Friday, May 29, 2020

May 2020 Books I read



Blue Mind by Wallace Nichols  The science that shows now being near, in, on and under water makes you happy! Loved it because I am so interested in this, but it is a little dry reading.
Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James (audiobook) I remember I read this years ago and did not like it, I was hoping that the audio version would make it come alive better. Eh, not so much
Becoming Bonnie by Jenni Walsh The origin story of Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) Clyde does not show up til the end of the book. This is a fictional account of how Bonnie evolved into someone who would commit those crimes with him. I liked it.
The Other Sister by Sarah Zettel psychological thriller, very dark, it was okay.
Columbo: The Hoffa Connection by William Harrington  based on the TV character. Do not waste your time. it was not good, the idea to link a rock star with the Union Boss Jimmy Hoffa was ridiculous.
Baghdad Without a Map by Tony Horwitz Travelogue from a journalist who lives in the middle east for a while, he was there in the late 1980's the book was published in 1991. I liked it.
The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley The latest Flavia de Luce book. Loved it as usual. I am just now realizing that the author is in his 80's and we need to appreciate every title in this series because there might not be many more.
Nightshade by Jonelle Patrick Murder Mystery set in Japan. If life had not been derailed by the virus, I might have been in LAX base and working trips to Tokyo by now, so instead I get to take a trip thru reading. I'm an armchair traveler now.
No Good From a Corpse by Leigh Brackett Noir mystery by Leigh Brackett who went on to be a scriptwriter of The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo and The Empire Strikes Back just to name a few, very hard-boiled noir --reading today, it is almost like a joke because we have seen it so much it is a cliche
The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck I really enjoyed this one. It is about a man and his brother who take a wagon and retrace the route of the Oregon Trail in modern times. It is a fun read and he includes a lot of history about the trail as well as photos too. Highly recommend.
No Deadly Drug by John D MacDonald  I was hoping for more, but this was just a pretty dry recollection of the court case for this murder.
 

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Nancy Drew Hardy Boys Super Mystery a good one????

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys SuperMystery: Desperate Measures



Hurrah, Hurrah, finally a GOOD Supermystery. I was so happy to read this book. Finally there is a super mystery that is a true collaboration between the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. This book was published in March of 1994. It starts with Frank and Joe Hardy surviving a hurricane in Florida. The resort where they were staying was owned by a friend and it was built using defective siding and roofing materials. After the hurricane, there is so much damage and one employee is even injured. So the Hardy's decide to reach out to the manufacturer of the siding and see if anything can be done. They keep getting the run-a-round from the company.
Meanwhile Nancy Drew is asked to investigate the disappearance of the father of a good friend, Molly Keegan.  It turns out that Mr. Keegan is a chemist with the company that the Hardy Boys are investigating. So the sleuths end up on the same case. The company is called Tercon and has headquarters in Virginia.  The Hardy's were going to visit with Sheila Wyse, a lawyer for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  Shelia gets shot and the father of Nancy Drew's friend, Lambert Keegan,  is found standing over her, so of course all the evidence points to Mr. Keegan as the shooter.
There is lots of conflict between Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. All evidence points to Mr. Keegan as being the prime suspect. But Nancy trusts her friend and is committed to prove that Mr. Keegan is innocent. The Hardy's are trying to get to the bottom of the Tercon company corruption, so they are focused on that aspect of the mystery.  When Frank and Joe are held at gunpoint and roughed up at the Tercon headquarters, it is Nancy Drew who comes to save them! Next, when Nancy is fighting the bad guys, the Hardy Boys show up to save the girls.
This book has both sets of detectives approaching the mystery as helping out a friend. There are instances where both parties save the other from the bad guys. And both are involved in physically fighting the bad guys. The girls are not just on the sidelines. The Hardy Boys do have access to a "Network" which reeks to me as a lazy author's device to provide information to the detectives. It sounds like they have a team of computer hackers at their disposal. The romance angle is definitely not as bad in other Supermysteries.  Joe ogles some girls on the beach in Florida and Bess has a crush on Molly Keegan's business partner.
My favorite quote in the book is: "I'd say good teamwork solved this case." Page 208.  All in all, I was very pleased with Desperate Measures. It is my favorite Super Mystery so far and it deserves the moniker.

Monday, May 25, 2020

Postcards 2020: Movie Screen on the beach at Lumina



This postcard is postmarked 1914 and on it, you can see the movie screen and grandstand set up on the beach for watching movies!

At the end of the Beach Car line was Lumina pavilion, built in 1905 by the Tidewater Power Co.; Lumina was constructed on 200 feet of ocean frontage at Station 7.  Lumina’s 12,500 square foot complex presented visitors with three levels of games and activities including a magnificent dance hall and a movie screen in the surf.

