THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605020192
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 32 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Towns and cities on the sea have always seemed a little friendlier than inland outposts.
Strangers have been sailing around Ocracoke and Hatteras and Wanchese and Manteo since the 16th century. when native Americans were still in charge.
As the coastal communities developed, outsiders kept coming: Fishermen from the north and south, ocean travelers, traders and pirates, military folks on warships, tourists.
Their odd customs and costumes and their foreign tongues didn't startle the settlers who themselves had come to the promised land as strangers.
In communities on the mainland, an oddly dressed visitor, a stranger speaking a different language, a worshipper of a different god was often frightening.
But in areas like the Outer Banks, outsiders were welcomed as long as they brought money, and as today's Coast cover story points out, come-heres by the thousands have settled on the islands for good.
I'm perhaps typical. For 17 years I visited three or four times a year, and then moved to Manteo for good two years ago this week.
As a country boy from Nebraska, I'm not a Yankee, yet I'll never be considered one of the locals.
But I don't feel like a stranger, and neither do most of the outsiders who have put down roots.
We live, I think, in sort of a halfway house, and our kids will, too, because the definition of a native is quite restrictive.
You have to have been born here, and some say that to really be a native you also have to have two sets of grandparents buried on the Outer Banks.
That doesn't mean we can't do our own things, because thousands of people who were fully grown long before they came have become leaders and power-brokers without the benefits of a long Outer Banks legacy.
But the jarring notes of a New Jerseyite can sometimes ruffle feathers of softer-speaking natives.
And the demands for change by many northerners as soon as they arrive can be upsetting to oldtimers who wonder why they came if they want to redo immediately the Outer Banks.
But the newcomers bring money and jobs and ideas that invigorate the area, and provide work for the people who have always been here.
``Our whole economy is based on northern trade,'' says R.V. ``Bobby'' Owens Jr., chairman of the Dare commissioners, who wants outsiders to feel welcome. Another oldtimer, Moon Tillett of Wanchese, says he gets along just fine with Yankee fishermen when he sails north or northern watermen come to Carolina.
``But they do talk real different,'' he says, which may surprise Yankees who have met Mr. Tillett and have tried to figure out what he's talking about in his Outer Banks brogue.
He and Owens and a number of other insiders have long enjoyed gathering in the morning over coffee to talk about just about anything, and sometimes make a deal.
Occasionally a few outsiders are allowed to sit in with the movers and shakers, who for years gathered at a diner in downtown Manteo.
Presiding over the coffee and the conversation has been Manteo's Marc Basnight, just one of the boys at the diner but known over the state as president pro tem of the North Carolina Senate.
But coffee and hot air don't pay the bills, and two weeks ago the diner closed. The coffee drinkers are in mourning, because they have no place to gather.
So if there are any Yankee go-getters who want to make a hit with the oldtimers and a few of us latecomers, here's how to quickly become a beloved member of the Outer Banks family:
Open a coffeeshop in downtown Manteo. If it's homey nobody will mind where you came from, how you dress or how you talk. by CNB