Most of us, honestly, don’t appreciate what it means to be a real pirate. It’s fun to envision the prototypical pirate ship from the movies, where the crew sings in unison and the captain is as charming as an eyelinered Johnny Depp. You know, the Disney version. I, for one, acknowledge the darker, murdering and plundering side of piracy — less yo-ho-hoing and more stab-stab-stabbing. Blackbeard, I assure you, was not a gentle man.
So when you start an event called the Dare Coast Pirates Jamboree, it makes sense that things could get out of hand. This particular festival — more of a “whoop-de-do,” as one newspaper put it — was first held on the Outer Banks in the spring of 1955. It was a publicity ploy: What’s it gonna take to get folks out to the coast at the very beginning of tourism season? Pirates, that’s what.
In the beginning, it seemed nice enough. The three-day festival had dances and fish fries and beach buggy races and whatnot. Women sewed elaborate costumes. Men grew elaborate beards. And, well, if you look like a pirate, you start to act like a pirate. In one picture from the jamboree, a woman dressed in a dark vest raises a highball glass in a toast, her grinning face telling us, “Honey, this ain’t my first bourbon.” (The woman in the eyepatch next to her silently agrees.) In another photo, a woman perches atop a rock near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, wearing nothing but a pirate flag. Ahoy! And in a particularly dramatic shot, a small boat belches smoke on Roanoke Sound as part of an annual mock sea battle that, in 1963, ceased to be mock when it accidentally set fire to some marshland in Manteo.
More pirates came every year, which made the festival rowdier — too rowdy for its own good. After 1964, organizers called the whole thing off. Which meant that for the first time, someone was sad that the pirates were gone.
Growing up in North Carolina, the swelter of a late Southern summer was all about finding the best ways to cool off.
North Carolina pharmacists may not prescribe Pepsi anymore, but the sweet treats at these historic soda fountains can still cure a case of the blues.
The National Register of Historic Places has documented some 95,000 structures, sites, and districts across the country. In North Carolina, around 2,900 properties — from churches and cotton mills to farms, homes, and schools — have earned this designation. Now, these special spots representing our state’s history are known nationwide.
Boiled, brittled, or bagged at the ballpark, there’s a peanut for practically every time and place. We’re proud that so many of them come from eastern North Carolina — ranked fifth in the nation for peanut production — where a whole lot of legumes find purchase in our sandy soil.
