Go East Young Man

Dear Uncle Jack,

You wrote a column a while back about the broadening effects of travel and I was wondering if you have ever been to the far west.

Juan Tjese

Wanchese

Dear Juan,

It depends on how far west you are talking about. Uncle Jack has been over to Greenville a few times which is quite a ways west of the Dare County Sanitary Landfill which is fairly far west itself if you come right down to it, even though it is in East Lake.

If you are thinking about going west yourself, though, Uncle Jack thinks you would be better off to save your money and go south instead to some nice place like Frisco where you can at least get a nice plate of ribs.

The only cultural attraction he ever ran across out west was Simp’s Barbecue which was on 64 just this side of Plymouth where you could still get Coca Cola in those little eight-ounce glass bottles they used to have when he was a kid. He can tell you that a Simp’s barbecue sandwich with slaw and a couple of those little cokes made a real gourmet breakfast but after you burped a couple of times you might as well have turned around and come home because there was nothing west of Simp’s worth bothering with as far as he could tell.  And now that Simp's is closed forever there is absolutely no point in driving over there any more.

Back when he was in the navy a long time ago he did get to a place called the Far East and he was single at the time so he enjoyed meeting all the friendly ladies and he thought it would be nice to go back there and live forever but that is not the way it worked out.

Nowadays when he feels nostalgic for the sights and smells of the Far East he just goes over to the Wal-Mart and stands in the women’s clothing department for a while but he has to admit it isn’t quite the same.

Sayonara,

Uncle Jack

                            Modern Maturity

Ever since he had to have his gall bladder forcibly removed Uncle Jack has been thinking about what it means to grow old and he is happy to say that he is moderately optimistic about it at this point. He has had to take it easy this week while all the little holes the doctor punched in his stomach healed up so he has had a lot more time to read than he usually does and he really enjoyed it.

He started working his way down through the magazines that always pile up next to his barcalounger because he never has time to read them. He is now caught up on his National Geographics, Smithsonians, Atlantic Monthlies and New Yorkers and he feels so well informed he can hardly stand himself.

Anyway Uncle Jack got a good taste this week of what it would be like not to have to go to work every day and he has to say he can see some real merit in the retirement lifestyle. In fact he got so interested in retirement there for a couple of days that he actually read a couple of issues of Modern Maturity which he forgot to throw away at the post office which is what he usually does with them.

If any young persons are reading this he will explain that Modern Maturity is the magazine you get every month if you belong to the American Association of Retired People, better known as AARP, which is a good thing to be a member of if you are over 55 because they have terrorized motel owners all over the country into giving old people a 10 percent discount on their rooms.

He usually hates to read Modern Maturity because it is full of ads reminding vigorous old people like himself what is in store for them down the road such as motorized wheelchairs, Alzhimer’s pills, Medicare supplement plans, Florida mobile home developments and Viagra. The people who put out Modern Matuirity really knock themselves out to make old age sound like fun but the ads tell the truth.

He has to admit he really enjoyed this month’s issue though because it is full of articles about how computers can enhance the quality of life for older people---even more than Viagra in many cases. This was very meaningful to Uncle Jack because he has only recently embraced the computer and he can honestly say that he loves it and he knows that it will be a great comfort to him in his old age if he lives that long.

The single most depressing paragraph he has read in any magazine in the past five years is in Modern Maturity this month and he would like to share it with all those who threw their copies away at the post office. It is in an article about Martha Stewart who is described as “the woman America turns to for clever tips on how to…revitalize discarded lighting fixtures…” and this is what it says:

Stewart has 30 telephone and fax numbers and more than 40 separate phones as well as seven cellular phones….She owns and uses five Macintosh desktop computers, two Mac Power Book laptops, an IBM Thinkpad 770 notebook computer, and carries a laptop at all times…Her cars are equipped with fax machines and VCRs and her Chevy Suburban is a rolling office outfitted with a telephone, a laptop computer and a fax that doubles as a photocopier.

Uncle Jack’s advice to Martha Stewart: Get a life before you run over somebody with that Suburban and they lock you up for good.

                        Wiring the South

Uncle Jack was very happy to read in the paper that the President came to North Carolina last week to talk about a subject near and dear to his heart and his pocketbook. Uncle Jack’s heart and pocketbook that is. What he talked about was the internet.

The President is a superb politician so you can never be sure what he really thinks about the internet or anything else for that matter. Whether he meant them or not, though, he surely did say all the right things in his speech down in Columbus County the other day.

“I don’t care if you don’t have a college degree. I don’t care if you never finished high school. You need to figure out how these computers work. You need to figure out how to get on the internet. You need to figure out how to do this because this is the future of America,” he said. And Uncle Jack says “Amen”.

As far as he knows the President did not specifically mention eBay but he is pretty sure that must be what he had in mind. Uncle Jack does not need any convincing that eBay is where it’s at in the future department and he will explain what he means in a minute.

The President and the Governor talked a lot about the “digital divide” between urban and rural parts of the country and the Governor unveiled his plan to wire up the entire state, urban and rural, for high-speed internet service within the next three years. He said the big telephone companies had agreed to help which is a good thing because they own all the wires, but he did not say how he would get them to do any more than they are already doing.

The paper said that only 20 percent of North Carolinians are hooked up to the internet now and our great state ranks 46^th in the country in that category. Presumably we have been saved again by Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia which have traditionally rescued us Tarheels from total ignominy in so many areas of human endeavor.

And this brings Uncle Jack back to eBay where his chief stock in trade is old maps of Civil War battlefields in---you guessed it---Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and other parts of the South where not too many years ago politicians were touting indoor plumbing with the same fervor they accord the internet today. He is doing so well with only 20 percent of his potential customers hooked up that he can only imagine what riches may accrue when every rural hamlet in the South boasts high-speed internet access.

He agrees with the President that the future of the rural South lies in the internet, or more specifically eBay. He is convinced that one of the greatest untapped sources of wealth in America lies in the back (and front) yards of dilapidated houses all over the region. Those hitherto worthless accretions of discarded trucks and automobiles, appliances, farm implements, furniture and God knows what else now have a market. Ebayers will buy anything. Uncle Jack knows.

         Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Uncle Jack read in the paper last week that Town of Nags Head officials are agonizing over how best to preserve the town’s “historic district”---the mile-long row of old cottages on the ocean front opposite Jockey’s Ridge. The recent issuance of a CAMA permit to demolish one of the old buildings because it is considered too unstable to move has reawakened interest in trying to find some way to preserve the historic character of that defining part of Nags Head.

According to the newspaper report “the board is considering entering the long and arduous process of creating a commission to regulate what can and cannot be done to the town’s historic homes”, which determination Uncle Jack applauds. But he is not sanguine about what such a commission could accomplish over the long haul. He says this because Mother Nature is one of the players in this game and she is likely to make up her own mind about what will happen to those delightful old buildings, regulations notwithstanding.

By pure coincidence Uncle Jack came to Nags Head for the first time in 1969, the same year that the National Geographic Magazine published in its September issue a comprehensive article about the Outer Banks. One of the illustrations for the piece as an aerial photograph of the old cottage row from the Arlington Hotel at the south to the First Colony Inn at the north. The photo was taken seven years after the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 by which time many of the surviving cottages had been moved back from the ocean---some for the third or fourth time. (Part of the substructure of one of the cottages is clearly visible at the edge of the surf at its previous location).

The venerable Arlington juts out like a sore thumb in the picture. Too large and ungainly to move, it stayed put until destroyed by a storm in 1973. Prior to its demise Uncle Jack ate many a delicious lunch and dinner in the Arlington’s superb dining room as the waves rolled under it and shook the building. For a while the Arlington was possibly the most exciting dining place in America---in more ways than one.

He once interviewed the owner, Mrs. Phoebe Hayman, who reminisced about the extremely wide beach that fronted the hotel when it was built in the early 30’s. It was so wide that she had to nag the lifeguards to carry their umbrellas and chairs all the way out to the water’s edge rather than setting them up halfway as they were wont to do.

The First Colony Inn was saved---not by declaring it a national treasure (which it is for no other reason than that Uncle Jack was the manager for two summers) but by cutting it into three pieces and moving it to a new location between the highways---far from the waves that were pounding it to pieces every winter in its last years on the oceanfront. But for its rescuers, the Lawrence family, it probably would have gone the way of the Arlington, or the Old Nagsheader which was deliberately torched in 1977, or the Croatan Inn, demolished in 2006.

Since that historic photo was taken in 1969, most of the old cottages have been moved backed yet again as storms have relentlessly chewed away at the beach in front of them. Nearly all have now been moved back as far as they can go---in effect their fate sealed by the building of the Beach Road in the early 30’s. Ironically the Beach Road caused them to be built in the first place and now, along with the ocean, it is their nemesis.

Some, like the First Colony, have been moved back across the road and more could follow, but it looks to Uncle Jack that in the foreseeable future, barring massive and endless expenditures for beach replenishment, the erstwhile “historic district” could be history.

It is possible, of course, that the geological processes which have shaped the Outer Banks over millennia could suddenly reverse themselves. And wouldn’t Uncle Jack have egg on his face if that happens!

                          High on the Hog

This was the week for the Nags Head Surf Fishing Club’s annual Pig Pickin’ and Social Hour so Uncle Jack does not have to tell you what kind of a week this was for him. As far as he is concerned this week ranks right up there with Thanksgiving in the eating department every year.

There is no way he can tell you how good the pig was this year except to say it was just as good as last year. If you were at the pig pickin’ last year you will know what he is talking about but if you were not there you are out of luck. Words fail him sometimes and this is one of them. While he was working on his second plate it occurred to him that this is probably where they got that old saying about “eating high on the hog”.

Actually it is hard to tell if you are eating high on the hog or not because they chop it up pretty fine and one piece looks a lot like the others by the time they get through. But no matter where it came from, high or low, it was all good and that applies to the fixin’s too.

As far as Uncle Jack is concerned the Spring Pig Pickin’ is one of the premiere events on the Outer Banks social calendar and he could tell that a lot of other people feel the same way because practically everybody there was wearing shoes, including Senator Basnight. Uncle Jack tried out his brand new state-of-the-art Pro-Keds which have the Velcro tabs instead of laces. He is pleased to tell you they held up very well and gave him good traction even late in the evening when the floor started getting fairly greasy in spots.

Just about everybody who is anybody was there including numerous political leaders who were easy to spot because they were trying to talk and shake hands and eat pig all at the same time so they tended to look a little more awkward than they really are.

Anyway it made Uncle Jack feel good to think that a person like himself who never even saw a bluefish until he was forty years old could be a member in good standing of a high-ranking organization like the Nags Head Surf Fishing Club. Only in America.

This was a big week in the eating department for another reason, too. Uncle Jack’s only begotten son came home from college for a few days and he brought several friends from China home with him. One of these friends insisted on doing all the cooking so being a gracious host and everything Uncle Jack did not argue about it for more than a few seconds.

He is glad he was gracious, too, because he wound up eating three of the best Chinese dinners he has ever had and he has had a lot of them. He got his share, too, because he ate with a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other which gave him quite an advantage over his guests who were doing the best they could with chopsticks. It is hard for Uncle Jack to figure out how there ever got to be a billion Chinese people when all they had to survive on was what they could get in their mouths with chopsticks. One of these days somebody is going to get very rich by taking a lot of forks and spoons over to China and calling them “high tech chopsticks”.

Anyway he hopes his son will come back soon with those same friends because he really enjoyed their visit and also he is hungry again already.

               Requiem for Snug

Uncle Jack has seen a lot of changes along the Beach Road (a.k.a. N.C. highway 12) in Nags Head since he first used it back in 1969 to reach the First Colony Inn which was on the oceanfront in those days near the 13 milepost. Some years ago it was cut into three pieces and moved to a new location between the highways near the 16 milepost where it is enjoying a second life as an upscale boutique hotel.

