[reggae music]
[Peter] Morning guys.
Here in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
And we’re about to port
at the island of Ocracoke.
Here due to its isolation
there are a few people
that still speak the Ocracoke Brogue.
It’s a unique accent that has Irish,
English, Scottish, pirate influences.
So we have the great fortune
to meet up with one of these characters.
Get on the island
and get a better understanding
of what this place is like.
Let’s do this.
[music continues]
-[Peter] We’re cruising Rex.
-We’re going on a skud.
-Ocracoke I call it a skud.
-A little cruisy? A skud? Okay.
This is the way to do it here
on the golf cart.
-That’s my buddy Jay.
-You know everyone here Rex?
Everybody knows me and I know everybody.
-You grew up here obviously.
-Yep born and raised on the island.
I come from a family of 11 boys.
No girls in my family.
-Whoa are you serious?
-I’m serious as I can be.
So were your parents here just like
“We gotta get a girl.
Let’s try one more time.”?
Yeah I think so.
-Ride down some back roads first?
-Oh yeah.
-People think the island is small.
I mean it is small.
It’s only three miles of the village.
But there’s a lot of back roads.
People say,
“I think I’ve seen it all.”
“No you ain’t.”
-So O’Neil your last name’s O’Neil.
I just saw an O’Neil house.
Yeah. We got O’Neil Cemetery.
A lot of O’Neils on the island.
This is called Middle Road.
In World War II
they used to store ammunition here.
I can remember when
there were no roads back here.
-Okay. So your people, your ancestry
came over, what, in the 1600s?
Yeah they been on the island
for a couple hundred years on Ocracoke.
Lived off the water
and my daddy was a carpenter.
There were a lot on the island.
I became a fisherman
and carpenter as well.
-And Ryan Ballance put me in touch
with you and that’s the name.
-Yeah you can see here. [laughs]
-So how many guys and gals on the
island still speak in the Brogue?
-I mean some carry it
but not a whole lot of people do.
I don’t pay attention to who got it.
-This is my normal way of talking.
-Totally.
For you I have the accent.
Yeah that’s right.
A lot of people say you talk funny.
I might but I don’t drive “caars”.
I’m not from “Baasten.”
[laughter]
Give me a cawfee.
You might think I talk funny
but I think you talk funny.
Right.
Who has the monopoly on the accent right?
You can get it on down.
You probably say that
we’re hoi toit on the south shore.
What’s hoi toity?
[speaks Brogue]
-All right translation?
Okay.
High tide on the sound side.
-Okay.
It means the tide is high
on the sound side.
Last night the water fire that meant
there was phosphorus in the water.
When the phosphorus lights the water up
that means the water was bright
like the moonshine.
Moon was so bright.
No feesh.
And the reason
there was no feesh was because
it was so bright
that the fish could see the nets.
And so they didn’t get in the nets.
Okay one more time. How do you say it?
[speaks Brogue]
And the guy asked what do you suppose
is the matter Uncle Woods?
-Oh and people on the ferry
told me that in the Brogue
high-tider means local
and dingbatter is an outsider right?
-Yeah. [laughs]
-And also they said that
Blackbeard died here.
-He got captured and killed in 1718
just off the island
right out of the harbor.
He pillaged something like
40 boats in the Caribbean
up and down the Atlantic coast.
He was a pirate up
and down the Atlantic coast.
They would come in and they had
ballast stones like big rocks.
That’s what they called ballast stones
to make their ship ride good.
And when they’d come in
they’d unload those ballast stones
and throw them away.
And they’d navigate
across the Pamilco Sound
up to another place
called Bath, North Carolina.
[Peter] So Blackbeard was feared.
He was like 6’5″ 220. He was massive.
[Rex] Yeah a very feared pirate. Yeah.
His name was Edward Teach.
-Edward Teach?
-Yeah.
-Oh this is interesting.
-Yeah this crazy.
That one’s a little creepy
that girl on the horse.
That’s really creepy. The one
with chains coming out of the ground.
What’s going on there?
I don’t know.
You tell me. I don’t know.
Good question.
You gotta meet her to find out.
-There’s a “you be you” mentality here?
-Yeah.
Live and let be?
[Peter] What type of people
does this island attract to live?
Like who comes here?
-All walks of life.
-Okay.
-From that to everything else?
-Yeah that’s right.
Most of them are great people
but you get these few
they want to change the island.
-And we don’t like that.
-How so?
They wanna change it. “Well back
in New Jersey we do it like this.”
“So why ain’t we doing it like this?”
‘Cause you ain’t in New Jersey.
You don’t like the lifestyle
best thing to do go back to New Jersey.
-That’s what our feeling is.
-It’s the same story everywhere.
People move into an old school community
and they want to change it
and it pisses the locals off.
But if you come in from the outside
and you’re respectful–
You’re well accepted. You really are.
That’s most places. Yeah.
That’s Pokers Players Road.
That’s where the old-timers
used to go up there
and sit in the woods and play poker.
And drink homemade wine.
