Living on the Outer Banks has always had its challenges, especially back in the day, and Bankers tend to be opportunists as a result. For over 300 years, a ship ashore was a ship to be salvaged, in short order. Hatteras Island native and historian Danny Couch tells a delightful tale of the history of this tradition over on the Village Realty blog. If you like your history lesson with a good dose of humor mixed in, you’ll love this one as much as we do!
Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, dawned bright and warm on Hatteras, and the regulars at the Frisco Rod & Gun loitered around the coffee, talking about fishing, gas prices, and the latest “he said-she said.” Uneventful as the day began, that changed big time when a wild-eyed, out-of-breath local stuck his head in the front door and yelled, “Containers washed up at the bathhouse! There’s jillions of bags of Doritos all over the beach!” Later that day, as the novelty of the story worked its way into the national media, an employee of the Rod & Gun remarked to one of the papers that, “In the blink of an eye it was just the employees left standing there, stunned, looking at each other. The place emptied in, like, 12 seconds.
Down through history, that kind of mad scramble has been nothing unusual for the islanders. It is a scenario that has played out hundreds of times before.
We were just doing what comes naturally.”
[box type=”bio”] Hatteras Islanders called it wreck busting. Read the rest of the story HERE.[/box]
[box type=”info”] Original source and content from The Island Free Press. [/box]