Brunswick County- A View from the Bridge
as told to Veronica G. Burnish Back in the late fifties, we went to Southport High when the school was where the post office sits today. There was a gang of us that hung around together. Not anything like the gangs you hear about today, but a group of pals. On one partiular night it was just Can Head and me. My name is Jack. About where the Charthouse restaurant was in Southport in the late 1950s was a little grill called Mae and Ike's. The place was a drive-in offering curb service. The building was long and narrow from left to right and had a back wall grill where you could get a hamburger, a hot dog or the blue plate special. Seamen from Sunny Point came to sit at the counter and have a beer after work. The only other place you could get a beer with a meal was Ed Oliver's. This was back when Brunswick County was dry. You could go to Mae and Ike's and pull up in front in the summer time. No one had air conditioning in those days so you could sit there with the car windows down and see and hear everything that was going on. Boys didn't have a lot of choices for entertainment so we would go to Mae and Ike's to hang out. I was sitting out front with Can Head when Louis Herbert Fullwood came over. We all had a hamburger each with a beer. You see, 18 was the legal age then. There was a fellow inside Mae and Ike's who had been dropped off by his wife. The couple was on vacation from Fayetteville and she and their little girl wanted to go to the movie at the Amuzu Theatre, Southport's movie house. The two must have had a few words since they had gone their separate ways for the evening's entertainment. The gentleman sat in Mae and Ike's and had a few beers and got louder and louder. He proceeded to talk to no one in particular about his disagreement with his wife and allowed as how he wanted to go back to Fayetteville. The louder he got, the more he talked about going home and stated that he would pay someone one hundred dollars to take him back to Fayetteville. The fellow began to flash money around which caused some eyes to pop a bit. Next to the three of us was a car loaded with unseemly charcters we had never seen before. The loafers began to discuss offering our loud friend a ride. The ride they had in mind had nothing to do with getting the old boy home as they planned their scheme for taking the fellow up the road, throwing him out and taking his money. Growing up where we did and how we did, the three of us began to grow alarmed for the old boy's safety. We did not want to see the man get hurt and the one hundred dollars did not offend us either. So we decided... we'd take the man to Fayetteville. Can Head was elected to make the deal and went inside before the ne'r-do-wells in the car next to us could get in. "You want a ride to Fayetteville, mister?" Can Head asked. The fellow tried to focus on my friend and nodded. "What's the pay?" Can Head wanted to know. The fellow was in a cloud and agreed to pay one hundred dollars. Can Head was known to negotiate like a pro and stated that if the man would throw in a case of beer he had a deal. Our new friend agreed. Without missing a beat, Can Head raised one finger in the air and said, "A case of tall ones, Mae". The three of us let our families know that we were off to Fayetteville with a caution from the folks to take care. The night was growing late as we headed for the Green Swamp and drove and drove and drove. Our paying passenger was in the backseat between Can Head and Louis Herbert. Now both these boys were of a good size, each tall and meaty. Can Head weighed about 245 pounds with Louis Herbert not that heavy, but that boy could pick up the end of a car if he wanted to. I remind the reader again that entertainment was scarce around Southport in those days. We had received our money in advance with the promise of getting our friend home and continued our long drive. With the droning of the motor, the warm, humid night and a little too much to drink, our passenger's conversation drifted off and his head began to nod. Every once in a while the old boy's head would bounce and he'd look up and mutter, "Son of a gun" or words along that line. Then he'd look up and see these two big boys on either side of him and look from one to the other and say, "Nothing personal. Nothing personal". The he'd take a swallow of beer since he had brought his own supply along. Well, we drove on to Fayetteville and our passenger drank and slept and swore and swore and drank all the way there. Fortunately, he had given us his address as we set out on our trip. because by the time we got to his hometown, he was sound asleep. We arrived at the location our old friend had indicated and found no one to be home. He managed to give Can Head a key to the place and the two big boys took the fellow into the house. They put the man to bed, placced the key where he could find it and safely locked the door. Now we don't know if his wife spent much time looking for him, or if he remembered how he got home. Or if she ever even spoke to him again. But those things did not cross our minds. We knew we had done the right thing by taking the old boy home and placing him out of harm's way. And that's the truth as I remember it about young fellows being noble back in the summer of '58. Originally published in The Pelican Post in April 1996.