While being sliced in thirds and trundled down the road like a wagon load of used lumber may seem a bit undignified it was a far better fate than most of the Beach Road’s older hostelries have met in the past 35 years. The gracious old Arlington of lemon chess pie fame collapsed in a storm in 1973. The Old Nagsheader, which stood in all its white wrap-around glory across the street from Uncle Jack’s Yellowhouse Gallery, succumbed to arson in 1977. More recently the Cabana East, the Olde London Inn, the Carolinian, the Beachcomber, the Sea Oatel and several others whose names he has forgotten have been demolished to make room on the ocean front for more of the giant particle board palaces which now dominate the rental market almost everywhere on the Outer Banks.

Uncle Jack has fond personal memories of most of these departed hostelries but it was the least of them, and by far the most eccentric, that he remembers best. It was a rooming house known to the general public as Snug Harbor but more often to its denizens (and the police) as Bug Harbor, Drug Harbor and Thug Harbor. The sagging three-story structure stood next door to Uncle Jack’s gallery near the 11 milepost and for over 20 years until its demise in 1999 was an almost constant source of both irritation and entertainment for him and his customers.

Living with Snug was like living next door to several TV shows simultaneously. Episodes of ER, The X-Files, Miami Vice, Studio Wrestling, and Sanford and Son could have been filmed in the parking lot. Many a dull day on the Beach Road was enlivened by the arrival of what seemed like half the armed forces of Dare County bent on apprehending some scraggly, shirtless, shoeless miscreant who had found temporary shelter within the sagging walls of what was probably the least discriminating hostelry on the entire East Coast. Uncle Jack often thought that moving in shackles from Snug Harbor to the county jail had to be a step up for many of its inhabitants.

For many years Uncle Jack shared a dumpster with the thirsty denizens of Snug Harbor and he was not surprised that the bottom of that sturdy steel receptacle rotted out in less than half the normal time. Now that he has seen what beer can do to the bottom of a dumpster he can only speculate on what it might be doing to his own innards.

Snug was mortally damaged by a fire in the attic during the winter of 1999 (the last of many fires over the years) and a few months later was demolished and carted off to the county landfill where it joins the remains of its spiritual cousins---the Foosball Palace, the Casino, the Aladdin and all the other slightly disreputable establishments that once gave the Beach Road its funky character. A huge frontloader accomplished in one week what the tenants had been trying to do for decades.

The lot still stands empty seven years later but Uncle Jack is sure that one of these days some cash-laden Yankee developer will come along and build another 10 bedroom, ten bath (9 more than Snug ever had) “cottage” on the premises but it won’t be the same. Blandness thy name is Beach Road.

                          Road Rage

Uncle Jack has had a slow leak in the left rear tire on his pre-rusted Plymouth Voyager for the past couple of weeks so he is starting to think it might be time for him to get a new car. It has almost 40,000 miles on it and the light bulb in the glove compartment is burned out so he thinks maybe the time has come.

Ordinarily he would just go over to Junior’s Chrysler place and trade it in on a new Voyager or Caravan or whatever they are calling them now but these are not ordinary times any more. As he has often said he spends most of his time now waiting to make left turns on the bypass and he has been thinking it might be smart to move himself into something a little more macho and aggressive in the car department.

It seems like most of the cars on the Outer Banks these days are either monster pickup trucks or what they call SUVs which are these big gas-guzzling, four-wheel-drive car/trucks which are apparently what the average housewife needs to get to the grocery store and back safely these days.

They all have names like “Expedition” and “Range Rover” which makes it sound like going to the Food Lion is like going on safari in Africa which is probably not too much of an exaggeration come to think of it with all those Mustangs and Cougars and Impalas and Broncos out there. Uncle Jack would rather tangle with a herd of wildebeests than some of the drivers he has seen on the bypass this summer.

Anyway he has been fantasizing about which car to buy but he couldn’t make up his mind until he read in the New York Times last week about this car called the Hummer which the General Motors company will be making from now on and which it hopes will be a big seller in years to come. (GM’s slogan, remember, is “What’s good for GM is good for America).

In case you are not quite up to speed on the latest developments in automotive science Uncle Jack will explain that the Hummer is a civilian version of the HumVee which is an army vehicle that looks like a Jeep on steroids. By “civilian version” they mean that the rocket launcher is an optional extra but Uncle Jack is willing to bet that within a couple of years all the HumVee armament will be standard equipment if driving gets any worse than it has been lately. When it comes to “road rage” we have not seen anything yet, he fears.

If you have not yet been frightened by a Hummer he will tell you that they are really big---over seven feet wide with nearly a foot-and-a-half of road clearance and weighing more than two Jeep Wagoneers put together, so you can see why they would appeal to the average American driver. The only reason they are not already stalled in traffic everywhere so you can get a good look at one is the $100,000 price tag which pretty much puts them out of the range of everybody except dot.com millionaires and timeshare salesmen right now.

Uncle Jack was reading the Hummer article in the New York Times the other day while he was waiting to make a left turn into the ABC store and there was this quote from a Mr. Schwartz of Bellevue, Washington who said “I love the fact that the Hummer is a tank, it’s like a tank with fashion, it’s like having your own war toy. I like something where I can look down into another car and give that knowing smile that says ‘I’m bigger than you’. It makes me feel powerful”. Mr. Schwartz is only a high school student but Ernest Hemingway could not have said it better if you ask Uncle Jack. He is not sure why Mike Tyson and Arnold Schwarzenegger feel like they have to drive Hummers because it seems to him that they would be fairly intimidating driving Honda Civics which they could pick up and throw at somebody if they had to.

As much as he would like to put himself behind the wheel of a Hummer Uncle Jack is probably going to have to settle for another wimpy Voyager which could not even take on a Suzuki Samurai in ordinary road combat. He simply cannot bring himself to buy a car that costs almost as much as a week’s vacation in London.

