THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512290312
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
When I read a couple of weeks ago that there was a hassle over commercial development at Duck, my reaction was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh.
I will explain, but first a quick lesson in North Carolina geography. You cross the Currituck Sound bridge like you were heading for Kitty Hawk. Then, instead of driving south for Kitty Hawk, drive Route 12 north five miles and you're at Duck.
I half-chuckled, half-sighed at the development story because I remember the Duck that was. Today's Duck is an upscale resort community. A lot of the houses have price tags in the lower stratosphere and there are clusters of shops with quaint names and budget-be-damned mark-ups.
Not that the result is without charm. The houses are handsome, the shops attractive. In fact, I'm sit ting near a wall hanging we bought in one of them. It shows a herd of modern design llamas looking nervous like it's hunting season in the Andes.
Still, I remember the Duck that was. Back in the early 1960s, friends owned a cabin on 7 acres of land between Currituck Sound on one side and the ocean beach on the other. Each summer when our kids were growing up, we would rent the cabin for a week. It was $65.
In today's Duck, $65 wouldn't rent half a home for a gnome. Thirty years ago, it bought a week of blissful, isolated serenity. To get to the cabin, you drove through the village of Duck, then no more than a scraggle of small houses. You passed a little white church and watched for a utility pole that had a big gray transformer at the top. Just before you got to the pole, you turned left onto a dirt path that led to the cabin.
In its previous life, it had been a hunting lodge. It was rugged and rustic, but comfortable. No TV, no telephone, which made it a refuge from two of civilization's most annoying mood-busters. A few steps from the front door was a pier, a rowboat and the shallow but swimmable expanse of Currituck Sound.
The nearest neighbor was a mile away. It was the kind of isolation that allowed the kids to explore surrounding dunes in perfect safety. Meanwhile, we were plopped in the front yard reading. We would load our library cards to the limit and wallow in the printed word. Each evening, we'd watch incredible sunsets.
One June, our whole Duck vacation week was drizzly and cold. It wasn't a bummer, though. It was great. We scrounged firewood on the beach, drank hot cocoa, devoured more books and played games. The weatherman blew it, but we didn't.
When I think about the Duck that was, I remember the day the kids vanished in the dunes. After a while, we told our dog Timmy to go find them. In 10 minutes, he came scampering back with the kids at his heels. There was a sweetness about that moment I have held in my heart and mind for more than 30 years.
All of what I remember is homes and shops and traffic-polluted road now. The isolation and the serenity have been traded for gloss and bustle. Ocean, sound and beach still offer a lovely mix of nature, but a something that made Duck very special is gone.
All of which brings me to Great Bridge and the green plot on Battlefield Boulevard that apparently will house a bank and a drug store. What a shame. Great Bridge has gone the same route as Duck. People started coming to both places because there was a serene, unhurried feeling about them. Then so many people came for the unhurried serenity that they buried it.
Yes, I find it convenient to shop at some of the stores that have mushroomed in the Great Bridge area. But I would swap trees and grass for any fast-food heartburn haven ever invented.
And it would have been great to keep that patch of Great Bridge green as it was. Something that says, hey, this community is more than an entry in the Most-Strip-Shopping-Centers-Per-Square-Mile Derby. The green could have been rainbow-ish with flowers planted by the city's master gardeners. Or just left purely natural, a tiny bit of successful rear-guard action against the relentless charge of suburbia.
Nope. Current plans call for that bank and a drugstore. I don't doubt that they will be tastefully designed. I won't know about the interiors because I won't be going in. But in my mind's eye, I won't see them, inside or out.
Because when I think of Duck, I still have that endearing mental picture of two small children and a dog frolicking across the dunes. In the same way, I'll try to hang on to the mental picture I have of a small splash of green that used to be an island of rescue in the sea of concrete, asphalt and brick that Great Bridge has become. by CNB