Crossing the Mason-Dixon line means we’re in The South, meal portion control not on the agenda. North Carolina – Kitty Hawk, Cedar Island, Outer Banks.
Hushpuppies are delicious, fried, turd-shaped balls of corn flour, pure lard and loads of sugar, served with restaurants meals, which themselves are delicious, fat-, salt- and sugar-laden deep-fried foods in quantities that would make a dinosaur puke in surfeit.
Mrs Henry’s seafood basket, served in the dining room of the curiously named Driftwood Motel on Cedar Island, North Carolina, took up three-quarters of our table. The components of her meal were summed up by our waitress Lori (“Haaah, Aaahm Lori”) as: “Fraaah’d shrimp, fraaah’d scallop, fraaah’d clams, fraaah’d okra and French fraaah’z.”
Mrs Henry is no dinosaur and far too well-bred to puke, but she did decline the offer of a doggy bag when she decided she had eaten her fill and she was seated behind the leftovers, in which she had scarcely been able to put a dent.
“No thank you”, Mrs Henry told Lori in the nicest tone an expensive finishing school could teach, “I couldn’t eat this tomorrow. Or the day after. Or ever.”
Not that Mrs Henry has been to finishing school. It all comes naturally to her.
As we head further south, the way people speak increasingly reminds you of Senator Abetz from Australia’s own deep south, Tasmania: that same loopy, sanctimonious intonation with drawn-out vowels.
Suffering from memorial fatigue after our visit to Washington DC – our brains are fraaah’d – and arriving in the town of Kitty Hawk, on the North Carolina coast, it was this memorial fatigue that prompted us to drive straight past the Wright Brothers Memorial. Foot hovering over the brake pedal, I looked askingly at Mrs Henry for a moment, already knowing the answer: it’s the Wright Brothers that brought us Hawaiian Airlines. Drive on! Buy a Kitty Hawk fridge magnet and get out.
The Outer Banks, which start (if you approach by car from the north) at Kitty Hawk, wouldn’t cut the mustard as a beach in Australia. First, they’re too shingly. Second, water in a goldfish bowl is more agitated than the surf along the Outer Banks, allowing houses to be built on the sand dunes. Development becomes less frantic on Ocracoke Island (reached by a half hour car and ferry ride), and Cedar Island (two hours by ferry) is positively beautiful.
After our never-again meal, we made our way back to the Egg, parked in the unkempt campground attached to the Driftwood Motel, to retire for the night. We had picked a spot next to one of those retro – all curves and burnished steel – caravans.
Mrs Henry made her sociable way over to the caravan to strike up a friendship with its occupants and assure mutual protection from a mass shooting, which are so common in the US. Unfortunately, the caravan turned out to be historical rather than retro. It was for sale (“By Owner”) and it was derelict beyond retrieval.
“Our Norman Bates holiday continues”, sighed Mrs Henry, with memories of the Highland Motel in South Philadelphia still fresh.
I did feel for Mrs Henry. The previous night we had camped in the Millpond National Park campground, North Carolina, just out of Gatesville. Idyllic, certainly, but also abandoned. Just Mrs Henry and myself and millions of mosquitos. No power connection, no Wi-Fi, no nothing.
Mrs Henry has always been adamant she does not want to become a victim of a mass shooting in the US, a modest and reasonable ambition.
However, she objected to the Millpond campground because she does not want “to stay anywhere isolated”. There must be people around.
I do not tire of pointing out that having people around creates perfect conditions for a mass shooting. The more people around, the less isolated the location, the more mass the shooting can be.
But not only have we not been mass-murdered (so far), we have not been murdered at all, surviving the Highland Motel, the Millpond campground and the Driftwood Motel’s campground.