[Peter] So what are people
doing here for work?
-A lot of people work on the ferry boats,
work in restaurants,
work in motels, build houses.
I used to do a lot of
house building myself
as well as commercial fish.
I built this house.
This is my rental house.
And my daddy used to have a saying,
“No fools, no fun.”
I named it after his saying
no fools no fun.
-Is that cool when you build something,
you get to look back at it
and be like,
“I did that. I remember that time.”?
-I built quite a few houses on the island.
-That’s cool.
And this is my stockyard
where I keep a lot of golf carts.
-You’re renting golf carts obviously.
This is where I keep parts at and stuff
to work on the carts
-My tires and all that kind of stuff.
-Nice.
What’s going on with fishing right now?
It’s a dying breed of people.
There’s not much left for fishing.
We’ve got a running joke.
Used to be a quaint little fishing village
with a drinking problem.
Now it’s a quaint little drinking village
with a fishing problem. [laughs]
It changed.
Right.
They used to make a lot of homemade wines
and stuff they used to drink.
It used to be dry out here.
This is part of the Pamlico Sound.
This is all marshland back here.
-So this will actually
get flooded through here?
Yeah.
Six years ago Hurricane Dorian,
be up to your chest
standing right in this road.
[Peter] So those occasional hurricanes,
you want your house up?
[Rex] Yes.
We had a lot of houses got flooded.
That’s why FEMA
is jacking a lot of houses.
-Federal Emergency Management.
-FEMA’s doing it?
FEMA’s doing it for free.
Here’s one that just got jacked up.
-That one just got jacked?
-You still see all the stuff in the yard.
-Okay, FEMA will jack your house for free?
-Yeah.
They’ve done it about 40 so far.
-See this will still be in the works.
-Oh yeah.
It was down low on the ground.
It got flooded.
-So are people happy with FEMA here
Or it depends who you talk to?
Yeah somewhat but most people are.
How long has FEMA been here doing this?
-They came November last year.
They’re still here.
-That’s cool.
-Yeah it is cool.
I like the good FEMA stories
’cause there’s so many bad ones.
Like in Lahaina, Hawaii, you know in Maui?
-I was there.
-I did a story there.
-Huh?
-I did a story there.
After the fire or before?
After. Like a year after.
Really? I was there
five months before it happened.
The guys I talked to
weren’t happy with FEMA.
Same as Western North Carolina.
I’m going there next.
So it just depends who you talk to.
Then I was just on
a remote part of Florida on the coast.
Okay.
And FEMA, the locals said
they did a pretty good job.
So you went to Lahaina after the fire
and did a story there?
Yeah, I go to all these places
like a year after, Rex.
Reason being, nobody knows
what’s going on when it’s happening.
-That’s exactly right.
-All the cameras are there. It’s chaos.
And I’ll go a year later
when the cameras have gone away
and the stories are still there.
-Oh this is nice.
-These are canals that come up here.
-Oh can I get out?
-Yeah sure.
So you can just get
right out to the ocean here?
-No. This way you get out to the sound.
This way it goes further on up
into the middle of the village.
I’ll show you.
I can show you my house from here.
See the big green house with
the metal roof? The green one?
-Yep.
-That’s my house.
Oh, way down there? Nice.
You go way down this dips here.
You circle around.
It starts shallow.
It gets really, really shallow.
So if the tides are low
you can’t get up there.
Is it a high-tider house?
Yeah high-tider house.
Yeah mine’s a hoi-toider.
-Hoigh-toider?
-Yeah.
Okay what percentage
of dingbatters out here?
-90% of dingbatters own these houses now.
-Oh okay.
A lot of them are built
for summer cottages.
They rent them for the investment
and stuff like that.
-What’s a home like this go for roughly?
-That one’s over $500,000
something like that.
-Okay. Is that a three-bed two-bath?
-Something like that.
I built this house as well. This one
right here. He’s a good friend of mine.
-How much would that be these days?
On a canal like that
you could probably get $700,000 for it.
That’s how much they’ve gone up.
I built it for $150,000,
you know, way back when.
-Back in the summer of ’69?
Well… I just… [laughs]
Way back in ’02. [laughs]
Yep. This is my pontoon boat actually.
So you own half the island?
I won’t go that far but I own some stuff.
This used to be where I did
all my commercial fishing out of.
It was nothing but crab pots and nets
and all that stuff back here.
I started fishing in 19…
probably about ’66 ’67.
When I was still in school
I was doing some fishing and then
went on my own, fishing,
after I got out of school.
I’m fishing like 250 crab pots every day
and fish nets every day.
-Do you miss it?
-Huh?
I do, a lot of ways.
That was the labor of love.
You get up every morning go out there.
I could have probably been
a lot more wealthy earlier in life
if I hadn’t just loved fishing so good.
-Because I was a pretty good carpenter.
-There was never great money in fishing?
Yeah I made real good money
but it died away so now there’s not.
I could raise a family.
You know, you had to have other jobs.
I had a crew the same time I was fishing.
