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About the author Ernie Foster, 57, was born and raised in Hatteras village. His ancestors have been island
fisherman and lifesavers for generations, and his father, Ernal
Foster, is considered the "father" of sport fishing on the island. He
founded the Albatross Fleet of charter boats in 1937. After receiving a
degree from Thoughts on
watching a village die By Ernie Foster The place where I grew up was magical. It was a small place (population 500) where everyone knew everyone. It was a place where everyone seemed to be self sufficient (a common trait among fishermen). And it was a place where everyone seemed to want to help each other. I was oblivious to the petty problems, conflicts, and grudges that the adults surely dealt with. What I saw was a caring village, a village where the adults created and staffed a library with volunteer help. It was a place where a fire that burned down the home of a resident motivated the village to create a fire department that was funded by door-to-door monthly donations and weekly fish fries in the summertime. My village was a place where the people decided that they needed to act when the local public health doctor was no longer provided by the government. So they built a medical center and hired a doctor. Those were the things that every kid saw while growing up in my village. My village was a small, isolated place. Small and isolated but not insular. Not insular because we thrived on the contributions of "outsiders" who moved there. For as long as I can remember the mix of "locals" and "outsiders" resulted in progressive changes as we listened and learned from each other. For a boy, there could not have been a more wondrous place to grow up than Hatteras village in the 1950s. When I went off to college, I became more clear about what we didn't have but that was only in looking back. As a kid, I truly knew I had it all! The whole village was our playground. There was a ball diamond, a theater, and space, lots of space. I lived in the lower part of the village known as "sticky bottom" because it was more marsh and winding creeks than dry land. Every creek had crabs and fish and red-wing blackbirds and marsh hens, and there were still a number of "clam stakes" along the shore side where families kept their clams until a "mess" was needed for dinner. The beach did not have a single house glaring down on it, and the beach hills and the land between the village and the ocean was just one big place to explore. Voyages through the "Slash" in a shove skiff were all day adventures, and as I got older, there was shark fishing in the harbor at night. My father was a charter boat fisherman, and I had the great good fortune to be able to go to work with my dad. This provided me two significant benefits, exposure to the fishing that became a lifelong passion and an opportunity to see how people from other places viewed "my village." How did people view my village? That was the question then, and now, 40 years later, that same question has come crashing down around every villager in Hatteras. The Hatteras where I grew up was not the perfect place I viewed through a child's eyes. In looking back, with the level of poverty and the difficulty of making even a subsistence living in Hatteras in the 1950s, there were many needs. In the early 1960s, we qualified for help from Vista Volunteers, a type of domestic Peace Corps. Our schools were mediocre, the dropout rate was 50 percent and economic opportunity was very limited. There was no trash collection, the Oregon Inlet ferry ran only during daylight, and many homes still had outhouses and were heated with free standing coal stoves. (One of my fond memories of my elementary school classroom is the smell of crayon flicked on the stove by some daring student.) It is important that we all understand how far we have come. Our schools are now superior. Health services, water supplies, trash collection, and transportation all function with an efficiency that is the envy of most other places. And almost all of this has come to pass because of the economic benefits of tourism. Since my boyhood in Hatteras, much has changed, and much of the change has been progress. However, I call this article "Watching a Village Die" because of the dramatic changes taking place in Hatteras today. Hatteras today is in many ways like the place where I grew up. Fishermen still work the waters, residential homes are still scattered through the village among local businesses. Families are being raised, and there is still a strong sense of community. Our past has always included outsiders people who moved here because they wanted to be here, who lived here either full time or had homes here. In other words, these were people who had a vested interest in the village, in both its appearance and its residents. Like everyone else, they were willing to live daily, elbow to elbow, with their fellow citizens and were willing to be answerable for their actions. Contrast
this with what is happening today. The village itself is literally under
assault. A place where people lived, worked, and raised families for
centuries is converted into a mass of nondescript "rental
machines." The two projects that are most obvious are the Hoyle/Dixon
projects in the middle of the village. One will result in 29 massive rental
structures next to Hatteras Harbor Marina, and the
other will result in 40 plus condominiums across from the north intersection
of Make no mistake! These projects and countless other structures being built are not an attempt to improve the village. Charitably stated, these are projects in which outside investors intend to make a quick profit by building and selling in fewer than five years and being gone. These are outside, short-term investors who will change forever the physical nature of the village and its social fabric. Once these structures are built, they will be there beyond our lifetime. And once they are built, the physical scale of the village itself will be dramatically altered. These are not structures that will ever be homes. Though termed residential structures by zoning regulations, they are clearly "rental machines," an obvious fact that Dare County Commissioner Moncie "Punk" Daniels alone observed during the presentation of the project to the board. Approval of the project was granted because it met all present zoning regulations. No one questions that this project will dramatically alter the appearance of the village. Ultimately, what is even more significant is the change that will occur to the social fabric of the village. A village is not barren rental structures, but, rather, a village consists of the people who live there. People who have homes, families, jobs, and businesses. They are