Summer in Manteo

SUMMER IN MANTEO

The summer after second grade, my Aunty Libby and Uncle Maynard invited me to go with them for a couple of weeks to Manteo, NC, where Maynard’s mother lived and where he grew up. I don’t know why they took me with them—whether they just wanted to give me a treat or to provide a playmate for their two boys, Joe and Brazelle, who were already at their Grandmother’s house, having gone a few weeks earlier.

Anyhow, off we went from Fort Pierce, Florida in their ’47 or ’48 Chevy two-door coupe with whitewall tires, much nicer than our ’40 Ford. I don’t remember a whole lot about the trip up to Manteo, except that at some point Maynard bought us all hot dogs for lunch to eat in the car. I asked for mayonnaise on mine, but that’s not the way it came. It came with catsup and mayonnaise. I don’t think Libby and Maynard spoiled their boys as much as my mother spoiled her girls. They made it pretty clear that I could just eat it as it was, catsup and all. I managed to get through about three-fourths of it. As long as there was still hot dog in the bun, I could convince myself that the spicy flavor of the hot dog covered up the taste of the catsup. But then I got down to the last few bites, and there was no hot dog left in the bun. I could not possibly eat this! So I carefully and quietly rolled down my back window, just far enough for me to poke that catsup and mayonnaise-covered hot dog bun through and let the wind carry it away.

Everything was fine until Maynard had to stop for gas. He went back to unscrew the gas cap and I herd him say to Libby, “There’s red stuff smeared all over the side of the car.” I suddenly had a vision of that hot dog bun dropping down from the top of the window, splatting open on the side of the car, and then the wind slowly moving it back from where it landed to the fender, where a gust caught it and it fell off into the road, where it was supposed to have gone in the first place. Maynard got the station’s water can, usually used for filling radiators, and washed down the side of the car. I played totally deaf and dumb and stupid, and bless their hearts, they never said a word to me about it.

That wasn’t the end of their troubles with me, though. After about a week at Mrs. Duvall’s house, where for the first time I saw hydrangea bushes with blue and pink flowers that I have loved every since, and pecan trees with bagworm webs, and giant sand dunes at Kill Devil Hills that we slid down on waxed paper sleds, and the outdoor drama “The Lost Colony”, and the Wright Brothers memorial, and most special of all, a dime store in Manteo where you could buy souvenirs with shells pasted on them and that had Manteo, North Carolina written on the side---I got powerfully homesick.

I waited a day or two without saying anything about it to anyone, but meanwhile developing my plan. I reconstructed in my mind the roads that we took and the towns we went through and I figured that by a combination of Greyhound buses and walking, I could be home in about a week. I had $13 in my wallet and I knew I was going to need to ride a bus at least as far as US 1, maybe I could even get as far as Jacksonville, where I could then just follow US 1 all the way back to Fort Pierce. And you could see our house on 6th street from US 1 in Fort Pierce.

So the next afternoon, while everyone else was gathered in the side yard under the pecan trees, trying to keep cool in the drowsy Carolina summer, I said I didn’t feel good, and went in the house to lie down. What I really did was pack up my stuff, including my souvenirs, in the little brown suitcase that Mama let me use, the one her boss, Mr. Brown, had given her when she left her job as a bookkeeper for a citrus fruit packing house when she was pregnant with me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as good a packer as Mama was, and not everything fit back in the little brown suitcase. So I got a brown paper grocery bag and put the overage in that.

Then I eased out the front door with my suitcase in my left hand, holding my paper bag in front of my chest with my right hand. To get to the street that led to the highway, I had to walk down the sidewalk, visible to the side yard. As I got to the edge of the property, I sneaked a look at the side yard, where everyone was staring at me. I turned my head and quickly headed east toward the highway. Just as I passed the house with all the lightning rods on the roof, I could see coming towards me that ’48 Chevy coupe. When it got closer I saw that my Aunt Libby was driving. When she got even with me, she stopped the car and I stopped walking. “Where you going?” she called through the open window. “I was planning to go home,” I said. “Don’t you like it here?” she asked gently. “No”, I said. “What don’t you like? I need to tell something to Mrs. Duvall.” That gave me my only idea, since I couldn’t admit I was homesick. “I don’t really like her cooking,” I said. “Well, get in, “ Libby said, “and we’ll see what she can do about that.”

I opened the passenger door and put my suitcase and paper bag on the floor of the front seat and climbed up onto the seat. We drove back the 100 yards to Mrs. Duvall’s house in silence. When we got there, I took my suitcase and paper bag back in the house and unpacked them. Then I waited in the bedroom until someone called out that it was suppertime.

Nothing was ever mentioned during the rest of the trip about my attempt to walk home, although I suspect the grown-ups kept a pretty sharp eye on me. My Aunt Libby was so good. She never told my mother what I had done.

Years and years later, at a Roberts family get-together, my mother overheard Libby and Lorena laughing about the time Gwendie was so homesick she tried to walk home to Fort Pierce from Manteo. By that time, there was no need to be embarrassed or worried. She just laughed with them.