Sunday, June 7, 2009

Miss Sarah, the colonial housewife

Look at this, the most requested outreach from the museum at Onslow county is: Miss Sarah, the colonial housewife. Something must have occurred during the Revolution there.

I spent many summers in Onslow county. My uncle went in with three other volunteer firemen. They collected their old tobacco barns still standing in urbanizing Wake county and the four of them built a beach house at Surf City. The rooms were big, the porch was big and the kitchen was big. No air conditioner but in those days we opened all the screened windows and the ocean breezes were enough. The girls room had four bunk beds, so eight in all. We had a regular room for boys and apparently, the bath and showers were enough or we didn't take showers beyond the one under the house where the cars were parked.

The things I remember the most about going there with my cousins, which we did often, were number one, the water was filled with blue crabs and two, there were lots of young marines.

The crabs were not so bad so as to continually step on them, but enough to always find one if you wanted it. That was pretty interesting. There was a special place to catch them on the intercoastal waterway. Once we did that, caught quite a mess, and boiled them alive for dinner, which is what you do, you know. I learned not to eat the triangle part in the back of the crab.

The marines were somewhat more numerous, but we generally only observed them. My cousins and I were all long-hair fans at the time.

Were there marines of some sort during the Revolutionary war?

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