With his little brother Bill hunkered down in the bow and my grandfather steering from the rear, they won a silver cup in the two man runabout race at the Carolina Yacht Club Regatta. Canoe races at Wrightsville Beach, 1910. years, James would sell bunches of flowers — mostly brightly colored zinnias. During their second summer at the beach, my grandfather got a 16-horsepower Johnson standard twin motor for his 16-foot Old Town Canoe lapstrake runabout. “That thing was powerful, and it pushed that Old Town Canoe round faster than anybody down at the beach,” remembers my grandfather proudly. With his little brother Bill hunkered down in the bow and my grandfather steering from the rear, they won a silver cup in the two- man runabout race during the Carolina Yacht Club Regatta. Every time Bill popped his head up to get a view of the action, my granddad hollered at him: “Get on down in that bow and stay down there! You got too much wind resistance!” “We took that boat out and crabbed and fished, went over to Masonboro Inlet, went over to Shell Island, went over to Figure Eight. And of course we trolled for bluefish and Spanish mackerel in that boat. We’d fish for puppy drum off Masonboro Island in the fall of the year. We’d always take the dogs with us, of course. At least we’d take Drake. The other dogs didn’t amount to much,” remembers my grandfather fondly. Another favorite destination was Money Island, where rumor had it there was buried treasure. “Money Island, as we called it, was a spot just east of the Sprunt place out in the inland waterway. It wasn’t very large. Why, at high tide, heck it wasn’t 100 feet long and 50 feet wide. A lot of people went over there digging, but nobody ever found anything!” my grandfather says, chuckling. “I certainly didn’t. But it was a lot of fun to go over there and picnic and fool around. In the early days down there, not everybody had a rod and a reel like they use today. Most folks used a hand line that you’d twist over your head like this and throw. It was just a braided line with a sinker and a hook on it. A hand line is what they called it. People would come in the summer, pay two bits for one of those, use sand fleas or shrimp as bait, toss that line out in the ocean, and catch fish that way. If you got pretty good, you could sling it about 75 or 80 feet, you know. There was an art to it, just like casting.” My grandfather admired the Robinson boys, great fishermen who had learned from their father and who were strong from hauling in the nets and would later become lifeguards and college football stars. In the fall, under a half moon, Robinson and his sons worked the inlet, the father directing from the stem, his sons flanking either side of the rowboat. A s far back as he can remember, my grandfather wanted 44 WBM september 2014 a pony. As a boy of 6 or 7 living on Dock Street, he used to go across the street to St. Thomas Catholic Church, buy a candle for a penny, and pray for God to deliver his fondest desire. “Back in those days, most of the boys’ magazines had a picture of a beautiful pony on the back inside cover where you could send in a name, and if you won, they’d give it to you. Of course, they never did, and that was just a come on to keep you reading the magazine.” His wish came true during his second winter at the beach. His daddy found a pony, Star, for a good price in town and built a shed in the back of the beach house where the children could keep it. He sent Arrington the eight miles into town to the Broadfoot House in Forest Hills to fetch it. “I remember when Arrington arrived, I was waiting on the Harbor Island side of the bridge — looking, looking. Finally, he In 1933, at age 16, Jim Wallace Sr. went to work on a California ranch. IMAGES COURTESY OF NEW HANOVER COUNTY LIBRARY IMAGE COURTESY OF JIM WALLACE SR.
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