THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410210244
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JOHN HARPER, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 212 lines
IN 1930, Bill Casey built a two-story boarding house at the foot of Jockey's Ridge. His first tenants were workers building the Wright Memorial.
Moncie Daniels of Manteo bought the property the next year and brought in his son-in-law, E.J. Alford, to manage the business. Alford, known as ``Sheik,'' named the non-descript wooden building ``The Casino.''
Three generations remember The Casino, which rose from humble beginnings to serve for nearly half a century as the Outer Banks' pre-eminent gathering place for revelers.
Mention The Casino to someone and watch the memory bank jump-start. Thousands remember a first dance on the magical dance floor, or falling in love while slow dancing to the Platters, or passing from childhood to adulthood walking up the long staircase to the second floor of The Casino.
The Casino's story - some fact, some myth - is rich, and it winds through Outer Banks history like the Beach Road curves along the stretch on which the building sat.
After Alford renamed the building, he and Daniels added duckpin bowling lanes, a soda fountain, service station, grocery store and dining room to the downstairs of The Casino.
Upstairs, they built a giant dance floor. Early patrons of The Casino remember ``some dancing,'' but it was not the focus of the business. Jere Parker managed The Casino in 1937. Later that year, enter visionary George Thomas Wescott Jr., better known as ``Ras.''
Wescott needed a new challenge. A fire had destroyed his pool hall in downtown Manteo, and now he envisioned a place where families could gather for ``good clean fun.'' Wescott bought The Casino and immediately hired Robert Scarborough of Wanchese to help in building his family fun house.
The men increased the bowling lanes from six to 12. Scarborough and Wescott added a snack bar, booths and tables to the second floor. And the 60- by 100-foot dance floor was fitted properly and shined to a glassy finish.
The large upstairs dance hall featured a bar on the east side of the room and a large bandstand on the west side. The building on the Beach Road faced east. There was no bypass road then, so the back yard of The Casino stretched to Jockey's Ridge.
Most remarkable about the design was the method of air-conditioning. Twelve large side windows propped open allowed the cool ocean breeze in, and the ceiling fans did the rest.
``With the big windows open, you felt like you were on the beach,'' remembers Lois Twyne of Manteo, a former Casino employee.
WESCOTT WAS SET to go in the summer of l937. Dare County's population in those days was just over 5,000 year-round. So Wescott knew that to draw large crowds on a regular basis, he would have to attract patrons from outside the area.
Traveling to the Outer Banks in the '30s was difficult at best. The Beach Road was the only serviceable thoroughfare, and most of the bridges hadn't been built. Wescott's formula: Book big-name bands. In the summers of 1937-38, he booked the biggest of the big bands: Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw.
Soon, The Casino drew thousands of dancers from Dare County, Elizabeth City and the Tidewater area of Virginia.
Things worked just right for Wescott. While Mom and Dad bunny-hopped to Glenn Miller's music, the children played pinball, bowled, ate hot dogs and drank soda downstairs.
Wescott had his family fun house, and he was determined to keep it that way. He hired 10 bouncers who were summoned to any hint of trouble by the shrill whistle of Wescott. A whistle hung from his neck, but more often than not, Wescott wet his own whistle.
``He tried to run a nice place,'' says Delnoy Burrus of Manteo. Burrus worked for Wescott for more than 30 years and fondly remembers the early days of The Casino.
``It was my job to sell tickets,'' she says, ``but I was also sort of a mother to the young people who came there.''
Burrus' brother tore the tickets.
Not only was Wescott running a family fun house, but he was treating his employees like family, providing housing and food to many of them.
``He's the best there ever was,'' Burrus says. ``Everybody liked him.''
The Casino became the place in eastern North Carolina. It was not uncommon to have 1,500 people in the club on a Saturday night. Wescott's giant dance floor became his drawing card. The cool dance floor, polished with bowling alley wax, begged dancers to go barefoot in the dark. There was even a room for checking shoes.
The reputation grew for the barefoot bar. Many nights, the floor would vibrate under the tremendous weight of the dancers.
``I saw a man from Edenton soaking his feet in ice water one night,'' says Lois Twyne. ``He had burned his feet dancing so much.''
AS THE '30s BECAME the '40s, the United States was on the cusp of a world war. Many of the regular patrons entered the service and became part of the Allied forces overseas.
The Nags Head Casino stayed open during the war years, but the complexion of the dancers changed, and so did the atmosphere. Marines, soldiers and sailors became part of The Casino mix. And as German U-boats watched the coast, Wescott blackened the windows and dimmed the lights.
When the war ended, many of the returning servicemen's first stop was The Casino.
Business flourished for The Casino through the '40s. But times were a changin.' Rock 'n' roll entered America's conscience. One of the biggest stars of the rising rock 'n' roll tide was Fats Domino.
He played The Casino in 1954. The ``fat man'' packed the place.
``We were like sardines,'' Twyne says. ``People were standing on tables. It's a night I'll never forget.''
The unofficial attendance that night was 1,550.
