Blue Highways: Ocean City, Maryland

Unfolding the Map

Amidst the development of Ocean City, just recently ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, we stop for a moment to think about development decisions.  Just why do, or should, we build on barrier islands?  That's my question for the day, explored below.  Locate Ocean City by checking out the Littourati Blue Highways map.

Book Quote

"Near Ocean City, Maryland, the shore became a six-lane strip of motels and condominiums tied together by powerlines.  The playground of Baltimore and Washington."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 13

Aerial view of Ocean City, Maryland. Photo by Tex Jobe at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Ocean City, Maryland

I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to write with the Ocean City theme, given the shortness of the quote and its otherwise unexciting information, until I looked at Ocean City on Google Earth.  The recent landfall of Hurricane Sandy, only a category 1 hurricane on the 5 point Saffir-Simpson Scale, underscored the fragility of Ocean City and other developed areas along barrier islands.  A barrier island is basically a spit of sand, built up by tidal action, that is separated by shallow waters from the mainland.

Barrier islands have served as a much needed bulwark against such storms as Sandy, and even more powerful storms.  As a hurricane moves toward land, its rotation and energy pushes a tremendous volume of water in front of it, much like a bulldozer pushes dirt.  This surge can be augmented by tides, so that the surge will be higher if the hurricane comes ashore at high tide than it would be if the surge comes ashore at low tide.

Barrier islands, as the first pieces of land that a storm surge hits, weaken the force of the surge and spare the mainland from the main force of the water.  Buildings that are on the mainland behind barrier islands may thus get spared the main brunt of the most damaging element, water, and therefore are much more likely to survive with little or no damage.

So why, might you ask, have we built up populated areas on the very places that get the main brute force of hurricanes?

The answer is money and politics.  Barrier islands are beachfront property, and developers find beachfront property prime areas to develop with condos overlooking the water, restaurants, luxury hotels, and other high-priced items to draw tourists, especially well-heeled ones from the nearby metropolises.  As development happens, and people begin to buy their summer condos and vacation homes, the less-wealthy arrive to fill the jobs at the restaurants and hotels and other service industries.  Sometimes, before you know it, a municipality has been created or enhanced in places that appear to be mini-paradises.

You've heard of many of these places.  South Padre Island, Texas.  Galveston, Texas.  Atlantic City, New Jersey.  In a few weeks, I'll be heading to Sarasota, Florida where part of the city consists of development along Siesta and Longboat Keys.  Tourists flock to these places for the mix of sun, sand, water and amenities and wealthier people buy houses along the water to enjoy the boating and to have a home-away-from-home.  I'm not suggesting that these places are going to go away...yet...

In 1900 the city of Galveston had one of the largest ports in the country which competed in importance with New York and New Orleans.  A city of 37,000 people had grown on this narrow spit of sand when the storm known as the Great Hurricane of 1900 hit.  Years of surviving other storms had convinced residents that they would never need fear any storms, and they had resisted building a proposed seawall to protect the city.  Galveston Island, only 8 and 1/2 feet high at its maximum, was completely inundated by an estimated 17 foot storm surge which tore buildings from their foundations and washed them into Galveston Bay behind.  Anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 people died as a direct result from the storm, either from the storm itself or being buried for days under wreckage.  As a result, the glory days of Galveston passed, and though remnants of it are left, it has never regained its lost glory.

We may still ask the question, as people still clean up from our modern-day Hurricane Sandy, only a week or so distant in the past as I write this post, which ripped through the barrier-island city of Ocean City and caused widespread flooding and damage.  Why do we develop barrier islands?  After all, these places when hit sustain millions and billions of dollars in damages.  The resulting effects take their toll on all of us.  Insurance rates rise as claims are filed.  Taxes go to emergency relief and other programs that create stresses on federal, state and local governments.  People do not help themselves, refusing evacuation orders and then flooding hospitals with injuries that places stresses on health care.  Disease outbreaks are always a potential problem in the aftermath of hurricanes.  The latest report I've heard from Hurricane Sandy is the fear that unscrupulous people will refurbish hurricane-damaged vehicles and flood the used car market without revealing that they are storm-damaged cars.

I remember after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans (not on a barrier island but dependent on natural features such as the extensive, and disappearing, system of bayous and wetlands to blunt hurricanes as they approach), many people in the U.S. asked why should the the country continue to provide funding and relief to a place that exists below sea level and is likely to be hit by hurricanes.  Notwithstanding that New Orleans is one of our oldest and most historically significant cities, and that many people who live there have known no other place in their lives - it is their home - I think it is a fair question.  But if we are willing to ask that question, we should also be willing to ask the question of barrier island development.  Why should the U.S. continue to allow development when we know that hurricanes will scour these islands clean every so often?  For that matter, we should ask the question whenever there is development in areas that are subject to natural disaster.  Why should we allow farming and towns in known floodplains?  Should we keep allowing development in Tornado Alley when we know that tornadoes cause widespread damage there?  Why should we allow cities to be built along active fault lines that will occasionally rupture and cause widespread devastation?  Why should development occur in the shadows of volcanoes that will eventually erupt?