(P.S.  If you have been paying attention for the past year or so you know what he actually bought)

To the Editor:

I would like to respond to my friend (former Nags Head mayor) Bob Muller‘s letter regarding the funding of the Town of Nags Head‘s proposed “go-it-alone“ beach renourishment plan. (July 13 issue) He says that “The property east of the beach road in the area proposed for nourishment in Nags Head makes up about 7 percent of the total of Dare County’s assessed property value” and he estimates that those oceanfront cottages probably collect more than 10 percent of the occupancy tax collected in the county …“and a hefty share of the sales tax as well”.

He goes on to say that “If these properties are lost either through long term erosion or storm damage that revenue will be lost to the towns and the county.” He adds that “They generate much more tax revenue than they consume and if they are lost that revenue will have to be made up by raising taxes of the rest of the county”.

I believe there are some serious flaws in this argument. First, while it may be true that these properties “generate much more tax revenue than they consume” at the present time, will this still be true when the town and county begin to spend untold millions of dollars, in perpetuity, to prevent their loss to long term erosion or storms? Where will the money come from to meet these vast and endless expenditures to save existing oceanfront structures from now until the end of time? Surely the taxes on those properties won’t be enough to do it and they will soon become liabilities, not assets, and the cost of preserving them will fall on all the county’s taxpayers.

At the root of the current controversy, it seems to me, is confusion between the need to “save our beaches” and the desire of some to “save the properties fronting the beaches”. These are two entirely different goals but the distinction seems to get lost in the rhetoric of those who argue that beach renourishment is the only way to cope with the realities of living (and investing in property) on a barrier island.

There is another far more rational and far less expensive way to “save the beaches” and that is to remove buildings from the beaches as they begin to encroach as was done in the vicinity of Surfside Drive in Nags Head. After spending untold amounts of money on ultimately futile efforts to fight Mother Nature with giant sandbags and towering berms in front of Surfside Drive, the town wisely decided to give up and after removing two derelict buildings (Mother Nature took care of the sandbags and berms) from the beach it is now restored to something resembling its natural state. Did we learn anything from the saga of Surfside Drive or will we repeat the same mistakes on a far grander scale by dumping dredge spoil on the entire 14 mile length of our beautiful Nags Head beaches and then having to do it all over again, and again and again?

There has been a mad scramble in recent years to develop every available inch of the Dare County coastline. Oceanfront property values have escalated beyond belief at least partly because investors in that property have not yet had to confront the hidden costs of oceanfront development, foremost of which is the cost of trying to keep the ocean out of oceanfront living rooms. Every northeaster and hurricane brings those costs more clearly into focus and what the argument today is really about is who is going to pay those costs and how.

I, for one, believe that Mother Nature has all the marbles and we might as well face up to it before we squander additional millions of dollars making her prove it again as she has in so many other places. I find it comforting that if she forced the removal of every oceanside structure in Nags Head over the next 50 or 100 years, at worst it would result in the loss of less than 10 percent of the county’s revenues---and even that is unlikely as remaining buildings became more valuable. And this is without factoring in the almost unimaginable cost of maintaining the status quo.

Then again I’m not unlucky enough to own oceanfront property so I can well understand how those who do might have a different view. In any case our embattled lawmakers have my sympathy as this basically political struggle plays out over the next millenium.

Sincerely,

Jack Sandberg

South Nags Head

                The Joy of Taxes

This was an important week for Uncle Jack because he paid his property taxes to the Town of Nags Head and the County of Dare which he is always happy to do because it reminds him that he is one of the fortunate few who are able to call the Outer Banks of North Carolina home. It is an honor and privilege to pay his property taxes here instead of some wretched place like New York City where even Donald Trump cannot see the ocean from his living room window.

It is fairly obvious from Uncle Jack’s tax bills that both he and the Outer Banks have come a long way since 1970 when he first bought a home here. His house is worth ten times what he paid for it and his taxes are about thirty times higher and while he is not too good at higher math in spite of Mrs. Stonebreaker’s best efforts he figures that if the value of his house had kept pace with his taxes it would be right up there with the Biltmore today.

He knows there are many good reasons for his higher tax bill, of course. He noticed that “public safety” is one of the costliest parts of the budget and it reminds him that in the old days “public safety” was very economically provided by just two stalwart law enforcement officers---Sheriff Cahoon for Dare County and Chief Donnie Twyne for Nags Head---who between them managed to keep the Forces of Evil at bay from Hatteras Village to the Kill Devil Hills line. It is a measure of how far we have progressed on the Outer Banks that Sheriff Austin and Chief Cameron between them now command an army larger and better equipped than those of many Third World countries.

Even so they must struggle to contain the rising tide of crime that threatens to engulf us at all times. Where else in the country, Uncle Jack wonders, could one four-hour traffic check net as many miscreants as last week’s “Booze It, Lose It” session in Kitty Hawk. No fewer than 58 citizens were caught in the act of violating just about every law in the book from carrying a concealed weapon to motoring with an unfastened seatbelt. Who are these people, Uncle Jack wonders, and what part of New Jersey did they come from?

Anyway Uncle Jack comforts himself each year at this time by adding up all his property taxes and dividing by 365 which gives him the per jour cost of the various services he receives from local and county government which this year comes to a mere $5.19 per day---higher than it has ever been in his 30 years on the Outer Banks but still a bargain if you ask him.

For this paltry sum, less than he spends each day on the assortment of mind-altering beverages that help him to “knit up the raveled sleeve of care” as Shakespeare so aptly put it, he is pampered beyond belief by the legions of county and town employees who provide for his every need.

If local government did nothing more than remove his empties several times a week his taxes would be well spent but there is far, far more to extol. For example it gives him great comfort to know that when his liver finally gives out, as it must any day now, he will be speedily transported to the nearest emergency room by a Dare County EMS ambulance at no cost to his loved ones.

Also he knows that among the hundreds of town and county employees there must be many who are doing wonderful things for him every day that are not readily discernible to the naked eye.

Finally, but not least, he is grateful to the county for providing, however grudgingly, a school system that does a superb job of keeping large numbers of children and their skateboards off the streets most of the time, thereby improving immeasurably the quality of life for senior citizens on the Outer Banks.