The next postcard is from a photograph by Arcadia Publishing which shows another view of the movie screen



A reminder to folks who are fans of my postcard posts. Coming in 2021, I will be highlighting the cards that you guys send to me. So send me a postcard! And you will see it on the blog in 2021.  Amanda Arkebauer PO Box 16131 Seattle, WA  98116

Monday, May 18, 2020

Postcards 2020 Wrightsville Beach Babies Hospital

Babies Hospital







Babies Hospital was operated from 1920-1978. This postcard dates from prior to 1956 because that was when a third story was added.  The hospital was built at the beach to take advantage of the idea that ocean breezes could cure childhood ailments.  It was the only purely pediatric care facility in North Carolina for almost 50 years. Nurses throughout North and South Carolina would come here for their pediatric training. The original wooden building burned down in 1927 and was rebuilt as the building seen in this postcard. This building was used as offices after the hospital closed in 1978 and finally was demolished in 2004.





Monday, May 11, 2020

Postcards 2020 Wrightsville Beach Oceanic Hotel

Oceanic Hotel:  I do not always show the backs of the postcards, but this one was interesting. It was mailed to Elmer in Pennsylvania from Edwin in Wisconsin and it is postmarked from Cameron, WI, so I assume Edwin mailed it after he had already come home from his Wrightsville Beach vacation. The vast majority of my cards do not have messages on them or were never mailed so I find that the messages are often a lot of fun and are very interesting to me.





One of the most popular hotels at the beach was the Oceanic Hotel. Folks would come from all over to make the Oceanic their home for the summer.
An article in the Wilmington StarNews  newspaper from the 1920's tells how popular the resort was:
“Much of the social life, gaiety and general life peculiar to the seashore resort is seen all day long in the capacious and attractive lobby of the Oceanic hotel where the guests assemble for conversation, card parties, concerts and impromptu dances. Usually in the morning from 11:30 o’clock til 1:30 p.m. and from 7:30 till 8:30 p.m., the lobby assemblage numbers 200 to 500 and it is there that the beauty and the gallantry ... of eight or ten states mingle. The Oceanic with its lobby life, its concert assemblages, its social functions, its tete-a-tete corners contributes one of the crowning features of resort routine.”
The Oceanic Hotel (located where Tower 7 Baja Grill is today) was destroyed by fire in 1934. It was never rebuilt. 





Monday, May 04, 2020

Postcards 2020: Wrightsville Beach, Kitty Cottage and the Great Fire

Kitty Cottage and the Great Fire of 1934







  The Kitty Cottage is infamous because it was the starting place of the "Great Fire of 1934"

The Great Fire

by Michelle Bliss
March 2010


In January 1934, the cold of the off-season, Wrightsville Beach was quiet, most of its private cottages and boarding houses empty. The island was waiting for summer, when visitors would come in droves to enjoy the beach, dance at Lumina and shop at Newells. On Sunday, January 28, however, the peaceful, sleepy winter was shattered by The Great Fire

At about 12:30 in the afternoon, smoke was seen billowing out of the Kitty Cottage, the well-known boarding house in which the fire began. Its rumored that a cigarette lit during a card game started the fire, but others believe it was caused by an electric iron.


On January 29, under the headline "Destructive Fire Rakes Wrightsville," the paper reported that"The fire, at first whipped by a brisk westerly wind, enveloped the Kitty Cottage and then lashed by a gale that shifted to the south-southwest, spread to the historic Oceanic Hotel, a rambling structure of several hundred rooms, and then leaped back to consume the handsome Sprunt, Bear, Wright, and Sternberger summer homes"
In another article that day, a reporter describes the scene from above, after taking an airplane ride over the island:"The dread god of fire tramped over the northern extension of Wrightsville Beach this afternoon and lighted the cottages one by one like so many tapers. When at last, his saga of destruction done, he folded up his wings and soared away, hundreds of cottages lay in smoldering ruins; at least a third of the popular resort was ashy waste, and scores of year-round residents were destitute."

As the fire raged, those on the beach began forming bucket brigades and pushing heavy carts with fire hoses. Wrightsville Beach had a volunteer fire department, established around 1915, with buckets and hoses as their only resources. Former Wrightsville Beach Fire Chief Everett Ward, who served from 1976 to 2003, says that back in the 1930s there were some water pipes used for hose stations, but Wrightsville Beach didn't have hydrants, a fire truck or large fire mains. Also, there wasn't any freeze protection, so in the winter, the pipes they did have might have been frozen.

The Wilmington Fire Department was called in, but since the drawbridge for cars hadn't been built yet, firefighters spent valuable time loading their truck onto trolley flat cars. Then, once the fire truck finally made it to the beach, it got stuck in the sand since there were no paved roads, rendering it useless.
With strong winds and inadequate protection, the fire easily spread from one building to the next. Wrightsville Beach resident Bill Creasy remembers watching this chain reaction from Harbor Island. "When the Oceanic Hotel caught on fire, it was such an immense fire that the burning embers from the heat rose up, and the wind was blowing out of the southwest, and it blew those burning embers down and dropped them on various houses and, by then, the whole beach was ablaze."