people who belong to churches, volunteer fire departments, and civic associations. They are also people with roots, people who are interconnected to each other in ways both large and small. If a village consists of the people who live there, does anyone think that there are many jobs available in Hatteras that will allow a resident to afford $250,000 to $800,000 homes? No, not really. Hatteras has always been a village of fishermen, first commercial and then a mix of commercial and charter fishermen. Fishermen tend to be self reliant, very independent, and not very demanding of government services. And Hatteras is on its way to becoming a place that no longer has a place for its commercial fishermen. Already, homes are being built on what was once a place to mend nets, sell fish, and store crab pots. Now there are complaints by new owners about the smell of fishing. When you have a place where, if you actually work and make your living there you cannot afford to live there, then you have a strange place indeed. I don't know what will evolve, but I do know that it will be different from what has attracted people to Hatteras in the past. With
our existing zoning regulations, Hatteras is
rapidly moving to its extinction. Let's see, we dredge the "Slash,"
we tear down all those quaint local houses that have been nestled in with the
live oaks for centuries, we replace them with rental machines, 55 feet in the
air, which cost so much to purchase that if you actually have a job and a family
on Hatteras Island, you can't afford one. Then the This is how Hatteras village will die one monster structure at a time, 55 feet in the air, built to be sold immediately to the next buyer who plans to do the same with no interest in the life and well being of Hatteras as a viable community. If you're still reading, you have determined that my idyllic life exploring the "Slash" as a boy has been replaced by a more cynical perspective. I provide the following incidents as a defense. During a public hearing before the Dare County Commissioners in which Hatteras village citizens voiced concerns about the Slash Creek Condominium Project we were reassured by Commissioner Stan White that the developers (State Senator David Hoyle of Gastonia and contractor/builder Skip Dixon of Manteo) are "the kind of people you can work with, they want this project to be a positive one." Then I saw an artist's rendering of the proposed condominium structures, and there in the foreground, in the marina harbor, was a personal watercraft, the same device that the Park Service bans from park lands. Oh yes, just what the Slash needs, weekly renters on jet skis! And what sensitivity and concern the developers demonstrated in approving such a picture in the project plans. This article will offend some people whom I know. By growing up and living in a small village, one learns that this is not a good thing to do, and it is not something to be taken lightly. However, the reality is that many, many people are offended by what is happening to Hatteras. It is offensive to many people when they hear public officials comment that "people adjust" to the building of structures of a size or in places that are undesirable. Consider the other options beside "adjusting" that people have at their disposal when public officials fail to lead. They could move, they could take some illegal actions, or they can "adjust" by filing their grievance away in the drawer marked degradation of life quality by those who do not care about others. It is offensive to talk to a county planning board member who states that he has an obligation as a builder to help clients find the loopholes in the building codes and exploit them. You think, in all innocence, that planning board members ought to be about the business of helping to eliminate loopholes and inconsistencies in the building codes that cause those among us, who choose to use our intellect for things other than exploiting legal loopholes, to lose faith in government. It is difficult to listen to discussions about having the future of a village determined by the "marketplace" and to understand the economic philosophy used to justify the degradation of the landscape and the quality of life when there is no "economic necessity" beyond maximum exploitation of the land. When a county commissioner states that land speculators are paying so much for property that passing rules preventing additional rampant growth just seems like a difficult choice, one wonders if that commissioner is concerned about the interests of the majority of citizens or the small number who are about the business of "speculative development." Is it really a difficult choice for politicians to start looking for ways to control speculators if the overwhelming majority of residents are beginning to feel the impact of a diminished quality of life? If it is a hard choice, then one must wonder whose interest our elected leaders really represent? What a vague term quality of life. It means many things to many people. For all of us who remember Dare County 40 years ago, we are very clear that things are better, that we have a better quality of life. However, when certain human needs are met, there comes a time to re-examine our priorities. For just as sure as poverty isn't desirable for most of us, it is just as certain that we have reached a point in our development as a community that the time has come to take stock. A starving man needs food and you feed him, but there comes a time when he has added enough weight and it is prudent to change his maintenance strategy. As a village we are well past that point. I do
not think that anyone in Hatteras believes that
having the trash truck arrive even earlier in the morning is further
improving the quality of life. (However, to meet the ever-growing demand in the
summer, it must.) I can't find anyone who thinks that more highway traffic is
improving his or her life. I find that the number of people who think more
houses and fewer marshes are a life improvement is limited to a select few.
Given that we are having to import construction
workers from as far away as If the village of Hatteras is to survive as a living, working entity, for that matter if the whole county is to remain the place we now enjoy for both its natural beauty and the quality of life it provides, then all of us need to ask ourselves some difficult questions. For "us locals" a major question is: How much freedom to do what we want with our land are we willing to give up in order to restrain the impact of outside, short-term investors? For the new folks just arriving, the question is: Did you move here because of what this place is or did you move here because of your plan to change it? If you moved here because of what it is, are you changing it? |