I’d go fish mornings and come back
and work in the afternoons with my…
Oh, that’s the key.
I come back and work afternoons
with my crew and get them set up
so they could be working the next morning.
-So I always had a couple jobs going.
-Okay.
I had to hustle.
-Why did fishing go away?
-They put so many regulations on it,
it was almost impossible to make a living.
You see the old camps? They used to be
what they called fish camps
where people would fish out of there
and just put all their stuff in there.
I see a lot of these setups,
the fishing poles on the the truck.
We’ve got a fishing tournament this week.
I’m going to be in the tournament.
It’s the biggest fishing tournament
of the year on the island.
There’s like 77 teams.
See that, Fish Camp lane?
-Oh yeah.
-Yeah this is Ocracoke Community Cemetery.
You can see it right there.
-Is Blackbeard in here?
-No Blackbeard at sea.
He got beheaded. They said
he was so mean they cut his head off,
he still swum around the ship three times.
Well that’s just a tale, you know?
-So the old names here are Teeter.
-Midgetts.
-Midgett.
A lot of the Midgetts, O’Neil, Sterns.
You see Williams.
Like some of them
are people that moved here too.
Austins.
Garrishes.
You see a lot of O’Neils back there.
A few Tulsians.
-So when did the big change happen
from this being a fishing community
to being a lot of rental homes?
In the early ’80s
it started transforming into
where the people started moving in,
buying the land up in the very early ’80s.
There was some tourism but not a lot.
And then they started
really buying up the land.
My brother owns that house.
There’s five of us left. Three of us
still live on the island, my brothers.
-Five of the 11 left?
-Five of the 11 left.
‘Cause my oldest brother would have been
in his 90s now if he was still alive.
-How old are you?
-I’m 72 myself.
-All right.
-I’m getting up there but at least I am.
-How’s it feeling?
-I’m feeling good.
-You’re fired up on life?
-I’m fired up on life. I love life.
And I love people.
Everybody says I’m a people person.
-Yeah that’s obvious.
-My brother used to own this house.
My brother passed now.
Is that pretty sad
seeing so many siblings pass away?
Yeah it’s sad but it’s the way of life.
What can I say?
I mean yeah, it is sad.
-We all meet the end
and no one knows when.
Here’s the O’Neill Cemetery right here.
That’s my brother that’s
buried right there.
-That’s your cemetery?
-O’Neill Cemetery?
-Yeah.
-So these are all your relatives?
-Yeah they are my relatives.
That’s my brother.
That way back there, the old tombstones
is my grandmother and grandfather.
-Okay. Those two back there?
-Yep?
[Rex] I didn’t get to meet them.
My father was born in 1901
so that’s a long time ago.
-This is my nephew, my brother–
-Oh I’m sorry.
Yeah, he was young too.
My brother, it’s him
and his mother just died.
She’s my sister-in-law.
That’s just about two weeks ago.
-That’s very sad.
-I’m sorry.
Anyway they got their name on there.
They’ll be buried there,
my brother and her.
Well you know cremated
and just their vase.
And actually that’s my house back there.
The one I showed you from the canal.
-The turquoise one?
-Yeah.
This is my other brother’s house.
His wife just died.
She was my neighbor too.
It was a very hard time.
Yeah that’s the front of my house.
[Rex] Hey buddy.
That’s a musician. That’s my grandson.
He’s a hell of a musician.
I mean when I say…
-What’s he playing?
He plays drums and guitar.
-No way.
He plays with five different rock
and roll bands. Some are in their 70s.
He is so good. You wouldn’t believe it.
Hello. That’s my lovely wife and…
-How you doing?
That’s Dallas and that’s Asher.
Hey who’s your favorite drummer?
Neil Peart.
Dude! That’s my favorite drummer!
-Really?
-Yeah. I saw Rush.
My first show was Rush at 16 years old.
-Can you play any of his songs?
-Oh yeah. Can he play them?
-Every song probably.
-Are you serious?
Can he play them?
Can we get that on camera Rex?
He’s gotta go back to school. He can
do it if you’re still here this evening.
-He’s got a little studio under his house.
-I would love to hear that.
Okay. We’ll see you after school.
He can play Zeppelin, anything.
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Now back to the story.
This is where we grew up
on the end of this road.
We used to play as little kids in this
what we called the Pond.
Northern Pond is what it’s name is.
We used to call it down pond.
-So just super simple life
growing up here?
-Yeah simple, simple. Way simple.
See this Pamlico is the name of the sound.
Pamlico Sound,
of course you saw that on the map.
Here’s the British cemetery.
This is where four British sailors
washed ashore in World War II.
You can walk up there. I won’t drive
the car. Take your time Pete.
I wanna tell you a little bit
of the story behind it.
They got torpedoed with a German U-boat.
These four washed ashore
on Ocracoke beaches.
Because they were our allies
during World War II
we felt like it was only appropriate
to give them a proper burial.
So we donated this land to the British.
The Brits actually own
this little chunk of land.
