On this dreary, rainy day on Goose Creek Island, I thought I would share a story by the late Eugene "Gene" Price, honored journalist, editor of the Goldsboro News-Argus. Gene found Goose Creek Island many years ago and had a "camp" at The Pondersosa, Lowland. He spent many weekends here and fell in love with our little Island. This story is from his book Folks Around Here. Enjoy.
GOOSE CREEK ISLAND – The wind whipped out of the Northeast.
The slate-gray waves of the Pamlico Sound chopped at the net floats with
foaming white teeth.
This was a time to fish nets and get back ashore, for the
wind was building and it was barely dawn.
Across the Pamlico, only the larger boats ventured out of
the mouth of the Pungo to buck the seas.
Fishing a net from a 14-foot aluminum skiff, one pays only
passing attention to the big boats, their deep-throated diesels pushing them
doggedly down the waterway toward Miami and points beyond.
But one of the boats across that morning was different.
Her bow was high and she sliced through the waves with
dignity. Even from two miles one could see she was mahogany and white – and regal.
“Old wealth. She looks like old wealth,” I whispered to Clip Davis who was helping with
the net. And he watched with silent appreciation.
We dropped the nets, fired up the little outboard engine and
headed out to intercept her for a closer look.
One just doesn’t see many like that, though thousands ply the waterway
across the Pamlico each year.
"She’s pretty enough to the be the Sequoia,” I shouted
to Clip above the engine noise as we bounced toward the rendezvous.
As we closed, the skipper of the big boat looked our way.
We waved, pointed to his fine boat and applauded – and then
saluted. The skipper saluted in return.
She passed. And the name on her stern flashed above the bubbling
wake: “Sequoia.”
The Sequoia! The President’s yacht!
I crossed her wake and grabbed for the camera and twisted
the throttle on the outboard, trying to catch up to get a picture.
But we were a little boat and the seas, this far out, were
heavy.
The Sequoia, her noble bow parting the seas move on out of
range.
We waved again, but her captain was looking only ahead…to
the red and green buoys that marched out of sight down the waterway toward
Florida.
“That was the President’s yacht!” We said it almost together
from our little boat.
Only it no longer was the President’s yacht – or the
American people’s yacht.
It had been for many years – since Mr. Roosevelt and Mr.
Truman and General Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy and Mr. Nixon and Mr. Ford…
We looked with wonder at the fine mahogany afterdeck where
the great leaders of more than half a century had relaxed and socialized and
pondered the imponderables…
But this day, she no longer was the President’s yacht.
President Carter had sold the Sequoia to save money. She went
on the block and was sold as a tourist attraction. That hadn’t worked out. And
like a great – but old- fire horse, she had been sold again, to pull yet
another ice wagon.
No!
Not the Sequoia!
A mile and half away now, she altered her heading slightly due
south. Soon she would disappear into the narrow waterway that would take her
past Hobucken and Oriental and Morehead City and points on down the coast.
But her noble bow was proud and she would be something apart
from and above all she passed.
She was the Sequoia. A part of our great American heritage.
No one could buy that.
The Sequoia seemed to know it.