Creasy was six years old when he watched his familys summer home burn down. Like Creasy, many people saw the scene unfold from Harbor Island because the trolley was being used for the Wilmington fire truck and the walkway had been blocked off. Creasy still vividly recalls what he witnessed more than 75 years ago. "It burned an image in my mind because I can remember the smoke and the flames. The flames were very high because it was so hot, probably fifty feet." Creasy says that even from his vantage point, "You could feel the heat. When the wind would blow, it would blow a breath of hot air at you."
Luther "Tommy" Rogers Jr. was nine years old at the time and remembers actually crossing onto Wrightsville Beach with his father, Luther Rogers Sr., who had built the Kitty Cottage. "My dad took me over there. He built a large percentage of the houses on Wrightsville Beach, so he was trying to look out for his customers and save their houses."

Cecil Robinson, a year-round resident, was also on the beach that day. His wife, Silvey Robinson, says he was a part of the bucket brigade that saved a handful of cottages by climbing ladders to spray hoses and pour buckets of water onto the wood-shingled roofs, blocking the assault of burning embers. Silvey Robinson was in Brunswick County at the time, and she actually saw the smoke from there. "It was a big black cloud of smoke in the air," she explains, "and I remember my dad saying That's a bad fire wherever that's happening."
The Edgewater Inn, owned by Bill Creasys grandmother, was one of the buildings Cecil Robinson helped to save. After the fire, 10 families were left homeless and many stayed at the Edgewater Inn until they could rebuild. Along with the hotel, another four homes were saved as well.

Wrightsville Beach resident Betty Bordeaux says that just before the Ewing-Bordeaux cottage would have been engulfed in flames, the fires path was cut off by a large sand dune until the wind shifted away from the home. Hearing this story, the Wilmington Morning Startook a lighter tone: "If an historical commission is appointed in years to come to erect a monument to yesterdays Wrightsville Beach disaster, there is a sand dune on the northern extension sound side that deserves a little stone."

The tone was more serious in the Bordeaux home, however. Bordeaux was born after the fire, but she remembers her mother describing the dread she felt watching the blaze move closer and closer. "People were trying to save things they threw out the telephone of all things and a big marble sideboard," Bordeaux says. "But they just panicked, I guess, and threw them right out the window."
Other residents had a similar idea, but unfortunately, most items either burned anyway or were taken by looters who came by boat.
In less than three hours, Wrightsville Beach was forever changed. The fire destroyed most of the north end, sparing the south. "It was just a bunch of ashes," says Creasy of the aftermath. "There was nothing left. Chimneys were still standing and old iron beds. There were iron beds everywhere. The mattresses were gone, just the bed frames."
Even the wildlife didnt escape. "The fire was so hot," Creasy remembers, "that over on the ocean side, little sand fiddlers, little crabs, were all over the beach dead from being cooked by the fire."
Jim Wallace Sr. was 18 years old and in college at Wake Forest when his family called to tell him the news. When he returned home the next weekend, Wallace remembers kicking around the ashes, looking for anything. His family lost everything, including family photos. The only item he found was his grandfathers metal mustache cup.
"Some houses to the east did not burn," he explains, "but our house couldn't have been saved. Nobody back then could have stopped that fire."
The beach soon recovered with the help of the Federal Civil Works Administration, which rebuilt the boardwalks. The trolley line was repaired by the Tidewater Power Company, since power poles and trolley wires had been damaged. By 1935, tourists could drive their cars to the beach for the first time on the brand new two-lane drawbridge.
At the same time, private contractors, like Rogers Sr., worked to rebuild some of the cottages that had been lost. This time around, houses were made with asphalt shingles (instead of wood) and fire-proof asbestos siding. Finally, the Carolina Yacht Club saw a surge in membership from families who chose to join the club instead of rebuilding their properties.
Wrightsville Beach continued growing until the devastation of The Great Fire was just a memory. But Wallace Sr. still thinks about his family's home and wonders what could have been.

"I do sometimes think about what life would be like if that house was still there, if our house had survived," he says. "Some houses were saved and others weren't based on how the wind was blowing."
Wallace remembers a simpler time, before the drawbridge opened up the beach. "Back then, it was just the seagulls, sand pipers running along the beach, our dogs running free, and there were a lot of sand dunes still. We were all barefoot back then," he says, recalling life on Wrightsville in the 1930s. "It was kind of wonderful with the slow pace, but there was a lot going on too, with the Lumina and Oceanic going full blast."
Wallace says the best time to be at Wrightsville Beach was during the winter months, when the permanent residents had it all to themselves. Although the community rebuilt and prevailed, Wallace admits that Wrightsville Beach was never quite the same after The Great Fire.