Wescott brought a batch of rock 'n' rollers to The Casino in the '50s: the Platters, Jerry Lee Lewis and Danny and the Juniors. Wescott didn't forget the big bands. Louis Armstrong was there, too.
Andy Griffith, who came to the Outer Banks to play Sir Walter Raleigh in ``The Lost Colony,'' often delivered his humorous monologues to an appreciative audience at The Casino.
Wescott also allowed merchants to sell fresh fruits and vegetables on tables set up on the second floor. Downstairs, a bingo parlor opened. The games, featuring cash prizes, were later changed to games with prizes.
Church groups protested the games with demonstrations in The Casino's parking lot. Even the name of the game changed: Bingo became Quizo, with Twyne running the parlor downstairs.
From the mid-'50s to the mid '60s, The Casino was the focal point of the Dare Coast Pirates Jamboree. The three-day festival welcomed spring every April. Most of the men of Dare County grew beards during the winter. Women and men dressed in full pirate outfits for the festival, which started on Friday. The ``King'' and ``Queen'' were crowned at the Saturday night ball at The Casino.
THE CASINO'S complexion would change yet again in the l960s. Beach music moved to the Outer Banks, and thousands of dancers learned Myrtle Beach's shag. The shag, a modified version of the jitterbug, was executed easily on the shiny Casino dance floor. The great singer-philospher, Robert Parker, sang it best:
``Everybody get on your feet,
``You make me nervous when you're in your seat,
``Take off your shoes and pat your feet,
``We're doing a dance that can't be beat,
``We're barefootin'.''
Nicely said.
Wescott entertained the barefoot shaggers with a who's who of beach music: Bill Deal and the Rhondells, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, the Drifters, and Bob Marshall and the Crystals.
Linda Harper of Nags Head was among the '60s' shaggers at The Casino.
``Bob Marshall and the Crystals are the best band I ever heard,'' she says. ``It was great.''
Not only were there music changes, but fashions changed abruptly. Long hair on men became the style. But somebody forgot to tell Ras Wescott.
``If a boy's hair was below his collar, he didn't get in,'' Harper says.
The long-haired boys were exiled to the sand dune across the Beach Road. Wescott, hoping to shame the boys into getting a haircut, posted a sign on the hill reading, ``Monkey World.'' It was not uncommon to have 100 boys enjoying the music in ``Monkey World'' through The Casino's open windows. Some of the girls joined the boys.
Twyne, working downstairs, would often cut hair so the boys could escape the wrath of Ras and enter The Casino.
ENTERING THE CASINO was a rite of passage for many teenagers of the '60s. One of those teenagers was Angel Ellis Khoury of Manteo. Khoury, a writer and magazine publisher, entered the big room in August l969.
``I came down from Suffolk,'' says Khoury. ``I had to talk mother and six aunts into letting me go.''
Khoury and her date kicked off their shoes and joined the ballroom barefooters.
Ras Wescott's health faltered in the early '70s, and he was forced to leave the building. The business he loved for almost 40 years was sold to Ray Tucker of Raleigh.
Things were never quite the same. Ras' strict rules were relaxed and the building fell into disrepair. The top floor collapsed during the winter of 1976. The business changed hands several more times.
There was even a name-change for a few years. The Casino became ``Nephethe.'' The bottom floor featured some decent entertainment during the late '70s. Blood, Sweat and Tears, The Four Tops, John Prine and Robbin Thompson played Nephethe.
For a while, the Disco disease ravaged the building. A spinning ball splashed the once-proud dance floor while hundreds of John Travolta wannabees moved to the pulsating rhythms of the Bee Gees, Donna Summer and K.C. and the Sunshine Band.
The end was near. John Harris and Ralph Buxton leased a part of the building for their new Kitty Hawk Kites shop. Another building was added and named ``The New Casino.''
Finally, in 1981, The Nags Head Casino came down, but not before much of its contents were sold.
The original building was demolished in 1985. The building, which survived a hurricane in 1944 and the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962, finally burned in a practice fire for the Nags Head Fire Department.
But The Casino is still preserved in memories, and on tape. In 1989, WVOD's Lynn Summerall produced a five-part series on The Casino. Darwin's restaurant in Manteo sells T-shirts with an image of the original Casino on the front.
And the late Ras Wescott is smiling somewhere, too.
Lawrence Craighead of Wanchese worked for Wescott for years, first as a bouncer and later as a maintenance man. He loved the man. Almost as much as Ras loved the Casino.
``If Ras were alive today: he'd still be there. He loved it. Heck, I'd be there too.''
Step outside, Lawrence, kick off your shoes and feel the cool ocean breeze and remember your first date with your wife, Barbara, in the l940s in The Nags Head Casino.
Memories are like wine: The longer they age, the better they are. ILLUSTRATION: Photos courtesy of The Outer Banks History Center
As many as 1,500 pairs of feet would glide and slide across boards
that had been polished with bowling alley wax.
Big name bands like Louis Armstrong's group were booked to draw the
crowds at The Casino.
Shoes were checked at the door for barefoot dancing, but for some
dancers that just wasn't enough.
Louis ``Satchmo'' Armstrong and his band played at The Casino in
September, 1955.
by CNB