My last day in Morehead

We call our town "Morehead"  the way New Yorkers call their city "New York"  — "City" is understood. Yesterday was my last full day here in the town where I was born and grew up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be a year before I come back for another visit. Here are five photos I took yesterday afternoon.

One of Morehead's oldest neighborhoods is called Conchs Point. (I would have put an apostrophe somewhere in that name.) My Aunt Alena lived over there for years, with her husband George Snooks. Do you know what a conch is? Or how to pronounce the word?

Here's another photo that I took at Conchs Point. It's where the street ends, at the edge of a salt marsh.

The old and the new: the local people used to make their living or ensure their subsistence by fishing for conchs, crabs, small fish, or shrimp using flat-bottomed skiffs to ply the waters. Nowadays, outsiders come in and build monster mansions on what used to be farmland.

One of the main residential streets in Morehead is Evans Street, which runs west from the waterfront (with its fishing boats and seafood restaurants) for 35 or so blocks out to what used to be the edge of town. I grew up on Evans Street at 14th Street. The house above was the home of Ed and Dorothy Oglesby, with their five children. They were all distant cousins of ours, I think, and our friends.

Toward its western end, Evans Street again runs along the shore of Bogue Sound, and is lined with many impressive live oak trees. These are at Evans and 28th Streets. The houses are bigger over there, and many of them are summer homes.