THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 17, 1996 TAG: 9606180489
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PAUL SOUTH, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HATTERAS VILLAGE LENGTH: 198 lines
Dale Burrus sits on the worn wooden bench and gazes out on the small community his family has called home for generations.
As he talks, customers amble in and out of Burrus Red & White Supermarket.
``See you later, Mr. Dale,'' a pony-tailed man in his late 20s says as he carries his groceries toward a late-model pickup.
A steady stream of shoppers comes in and out of the rust-brick building, and Burrus acknowledges every one between short drags on a cigarette.
``It's that way in a small town,'' Burrus says. ``Everybody knows everybody else's business. Some folks have a hard time getting used to that.''
One thing folks in this fishing community have become used to is the Burrus family grocery, Red & White.
Since 1866 it has remained in virtually the same place, providing groceries and gossip for generations of residents and visitors.
Now Burrus, 53, and his 44-year-old brother Allen run the store that sits less than a mile from the Ocracoke Ferry. In all, eight members of the Burrus clan, ages 12 to 71, work in the store.
Except for the inventory, it seems that everything in it is a piece of history.
The 130-year-old business was founded by a blockade runner in the Civil War, A.J. Stowe.
``My great-great grandfather actually spent some time in prison for being a blockade runner,'' Dale Burrus remembers. ``After the war, he and his father put up the money to set up a store.''
Hatteras Island, like nearby Roanoke Island, has a peculiar Civil War legacy. By order of Abraham Lincoln, Hatteras Village was for one day the capital of a pro-Union section of North Carolina that seceded from Jefferson Davis' Confederacy.
``The battles of Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark weren't bloody battles like Bull Run or anything like that,'' Dale Burrus says. ``But they were strategically important because they gave the Union control of the North Carolina sounds.''
The coastal clashes were also significant because they marked a turning point in the war.
``I always get in an argument with some of the Park Service folks, who've worked at places like Antietam,'' Burrus says. ``But it's important to remember, the Union never won any major battles before Fort Clark and Fort Hatteras. After that, they never lost a major battle. It really was a turning point.''
But while the thunder of the war swirled 'round about them, the people of Hatteras Island took no side during the conflict. At one point, however, the citizens of the village wrote to Lincoln, asking him to order Union occupiers to stop pillaging Hatteras.
``The people here were so isolated during that period, that the only real allegiance they had was to themselves,'' Burrus says. ``They didn't care about slavery. They just made whatever money they could make.''
The Stowes did exactly that when they opened the store originally known as the Hatteras Store Company. Dale Burrus still has one of the ledger books from those early days. Time has torn away the leather cover of the book, leaving it spotted. But inside, on faded pages, the elegant script recording the purchases of early customers can still be read.
``Their motto was they sold `Everything from hairpins to horsecollars,' '' Burrus says of his ancestors. ``Most folks here have always been self-sufficient, raising their own livestock and a vegetable garden. In those days, there wasn't a bridge connecting the island. So they didn't sell a lot of meat, milk and vegetables.''
An early bill of sale from a supplier gives an idea of the cost of survival in those early days after the Civil War. Nineteen gallons of kerosene sold for $5.32. A lamp sold for $1.50. Forty-nine yards of calico for $3.55 and a pair of calfskin boots for $6.
A.J. Stowe passed the store to his son Caleb. Caleb Stowe's daughter Lucy married Adolphus Burrus - Dale and Allen's grandfather.
``In the old times, my grandfather would take a boat across the sound and trade salted fish for livestock,'' Burrus says. ``We always did have plenty of livestock, sheep, goats, pigs and cattle.''
The earliest picture of the family's store was taken in 1866, right after the opening. Captioned ``Hatteras Store Co. and Pigs,'' it features a group of porkers gathered near the store's porch.
As the days of the 19th century gave way to the 20th, Hatteras Island would remain untouched by the man-made storm known as the Great Depression of the 1930s.
``People here never really had a lot,'' Burrus said. ``So when the Depression hit, they really didn't have anything to lose.''
The store offered credit to its regular customers, often taking a promise of money generated from future fishing.
``My grandfather would extend credit to folks who needed help,'' Burrus says. ``Sometimes, he'd have to take out a loan to feed his own family.''
For the Burrus clan, as for many other families on the island, life revolved around the grocery.
``At one time, there were seven (grocery) stores here in the village, all owned by the large families,'' Burrus says. ``Until I was 15, we lived above the store. The men would gather around the stove and sometimes get into arguments about politics, the war, whatever was going on. I remember my mother banging on the floor trying to get them to quiet down so we could sleep.''
His mother, Minnie, 71, denies the story. She married a childhood friend, William Zachariah ``Bill'' Burrus.
