As a youngster, White worked with his father as a hunting guide. "My daddy operated Pud White's Hunting Club from 1922 until 

 1948. 1 can remember having to break through the ice to get to the duck blinds," White recalls. "At times, the bay would freeze so hard 

 that we had to put skids under the boats." 



As for snow, he remembers a storm in 1937 that dumped about two feet of snow on the island. The wind piled it into drifts above 

 his head. "We had no sleds or skis. We just put boards under our feet and slid around," he recalls. 



Residents in isolated communities such as Knotts Island had to be self-sufficient, White says. "When I was a youngster, my 

 family prepared for hard winters. There were 1 1 of us children and no supermarkets to run to. My father would slaughter eight or ten 

 hogs and put them up in the smokehouse. My mother always canned all kinds of vegetables and made preserves. Potatoes were stored 

 in a root cellar lined with straw. That's how we got through the winter." 



White says in his adult years he weathered many a tough winter season — with or without snow. Before retiring in 1978, he 

 tended about 300 eel pots for six months every year, and net fished the other months. 



And snowfall records from a series of weather-reporting stations indicate that residents in coastal communities have had their 



amount of snow in eastern North Carolina is a lot of snow," says Ryan P. Boyles, assistant state climatologist. 



share of the white stuff — at least one major snowstorm in each decade of the past half century. 



Continued 



8 HOLIDAY 2000 



