gftotofel tMl Caudle 



switch to some other material. 



But Rose is unimpressed by those who argue that wooden 

 boats and craftsmanship are out of date. 



"There will always be people who want wooden boats," he 

 says. "There lays a boat right off yonder that is about forty- 

 three years old, and it's still a good work boat. The man uses 

 'er in the roughest kind of weather, in the ocean." 



Ask Rose about changes on the island, and he won't com- 

 plain. He likes most of his new neighbors because, he says, 



they're mostly "retired," and willing to swap stories. He 

 doesn't want to tear down the bridge. 



"We haven't got any real mean people here," he says. 

 "There's some nutheads, I call 'em, that like to run up and 

 down the road and race their cars. But they don't interfere 

 with me at all. I've got the house well insulated, so it ain't 

 too much noise. There's just nothing here to change. If you 

 want to go to church you can go, and if you don't want to go, 

 that's your own desire, then. You do it like you want to do 

 it." 



Life among 'the loon eaters' 



Back in the 1800s, on Shackleford 

 Banks, families from Diamond City, 

 the same families who would later help 

 settle Harkers Island, ate loons. 



The loons were more than a part of 

 the islanders' diet. They were part of a 

 community ritual. Each year, families 

 would gather on the banks and drive 

 flocks of startled loons into nets held 

 high among the islanders' outstretched 

 arms. Even after a rash of hurricanes 

 in the early 1900s drove the population 

 of Diamond City to the safer shores of 

 Harkers Island and beyond, the loon 

 hunts survived. The people of Harkers 

 Island came to be known as The Loon 

 Eaters. 



Killing a loon is illegal now, but the 

 name "Loon Eaters" still turns up oc- 

 casionally in the conversations of older 



Down East families when they speak 

 of the island. The term is a small part 

 of the singular tradition of ritual and 

 lore that help make life on Harkers 

 Island what it is. 



According to Jim Sabella. there are 

 some almost failproof ways to pick out 

 a native islander from the crowds of 

 newcomers. You belong to Harkers 

 Island if you or your family came there 

 by way of the water — before the 1940s, 

 when people still arrived by boat. You 

 will also have, if you belong there, 

 some strong connection with fishing 

 and boatbuilding. And. you will speak 

 with a generous measure of the 

 Harkers Island brogue, so that "right" 

 becomes "roight" and "scallops" 

 becomes "sco'ps." (Harkers Islanders 

 will tell you that they can tell from a 



man's speech whether he's from Atlan- 

 tic or Salter Path or Harkers Island.) 

 Your family would have shared, if not 

 in the loon hunts, at least in the annual 

 pony pennings on Shackleford, where 

 the islanders gather to brand new foals 

 born of the wild horses on the banks. 

 And you would, if you belonged there, 

 come and go among your neighbors' 

 parlors and porches as comfortably as 

 you do your own, since for generations 

 your neighbors have shared with you 

 not only their tools, their food and 

 their labor, but also their island and 

 their way of life. 



From these traditions, the islanders 

 have fashioned a culture as fertile as 

 the estuaries they fish for a living. 



Continued on next page 



Families are close. Sons grow up work- 

 ing side-by-side with fathers, uncles 

 and cousins. People are satisfied with 

 their work. Young people grow up 

 among strong people and strong tradi- 

 tions, with useful knowledge available 

 at every hand. Even in their teens, 

 young people grasp the quality of life 

 on the island, and are reluctant to let it 

 go. 



Says 16-year-old Al Gillikin: "I'm 

 going to be a commercial fisherman. 

 That's what my father wanted to be, 

 and that's all I've ever wanted to be. I 

 love the water, just like he does." 



"The thing that makes those people 

 different from other communities 

 where tourists have moved in is that 

 they're not envious of those people 

 that they see come down from the 

 cities," says Bob Simpson, a writer and 

 long-time student of the island. "In 

 some ways, they're more sophisticated 

 than the newcomers. But it's a quiet 

 sophistication." 



But however rich the traditions, 

 there are signs that their grip on the 

 island is weakening. The islanders 

 have kept their independence and 

 freedom largely because of their ability 

 to remain almost self-sufficient in an 



age of specialization and dependence. 

 Many of the islanders can recall living 

 for months without any need for 

 money. Supper was waiting out in the 

 sound. There was no electric bills 

 because there was no electricity. No 

 paying job called them away from a 

 boat that needed repair or a neighbor 

 that needed help. 



Most of that has changed. To meet 

 the competition, fishermen are buying 

 bigger boats and going deeper into 

 debt. Fuel is suddenly a major ex- 

 pense. The cost of real estate on the 

 island, thanks to the swelling popula- 

 tion, is approaching big-city prices, so 

 that young people who try to buy their 

 own places face dizzying mortgages. 



Debt and mortgages demand sub- 

 stantial, reliable incomes, and for 

 fishermen and boatbuilders. those in- 

 comes are getting harder to come by. 

 Sabella and Hepburn speak of fishing 

 and boatbuilding as the two things 

 most critical to the old way of life on 

 Harkers Island. If those industries fail, 

 the chain of "vocational succession," 

 as Sabella terms it, will be broken and 

 the islanders will find themselves 

 working alongside their newest 

 neighbors in factories, machine shops 



and offices, or in some "marine- 

 related" job — perhaps even on a barge, 

 a Coast Guard cutter, or a tug. New 

 jobs, new lives. 



Hepburn and Sabella won't try to 

 predict the future of Harkens Island. 

 The answers are not contained so 

 much in the lives of the people there, 

 they say, as in the forces bearing down 

 on the island from all sides. But in an 

 era when it's fashionable to speak of 

 waters, earth and forests as 

 "resources," Hepburn and Sabella 

 point out that the way of life on 

 Harkers Island is a resource as well — a 

 cultural resource that has given the 

 islanders satisfaction for generations. 

 And, because North Carolina's fishing 

 communities are similar, the things 

 that haunt Harkers Island are likely to 

 haunt other fishing villages, where the 

 way of life, often equally as revered, is 

 facing the abrupt intrusion of change. 



Marcus Hepburn says that it's im- 

 possible to calculate what losing that 

 way of life would cost the people of 

 North Carolina. 



"We'd lose." he says, "the kind of 

 things that you can't put a price tag 



Islande 



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