39
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
We couldn’t afford to pay for
it, but we had ways of sneaking
in.”
There are lots of photos of
young George in and around the
ocean.
“I spent an awful lot of time
in the water,” he says. “That
included the ocean and the
sound. I particularly remember
when you swam in the sound,
you never did it at low tide. A
lot of sewage dumped into the
sound in those days. You waited
for high tide.”
Fishing is another recurring
theme. There are lots of photos
of Clark with a rod in his hand,
beginning when he was practi-cally
a toddler.
“I did a lot of fishing,” he says.
“In those days there were jetties.
Jetties have barnacles, and the
sheepshead love to eat barnacles
off the jetties. And so we did a
lot of casting to the jetties using
what we called sea fleas. Little
things about the size of your
thumb. We had a lot of luck
catching rather large sheepshead.
I used to do a lot of surf fishing.
In the old days, you could stand
on the beach and cast a weighted
treble hook and catch mullet that
way. In September, you could
go out there and catch a mess of
bluefish.”
From far left: George Jr. at an unidentified golf course, circa
1931. George Sr.’s miniature golf course at Wrightsville
Beach behind the Seashore Hotel. Below: An undated
photo of North Lumina Avenue business district flooding
(possibly after a hurricane) shows the businesses of a
bygone era. George Jr. and his friends liked to hang out at
Joe Stone’s Bowling Alley (right side of street).
Below: George Jr.
with a couple of
small fry (sand jetty
in background).
Above: George Jr. and
George Sr. with a string
of bluefish.
Right: After a day of catching bluefish with Joe Bridger
(Bridger Cottage in background. Below: George Jr. surf
fishing on Figure Eight Island in 1999.
COURTESY OF AL CREASY