Week of August 1, 1999

For the first time the Tucker family is going to a North Carolina beach. We have selected Holden Beach because it is known as a family beach with no commercialization and no boardwalk and no amusement parks and none of the other crap that makes some people flock to the water. We rented a house through Alan Holden Realty here in Holden Beach, deciding on a beachfront home. So far it has been a very good adventure. Katie is a little timid of the crashing waves, but Andrew has taken to the sea like a duck to water so to speak.

Katie is going to be attending a new school this year, so our family trip is broken up a little as she and Suzy are traveling back to Winston-Salem to attend the school's open house so she will no where to go on Monday. Middle school will be a new experience for us, which also means she will have to get up even earlier to meet her bus. Since Wiley Middle School is on my way to the office, she has volunteered that I could take her on my way to the office. Thanks Katie.

You probably would have bet that I would take my computer on vacation. I also brought along the digital camera with big plans of putting up a page of photos from the beach, but so far the camera hasn't made it out of the bag. Maybe by the time we leave I will have some photos to share.

In our beach house at Holden Beach there is a chart posted with the high and low tides charted for the year. It's courtesy of a local store, The Beach Mart, which we visited and it's your typical local store for this area. It appears to have been a grocery store in a former life, is loaded with almost any beach item you might imagine and some essential groceries. I didn't realize you could chart the tides this far in advance. Learn something new every day.

We rented our vacation home from Alan Holden Vacations and all of the homes here seem to have a name. The name of our house is Just Beachy and located near the eastern end of this island. It feels like it should be the northern end because it appears us, but I suppose if you consulted a map of the North Carolina coast you would see that this island lays cockeyed out in the Atlantic Ocean.

For some reason all of the home owners here name their homes. The name of the house that we are enjoying this week is Just Beachy. There's a thumbnail of the house to the right. You can click on the thumbnail image to see the full size photo of the house

You may have noticed that we rented this place from Alan Holden Vacations, who also has a full-fledged real estate and construction company here. Must be nice to have an entire island named after your family. Below is a simple history of Holden Beach provided in an information packet when we checked into the house on Sunday.

History of Holden Beach

Before the American Revolution, early settler seeking land near Lockwood's Folly River applied for patents and received warrants for surveys of selected tracts. Upon payment of fifty shillings for each hundred acres, the warrantee could receive a permanent grant for Royal Governor Arthur Dobbs

Benjamin Holden in 1756 bought four mainland tracts and the island between his plantation and the ocean. This island extended from Lockwood's Folly Inlet west six miles to Bacon Inlet. Benjamin and his sons used the island for fishing and cattle grazing.

John Holden, Benjamin's grandson, started a commercial fishery on the island and in 1924 surveyed a section which he called Holden Beach Resort, the plat of which represented the first subdivision of beach property in Brunswick County (NC). In 1925 he built the Holden Beach bridge; it was subsequently destroyed by the Inland Waterway construction. "Mr. Johnny" negotiated with the state of North Carolina for the institution of a public ferry to reach the island, but he did not live to see the ferry begin operation in 1934.

Luther Holden, John's on, operated the hotel that his father had built, started development of the property nearby and became a permanent resident in 1946, Soon afterwards, other developments were started west of the ferry location.

By 1954 the island had about 300 homes and a trunbridge. After that year's destructive Hurricane Hazel, rebuilding was slow. On February 14, 1969 the island was incorporated and on May 13, 1986 the Town of Holden Beach dedicated a new high-rise steel and concrete bridge, allowing better access to the more than 1700 homes on the island.

So far Andrew is the only semi-casualty here. He was riding a wave in on his "boogey board" and it turned out to be a double-header crasher. The last I saw him the boogey board was headed off one way and Andrew was tumbling into the ocean. He emerged from the water crying in pain. I thought it wasn't from getting dumped into water because he'd already experienced a ride into sea water many times over. He emerged wailing saying that he hurt his eye. After a few minutes of getting him calmed down we discovered a big red spot under his right eye and he has a small bruise there to account for his rumble in the ocean and a scrape on the ocean floor. The bruise of going away nicely and lucky he has no shiner. He's jumped back into the water but has refrained from riding the waves to the shore, leaving that chore to his dad, who has also been tossed around by the waves more than once.

We'll be packing up from Holden Beach this afternoon after high tide, which should hit sometime arond 5 PM today. Why after high tide you are asking? That's when a small pool of water comes up on a fairly level spot on the beach and allows the kids to use their boogie boards as surf boards. Andrew took to this concept right away, pushes his board in the shallow water and ends up looking just like a surfer. Katie, however, is another story, but she appears to be having fun with her own version of this beach surfing.

It's been a good week and the kids want to make plans to return here again next year. We have been very lucky with the weather. We had rain only on one morning and the rest of the days have been bright and sunny.

I even got in a fair amount of reading. I read three books, which is a lot for me. The titles I read this week have included "The Best Laid Plans" by SIdney Sheldon, "Obstruction of Justice" by Perri O'Shaughbessy and am currently about half-way through "The Last Hostage" by John J. Nance. The Best Laid Plans was a good starter book for this week. I read this book in one afternoon and then spent the next couple of days with Obstructionof Justice, which was about twice the size Plans and started The Last Hostage yesterday afternoon. As I write this I am about 40% through Hostage.