summer homes that were meant for warm weather living and were
not winterized. The Cooper Cottage had a fireplace with flues
to heat several rooms and electricity, but no running water and
no bathroom.
In a personal memoir my great grandmother wrote: “I loved the
little whitewashed cottage at first sight. It was a story and a half
high, made of vertical rough-hewn boards ten inches wide with a
two-inch strip to cover the cracks. The porch in front and around
the side had a quaintly made railing. Behind it a great live oak
stretched its huge limbs almost over the entire yard. So benign
and god-like it appeared that as I gazed up through the branches
to the blue sky beyond, I instinctively prayed. And ever since,
in times of trouble, sickness, world war and death, looking up
under it has been my favorite place to pray. The limbs seem to
stretch over the house in blessing.”
during the years of the Great Depression may have been financially difficult for
the Smith family and their neighbors, but life for my Great Aunt Nancy and her
sister, my Grandmother Jean Smith Holman, and their brother Lansing Smith
was rich in gifts from the land and sea and the beauty of their natural surround-ings.
My Great Aunt Nancy, now 92, fondly remembers the days of their youth
spent exploring the wilds and water sur-rounding
their home. While their father
was busy setting up a dairy behind their
house to make a little extra money, the
children spent warm afternoons discov-ering
treasures along the water’s edge.
Abandoned wooden rowboats would
periodically wash ashore down near
Bowden’s Landing. The Smith kids and
their neighbors, the McCrarys, would
climb aboard their “Plymouth” ship as
pilgrims and sail across the Intracoastal
Waterway to dredge island where they
would spend the day digging quahogs
and littleneck clams out of the mud with
their bare toes.
Grandmother Jean Smith Holman
wrote of her days growing up on
the sound in an article published in
Wilmington’s Sunday Star News on
Sunday, September 8, 1985.
“We would row across the newly
dredged Intracoastal Waterway, where the fresh white sand provided the per-fect
spot for camping. There we cooked fat pigfish and croakers caught right
from Bowden’s Cut. There was nothing more delicious than those fish and
corn on the cob boiled in the clean, clear salt water.”
Easter c. early 1960s. From left,
back row: Brook, Jane, Jean, Wright,
their dog, Bo, and Lucy, front.
Taylor’s Great
Aunt Nancy and
Grandmother Jean,
c. early 1920s.
life on the waterfront
34
WBM november 2013