October in Nags Head

     Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are enjoying a visit to Nags Head this week.  October has always been their favorite time of the year on the Outer Banks and they have been blessed with perfect weather ever since they arrived on Wednesday.  The 59th annual Nags Head Surf Fishing Tournament has been in full swing since Thursday and it brought back memories of when Uncle Jack once served as a judge in that venerable contest many years ago. He wrote about his experience at the time and this is what he said:


                                    It's Nice to be a Judge

If you ask Uncle Jack, one of the best things about living in a country like the U.S.A. is that almost everybody has a chance to be somebody when he grows up. You do not have to be born rich and you do not have to have a father who is a county commissioner or some other important person like that.
All you have to do is go to school and pay attention to the teachers and learn how to do those arithmetic problems where the trains start out from different places and also memorize the capitals of all the states and if you can do this you are sure to be a success. And if you can hang around long enough to graduate from high school there is almost no limit on how far you can go. Uncle Jack knows.
He has been thinking a lot this week about how lucky he was to be born in the U.S.A. because something happened to him this week that would never happen to an ordinary run-of-the-mill person like himself in most other countries. What happened was that Uncle Jack was picked to be a judge of the Nags Head Surf Fishing Tournament which starts on Thursday and goes until Saturday.
In case you do not know what this means he will explain that the judges are the people who drive up and down the beach for two days, picking up dead fish and measuring them so the scorers can figure out who won the tournament.
He should not have to tell you that this is a very important job and not everybody can get to be a judge. For one thing you have to be highly respected in your community and for another thing you have to own a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Uncle Jack is not sure which is more important but he can tell you that as soon as he bought his new secondhand Jeep they picked him to be a judge, no questions asked.
Anyway this is the highest honor Uncle Jack has ever had and he can hardly believe what has happened. Who can believe that an ordinary, average child of poor parents, born in the north woods of Wisconsin, thousands of miles from the nearest ocean, would one day grow up to become a judge of the oldest, largest and finest surf fishing tournament in Dare County?
If you ask Uncle Jack this is real proof that the American Way of Life is working just the way the Founding Fathers hoped it would.
Uncle Jack is not taking this honor lightly, either. He is doing his best to get ready so he will be able to do a good job of judging. For one thing he has sworn off all spiritual beverages until after the judging is finished because he knows how hard it is to measure fish accurately when your hands are shaking or when you have impaired your faculties with foreign substances such as Scotch whiskey.              
He knows he has to measure every fish very carefully because the outcome of the whole tournament could rest on how well he does his measuring. Also he knows he could be assaulted by some irate fisherman if he does it wrong.
Uncle Jack knows that different kinds of fish get different numbers of points so he is studying hard to learn the various kinds of fish so he does not make any mistakes that way. Yesterday he finally mastered most of the main differences between the tarpon and the flounder and he plans to keep studying right up to the time he has to start judging.
Uncle Jack does want to warn all the contestants about the new state law that says you cannot drink beer or any other spiritual beverages in a motor vehicle even when the motor vehicle is on the beach and not on a highway. He wants all the contestants to know that he is planning to keep a sharp eye out for anybody who breaks this law and he will not hesitate to report them to the police. As far as Uncle Jack is concerned beer-drinking has no place in the Nags Head Surf Fishing Tournament anyway and he knows the vast majority of the club members will back him up on that.

      The new Jennette's pier is coming along nicely. Workers were on the job even on Saturday when Uncle Jack took these pictures.  The red crane is riding on a temporary pier that will be removed after construction is completed. (Click on the pictures for larger views).

                                                  
       The permanent (hopefully) concrete pilings of the new pier can be seen here.  Mother Nature will determine how permanent they are but they look formidable.

      
 The pile-driving device is being lifted into position in this rather blurry picture.  Presumably neighbors have grown accustomed to the constant banging by now.

    
There is some talk of replenishing the beach in the vicinity of the pier but nothing has happened yet.  The last attempt to replenish the beach just south of the pier with sand from Roanoke Sound was an expensive disaster of which no sign remains, fortunately.

                                    
       Remember Papagayo and Quagmire's?  Rumor has it that these new condos that replaced the old Croatan Inn buildings are not moving very rapidly in today's economic climate and that the project is in trouble financially. There didn't seem to be much going on around here when Uncle Jack took the picture on Thursday.

                      
      Ditto for this brand new condo development on the Beach Road at the former site of the old Wright Brothers motel.  A third large development on the sound side in Nags Head south of the Tanger outlet mall is apparently in similar straits.  Too many condos and too few buyers who can get financing.  Very sad.

                                              

But hope springs eternal in the developer's heart, apparently.  These are under construction on the old Sea Holly Square shopping center property across from the Ramada Inn in Nags Head which has stood empty since the shopping center was torn down quite a few years ago.

                    Here's a front viewof one of the two new buildings. Uncle Jack is not sure what this is going to be but  the occupants will have a great view of the Ramada parking lot for sure.