If we are willing to understand that along with benefits there will occasionally be costs in lives and property, as well as more diffuse costs in services and health, and we are willing to accept these costs, then we should build away.  But we should be aware that there will be costs, as nature every so often tragically reminds us.

Musical Interlude

In the 1960s, Tom Rush recorded Wasn't That a Mighty Storm, an old spiritual that may be about the Great Hurricane of 1900 that hit Galveston.  The song could easily apply to wherever hurricanes hit barrier islands. The footage of the destruction of Galveston in the accompanying video was filmed by none other than Thomas Edison.

If you want to know more about Ocean City

Maryland Coast Dispatch (newspaper)
Ocean City Chamber of Commerce
Ocean City Convention and Visitors Bureau
Town of Ocean City
Wikipedia: Ocean City

Next up: Crisfield, Maryland

Blue Highways: Abbeville, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapHappy New Year!!!  In this January 1, 2011 post, we stop for some oysters in Abbeville with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), and reflect on whether disasters, human- and nature-made, will lead to the end of the oyster industry in Acadiana and take with them a unique culture and cuisine.  Read on, and taste these morsels with us!  And click on the thumbnail at right to see where on the map, and where in our journey, Abbeville is located.

Book Quote

"My last chance at Cajun food was Abbeville, a town with two squares: one for the church, one for the courthouse. On the walk at Black's Oyster Bar a chalked sign: FRESH TOPLESS SALTY OYSTERS. Inside, next to a stuffed baby alligator, hung an autographed photo of Paul Newman, who had brought the cast of The Drowning Pool to Black's while filming near Lafayette. Considering that a recommendation, I ordered a dozen topless ("on the halfshell") and a fried oyster loaf (oysters and hot pepper garnish heaped between slices of French bread). Good enough to require a shrimp loaf for the road."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 14

Black's Oyster Bar in Abbeville, Louisiana. William Least Heat-Moon ate here on his way through town. Photo at nssf04's photostream at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host site.

Abbeville, Louisiana

One last Cajun meal, one last batch of oysters.  When LHM went through Abbeville and stopped at Black's Oyster Bar, I’m sure the thought never crossed his mind that oysters, which seemed so plentiful along with crawfish and shrimp, would quite possibly become a commodity that would be one day difficult to find.

Elsewhere in this blog I opined about how I love oysters.  I wrote about getting them on the half shell.  I may have mentioned that one of the best things to do is make your own oyster sauce – a little horseradish combined with some Tabasco or Louisiana Hot Sauce and you have yourself a bit of a kick to put on them.  Then, you put the shell to your lips, tip your head back, and let them slide with the hot sauce right on down.  Whether you chew them, or just let them go down your throat alive, they’re all good.

I may have also written that two fried delicacies that practically made me see God involved oysters.  The garlic-oyster po-boy, served in some fine New Orleans establishments but made particularly well by Liuzza’s by the Track just off Esplanade Avenue, is so good that I could literally eat one every day.  I’d weigh 300 pounds by now if I did, but they are that tasty that I wouldn’t care.  I could be having a coronary because of arterial sclerosis caused by too many garlic oyster po-boys, and if I were clutching my heart with a bit of one in my mouth, I’d consider it my honor to have died that way.

But the best, most wonderful oyster dish I had was something that even I had trouble envisioning until I tasted it.  Fried oysters wrapped in bacon.  Yes, it’s true.  Fried oysters taste like heaven, and then wrap some bacon around them, (because everything tastes better with bacon, right?) and you have a heavenly treat that’s a major sin to eat.  After eating one of those get out your rosary, because you need to do penance right there…and consign yourself to hell if you eat a whole meal of them.  I saw the light and never looked back after that meal.

I don’t revisit these things just to remember.  I revisit them because frankly, with hurricanes and with large oil spills, I fear for the fishing industry on the Louisiana coast.  Oyster beds that have been harvested for decades were put in danger by these events.  Shrimping businesses passed down through generations are in trouble.  These are major economic engines for Louisiana, particularly Cajuns, and a major reason that tourists go to New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana.  They are in mortal danger.  I want to go back and have my shrimp gumbo and my oyster po-boys.  I want future generations to be able to experience these delights.  LHM says that somewhere in Louisiana there has to be a bad chef but he never found one.  I know that from living in Louisiana, you have to go out of your way to find bad food there.  I know that there will be adaptation and renewal, and yet I worry about a culture, a cuisine and a way of life that could be gone within a generation.

