anywhere, in any quantity, seems to draw 

 the offbeat and the oddball. Add the 

 transient nature of the waterway's 

 denizens and the remoteness of the region 

 it travels in North Carolina, and you have 

 a fertile brew for oddity. 



Which helps explain the Belhaven 

 Memorial Museum. I have heard about 

 the museum for years, or I should say, I 

 have heard about its most famous exhibit: 

 a pair of fleas, dressed like bride and 



'Do you want this?'" explains museum 

 president Peg McKnight, "she never 

 said no." 



But Way said "yes" plenty, and she 

 wound up with a world of weird stuff. It's 

 all housed in the second-floor museum: 

 30,000 buttons, jars of rocks and 

 arrowheads, stacks of old North Carolina 

 license plates, a watch fob made from the 

 first trans- Atlantic cable, a collection of 

 three dozen rattles from canebrake 



Buttons — 30,000 of them — are a joy to Peg McKnightof the Belhaven Memorial Museum 



groom and visible through a magnifying 

 glass. After breakfast I climb the creaky 

 wooden stairs of the brick Belhaven City 

 Hall with no small amount of anticipation 

 — and no small bit of snickering from 

 Bellamy and Taylor. 



For most of her 92 years, Belhaven 

 resident Eva Blount Way collected the 

 flotsam of everyday life. Buttons, old 

 coins, shells, kitchen implements, her own 

 shoes — what began as a packrat's 

 passion turned into a collection of 

 curiosities from around the world. "If 

 anybody ever came to her house and said, 



rattlesnakes she killed herself, the head of 

 a pronghorn antelope. We wander 

 through the mazelike exhibits, wonder- 

 struck one moment, cackling the next. I 

 finally find my finely dressed fleas, and 

 through the magnifying glass I can even 

 pick out the bride's parasol. 



But when I see a hand-lettered sign 

 marked "Kitchen Artifacts," I realize that 

 there is more to this collection than just 

 the whimsy of an elderly lady. On 

 ramshackle shelves I find rows of pickled 

 okra and corn-on-the-cob, "put up" 

 chicken fat and a sealed jar of unidentifi- 



able contents with a strip of masking tape 

 lettered "Possum and Tatoes." 



It's as much a historical document as 

 any president's letters, for that jar of 

 opossum meat and (I'll bet) sweet potatoes 

 speaks of a time that has passed as surely 

 as the days of oyster tonging in the 

 Pamlico River. 



Right there on the banks of the 

 waterway, I am swept back through the 

 years, for with one glance at the collection 

 of bleached pig carcasses 

 and coiled snakes I am 

 suddenly back in Mrs. 

 Lomax's sixth-grade 

 biology class, with my 

 desk situated next to a 

 hundred-foot-tall (at the 

 least) bookcase 

 chockablock with pickle 

 jars in which reside all 

 manner of beasts floating 

 forever in formaldehyde. 

 My love of natural 

 history was bom with my 

 face pushed up to those 

 glass doors. I'll argue 

 forever in favor of the 

 historical value of an 

 eight-legged pig in a 

 bottle of alcohol. 



I've come to expect 

 such little epiphanies 

 while traveling the 

 Intracoastal Waterway. A 

 trip down this commer- 

 cial and cultural conidor 

 is nothing if not an 

 excuse to shed light on dusty comers of 

 coastal-plain history, whether you find 

 them along tangled blackwater rivers or 

 once-prosperous waterfront communities. 

 Like any route that traverses place, the 

 waterway crosses time as well. I've learned 

 to watch for where they intersect. Keep 

 your eyes ever on the channel markers, and 

 you'll miss the best of the waterway. 



From Belhaven we head down the 

 wide Pungo River and into the Pamlico, 

 slaloming through crab pots. A shrimp 

 trawler pulls nets through lightly swelling 

 seas while an orange-bibbed waterman 



10 WINTER 1999 