-Are you serious?
-Yeah.
-This is British territory?
-Just the four sailors right there.
Two of them are unknown
and two of them had dog tags.
But the United States Coast Guard
keeps it up now.
Every year they have
a British ceremony here
with a 21 gun salute and everything else.
And this is what they call
the Howard Cemetery here.
That’s another name that lives here.
That’s the old Howard Cemetery.
Oh the golf cart’s great.
-Yeah it’s a way to go.
-Yeah you don’t want a car here.
No.
-Just jump in and out.
-And I like the way it’s quiet.
-Hang your feet out the…
-Yeah especially in the summertime.
You can get your shorts on.
[Rex] This is what they call
East Howard Street,
one of the oldest streets on the island.
A lot of the streets used to be like this.
What they call Howard Street.
That’s William Howard.
-Say hey, William.
-Hey what’s happening buddy?
His grandparents and family
go back forever till.
In fact one of the Howards
bought the island originally right?
Yeah at one time or another.
-Not left with much now though.
-Yeah.
Yeah my grandparents,
my mom and dad both grew up here.
But I actually didn’t grow up here.
-Oh.
-My dad, he left at a young age
due to having a young child.
He went to the Air Force
and went to Vietnam.
-You live here now?
-Uh-huh.
In fact, jobs were hard to come by here.
So people would have to move
off the island to find a job
and the wives would stay here and
the husbands would go off and go to work
on dredge boats and tug boats
and work three weeks on, a week off.
-…to be able to stay here.
Don’t you think Rex? You know you and us.
To be able to stay here and make
a living and not have to go away.
-That was the first generation?
-I feel like it maybe.
You know what I mean?
Like I said dad was born in 1942.
He had a kid when my mom was 15.
I’m sure they were like,
“You got to go do something buddy.”
-[laughter]
-Get to work.
He had to go but granddad left.
He went to Philadelphia and worked.
My uncle lived in Delaware and worked.
-What do you think
it’s like here in 10 years?
-I don’t know.
I just read an article
on Carolina Country, Rex.
-Yeah?
-It had granddad in it. 1962.
And they were interviewing granddad
about the power plant.
And he was sitting there
and he was talking about,
“Oh you know,
there ain’t much fishing left no more.
It’s all recreational.
There’s people everywhere.
The last 10 years
I ain’t never seen nothing like that.”
I said,
“Kate does that sound like me talking?”
[laughs] He was talking about
that 10 years.
-Exactly.
-It was real interesting
to see how much in ’62
granddad was talking about
that last 10 years was big.
And I think most of us would say the last
10 years was real big around here.
You gotta love America.
So we have Rex speaking the Brogue.
You’re speaking a North Carolina accent
I would say.
-North Carolina.
-I’m speaking some Yankee something right?
And we have all these
different cool accents.
I love it.
And a lot of times people
say the Southern accent.
There are many Southern accents.
Oh yeah. Even just between here
and Core Sound there’s a big difference.
-Oh yeah. You go to Core Sound,
they got their own accent.
Each little island has a
different way of speaking.
If you go down to Cedar Island
they speak different than we do.
Then if you go down to Harkers Island
they speak different than we do.
We all got our own accents
on these little islands.
They don’t have the
beautiful beach that we got.
We’re stuck out here like a sore thumb.
We have an ocean beach.
-We miss your dad. He’s was a good man.
-Yeah.
[Rex] I miss his dad.
We miss Lindsey.
He said, “God darnit, Rex took me
places I didn’t even know existed.”
Me and his dad rode right out…
The weather was so bad we couldn’t fish.
Couldn’t get on the beach.
So I said let’s go for a ride.
Me and him got us a 12-pack of beer.
We rode all over everywhere.
We rode the whole day
up and down these little roads.
Kind of like we were doing
but more of them.
And it was…
The tide. It was raining, blowing.
The weather was terrible
but I wish she was here to fish with us.
My God that was fun.
Lindsey was a top-notch guy.
I tell you that.
[Rex] All right William.
We’ll catch you later buddy.
[Peter] Take care.
[Peter] This is a cute street.
[Rex] We used to play out here
as a kid all the time.
Of course you didn’t have as many houses
and stuff like that on it either.
And a lot of old graveyards right here.
See all the graveyards here?
-Oh yeah. Oh that’s interesting.
These are all family graveyards.
You know people used to bury
their family in their yards.
“Don’t let friends eat imported seafood”.
-Bumper sticker on the truck.
-Oh yeah.
[Rex] And this is what they call
Silver Lake Harbor.
-Has there ever been a time
where you’ve been cut off?
A lot of storms, ferries haven’t come in?
-Oh yeah. Big time.
-Like food gets cut off?
-Yeah we always keep
food and beer in the refrigerator.
This is… if you want to call it downtown.
Coming downtown.
-You have a skyscraper.
-Yeah.
Boy there was such a protest
when that got built.
It took them forever.
They’d like to sabotage this guy.
He finally got away with it.
This is the other
golf cart rental business.
