August 12, 2010

Strange Tales

Dear Hank,

My friend Rick had his birthday on the 10th and he related this story to me. Now, I know you aren’t going to believe this, but it’s true.
He and his wife went to Oriental to celebrate his birthday. Oriental is a little town on the other side of Pamlico Sound from where they live on Hatteras Island. It’s about thirty miles away by boat or as the crow flies and five hours by car if you drive it. If you take the ferries, you need to take two. There are two different ways to get there by ferry but either way it takes two. If you take the ferries then it’s more like six or seven hours to get there but you’ve only driven sixty miles. In other words, no matter how you go to Oriental it takes the better part of the day.
There’s an Oriental Women’s Club in Oriental but no Oriental women – strange huh? At least, we didn’t see any. Nor did we see the club. We only saw the sign and it was pretty run down so the club may not be there anymore. We saw lots of Oriental women but no Asians – double strange huh? But that’s Oriental. Apparently, it used to be called Smith’s Creek but when they were fixing to get a post office they needed a proper name and folks thought the current name wouldn’t do. A ship named – you guessed it – Oriental had run aground and or sunk a few years before and a nameplate of Oriental had washed ashore; not in Smith’s Creek but in Manteo or thereabouts and a young woman found it and based on finding that nameplate decided to enter the naming contest for Smith’s Creek and won. So there you have it.
Btw if you look for my friend Rick in google maps and put in his town of Avon you won’t find him most likely. You gotta either put in Kinakeet, the old name for Avon, or Kitty Hawk, which is up the beach thirty miles. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know.
But that isn’t what I came here to tell you about. Come to think of it I have moved much so I have gone anywhere and nor am I talking to you so I ain’t tellin’ neither. Strange huh?
What I came to tell you about was that the day after his birthday when Rick and his lovely wife, Shelby, were returning home they ran into Corey! It was obvious to Rick that Corey had come all the way out here to celebrate his birthday with him and then at the last minute gotten modest and didn’t want to disturb him on his birthday. Such a gallant gesture! Actually, double gallant: one for coming out, and two for not disturbing him. But then he had the strangest meeting with Corey. It went something like this and, excuse me; I may be paraphrasing a bit (that is a word isn’t it? Paraphrasing?):
“Hey, Corey!”
“Who? Me?”
“Yeah, who else?”
“I don’t know.”
“How you been?”
“Fine.”
“It’s great to see you?”
“Do I know you?”
“Do you know me? What kind of question is that?”
“Huh? King’s English? I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you old kidder. It’s great to see you.”
“What did you call me?”
“Corey.”
“I’m not Corey.”
“You old kidder you. Of course you are.”
“Am not.”
“Are. Are. Argh. Oh, I get it. You are with your biker friends and don’t want to be seen with me. Okay. Okay. That’s cool. I get it. Hey, can I get a picture with you?”
“Will you leave me alone then?”
“Sure. Sure. That’s cool. Okay.”

Strange huh?
Guy comes all the way from Las Vegas on his bike and then doesn’t even want to disturb his old bud.

Gotta go. My car’s double parked.

B