DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9709070143

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER  
DATELINE: NAGS HEAD                         LENGTH:  230 lines

"IT WAS LIKE A MUSEUM HISTORIC STORE TO BE OPEN TO PUBLIC

For the better part of her 74 years, she strolled the sands surrounding her Nags Head home, collecting rejects of tide and dune with unrelenting fervor. Each piece of colored beach glass and broken pottery, each shell, each doorknob, each button, each bottle, plastic toy, Indian artifact and war remnant was carefully saved.

By the time she died in July 1992, Nellie Myrtle Pridgen, beachcomber extraordinaire, had gathered thousands of treasures. Stashed on shelves, hung from the ceiling, nailed to walls, the massive collection remained pretty much how she left it at her family's Nags Head grocery store.

``Everything in here was collected within walking distance from the sound to the pier,'' says Carmen Gray, Pridgen's daughter. ``Everything was labeled. Honey, it was like a museum - and she didn't let you in unless she liked your looks.''

For the first time Tuesday, the public will be able to see Pridgen's astonishing display at Miss Mattie Midgett's Store in the 1997 tour of Old Nags Head beach cottages, sponsored by Preservation North Carolina.

A self-educated environmentalist, Nellie Myrtle - as everyone called her - was known to be a cantankerous defender of her native land - and her property. The sign she posted in her later years on the weathered storefront, ``Don't even THINK of parking here,'' remains as her calling card. ``See this?'' Carmen Gray says, jabbing at the sign as an example of her mother's personality. ``Difficult.''

Pridgen's parents, Mattie and Jethro Midgett, married in 1914 and, shortly after, opened their general store on the Nags Head soundside where the boats docked. It was moved to its present location on the Beach Road after the 1933 storm. In an amazing feat, the family then built the house behind the store in just 30 days.

The business hung on through the 1970s, when Mattie Midgett died and the doors finally closed. Pridgen, who worked at the store on and off through much of her life, moved from the house to the retired store after her father died a few years later.

``Mrs. Midgett was so wonderful,'' recalls Katherine Kittrell, who has known the family for 60 years. ``It was one of the first self-service stores. She'd sit in her chair with her pocketbook and rock. But if you had to charge, she'd get up.''

Unlike the stylistic Nags Head beach cottages across the road, Miss Mattie's old grocery store has no architectural design to write home about. The square two-story building looks functional, salt-cured and sturdy.

But inside lies the soul of the Outer Banks. More than a vault for Pridgen's cache, the old store is a depot of Outer Banks history and lore. It had the only phone on the beach; for years, it was the only food store around. Crammed among the bottles of color-sorted beach glass and cases of extraordinary seashells are antiques left behind by seven generations of native families - many in the room that was added to the original structure after the 1944 storm. Original ledgers recording the routine purchases made by local residents over the decades are stacked on a back table in the store.

``We've got everybody on this strip,'' Gray says, leafing through the aged pages. ``Every mouthful they ate.''

Pridgen's beachcombing booty - much meticulously categorized - her newspaper clippings taped to the shelves, her books, unmoved from the original place, tell the human story of the barrier islands, the ocean, and quirky Nellie Myrtle herself.

``She was out at daybreak, and she was out there at sunset,'' her daughter recalls. ``Especially if the winds were blowin' and the tides were high. . . . Oh, Lord help me, if you ran over her shells!''

Gray struggled for years to find the time and energy to put her mother's lifework in order, but, until recently, ill health interfered. Inclusion in the second annual Nags Head Beach Cottage tour was a godsend, and she enlisted the help of friends to help clean and organize Pridgen's collection.

``Everything you open up, you find something wonderful,'' Gray murmured as she studied the contents of a shell-covered box: two delicate sand dollars and picture postcards about sand dollars. Open a drawer, there's a little antique rubber dog. Another drawer - old china buttons. Shelves of old school books with all local names scribbled inside. Trunks of vintage clothing. Three old autograph books, signed by friends and families of natives. Oh! Here's an envelope of original photographs taken by Frank Dinwiddie after the Ash Wednesday Storm.

Gray, 60, remembers her mother - Nell, she later called her - with unsentimental fondness, her recollections often spiked with a robust hoot.

``This was an enterprising witch,'' she says, smiling. ``She stayed busy every minute of the day. She was very hard on the outside, but on the inside, she was a pushover. She was mean. People thought she was mean. But she was a pushover for young 'uns and for old folk.''

Even at 5 feet 7 inches tall and 100 pounds, Pridgen was a force to be reckoned with. She took her role as caretaker of the beach homes seriously, making nightly rounds of porches and yards when her neighbors weren't in town. Some of the house keys she used are still hanging on the backside of a white store cabinet.

``You dare not go down the driveway without seeing her first,'' Gray says. ``She went down behind you and said, `WHAT are you doing?' She wasn't afraid of the devil. Nobody ever accosted her.

``I don't know why somebody didn't slap her - I think it was the tone of her voice. Her demeanor.''

She walked at a fast clip. Gray says even children could barely keep pace. She sewed clothes for three generations of her family. She was a big reader, devouring books and magazines on weather, nature, shelling, birds, the Outer Banks. Hardly any fiction. She was renowned for her fishcakes. She was an excellent swimmer.

Kittrell, whose grandmother was one of the Nags Head aristocracy, says she remembers Pridgen as being lean - ``not an ounce of flesh on her that didn't belong there.'' And she used to hear stories of her dancing the night away at the Nags Head Casino down the road.

During World War II, Pridgen worked in Norfolk as a hydraulic mechanic. After the war, her parents moved into rooms above the store, and the house was turned into a tourist home named ``The Last Resort.'' Pridgen ran the place and was much loved by the musicians who frequented there.