-Okay.
-We’re a friendly competitor.
You guys get along?
Yeah. If I run out of carts, I call him.
If he runs out, he calls me.
Whose prices are better?
Mine a little bit.
We call us the friendly group.
He’s from New York. He’s not so friendly.
This is a hell of a place
to eat your lunch.
That’s a good lunch place?
Really good if you
want grab you some lunch.
I think we can get a couple places.
-So this is one of your local go-tos?
-Yeah.
“Clam strips, crab cakes, fried blue”.
What’s fried blue? Blue fish?
Blue fish. Yeah. Very good.
What do you say, buddy?
What are you doing?
How have you been doing?
-Been doing good.
-All right. Doing good pal.
You come down fishing?
You ain’t gonna win
the tournament are you?
-I’m gonna try to.
-You’re gonna try to? Good luck.
Hey. I’m all right, pal.
How are you doing?
-I’m good. Thank you.
Good to see you buddy.
Rusty.
-I remember you, pal.
-You’re doing all right?
-You been behaving yourself?
-Hell no.
-Me either.
[laughter]
Don’t know how.
-Good to see ya.
-Don’t know how, too old to learn
[laughter]
-Everybody knows me ’cause of–
-High tider?
Kind of. He’s a main lander.
He’s across the sound.
He’s not really a high-tider.
He’s a main lander over the farmland.
-Dingbatter?
-He’s not really a dingbatter.
Yeah I’d say kinda…
He lives over
on the other side of the sound.
Like a farmer.
A lot of farmland
on the other side of the sound.
-[Peter] Local crab cake?
-[Rex] Oh yeah. Uh-huh.
So you got a few
commercial guys out here still fishing?
Yeah. We don’t do commercial crabbing
on the island but Cedar Island does.
-Okay. So hold this like that.
[Rex] What’s that?
There you go. Nice.
-You going to put me to work
to hold your equipment?
Okay so you’re…
I’m videoing him now!
I’m videoing him now.
Wait your nephew caught this?
-I’m telling about his
nephew who caught this.
-Yeah?
-How far out here?
He’s probably two or three miles out.
-Okay.
-Look at that.
It’s all in the family?
-Yeah all in the family, buddy.
Yeah he did. He caught this.
-Nice.
-Yeah.
-Blackened?
-Yeah.
He catches it.
He goes on his little boat, 22-foot boat.
[Rex chuckles]
We’re putting Eric on the map now.
Rex is good at many things
but not camera work.
[laughter]
That’s right.
-Tell him he’s eating your fish.
-Yeah.
-You just caught this Eric? It’s good.
-Yeah.
-Oh hey bud.
-We’re making a video today.
-Of him?
-Yeah.
-Oh my God.
-[laughter]
-All day?
-All day.
[laughter]
-So you got a fresh load
you’re just dropping?
Yeah.
-Is that what a fisherman’s
phone looks like?
-That is. Look at the scales on it.
-It’s got scales on it.
Show him a picture of both of the fish.
-That was your catch this morning? Nice.
-Yeah.
Let’s try this again Rex.
-I’ll hold it for you.
He’s all over the place.
I don’t eat my fish here.
Why?
I don’t buy it back.
[laughter]
[Rex] There you go.
There you go.
-They’re giving you sh*t huh Rex?
-All day long.
-All day long?
-Every chance they get.
All right.
Y’all behave.
-All right.
-All right Rex.
[Peter] Good stuff.
-That’s what it’s all about right?
-Yeah.
Good old local fun.
How many times a week
you go in there Rex?
Ah two or three times a week probably.
This is basically downtown
if you want to call it.
There’s no fast foods
or nothing like that.
-This is all just…
-That’s nice though.
Yeah and there’s some gift shops
and stuff like that.
-Relaxed island life.
It’s relaxing.
In the wintertime
there’s very little stuff going on.
If that car was coming and I knowed ’em
I could stop and talk to them
in the middle of the road ten minutes
without a car bothering us.
Used to be a nice restaurant here
but the hurricane took it out.
And here’s our local fish house.
Where you buy your local fish
and sell your fish here and everything.
Ocracoke seafood,
and here’s the lighthouse.
-Still functioning?
Yes the light still works. You can’t climb
but you can walk down to it.
If you want to come down,
have a walk, come back yourself
and walk down to it, you can.
-Oldest functioning lighthouse
in North Carolina?
-That’s right.
-One of the oldest in North America?
-Yep.
Used to guide the ships in.
[Peter] “Dozen of brave
lighthouse keepers and their families
living a few steps away”.
Keeper’s quarters.
-That used to be.
They’re being remodeled right now.
-That’s so cool.
Just a whole different culture.
I mean not for you
but just for those on the mainland.
Yeah it is.
Lighthouse culture.
That’s why it became
such a heavy tourist destination.
Okay.
Are there too many tourists now or no?
Sometimes there is.
It’s how I make my living
so it doesn’t bother me but yeah.
Right. You can’t be a hypocrite
and say no tourists.