You will never hear Uncle Jack complain about his local taxes. No sir. Those whiny Republicans among us don’t realize how lucky they are.

                     Taking Umbrage

A couple of weeks ago Uncle Jack mentioned how disgusted he was with an advertisement he saw in the New York Times which claims that wealth is a terrible burden for those who are unfortunate enough to possess it. It was almost enough to convince him he is better off being poor and he is seriously considering refusing his forthcoming tax refund on the grounds that he will go crazy trying to decide how to invest it.

Now there’s another advertisement running in all the upscale magazines (including the New York Times) that is equally obnoxious. It shows a man driving a shiny new Jaguar automobile and the ad copy reads “Your guidance counselor said you would never amount to anything. Your guidance counselor drives a minivan.” The clear implication of this statement is that people who drive minivans are failures and that people who drive Jaguars are successful.

Faithful readers of Uncle Jack’s column will understand why he would take umbrage at that conclusion---at least the high school graduates among them who know what umbrage means. They know, too, that he drives a minivan---a pre-rusted minivan that was two years old when he bought it “new” and is now seven years old all together.

This fact alone should move him out of the “failure” class and into the “abject failure” group, at least in the minds of those who believe that the kind of car you drive is the only acceptable measure of your accomplishment in life.

Uncle Jack was lucky that way back in high school he read a book that freed him once and for all of that kind of thinking. The book was called “Theory of the Leisure Class” which was written by another Scandinavian-American from Wisconsin named Thorstein Veblen. (Uncle Jack’s bosom swells with pride) and it explains the phenomenon of “conspicuous consumption” which is what drives people to buy bigger, flashier and more expensive cars than they really need.

When they do this, Veblen explained, they are really trying to tell other people “I am successful. I can drive to the post office in a car that you peasants can only envy.” Unfortunately, as Veblen points out, this kind of thinking only leads to dissatisfaction when, for example, the proud owner of a shiny new Ford Explorer has to park next to a shiny new Lincoln Navigator which is owned by someone who is obviously even more successful.

Regrettably the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption does not seem to extend to the public sector. Rarely do we hear people say “We are successful because we pay our teachers (and guidance counselors) a living wage and our classrooms are not overcrowded and our schools don’t leak.”

Anyway Uncle Jack would like to take this opportunity at the end of another school year to thank all those underpaid teachers and guidance counselors (who won’t be buying a new Jaguar this year) that he thinks they are the really successful people in our community and he greatly appreciates what they do.

He invites them to park next to his old pre-rusted Voyager any time they would like to feel superior to somebody else for once.

       Nature’s Most Perfect Food

Uncle Jack’s grandson, Andy, turned 18 last week which means he is now legally old enough to do some fairly dumb things if he chooses to do them, such as smoke cigarettes and buy lottery tickets. Fortunately he is too smart to do these things or he would have started doing them a long time ago. Some things are much more fun to do when they are illegal, which is probably why so many kids quit smoking when they turn 18.

This is not true of everything, though, as Uncle Jack knows from his own experience, and one of the things it is not true of is drinking beer. He discovered nature’s most perfect food when he was 16 and it was love at first taste. Lucky for him he looked like he was 25 years old when he was 16 so he never had any trouble buying the stuff even though he was two years short of legal.

Unfortunately for Andy he lives in one of those states where you have to be 21 before you can buy beer legally, which makes it harder, but he has managed to get around this problem by learning how to make his own beer. Like his grandfather he consumes it in moderation and only at times of great ceremonial significance such as the rising and setting of the sun. Or the waxing of the moon. Or high tide. Or Thursday.

Next year Andy will be going to college where he will join some of the millions of college students who drink beer even though they are not yet 21. Several fraternities have already offered him a full four-year scholarship if he will pledge to brew at least 200 gallons of his famous porter each week.

Uncle Jack is kidding, of course, but he does have to wonder what was going on in the minds of the lawmakers who decided that college students are not old enough to drink beer. He could see how it might happen in some extremely virtuous and sparsely populated state like Utah but how could this be the law in such enlightened states as Massachusetts, where Andy lives, or even North Carolina which may not be exactly enlightened but where moonshine has been a tradition even longer than March Madness?

Uncle Jack would never urge college students to drink beer if they didn’t want to. But having been to college and seeing what goes on there he has to say that any law that prohibits beer drinking by any college student under 21 is destined to create a large criminal class who will spend a substantial part of every week enthusiastically breaking the law.

He has to wonder about the wisdom of a statute that turns half the future leaders of our country into chronic criminals even before they get to law school.

               Ashes to Ashes

Uncle Jack got a very nice letter last week asking him to join a new Mausoleum Society they are starting up over on Roanoke Island. It was very exciting for him to get this letter because he hardly ever gets asked to join anything. The letter had a picture of their building which is very good looking and it should hold up pretty well, too, because they are going to build it out of granite instead of particle board which is what most of the new buildings around here are made of these days.

Anyway Uncle Jack was very interested in joining the Mausoleum Society until he found out what a mausoleum was. Now he is wondering how he got on their mailing list. That letter did start Uncle Jack thinking about what should be done with his mortal remains when he kicks the bucket, which he hopes won't be anytime soon but one never knows.

Different people in different parts of the world have certainly come up with a lot of interesting and unusual ways to dispose of their mortal remains. Uncle Jack knows quite a lot about this because many years ago his mother-in-law gave him a subscription to National Geographic magazine which she must have thought would be more uplifting for him than some of the other magazines he used to read before they quit selling them at the 7-ll.

It was more uplifting, too, in the long run. At first Uncle Jack would just skim through the National Geographic looking for pictures of topless native girls but after a while he started reading the words, too, and he learned many interesting things that way.

One thing he learned is that over in India they get rid of their mortal remains by building a big bonfire and burning them up. Another thing he learned is that Eskimos put their mortal remains on floating ice cakes and let them drift out to sea, but he is not sure if the E.P.A. lets them do that anymore.