An old photograph of Pridgen shows a slender woman standing next to the Wright Memorial, wearing canvas sneakers, a kerchief and sunglasses. Other photos show her as a dark, wavy-haired woman with a full mouth and pencil-thin, arching eyebrows. She married twice, neither time successfully, and had two children.

Mike Williams, 47, lived two cottages down from Pridgen between 1975 and 1980. He admits he didn't have a good first impression of the by-then-cranky old woman.

``She hated everybody,'' Williams said of his initial take on his neighbor. ``But she wasn't really like that. . . . She kind of had a bum rap with the `being mean' stuff.''

Despite Pridgen's reputation and her display of intolerance with the cinder blocks and boards - he heard they had nails sticking up from them - that she used to block would-be parkers in front of the store, Williams said, he grew to respect the old woman for her naturalist views. And eventually, he said, she grew to respect him.

``I had my chickens. I planted a garden. I lived at this old house with only an outdoor shower,'' Williams says, citing reasons why Pridgen accepted him. ``She was kind of stand-offish, but after she found out I wasn't one of those surfer kids, she was friendlier.''

``She was pretty much a recluse,'' Williams recalls. ``She kept to herself. As far as inviting outsiders in, she wasn't very outgoing.''

But it is Nellie Myrtle the beachcomber that will remain her legacy. Year after year, she culled history from the shifting sands of her beloved barrier islands - illustration of the dramatic change that she, and the Outer Banks, experienced.

Pridgen fought hard against change, but she knew what her ocean told her. The veteran beachcomber - she who scooped up such things as spent munitions, whale bones and shipwreck remains from the sand - laughed good naturedly watching young men scurry after broken bales of marijuana that had washed ashore.

The ocean told the best tales, Pridgen believed.

``She was wonderful,'' Kittrell says. ``She loved every piece of sand on this beach.'' MEMO: Related story on page G1.

Gray wants to gather support to help her establish a museum to

showcase her mother's vast collection. For information on starting the

Nellie Myrtle Beachcomber's Museum, or to donate money, contact Carmen

Gray at 261-2524. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

DREW C. WILSON, The Virginian-Pilot

From the second-story porch of Miss Mattie Midgett's Store, viewers

can look at some of Naggs Head's historic cottages. The store, and

several other cottages, will be on display starting Tuesday in the

1997 tour of Old Nags Head beach cottages, sponsored by Preservation

North Carolina.

Color photo

Nellie Myrtle Pridgen gathered thousands of treasures during her

years of operating a general store in Nags Head.

Graphic

TAKING THE TOUR

What: A walking tour around and through eight historic Old Nags

Head homes, an Episcopal church originally constructed in 1915, a

restored 1931 inn and an old general store filled with the

incredible collection of legendary beachcomber Nellie Myrtle

Pridgen.

Where: Nags Head, between mileposts 11 and 13 on the beach road.

When: Tuesday from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Rain or shine.

Cost: $25 a person; $40 a family; children 12 and under are free.

Available at St. Andrew's by the Sea on the day of the tour.

To call: (919) 482-7455

WHAT YOU'LL SEE

St. Andrews By-the-Sea Episcopal Church

In 1915, this church was built near the sound. Its congregation

moved the building to the seaside in 1937. Its vernacular Gothic

Revival style has been adapted to fit the beach.

Windemere

Well-known Nags Head builder S.J. Twine, who constructed many of

the cottages along the historic row, finished this one-story home

in the 1930s.

Fred Wood Cottage

Also built by Twine, this two-story house has two gable-end

chimneys and a covered porch surrounding all four sides.

Pruden-Battle-Clark Cottage

This 1915 home is square and has two stories. The upstairs

windows are irregularly spaced and shaded with hinged wooden

shutters. The encircling porch features the built-in benches

popular in historic Nags Head architecture.

Whedbee Cottage

Built just after the Civil War, this two-story frame home was

finished in 1866.

Nixon Cottage

The area's third-oldest oceanfront house, this cottage was built

in 1866 as a single-story structure. A second floor was added in the

1920s, and the lower level was expanded.

Badham-Kittrell Cottage

S.J. Twine built this house, too, in 1928. There's a one-story

L-shaped wing extending from the back of the home. A second story

perches over the primary living area.

Miss Mattie Midgett's Store

This general store sat on the soundside of the Outer Banks,

behind Jockey's Ridge, in 1914. But its owners slid it to the

seaside in 1933. Miss Mattie ran it for more than 40 years,

supplying vacationers with groceries, mail and the area's only

telephone. Thousands of artifacts that Miss Mattie's daughter,

Nellie Myrtle Pridgen, found in the sand, from shells and fossils to

plastic pails, will be on display for the first time. Pridgen's

family hopes to be able to establish a permanent museum to house her

collection.

Martha Wood Cottage

Some say this is the oldest Nags Head oceanfront cottage. It was

built at least as early as the 1870s, maybe earlier. It's a

two-story, single-pile structure with two projecting dormers on the

beach side. It has a small, rear L-shapped addition, hinged wooden

awning shutters and a covered porch encircling the cottage with

lean-out benches.

Walker Cottage

Located on the Roanoke Sound, near Jockey's Ridge State Park,

this house was built in 1932. It is located where Nags Head's

original resort was built and is the only structure on this tour

that's not near the ocean. Participants are permitted to drive to

this property. The rest of the sites are within walking distance of

one another.

First Colony Inn

Built in 1931, this historic hotel was called LeRoy's Seaside

Inn. It was moved to its current location in 1988 and has been

renovated. It's the last old-style Nags Head hotel that's still open

to guests, with traditional wrap-around porch.

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