No exactly right.
You know I mean yeah, exactly.
Let me put it to you like this…
We might be richer in money now
but we were richer in the way of living
when we were young.
I grew up very poor
being from 11 youngins.
Very poor.
I had hand-me-down clothes and everything.
My dad and mom
had to feed 13 mouths.
[horns honking]
But now we’ve got more money,
we’re richer in money, but we were richer
in the lifestyle
back when we were growing up.
When your neighbor was your friend
if he lived there and he lost his roof
everybody would jump in and help him.
-Why do you think when we get more money
we lose our humanity like that?
Some people, goes to their head
and they just grow greed I guess.
I really don’t know the answer to it
but they get to the point.
-That’s all he want’s money, money, money.
-Right.
Life’s not all about money.
Yes I like to make money.
I can treat my grandkids what they want,
my kids what they want,
and I’ve got money to go travel.
But money’s not everything.
Money don’t buy friendship.
Money don’t buy love.
You’ve got to have that.
That’s my way of thinking.
-I know I might be wrong…
-No, I think you’re right.
You can’t take it with you when you go.
I mean…
-Money helps money problems.
It’s a balance.
-Yeah I’m going right down here.
-All right.
There are many different ways
of being rich.
You can be rich in money or you can
be rich in a love of life and culture.
That’s the way I look at it.
Now the village craftsman, Phillip Howard,
he’s a very interesting guy to talk to.
He can tell you some old stories.
He does storytelling.
we can talk to him for a few minutes.
[Peter] Rex says you have the stories.
Well old-timey stories.
Old-timey Ocracoke stories.
Tell them about it used to be a dry.
You couldn’t buy any beer
or anything on the island.
So everybody,
the old-timers they liked to make…
In order to get something to drink
for alcohol they would make wine.
Like meal wine was a big thing.
Wine out of meal. Cornmeal.
-Okay.
-So right?
Yeah the recipe,
tell me if I’m right or wrong.
Five gallons of water, five yeast cakes,
five pounds of sugar, some raisins.
Did I say that?
-Meal.
-And five pounds of meal.
You put it all in a big jug
and put it out in the woods.
You put it out in the woods
and let it brew for about two weeks.
-Why in the woods?
So the women folk couldn’t find it.
So the women couldn’t find it
’cause they would get mad.
They’d beat you with a broom
if they found out you were drinking.
The wives that is.
-When did it turn wet again?
It was a dry island.
When Ronnie Howard
started the pub in the late ’80s.
-Oh it was…
It was dry here until the late ’80s?
-Yeah, till the 1980s.
Wow.
So you guys were making your own wine–
It might have been like 1985.
It was very religious or why?
What was the reason for that?
Or just tradition?
It’s a dry county and–
There were a lot of dry counties all over
the country but especially in the South.
It wasn’t being approved of by everybody.
-Okay okay.
But Fowler told me he said when you
go out there to drink that meal wine
you want to take your banjo,
your guitar with you.
-Play music in the woods, get drunk–
-Play cards.
He said when you were dripping down
in there when you got to the bottom,
he said every once in a while you’d find
that a rat had crawled up the side
and had fallen in and had drowned.
He said now if you were from the mainland
you’d pick that rat up by its tail
and throw it in the woods.
He said but you were too O’cocker…
You’d pick that rat up by its tail
and wring him out good
before you threw him away.
-So you wouldn’t waste your wine.
-[laughter]
You’ve heard that haven’t you?
-O’Cocker?
-We’re considered O’Cockers.
Am I an O’Cocker?
-Yeah you’re an O’Cocker.
-I want that one.
Your family been here longer,
you’re not a dingbat, you’re O’Cocker.
-That’s huge hearing from Rex.
-I want that on tape.
-Yeah that’s there.
-[laughter]
-It’s on the record.
‘Cause I wasn’t born here.
He wasn’t born here
but he’s a true O’Cocker.
-Because his family goes back so far.
-Hey buddy…
Is there a middle word
between dingbat or an O’Cocker?
-Could I be somewhere in the middle?
-Transplant.
-Well you’re not a transplant.
-Okay.
-A visitor.
-Hey now listen up.
Dingbat is not necessarily a bad thing.
James Byron,
he’s dead now, bless his heart.
He was born and raised here.
He said “My wife’s been here 42 years
and she’s still a dingbatter.”
Because she moved here
from somewhere else.
How about your wife?
-Dingbatter?
-Yeah she’s kind of a dingbatter too.
-She’s a dingbatter too.
-Yeah she’s a dingbatter too.
-She’s a good dingbatter though.
-She is. She is a good…
My father was born here.
But my dad left when he was 16 years old.
Most of the men in my dad’s generation
worked up in Philadelphia
with the US Army Corps.
-Remember I told you?
-Yeah. Okay.
Worked with US Army Corps of Engineers
on dredges and tugboats.
-You decided to come back?
Yeah I came back.
I started this business in 1970.
-But you don’t have the Brogue.
That’s because my father
moved away from here.