I will be back in New Orleans in March.  I will stay with good friends and find good food – the best things that Louisiana has to offer.  And I will hope that these wonderful aspects of Louisiana that are unique to the United States, that make our rapidly homogenizing country a little more interesting, will be around for a while, and hopefully for a long time.  "Laissez les bontemps roulet," goes the French saying – let the good times roll.  I’m planning to take as much advantage of these cultural gems for as long as I can, and will by eating gumbo and oysters, dance to some Cajun music, and wash it all down with an Abita Amber or a cold Dixie.  Laissez le bontemps roulet, and let them live long!

If you want to know more about Abbeville

Abbeville's "5000 egg" giant omelette celebration
Black's Oyster Bar review
City of Abbeville
VermilionToday (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Abbeville

Next up:  Kaplan, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Manteo, North Carolina

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe've gone from Columbia, Missouri to an East Coast barrier island at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.  That's a long way, and yet we're still not even close to finishing our round the country trip.  Click on the map to get your bearings, and read my musings on places being unique.

Book Quote

"'The sea never forgets where it's been, and it's been over that land many times.  We haven't had a major hurricane in nearly twenty years, when we used to have a hard blow every few years.  New people don't know that.  They come in and see open beach and figure they've found open land.  But the Banks aren't ordinary islands, and that's why they've been left alone.  People didn't used to build much they couldn't afford to see washed away, because sooner or later most most things out there get washed away.  I know -- I've lived there.  It's always been a rough place.  Land pirates, sea pirates.  Blackbeard was killed down at Ocracoke where my family comes from.  One of my ancestors was on the Arabian ship that wrecked and spilled the Banks ponies that used to run wild.'" 

Unnamed man in Manteo, North Carolina
Quoted in Blue Highways: Part 2, Chapter 8

 Street in Manteo, North Carolina

Manteo, North Carolina

Reading up on the Outer Banks, where Manteo is located, I find myself intrigued by its history and its culture.  It is a place set apart from the rest of the United States geographically and culturally, though historically it may be one of the most important places.  Reading William Least Heat-Moon's account of going to Manteo, and then Wanchese and Fort Raleigh National Historical Park, just the cadence and pattern of speech that he captures suggests something a little different about the place.

One thing that intrigues me is that it evidently is a place where some say that the speech is possibly very close to that of Elizabethan England.  I am really fascinated by accents.  My wife likes to joke that I immediately fall in love with women who have some sort of accent, and I guess it is really true.  For me, the accent sets a person apart, suggests different experiences and places other than the ones I know, and I suppose also that women with accents call to my mind the exotic and maybe even the erotic.  I don't understand it, but it's probably best I don't try too hard.

If you love Shakespeare and his plays, it cannot help but be of interest that the people who live on the Outer Banks may speak a language that is the closest we will ever hear to Shakespeare's time.  Is it possible that if one were to secretly listen to two young lovers on the Outer Banks today, one would see shades of two star-crossed lovers on a balcony in the Globe Theater in 15th century England?

My experience with living in a culturally unique place that gets battered by hurricanes every so often was when I lived in New Orleans.  Of course, New Orleans is a city and the Outer Banks are islands with small towns.  But in a lot of respects, they are similar.  They both have a sizable part of their economies that depend on the sea and fishing.  Both, for much of their history, were disconnected from the rest of the country by their geography.  The Outer Banks for centuries could only be reached by boat, and New Orleans sits surrounded by difficult-to-traverse wetlands, swamps and marshes.  New Orleans developed a culture and language that was distinct from the rest of the United States, and I imagine the Outer Banks have as well.  In New Orleans, it really doesn't matter what's going on in the rest of the country - what matters are the things that happen in New Orleans.  The Outer Banks are probably similar.

And of course, there are the hurricanes.  Both areas are very vulnerable.  Both sit along likely paths of storms.  Both are vulnerable to the erosive effects of both natural origin and of human activity.  Both have borne the brunt of hurricanes recently.  Of course, Katrina and Rita battered New Orleans and Louisiana a few years ago, and just within the past month of writing this post, Hurricane Earl brushed the Outer Banks, not scoring a direct hit but bringing rain, wind and flooding.  Both also depend on the Army Corps of Engineers to build both protective defenses and to help control the damage.  In the case of New Orleans, the Corps may have made some major mistakes that may have contributed to the flooding.  In the case of the Outer Banks, they have been called in to fill channels created by direct hits by hurricanes.

I told my wife we should try to visit the Outer Banks.  She informed me that she will attend a conference in Asheville, North Carolina next year, and suggested I meet her and we make the trip.  Her conference will be in October, right in the middle of hurricane season.  Maybe I'll get to see all aspects of the Outer Banks that make them so intriguing.

If you want to know more about Manteo

Elizabethan Gardens
North Carolina Aquarium at Manteo
Outer Banks of North Carolina
Outer Banks Sentinel (newspaper)
Town of Manteo
Wikipedia: Manteo
Wikipedia: Outer Banks

Next up: Wanchese, North Carolina