If you want to know the truth none of these methods appeals to Uncle Jack very much. On the other hand he isn't too crazy about having his mortal remains buried in the ground either, especially around here where the water table is only about three inches down.

The mausoleum sounds a lot better because they say it is clean, dry, ventilated, above ground and permanent. It sounds a lot like being buried in a condo except for the part about "permanent". If you were looking for words to describe some of the condominiums they have built around here you surely wouldn't have too much use for "permanent".

Anyway Uncle Jack wouldn't mind if they just propped up his mortal remains in his favorite rocking chair on the deck and faced them toward the ocean. For the first few days it might be hard to tell if you were looking at Uncle Jack's mortal remains or Uncle Jack but eventually the seagulls would figure it out and do their thing

He knows this solution would not appeal to everybody and he wishes the Mausoleum Society the best of luck with their membership drive.

                     The Demon Sex

Dear Uncle Jack,

I have been reading a lot in the papers lately about how the Nags Head Commissioners are agonizing over what to do about dirty movies and topless bars and other sordid things like that which are threatening our way of life here on the Outer Banks. You live in Nags Head, Uncle Jack, so what do you think they ought to do.

Kari Nation

Wanchese

Dear Kari,

This is not a subject that Uncle Jack spends a whole lot of time worrying about but he has a few thoughts that he will be happy to share with you since you asked. For one thing he knows that people have been trying to deal with the Demon Sex for a very long time---even before there was a Bible to provide them with clear guidelines. You may not believe this but archaeologists have discovered that there were harlots roaming the earth, leading men astray, as early as the Fifth Century B.C.

Down through the centuries the good people have been trying every which way to stamp out the evil manifestations of the Demon Sex (along with his cousins the Demon Rum and the Demon Dope) but he has to be honest and tell you that it does not look like they have made very much progress so far.

It has gotten so bad that if Uncle Jack's flesh was any weaker he would be inclined to throw in the towel and let the bad people have their way with him.

But Uncle Jack remains strong in his resolve and he believes that the only way to turn the tide against the Demon Sex is to crack down even harder on his handymen (and handywomen).

To this end he suggests that during the off-season when the town police are not so busy writing speeding tickets they should go to work rounding up all the bad people such as the harlots and the men who consort with them and the people who traffic in naughty movies and the people who watch them and they should be stripped naked and tied to a stake in front of the Nags Head Town Hall (it is not too late to add a stake to the new complex and and it should not push the project over budget if the commissioners don't get conned into buying a fancy rhinestone stake from Tammi Bakker or somebody like that).

Then they should schedule regular public whippings and invite the mayors of all the towns and maybe other celebrities such as Pat Buchanan or Pat Robertson to do the honors. Uncle Jack is fairly confident that a spectacle of this nature would draw a good crowd and would go a long way toward stamping out the Demon Sex in our communities. Whether or not parents should bring their children would be up to them but if they decide to leave them home they should be aware of what they might be watching on TV.

Anyway there is a lot more Uncle Jack could say on this subject but he has run out of space and he is probably in big enough trouble already so he is going to stop right here.

Prudently,

Uncle Jack

                Septuagenarianism

Uncle Jack is pleased to report that he is writing this column on his 71st birthday. He and his apparently indestructible liver have survived another year together for which he is deeply grateful and more than a little amazed.

For younger persons who might be wondering what it is like to be 71 years old he can tell you it is not bad at all, especially if you feel good and you have a terrific spouse like Mrs. Uncle Jack to keep you on your toes, so to speak. He recommends it unequivocally to all those who might be thinking about becoming 71 themselves some day.

Being as old as he is he has become, by default, something of an expert on aging and he has to say he certainly had a lot of misconceptions about it when he was younger. He used to think that people who were 71 were really old but now he knows from personal experience that this is not true. It is people who are 91 who are really old.

He should probably thank his hardy Swedish ancestors for the fact that his body is almost completely intact with all the moving parts still moving, although not as often as they used to in some cases, and not as far. Only his tonsils and gall bladder are missing from the corpus he was born with and he has yet to figure out why they were installed in the first place. Perhaps they are God’s way of providing a little extra income for surgeons between wars.

One of the nicest things about getting older is that he doesn’t need as much sleep as he used to so he usually gets up very early in the morning. He has learned that the first two or three hours in the morning, before the rest of the world wakes up, can be priceless.

One day last week he watched a sunrise that was nearly as beautiful as any sunset he has ever seen. It was embellished by flocks of pelicans floating through a pink sky and pods of porpoises frolicking in the pink surf. He is sorry all you younger slug-a-beds missed it.

Anyway he could go on at much greater length about how nice it is to be 71 but he will conclude now by thanking the two major contributors to his geriatric bliss---Mrs. Uncle Jack and the Sunsweet Prune Company.

P.S.  Uncle Jack turned 76 a couple of weeks ago and nothing has changed except that he had to give up hard liquor. Now he makes his Manhattans with prune juice instead of bourbon and he is probably the better for it.  

                      Drilling for Dollars

Dear Uncle Jack,

I read in the paper where the Chevron oil company wants to drill for oil about 40 miles out in the ocean off Hatteras. They say there is hardly any chance they will find anything but they are willing to spend a few million dollars to find out. Are those people nuts or what, Uncle Jack?

Incredulous

Avon

Dear Incredulous,

When he first read about this plan to drill for oil out in the ocean Uncle Jack thought it was pretty crazy, too, but then he started thinking about the other places they have gone looking for oil and it didn't seem so strange any more.

For one thing they found oil way up in the northern part of Alaska by the Arctic Circle and then they had to build a pipeline about a thousand miles long to carry it down to the nearest seaport which was a little fishing village called Valdez which you may remember reading about a couple of years ago when the tanker ran aground and spilled a zillion gallons of Valdez oil into the ocean up there.

Drilling a well off Hatteras would be a piece of cake compared to drilling wells on the Arctic Circle and if they did find oil they would only need a 40 mile long pipeline to pump it into the nearest fishing village. With a little luck Wanchese could be just as famous as Valdez some day.

