A few weekends ago, Mike was looking for an old photo. We have a ton of photos in boxes, waiting to be organized. He was sorting through them and was putting some duds in a pile. I casually asked if there were any “good” bad photos in the group. Mike held up a photo and asked why anyone would take pictures of a few lawn chairs. I went over and smiled when I saw the photo – that wasn’t a photo of lawn chairs – it was a photo of the “reading nook” we made in a hotel the year (1993) Hurricane Emily forced us to evacuate the Outer Banks.

The vacation started off great. My sister and I drove down to Avon, NC on Saturday, did the obligatory shopping at Food Lion, ate Bubba’s fried chicken and went to relax at the beach. My (now) brother-in-law Jeff was coming down on Sunday after finishing a grant proposal he’d been working on. It was a great two days at the beach but we knew the storm might be coming. This was before we were news-obsessed – watching weather 24/7,and before wide use of cell phones etc. We just saw the weather on the nightly news. Jeff arrived Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure he even made it to the beach that day.

Monday morning arrived with the mandatory evacuation orders. The rental agency called to let us know and fire trucks went down each of the streets with a person announcing the order via a megaphone. When you rent the houses down there, you can’t just pack up and leave before a storm. There’s quite a bit of housekeeping to do – clearing out the fridge of perishable items, bringing in furniture etc. So, by the time that’s done that, everyone is leaving at the same time.

After about 5 hours of driving in an unbelievable amount of traffic, me in one car and Kathleen and Jeff in another, we ended up at a Pizza Hut in Edenton, NC, a town that under normal driving conditions is only 2 hours away from Avon.   If you look at the town’s website, the description is “on the North Carolina Inner Banks Albemarle Sound, was founded in 1712 and features 300 years of outstanding history.” Doesn’t that sound nice? And it would be if you weren’t forced there.

At the Pizza Hut, where we stopped for lunch, a nice young man allowed me to use their phone book and call around for a room. We didn’t want to get back in the cars and drive on. I called a hotel, the Habit Motel, and they said they had one room left, a double but would “put something together” so a third person could stay. True to their word, they’d made a bed for me out of chaise lounge cushions and plywood board (for support). The room itself was clean although dated. There were a few odd things – to use the phone you had to stand on the bed it was so far up the wall and there was a section of the wall that looked like a car had driven through it. They had repaired it and but not painted it the same color. All in all, it was clean, just dated.

Jeff, worn out from two days of driving, following weeks of working on that grant,  was not at his best. He thought the place was a dump. He set up the lounge chairs in the open closet area, thus creating our reading nook, the one from the picture, so he didn’t have to sit on the other furniture. When we ventured out to the tourist center, a beautiful building with a long stairway leading to the second floor, he sat at the top of the staircase in a chair, head in his hands until we told him he might not be selling the town too well with that look. He wrote in the visitor’s books “Don’t make The Habit a habit.” At one point, he made a comment like “You two may be used to staying places like this, but I’m not.” My sister and I basically laughed ourselves sick at this comment and proceeded to plan the evening events.  Some people make lemonade out of lemons, others need a shot of something in that lemonade…

We walked downtown and decided to go to the movies. The only thing playing was Surf Ninjas. Rob Schneider is in it, need I say more? The gentleman that sold us our tickets, sold us our refreshments and then told us he’d be in the theater to start the movie shortly. One man operation. We ate a delicious dinner at Golden Corral.  Tuesday, the day of the storm, we ate breakfast at Hardee’s with the other beach refuges, walked around town, shopped at Peebles for storm necessaries – cards, snacks, “dirty magazines” (as my grandmother called them) The Enquirer and the like which we read in the reading nook, and my sister and I got funky plastic watches to mark the occasion. We all hunkered down that evening for the storm, which never hit Edenton although we read later that part of the roof of the movie theater caved in for some unknown reason. Good thing we catch the Ninjas when we did.

On Wednesday, on Jeff’s request, we switched hotels to the Coach House Inn down the street. While it did allow me to sleep in a real bed, the carpet was filthy, rendering your feet black if you walked on it in bare feet. You could sit on the bed and talk on the phone though. We got word that the storm had hit the Outer Banks hard and they weren’t letting anyone back on the island yet. Honestly, I’m not sure why we thought we would get back at all. We took a walking tour of Edenton which was quite interesting following our Hardee’s breakfast. That afternoon, we headed to Elizabeth City to catch the movie “The Fugitive.”

We got back into Edenton around 8pm and I called Pizza Hut to order a pizza. The guy on the phone said it was closing in 20 minutes. Not a lot of nightlife in Edenton. I must have said something about not realizing it closed so early and the guy on the phone exclaimed “Oh my God, you are THOSE people. You are STILL here? What have you been doing? What do you want – I’ll make it – just come get it.” 

On Thursday, with the news reports filled with descriptions of the Outer Banks being covered in snakes and rats, we came to terms with the fact that we weren’t going back. I decided to head home and Kathleen and Jeff decided to go to Virginia Beach for the last few days. A vacation to remember.

Sometimes when we are together, we will retell the story of our time in Edenton. Unlike some things that you experience and think were terrible at the time but get out a laugh out of them now, I’m not sure Jeff thinks the story is funny yet. Maybe next year we should head back for our 25^th anniversary. Looks like the Pizza Hut is still there but sadly, it seems the Habit motel is gone. Good news, Carriage House Inn is still there. One can only hope new carpet has been installed.