Press photo from 'The Lost Colony.'When I was almost thirteen our family travelled to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the first time. We arrived on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, so did a weather system that stalled for the week. Monday morning we awoke to a grey wet world that stayed until we departed.
My Grandmother was an Outer Banks regular and she rented a large Nag's Head cottage from the village postmaster. Mom remembers Grandpa using tractor gas to get the family to Nag's Head during the War. My younger brothers were old enough to travel well so our family was ready for new adventures on the road.
Halfway through our soggy sojurn someone suggested we take in Paul Green's 'Lost Colony.' The story is about the first attempt to plant a British settlement on Roanoke Island in 1587. Eleanor Dare, dcaughter of the colony's governor John White gave birth to the first English child in the New World and named her Virginia.
Think about it. It was in a sense more remote than the International Space Station. There was no communication with home. It took a special kind of courage to sail off into the unknown and start a family. These people were brave folks!
War with Spain delayed the colony's resupply ships and some sixty souls simply vanished. They were never seen or heard from again.
We arrived at the Waterside Theatre as another torrential rain began. They would wait thirty minutes before deciding to go ahead with the play or cancel the performance. We sat in the Volkswagen bus [Mom had her minivan before they were cool], and read aloud from a 'Space Action' comic book. Some noseless aliens were involved in a life and death struggle and Cam Remba aquired the 'Gosmic Triglor,' a device that looked like an old radio antenna that would bring peace to the galaxy.
Thirty minutes passed and the galaxy was saved but the British wouldn't be colonizing Roanoke Island in the unrelenting rain. We headed back over the bridge to our beach cottage.
No comments:
Post a Comment