Albemarle Tradewinds February 2020 Web Final

The Albemarle Loop’s Focus Is on Growth
By Claude Milot
The Albemarle Loop, an organization formed to
promote the towns and marinas on the Albemarle
Sound, launched in 2015 with six members. That
number has now grown to 13: four commercial marinas
(Albemarle Plantation Marina, The Pelican Marina, The
51 House at Wharf Landing, and Yacht Doc @ Cypress
Cove); five non-profits (Columbia Municipal Marina,
Hertford Bay Marina, Edenton Harbor, Plymouth Landing
Marina, and Elizabeth City Mariners’ Wharf); and four
gateway marinas (Alligator River Marina, Shallowbag
Bay Marina, Waterside Marina in downtown Norfolk, and
the Dismal Swamp Visitor Center.
While the Albemarle Loop’s promotions welcome local
and regional visitors and tourists, they are primarily
aimed at boaters, including the thousands who migrate
each spring and fall along the Intracoastal Waterway
(ICW). Results are encouraging. Statistics from Albemarle
Plantation Marina, for instance, show substantial
growth. From just a handful in 2015, the marina has had
70 visitors in 2019, a 27 % increase over the previous
year.
The towns on the Albemarle Sound have plenty to offer
visitors throughout the year, like festivals, museums,
concerts, sporting events, art fairs, and even a Civil War
re-enactment. The Albemarle Loop organization promotes
all of these with brochures it distributes throughout
the region and all along the ICW, on its comprehensive
website www.albemarleloop.com, plus advertising in
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Management Solutions
regional and national boating publications. Most
exciting is the Loop’s Facebook page www.facebook.
com/AlbemarleLoop with over 600 active followers and
its membership in several groups that can reach up to
100,000 people. One of these groups reaches paddling
and kayaking enthusiasts who are very active in rivers
and creeks around the Sound and whose adventures will
receive special attention in the coming months.
In 2019 the Loop added an Oyster Roast and a Pig
Roast, both sold-out events. It also promoted Pocosin
Arts in Columbia, Dragboat racing in Plymouth, and the
consolidated ASSA regatta, among many others. The
new year promises to be even more exciting as more
and more visitors, tourists, and boaters discover the
many riches the Albemarle Sound has to offer.
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My First Two Days in the Army (or Holden Caulfield in the Military) Part 1
by Bernie Walker
The ink on my Bachelor of Social Science Degree I
got on a Sunday in June of ‘67 was still drying when
I got my draft notice on the following Tuesday. It was for
the pre-induction physical at Fort Holabird, which was the
blue-collar section of Baltimore County, named Dundalk,
Maryland. Holabird was a hodge-podge of old World War
I buildings held together with lousy paint and bonding
glue. Its two claims to fame were- 1) President Eisenhower
had been its Commander in the 1920s. 2) later,
Chuck Colson and some other Watergate prisoners were
kept there
As I looked at my draft notice, a bad feeling hit me in the
pit of the stomach. The war in Vietnam in 1967 had the
domestic support of most of its citizens unless you lived
in Greenwich Village or some other outliner community of
artists. Still, men were needed because the first draftees
in 1965 had finished their tours of duty. The Draft had
been a leftover from World War II, an obligation most of
us understood was the trade-off for living in the land of
the free.
Having to register at age eighteen and report every
address change as well as every change in marital status
or schooling until age twenty-six seemed like being
Jewish in Nazi Germany sometimes and other times like
George Orwell’s book, 1984. Also, the military had sent
some highly mixed signals about “your obligation” to us
teenagers during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Korean War, which lasted just about three years,
had almost 35,000 of our men killed, not counting all
the other casualties. Some of the fightings were as
bad as that in places like Stalingrad or Tarawa. A lot of
the top brass railed about the quality of our soldiers to
smokescreen the fact the military had gone downhill to
bilge level under their watch. Some men hadn’t even
been to Basic Training and were issued junk radios,
bazookas that couldn’t stop tanks, and so on. One army
veteran said a company of Marines who landed with
him chrome-plated M-1’s. Later, a Marine sergeant got
six “boot” trainees drowned at Paris Island, and people
leaped to defend the honor of the Corps. Still, you didn’t
hear too many defenders for the “boots” who died.
I was twelve years old when we went to visit my father’s
brother at the massive V.A. hospital complex in Roanoke,
Va. The human debris of war there was gut-wrenching.
“Unk’s” doctors fixed his body after he had been burned
at Pearl Harbor, but they couldn’t set his mind, so he
stayed there doing supervised maintenance and grounds
work. To compound the mixed image we got, my brother,
who is eight years older than me, and his friends took
six months to active duty in the National Guard and
Reserve time for six years. They all came back with
tales of harassment, miserable food and quarters, sleep
deprivation, and so-called discipline that resembled what
inmates got in German concentration camps. All of this
happens near the dead-end towns in the South. At this
time, the lowest paid soldiers of all 154 countries
in the World who had standing militaries were those in the United
States. The fifty dollars a month that you got as a private didn’t go
very far. You had to pay state and federal taxes on it, and you were
required to serve one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer
on active duty. If you had to move out of state or desired to
attend night school, it was an administrative nightmare to change
status.
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14 Albemarle Tradewinds February 2020 albemarletradewinds.com