TEETH, BONES AND BUTTONS

When my father was a young man, he did a lot of construction work along the southeastern Virginia coast.

He was telling once about a job he had to do at Fort Monroe, Va., before they could put up some new buildings. It involved moving most of the graves from an old military cemetery to a site less intrusive to the work-a-day world.

All the coffins they found had been wooden and there was practically nothing left, outside or inside.

In most of the graves there was only a little hair, some teeth and crumbly bones, and a whole lot of military-clothing buttons lined up as if in parade formation.

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POPULATION EXPLOSION

Each of my great-grandfathers had five children, and each of my grandfathers had eight children.

My grandfather's older brother had 13. An uncle had 11.

My father, who was married twice, had eight kids. (My mother had five.)

But that was long ago. Not too many years back, when I had my fourth, there was a lot of finger-pointing and kidding about whether I was trying to over-populate the world single-handedly.

At the time, I had sort of felt like I was running behind.

~~~
Gary Pearce and friends,
Capitol Square, c. 1952

James Gary Pearce is the grandson
of James Fred, son of James David
and father of James Burgwyn

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TAKING THE FERRY

North Carolina has some good ferry rides, from Hatteras to Ocracoke and two routes from Ocracoke to the mainland, and several others including the little two-car jobs at Parkers Ferry in Hertford County and at Sans Souci in Bertie County.

A summer doesn't seem complete without at least one ferry ride.

In olden days you had to ride a ferry to get from Portsmouth VA to Norfolk VA, and from Norfolk to Newport News or the Peninsula.

And before the bridges there were ferries across Croatan Sound between Manns Harbor and Manteo, and across the Alligator River about 10 miles east of Columbia NC.

For people who weren't in too much of a hurry, the ferryboats themselves were worth the trouble of traveling.

~~~
Two-car cable-guided Parkers Ferry
is two miles north of Winton

~~~
Outer Banks ferry
Gwendolyn Pearce
in foreground

In the early '30s, the long-ago days before every family had four cars, even the train took the ferry.

When you rode the Atlantic Coast Line from Ahoskie to Norfolk VA, the train stopped in a section of Portsmouth called Port Norfolk.

Here the cars were pulled onto a huge barge that took them across the Elizabeth River to a place called Pinners Point in Norfolk.

It was an easy way to get across the river to downtown Norfolk without having to leave a comfortable passenger seat.

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Later in the '30s and early '40s when you took the train to Norfolk, it no longer rode the ferry.

You had to get off the train in Port Norfolk and catch a bus to uptown Portsmouth where you could get on a ferry yourself for the trip across the Elizabeth.

On the Norfolk side, you then could take a trolley to almost anywhere, except when you occasionally had to get off and catch another ferry.