He had some of it
but he’d been away for so many years.
-So Rex is like
an endangered species right now?
Oh my God he is an endangered species.
No question about that.
[laughter]
-So you love it out here though?
Oh my God it’s a great place to live.
-Why?
You know my son-in-law, he moved here
from Oklahoma and married my daughter.
And you’ll confirm this.
He said a lot of people come here
and fall in love with Ocracoke
and they move here
because of the natural beauty
and the beach and all that.
But they stay here.
They like being here
because of the sense of community.
Yeah I mean everybody is friendly.
It’s a good…
You can see, friendly community.
Everybody is friendly, you know?
People we don’t like hatred around here.
-That’s right.
-For the most part.
I’ll tell you another story
that you might enjoy.
I built a house down on Lighthouse Road.
I was working here.
And I walked home about 5:00 at night.
And I walked in my front door.
And I looked in my bedroom
and Karen Lovejoy was lying on my bed.
One of my neighbors.
And I said, “Oh hi Karen. How are you?”
She said, “I’m good Phillip.”
She said David, her husband…
She said, “David’s in the bathtub.”
There aren’t many communities
where that can happen.
-Her name was Lovejoy?
It is Lovejoy. Karen Lovejoy.
And she was on your bed?
She was lying on my bed
reading a magazine.
Love for the Lovejoy.
-And her hubby was in the bathtub?
And her husband. I didn’t hear that.
What happened afterwards?
Her husband was in the bathtub.
Their power… I mean their water
wasn’t working or something.
They were close friends.
-You didn’t jump into bed too did you?
No, no.
[laughter]
Eric rubbed off on me.
I got really bad dark humor now.
Did you talk to Ferris too?
-I don’t know Ferris.
-That’s his brother.
That’s my other nephew, Ferris.
Do you remember how
we started this business?
-Not exactly.
-I started with TP right there.
-Oh I do now yeah.
-Do you remember now?
Your father he’s a great storyteller
and I didn’t know this
business you guys have.
-It’s all US products.
-Yep.
-That is very cool.
[woman] Started in 1970 before I was born.
Where are your artists from?
All over. A lot of them have connections.
Like that artist grew up on Ocracoke.
Her grandfather was actually
my principal at school.
-Oh cool.
-She moved from the coast
and then got stuck in Helene.
-Hurricane Helene in the mountains.
-Oh okay.
So she left the coast
but ended up in a hurricane anyhow.
Okay, so–
Allison’s from the county.
She doesn’t live on Ocracoke
but she’s from the county.
So we like to support our small artists.
-I love it.
And you have a pirate theme going on here.
Did he tell you about his
connection to Blackbeard?
-No.
-It’s on the wall there.
These are my grandparents.
-Okay.
-And that little baby’s my father.
But here’s the line.
That’s Amy right here.
-And her brother.
-Okay.
That’s me my father,
and go all the way back to William Howard
who bought the island in 1759.
-Oh wow.
-He might have been
the same William Howard
that served as Blackbeard’s quartermaster.
So that explains
your personality a little bit.
You’ve got a little pirate in you.
-I guess that’s a compliment right?
-Yeah!
Did you see my books?
These two are ghost stories and history.
This one, every chapter
is a different individual
who had some impact on Ocracoke.
-Oh cool.
-Most of them either eccentrics
or free spirits or did something.
-Is that the type of characteristic
the island attracts?
-The free spirit?
-I think so. Yes.
That’s an understatement.
One of our sayings is we’re all here
because we’re not all there.
Oh! I like it.
That’s why I’m getting along
with you guys.
[Peter] Thanks.
I’ve got you a paper you can read later,
Ocracoke Observer.
I advertise in there.
It’s something you can read
on the ferry going back.
-All right. I appreciate it Rex.
-That comes out every so often.
Phillip, you behave yourself.
-That’s good stuff ain’t it?
-Yeah. It’s awesome.
Do you remember Bill Askren?
Bill Askren?
I seen him take a many bag of seaweed
from the shore for the garden.
-He’s in that book. Yeah.
-Bill Askren’s in that book?
There’s a hermit that moved here from
I don’t know where when I was a kid kinda.
And he would go around the shore side
and take tow sacks
and fill ’em full of seaweed
and use it for part of his garden.
It had a beautiful garden.
He was like a hermit
but he bought a little piece of land
and he lived in a little hut.
Out there by the Pony Island.
A little hut by the Pony Island.
They said he was a smart man.
He made a radio that you had to
lay a nickel on it for it to play.
Something like that.
I don’t know how true that was.
-Electronics.
-Yeah. But he was…
He was a super smart guy.
-Picture of him right there. See it?
-Yeah.
Marvin lived right over there.
He was the leader for the only mounted
Boy Scout troop in the United States.
Did you know that?
-What does that mean?
-Horses.
-Oh!
They were the only Boy Scout troop
in America that rode ponies.
They were mounted ponies.
Ponies used to run wild on the island.
Each one of them,
the Boy Scout owned their own pony.
