happyTitle: Ocracoke
Author: Carl Goerch
Page Count: 224
Genre: Travel, Non-Fiction
Synopsis/Thoughts: This was a book I picked up on impulse while browsing at the library. I live in North Carolina, and the Outer Banks (including Ocracoke Island) are a favorite vacation spot of mine. So I was curious to see what this book (the edition I read having been published in the 1950s) had to say on the subject. It's written in a chatty, anecdotal manner, describing the island as it was at the time the book was published. Though these descriptions are now vastly outdated, they are no less charming. The author describes a place and a time the modern reader can hardly imagine, a place with no police officers, because they don't need them. Where nobody locks their doors because there are no criminals, where everybody knows each others and helps their neighbor when they are in need. Where the only entertainment is a weekly movie shown at a local hotel, and square dancing. We're told about the local legends of pirates and shipwrecks, as well as where the best fish chowder can be found.
This book made me smile, and made me wish I could go back in time to see Ocracoke Island as it was then.
