same building he worshiped in on Sundays. A single structure in Skyco served as classroom and sanctuary for most of the villagers. ``We all sat together in one room,'' says Slim, who still sees some of his childhood chums while walking along Wanchese's wooden waterfront. ``We didn't have no toilet. Girls went outside, to an outhouse. Us boys, we just used the woods.''
When Slim was 17, three boys he knew bought the village's first Model T Ford truck to aid in their beach fishing operation. ``They were going up there to Whales' Head. They were building that big hunt club up there, (The Whalehead Club) in Corolla. And they were going to catch a bunch of fish at once and get rich out of it.
``On the third day of October, we piled up some spot - I mean over our waists,'' Slim says, gesturing with rough, weathered hands. ``We hauled some spot that day. Loaded up that truck. It went to Norfolk and we had to guard over the piles that was left so's the hogs wouldn't get 'em. We 'spected 10 cent a pound on 'em. That truck came barrellin' back down the beach a few hours later - we thought to load the rest. And the feller says we only got $5 for the whole lot. The haul from those pound nets, now that we had a truck to load 'em, had filled every fish house in Norfolk. No one wanted spot.
``Now, they ship 'em to New York, Philadelphia, even those Japan markets. Used to be, all the nets were 150 yards - what you could handle yourself, or with one other guy. Now, they've got 1,000 yards, electric reels, computer fish finders - those fish don't have a chance.''
Slim remembers when he and his sisters caught ``a whole mess of white perch'' out of the Wanchese creeks with tiny pieces of cork tied to the end of strings. His dad said bluefish were so thick, before Slim was born, ``you could walk across 'em at the inlet.''
No one ate shark or dolphin. ``Those bloated, stinky things?'' Slim snarls, showing his contempt for the now-profitable, popular restaurant fish. ``We used to throw hundreds of them overboard when we got 'em by accident. I've never ate one in my life. Never will.''
Slim did, however, eat his share of wild game birds - and is still a sucker for just-shot dove ``fried in just a little oil.'' His grandchildren bring them by. With 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren and one great, great-grandchild, Slim and his wife stay well-fed on fresh food. Good thing. Slim eats hominy drizzled with bacon grease, and fish that's been soaking in brine out in his garage for three months. But he says he won't touch anything once it's been frozen.
``At the store, you got to buy chicken, beef, pork. I don't like none of it,'' says Slim, who, despite his years and antiquated, high-fat diet, still remains true to his name. He barely fills out his brown corduroy trousers and soft, plaid flannel shirt. And although he loves to reminisce about robust meals, Billie says he barely eats any of her authentic Wanchese cooking anymore.
``Used to be, I loved wild goose. Christmas, Mama always had one. And peaches swimming in cream she'd saved in jars. Papa had wild geese and ducks he'd tamed. You could use live decoys then. He kept about 15 on the pond in back the house. Papa could tell his geese a-honkin' - different from any other. He was reading the paper one afternoon and heard a wild goose. Grabbed that double-barrel shotgun that stood in the doorway and said, `Nell' - that was my Mama - `I got to have one o' them geese.'
``Firin' a gun on Sunday was a crime then,'' Slim says. ``But he went on out anyway. And when he came back through the bushes from that pond, he was carryin' two or three wild geese with him.
``Mama told my sisters if anyone in Wanchese heard any guns, we didn't know nothin'.
``Then, we all had one of the biggest, best Christmas dinners around.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Slim Hayes, who has lived on the Outer Banks for most of his 90
years, checks a pot of pickled spot that his wife, Billie, will
later fry into a tasty meal. Hayes' knowledge of the people, sea and
land in the early part of the century is voluminous and delightful.
Says Hayes about the shad, ``It's like no other meat. Locals, they
say when God got through makin' all the other fish, he had some real
good meat and a whole lot o' bones left over. So he threw them all
together. And off swam shad.''
Graphic
SALTED SPOT: SLIM-STYLE
Clean a mess of spot , just scraping the outsides. Leave the skin
on.
Split the fish open down the middle and sprinkle full of salt.
Fix yourself some pickling - water with enough salt in it to
float an egg.
Let the salted spot soak outside in pickling for four days - up
to all winter.
The night before you're ready to eat the spot, take them out of
the pickling and soak in water overnight.
Pat the fish dry and roll in cornmeal.
Fry with butter in hot iron skillet until golden brown.
Serve with hominy, thick buttermilk biscuits and sweet potatoes.
Source: Wanchese natives Clarence ``Slim'' Hayes and his wife,
Billie. ``He showed me how to fry those fish,'' she says. ``He knows
how to fix 'em just right.''
by CNB