WILLIS-SALTER CAMP

WILLIS-SALTER CAMP

–built alongside Oak Creek

–north of the Core Banks Club

ROY WILLIS (interview with Connie Mason–Costal Voices CALO project):

RW: I think it’s still there. (referring to the Evergreens)

 We, also, me and my father and Mr. Elmer, Joe Pepper, another fellow from Stacy, and one of Mr. Elmer’s sons, Major Salter; we built a camp along the banks. 

CM: Where about was that? 

RW: It was what you might call, right across from Sea Level; the end of the road there, down where the fishhouses were at, almost straight across from that. We didn’t own the land; we just went over there and built it. When the Park Service obtained all the land, they burned our camp. So, that was the end of that. 

CM: In hind-sight they should have said that’s something we should preserve because that was the usage of the Banks. The camp was probably pretty rustic? 

RW: The best I can recall it was about 18’ long and 12’ wide. Had one front door entrance and in the back about six or seven foot we put a partition across and had two doors. We built bunk beds, three high on each side. There were six of us, my bunk was at the top bunk. 

CM: Cause you were the young guy that could climb to the top. 

RW: Yea. You could take a gas light and light a Coleman gas lantern in there that would keep that camp almost warm enough. You get up early in the morning and light the lights, we had an old kerosene stove we cooked on, you had to come out of that top bunk for the heat. 

CM: It would feel good on a day like today, wouldn’t it? 

RW: Yea. The walls weren’t very high; probably the walls weren’t over seven foot high. 

CM: Was it a flat roof building? RW: No, no. It had an A-frame on it. CM: How was it oriented? 

RW: We built it right along side Oak Creek, had a little wharf right down to the creek. You just tie your boat along side the dock set out of your boat on the wharf, walk ten of twelve feet you’re in the camp 

CM: It was on the north side of the creek? 

RW: Yea, it was on the north side of that creek, facing south. Then we built a little shed on the side of it where you could hang your boots. 

CALO Oral History Project 10-019 December 15, 2010 

ROY WILLIS 8 

CM: Did you put your decoys in there? 

RW: No, we didn’t put no decoys in there. We always kept them in a boat for bringing them back and forth. You could hang your oil skin jacket in there, raincoat, your boots. 

CM: What kinds of meals did you have over there? 

RW: The best in the world! Anything that you would eat on the Outer Banks, I guess it was from all the exercise you were getting, it always tasted better than it did anywhere else. I remember one time, we were over there crabbing and we cooked about 45 soft crabs for breakfast one morning. 

CM: Oh, my gosh. 

RW: I remember another time we were over there me and Mr. Elmer were over there by ourselves. Mr. Elmer, he didn’t do a lot of hunting, he wanted to look around the shore and find decoys or wood to make decoys. I was out in our blind one evening [bad, bad static- Roy was relaying how he was so cold in the blind and when he got back to camp Mr. Elmer had fixed a big pot of coffee and had gotten green gilled oysters and fixed a stew. Roy explained that the oyster wasn’t green but the juice it made in the stew was green] 

But I never had a better meal than that was cause I was cold, wet CM: Tired. 

RW: Tired. That was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. CM: And it stays with you today. How long ago was that? RW: Probably fifty- sixty year ago. Closer to sixty, I’d say. 

[Very bad static. Talking about the oyster stew was made.] 

CM: Did you call it the Willis Camp? 

RW: No, we did have no name for it. Just going to the camp that was it. 

CM: Just going to the camp.
Did you ever go to any of the other lodges over there? 

RW: No. Not really. [Bad static] CM: Were there a lot of camps? 

CALO Oral History Project 10-019 December 15, 2010 

ROY WILLIS 9 

RW: Yea, there were a lot of camps. I would walk by them time to time. They were used for fishing and hunting. Mr. Clarence Lewis had one right up past ours on the same creek. [Bad static] The Piner brothers, they had one to the south. We were north of the Core Banks Club and they had one south of the club. Sterling Dixon had a hunting camp and fishing camp across from Davis. Mr. Ammie Willis, he had camps over there that people would come down and they’d take them out hunting or fishing whatever they were doing. There were a lot of camps at one time strung up and down the beach. 

CM: Did the women ever go over there to the camps or was that solely a man’s territory at that time? 

RW: Well, [Bad static- they took family visitors] but that was mostly during the summer. They’d go over there and spend the night. 

CM: Facilities, like bathrooms; did you have outhouses or did you just go behind a dune? [Laughter] 

RW: No, there was no facilities. Open air! 

CM: You didn’t have any running water, so did you have to bring your water to drink? Did you use rainwater? 

RW: I think we had a barrel best I recall now. We had a barrel that caught water but we’d always carry drinking water. [Bad static] Water in the barrel wasn’t very good to 

drink or anything according how long it’s rained. We always carried water. We carried drinks: Pepsis and Cokes. 

CM: What did you take to the blind with you when you were going to stay a day? 

RW: We’d take a lard can, a can you’d use to buy lard, a 5 pound can and that was our lunch box. We’d put a sandwich or cake, whatever, a can of beans. 

CM: What kind of beans? 

RW: Mostly we ate Campbell, that’s what we’d eat during the summer when we were clamming. We’d carry a Pepsi, one of those 12 ounce Pepsis with us, a bottle and we’d put that in the water. We didn’t have any ice. We’d put that in the water to keep it half-way cool. It would get dinner time, we worked back up to where we put it at. We’d sit on the side of the skiff, open a can of beans, have a big biscuit and that was our dinner. 

CM: Sounds good. RW: It was good. 

CALO Oral History Project 10-019 December 15, 2010 

ROY WILLIS 10 

CM: I’m still amazed by the forty-five soft crabs for breakfast that’s a dream for a lot of people. 

RW: That’s something you’ll never see again. Or probably, never hear about it again. Days during the summer, we’d be mulleting. We’d come back aboard the big boat, most of the time, we’d go over from the mainland to the Outer Banks, we go in a bigger boat. My father and grandfather, they had a thirty-two foot wooden boat. We’d go over there; of course we towed the small boat behind us, the skiffs, we called them. We’d go out mulleting or clamming, sometimes during mulleting, we’d come back to the boat and fry some mullets. They were mighty good meals. Before that, we’d fry some cornbread fritters out; mullets and cornbread, that was pretty good eating. 

CM: Did your big boat have a name? 

RW: Yea, they named it the Hilton, after me, my middle name. 

CM: Who built her, do you know? 

RW: I think Mr. Ambrose built her to Atlantic. I’m not a 100% sure of that, but I’m almost positive that he’s the one that built it.