Bill Burrus served in the Coast Guard during World War II, but asthma and pneumonia forced a medical discharge. In the days following the war, veterans would come in and recount tales of clashes in the Atlantic and Pacific. Those yarns became Dale Burrus' bedtime stories.
``It was quite something for a boy,'' he said. ``Those men who had been in the Atlantic and the Pacific could tell some tales.''
They didn't need to go to war to have tales to tell, however. Hurricanes and nor'easters have paid regular visits over the years.
Dale Burrus, like most of his fellow islanders, doesn't flinch in the face of a storm.
``It's a part of life,'' he says. ``Everywhere in the world has things like that, earthquakes and all. you just have to learn to live with it.''
Allen Burrus agrees.
``In the city, folks worry about people with guns,'' Burrus says. ``In other parts of the country, they worry about tornadoes. Everybody has to worry about something.''
The most recent major storm, Hurricane Emily, hammered the island in 1993 two days after the burial of W.Z. Burrus.
``It was a tough week,'' Dale Burrus recalls.
Allen Burrus says his father worked almost until the day he died. ``People used to ask him why he didn't retire and do what he wanted. He told them, 'I get up every morning and do what I want to do anyway. Why should I retire?' ''
Dale Burrus didn't officially go on the payroll of the store until he was 25, after two years of college and four years in the Coast Guard. But he worked as a boy in the family business.
``My first job was bagging potatoes,'' Burrus says. ``We used to load them in these 100-pound bags. But my dad got the idea we'd sell more if we put them in 10-pound bags. He was a good businessman.''
Allen Burrus began work as an 8-year-old on charter fishing boats. A member of the Dare County Board of education, he says kids on Hatteras aren't taught a work ethic, they're born with it.
``Twenty years ago, Hatteras Island was a much different place,'' Allen Burrus says. ``We didn't have a lot of modern conveniences. I remember when running water first came to our house. We had wood stoves and kerosene stoves and then base heaters. We weren't taught how to work hard. You had to do it to survive.''
Sometimes, in the tough economic times wrought by storms, or bad fishing, Dale Burrus remembers, money was tight.
``We've always been on the edge. When the Food Lions and the other competition came here, it made it hard. But it's because of the loyal folks that we've been able to stay in business.''
And business has boomed with the onslaught of sport fishermen, tourists and developers, who now spend $100,000 for an oceanfront lot that sold for $1,500 when the Burrus boys were lads.
Like every kid who grows up on the island, Dale Burrus says he often thought of leaving to see the world. But even after four years in the Coast Guard and two years of college, the tug of home was stronger than the urge to travel.
``I've often thought about what it would be like if I had stayed in the Coast Guard for my career. It would be nice to get that retirement check every month. But Dad needed the help, so I came home.
``Everybody leaves here. But they eventually come back,'' he says. ``No matter where they go, Hatteras Island is home.''
Allen Burrus worked on trawlers up and down the East Coast for a few years after graduating from North Carolina Wesleyan. But, he too, wanted to come back to the grocery.
``I knew I could do better here than working on a trawl boat,'' he says. ``The money was good, but it was cold and sometimes the water was rough. It was a lot harder way to make a living.''
Many of the island's first families are still here. And while ``family values'' may be relatively new in the political dialect of America, the idea is a common, unchanging thread of life here.
``They say it takes a village to raise a child,'' says Dale Burrus, who has long been a leader in the Hatteras electric co-op, which his father helped found. ``That's the way it's always been here. People will disagree about things, but when people need help, folks pull together.''
``My dad always taught us that kindness was your cheapest commodity, and that it doesn't cost anything to be nice.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
ABOVE: Dale Burrus, left, and his brother Allen run the Burrus Red &
White Supermarket in Hatteras Village, less than a mile from the
Ocracoke Ferry Landing. Eight members of the Burrus family, ages 12
to 71, work in the store. BELOW: What the store looked like before
the turn of the century, in virtually the same place. The market has
provided groceries and gossip for generations of locals.
Graphic
SHOPPING LIST
On Sept. 16, 1876, A.J. Stowe put in his order with Moses Patterson,
a self-described ``Wholesale and Retail Dealer in Dry Goods,
Groceries, Hardware, Willow-Ware, the Celebrated States' Prison
Boots and Shoes, Furniture, Oils, Paints, Glass and Agricultural
Implements.''
Here is A.J. Stowe's shopping list:
2 Bunches Yarn at $1.05 each
Fish hooks 55 cents
1 bag Shot $2.45
19 gallons kerosene oil $5.32
49 yards calico $3.45
47 yards calico $3.41
49 yards calico $3.31
1 pair calfskin boots $6.00
3 dozen spools cotton thread $1.05
12 boxes buttons $2.16
30 pounds butter $9.30
1 lamp $1.50
TOTAL $59.09 by CNB