And they were the mounted Boy Scout troop.
I’ve got a whole chapter
on Marvin in there.
And he was a scoutmaster.
-You remember him of course.
-Yeah, very well.
He was a great guy.
[country music]
-[Peter] This beach is beautiful.
-[Rex] Isn’t it a pretty beach?
I used to do a lot of surfing, fishing.
You can see all these are fishermen
getting ready for the tournament.
-Does this ever get crowded in the summer?
-It’s quite crowded.
But it’s nothing like Myrtle Beach
or Long Island or nothing like that.
We got a pretty beach here. We do.
That’s why it’s named number one beach.
All the different criterias.
It’s flat, it’s pretty,
the water’s clean, there’s no trash.
-I figured you’d probably like it here.
-It is beautiful.
-Do you feel removed from everything?
-Quite a bit. Yeah.
We’re stuck out
on the edge of the Atlantic.
So in North Carolina,
you can drive on the beach?
Certain areas you can,
certain areas you can’t.
And up here, these signs this time of year
the birds start nesting
in places on the beach.
So they have certain areas that
they block off only in the summertime.
And they have these same
kind of things for turtles.
-I’ve never drove
on a beach for this long.
How about that?
-It just goes.
Yeah, it keeps on going
for another two miles.
-So these people have these setups
on their trucks with the fishing Poles.
Yeah they get yeah they set up
right in front of their trucks
and just sit down and relax and drink
cold beers and watch the world go by.
Soak you in the sun.
Could be worse, right?
-Yeah.
-[Peter] Dallas, this is the room?
-Yes sir.
The bro’s music room?
-Yep.
-All right.
I did that four years ago, maybe three?
Cool buddy.
[Rex] You gotta get pop a chair.
-[Peter] Oh you got the Rush posters.
-[Dallas] Yep.
Yeah I wrote all those
when we first built this.
-Ah cool buddy.
Well rip on whatever you want to rip.
[sings] See the man go to the moon
and come back again.
See the man from Memphis.
Turn the world into rock and roll.
[cymbal tings]
[plays drums]
[Dallas] All right, let’s see.
[The Spirit of Radio by Rush plays]
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
[The Spirit of Radio continues]
♪ ♪
[Peter] Yeah Dallas!
-Woohoo.
[Peter] On point!
-Tom Sawyer.
-Tom Sawyer by Rush?
Yeah.
You got this.
One of the hardest songs right?
[Tom Sawyer by Rush plays]
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
[Rex] Woo.
-[Peter] That was awesome.
-[Dallas] Thanks dude.
Before we get going what do you think
is going on with rock these days?
Are there any new rock bands
that just crush?
Nothing like any of these labels up there.
No, not that I’ve seen or heard.
You’d think that I’d listen to the stuff
that the kids my age are listening to now
but like I’m kind of
listening to more ’80s
because that’s what I grew up on.
-What are the kids in class listening to?
They’re listening to like
just newer rap.
Don’t get me wrong. I listen to that too
but none of the kids my age
listen to any of this stuff.
Is there any newer rap
that’s as good as Tupac?
Not really.
Tupac’s up there with my top three.
-Your top three? Nice.
-Yeah.
You started playing guitar too?
Yeah I started that three years ago now.
I basically play with
60, 70, 50 year old men and women.
[blues music]
[Peter] That’s cool.
Matures you pretty quickly huh?
Yeah.
So do you wish you had a band?
Yeah I do.
‘Cause that way we can carry on
if we did have a band.
We could carry on for our future
instead of being stuck here.
You’re too young to probably know but
do you want to leave the island or stay?
My plan is to go to college in California.
I want to go to Musicians Institute
and then really from there
I just want to see where it takes me.
-Right on. So you found your love
basically at two years old
being what you love to do?
Yeah definitely.
That is so cool buddy.
Dallas Mason fan page on YouTube.
-That’s where people gotta go?
-Yes sir.
Your grandma’s running your YouTube page?
Her and my grandpa
are almost there at every gig.
And she’s the one taking videos
and putting stuff up.
-Oh that’s awesome.
And I never say this for my own channel
but like and subscribe
to Dallas’ channel.
-[Peter] Take care.
-[Dallas] Thank you.
-[Rex] Love you Dallas.
-Love you too.
-Enjoy your practice.
-I will.
Okay, Rex. Thank you.
That was awesome.
-I’ve enjoyed the day.
-Thank you. Me too.
And everybody stay safe
and healthy and happy out there.
You know?
We got a big world. Let’s stay healthy
happy and safe. That’s the whole thing.
-Be cool to one another.
-Be cool to one another.
Kindness goes a long way.
Be kind and it will come back to you.
For any of you coming to Ocracoke,
Rex didn’t ask for this
but I’m going to promote his business,
Wheelie Fun.
He’s the guy.
You can do the Ocracoke side of it.
-There we go.
You’re a legend Rex.
All right.
I ain’t no legend. I’m just here.
All right guys.
Thanks for coming on that journey.
Until the next one.
[reggae music]