If you ask Uncle Jack you have to give the oil companies credit for what they are trying to do which is to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. It is very scary to think that something like 70% of all the oil we burn up in our cars and trucks and airplanes---and most important our 4WD recreational vehicles---comes from unstable places like the Middle East and South America and Africa.

It is entirely possible that if Chevron brings in a big gusher or two out by the Gulf Stream America could reduce its dependence on foreign oil from 70% to maybe 69% for a couple of years before it runs out and they have to drill someplace else---like maybe off the end of Jennette's pier. By that time there could be so much oil on the beaches around here that nobody would care. Anyway Uncle Jack is glad that there are selfless, patriotic oil companies like Chevron who are willing to risk millions of dollars in what could well be a futile effort to free us from the specter of oil deprivation at the hands of greedy middle eastern potentates, some of whom probably do not even believe in the Bible.

Testily,

Uncle Jack

                          Go Badgers

Uncle Jack has mentioned from time to time that he is a high school graduate of which he is very proud. One of the main reasons he is glad he graduated high school was that it made him eligible to go to college which he did and going to college made it possible for him to go to graduate school which he did and the upshot of all this was that he did not actually have to get a job until he was over 30 years old. Needless to say Uncle Jack is a strong believer in the value of higher education.

Uncle Jack was the first one in his family to go to college so he had to learn how to matriculate pretty much on his own. Back when he graduated from high school during the latter part of the Second Ice Age this was not too difficult, though, because every high school graduate in Wisconsin could go to the University of Wisconsin in Madison if he, she or it could figure out a way to get there.

Uncle Jack was lucky because he won a full-tuition scholarship to the university because of his incredible skill on the bass clarinet. That took care of the biggest stumbling block which was the annual $l00 tuition at the university which Uncle Jack did not have because he spent all his paper route savings on Leinenkugel's Old Style Lager during his fun-packed senior year in high school. Lucky for him his parents forgave him and sold the cow so he could go off to Madison with another $l00 to tide him over until he could get a job. If you want to know the truth Uncle Jack's first semester in college was very nearly his last because he had some trouble controlling himself when he found out you could drink beer all day in college if you wanted to which is not something you could do in high school except maybe on teacher workshop days.

Anyway he pulled himself together and passed all his courses and one day they herded him into the gym along with about 4000 other students and gave him his diploma and he can tell you that was a proud moment that lasted about three hours and made him very thirsty.

This was over 50 years ago and Uncle Jack is still as proud as punch to be a "Badger" which is the weird little animal they chose to be the symbol of the University which is probably a little better than a gopher or a groundhog but not by much. They all live underground and usually wind up as roadkill.

You would think that after 50 years the University of Wisconsin would have forgotten a totally undistinguished graduate like Uncle Jack who barely squeaked through and who anybody could have predicted would never amount to anything. This is not true, though, because just about every week for the last 50 years Uncle Jack has gotten at least one letter or bulletin or magazine from the University asking him to send money. What they don't know is that if Uncle Jack sent them every penny he has in the world it would not even cover the postage on all the mail he gets from them.

This week they want him to add his pittance to the many millions of dollars a few fatcats have donated for the purpose of building a new state-of-the-art football stadium so that all the Wisconsin students and alumni will not have to feel ashamed when teams come from other colleges where they have already spent millions of dollars on their stadiums.

If you want to know the truth Uncle Jack would really be proud of his "alma mater" (which is Latin for "great place to party") if they would write him a letter that says they are not going to spend another dime on bigtime sports facilities and they are no longer going to participate in the corrupt and indefensible foolishness which bigtime college athletics have become.

If he ever got a letter like that he would cheerfully quit drinking beer for a whole week and send them the money he saved and he can tell you we are talking big bucks here.

                          Babies

Dear Uncle Jack,

I read in Parade Magazine last Sunday that many famous actresses such as Farrah Faucett, Jessica Lange, Ursula Andress, Vanessa Redgrave and Catherine Deneuve have managed to have babies even though they don’t have husbands.

How do they do that, Uncle Jack?

Incredulous

Manns Harbor

Dear Incredulous,

Uncle Jack is sorry to tell you that this is one of the areas of human knowledge in which he is not quite up to snuff. He too has read in USA Today about various rich and famous women who have had babies without having husbands but he does not have a clue as to how they do it.

For a long time he thought maybe it had something to do with being rich enough so you could go to some clinic in Switzerland where they knew how to do it with mudpacks or something but he was wrong about that.

Later on he read in the paper where a lot of women who were not very rich at all were having babies even though they did not have husbands so it can’t have anything to do with being able to go to Switzerland. Some of these women were actually on welfare and they were not all high school graduates so it must not have anything to do with being rich or smart.

Anyway when Uncle Jack was in school Mrs. Stonebreaker taught him that you could only have babies if you had a husband and wife who were married to each other but it sure looks like it is not that way any more.

He probably could have made up a pretty good answer to your question if he put his mind to it but he is too honest to do that so it looks like you are going to have to write to Ann Landers or Miss Manners or somebody like that who is more up to date on where babies come from these days.

Next time ask Uncle Jack something about sports and he will try to do better.

Evasively,

Uncle Jack

                   Tomato Lust

This was a terrific week for Uncle Jack because his long-awaited tomatoes are finally starting to ripen and he has already eaten his first dozen tomato sandwiches on Pepperidge Farm white bread slathered with mayonnaise and sprinkled with salt and pepper. On Uncle Jack's Calendar of Gustatory Events the Day of the First Homegrown Tomato is truly a red-letter day, looked forward to with unseemly anticipation which often involves drooling at inappropriate times.

Actually he is wrong to refer to them as "his" tomatoes because all he did was water them a few times and it was really Mrs. Uncle Jack who planted them and anointed them with Miracle-Gro at regular intervals and otherwise nurtured the humongous tomato patch which now threatens to engulf all of South Nags Head.

This is without a doubt the opus magnum of her long and brilliant gardening career and it promises to produce a flow of tomatoes during the next couple of months that has Uncle Jack seriously thinking about applying for an export license. Only in China or perhaps India are there enough hungry people to consume all the tomatoes that are lurking in her tomato jungle, ripening, ripening, ripening, day and night, ready to star in their own horror flick if Uncle Jack fails to keep them at bay.

Uncle Jack jests, of course. There can never be enough juicy ripe red tomatoes to satisfy his tomato lust but when he can no longer eat fast enough to keep up he knows that Mrs. Uncle Jack will start to make tomato sauce and he is pleased to tell you her sauce bears no resemblance whatsoever to the pallid concoctions purveyed by H.J. Heinz and the other mass merchants of tomatiocrity.

This is sauce that turns common spaghetti into something the Great Chefs of New Orleans could charge 50 bucks a plate for and never hear a murmur of protest. You could pour it over Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream and get compliments, that's how good it is. Uncle Jack wants you to know that he is truly sorry that nobody outside of his immediate family will ever experience the Joy of Sauce as he does throughout the long tomato-less winter. He is truly blessed and he knows it.

               How Now, Palau?

Uncle Jack has been in retail for 32 years now but he never gets tired of shopkeeping because he never knows who is going to walk through the door next. He has met many interesting people over the years who have enriched his life with their stories as well as their credit cards.

He usually starts out by asking the visitor where he or she is from and most often the answer is "Ahia" or "Virginia" or something similarly unpromising but one day last week the answer was "Palau" which really got his attention. Uncle Jack knew from his in-depth study of world geography in the fourth grade that Palau was a tiny island country out in the south Pacific somewhere and he never expected to meet somebody from Palau in his shop on a tiny island off the east coast of the United States.

It turned out that his visitor was actually an American (from Virginia, naturally) who has been living in Palau for several years while he helps to oversee a roadbuilding project for the U.S. government. For reasons that are still not clear to Uncle Jack (nor to many of the approximately 19,000 residents of Palau, apparently) the American taxpayer is footing the bill for a $150 million, fifty-mile-long highway through thick jungle on the largest of Palau's islands.

Uncle Jack never ceases to be amazed at the generosity of the American people and he suspects that one reason for their munificence is that they seldom realize just how generous they are or where their money is going. For those who seek further enlightenment with regard to this particular act of charity he suggests that you Google "Palau highway project" on your computer and read a couple of the many reports available on the web.

On the other hand Uncle Jack may have already told you more than you want to know. At a time when the U.S. Government needs every penny it can get its hands on for beach replenishment it is hard to understand why it is lavishing $150 million on a dubious highway project in Palau. (He urges the county commissioners to find out who the Palauan lobbyist is and get him on the payroll quick. He may even work for coconuts).

One good thing about the Palau Project is that it momentarily took Uncle Jack's mind off matters closer to home, namely the Dare County Visitors Bureau's plan to enter a $150,000 float in next year's Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California. The float will be titled "The Outer Banks of North Carolina, Where Dreams Still Take Flight" and according to the Bureau "It's a unique and powerful opportunity to reach the world and showcase the Outer Banks of North Carolina".

Uncle Jack can only hope that they are wrong and this adventure will be no more successful than their $30,000 racing car bumper sticker scheme of a few years ago. Some 425 million people watch the Rose parade on TV and if only one tenth of 1% of them decide to visit the Outer Banks next year it will be Uncle Jack who takes flight along with his shattered dreams of living out the rest of his years in peace and quiet in this once-lovely place.

            Unconventional Thinking

Dear Uncle Jack,

I read in the paper the other day where a lot of experts in the tourist trade are saying that Dare County was never going to amount to anything until we got a real convention center down here. I never heard of a convention center and I was hoping you could tell me what it is.

Common Mann

Mann’s Harbor

Dear Common,

Uncle Jack will be happy to answer your question. This is something he knows a lot about because he used to go to a lot of conventions himself before he moved to the Outer Banks and stopped going anywhere. He can tell you that a convention is where a group of people who are all in the same line of work will get together someplace once a year to talk about what is new in their line of work. For example if you were in the plumbing business you would go to the plumbers convention to find out what kind of new valves or washers the Japanese have come out with since last year. Or if you are in the car business you go to find out what new engines the Japanese have come out with and so on.

That is not the only reason people go to conventions, though. Uncle Jack found out a long time ago that the main reason why many people go to conventions is that they can go someplace where nobody knows them and they can fool around a little and also take it off their income tax.

People spend a lot of money when they go to conventions which is why so many towns have convention centers now. If you want conventions to come to your town you have to have a convention center with a room big enough so everybody can sit down at one time together and eat rubber chicken and listen to boring speeches. This is how they keep from feeling too guilty about going to the convention in the first place.

Anyway if Dare County does get a convention center then maybe instead of going to some warm, sunny place like Las Vegas in January or February the way they do now, some conventions might want to come to Dare County instead.

Right off hand Uncle Jack cannot personally think of anybody in his right mind who would rather come to Dare County in the winter but there are large numbers of demented people in the U.S. so you never know. Uncle Jack has read about some people called the Polar Bear Club who go swimming in the Monongahela River every New Years Day when the temperature is usually about four degrees above zero. Maybe they would like to have their convention here in January or February.

Uncle Jack is not sure if the masochists are organized yet but if they ever have a convention they would surely want to have it here in the winter. They could do all kinds of fun things like hiking to the top of Jockey’s Ridge in the nude during a northeaster and letting the sand tear the skin off their bodies.

If you want to know the truth, though, Uncle Jack is not too crazy about the idea of having a lot of conventions around here in the winter. He kind of likes having a few weeks each year when he does not have to wait twenty minutes to make a left turn onto the bypass. Also he is worried about what will happen when the gulls start dropping their clams on the convention center parking lot when it is full of cars. Who is going to pay for all those broken windshields?

This is why Uncle Jack does not think a convention center is anything Dare County needs to rush into right now---unless they want to give him the windshield replacement concession over there.

Opportunistically,

Uncle Jack