My brother Dan frying fantail shrimp, 2005. Photo by Vickie Hardee.

 

 

 

Ma-Ma (Alta Wescott Dosher) at Mammie Dozier's punch bowl, about 1950. She could whack the head of a chicken in the morning, and pour punch for the ladies in the afternoon.

Ressie Robinson Whatley (left) was a very dear friend. For years she was Auditor for Brunswick County, so you know how clever she was to hold onto that prized political plum in Brunswick County. She was a pillar of the Baptist Church and gallantly sang in the choir. She served as Treasurer for Revolution!, our bicentennial out-door musical, wisely managing its funds. She had a lively sense of humor. During my college years, when she attended meetings at the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill, we’d meet and have dinner. A cocky young man once jay-walked in front of her car on Franklin Street. Ressie drove gaily by him, and said, to no one in particular,
    “Stick it out there again and I’ll stamp Dodge on it.”
Another time we were discussing a certain fertile Southport woman who was having yet another baby.
            “Is she pregnant again!” I asked.  
            “Oh yes,” answered Ressie. “She pulps ‘em like grapes.”
            Ressie was also a fine cook, and for years baked bread to raise funds for Dosher Memorial Hospital. I include some of her recipes.

 

Shrimp pickers at Lewis Hardee's dock, 1950's. Mary Mims is
seen right. Photo courtesy of Marjorie Clemmons.

Some of the many piers that once thrust out into the Cape Fear River. The large building upper-left is the old Miller Hotel, the old Pilot Tower, and Dan Harrelson's grocery store are center, on the water skirt. The vessel in the left foreground was abandoned by Estonian refugees fleeing Communist rule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Views of the Southport waterfront early 1950's.
Photos by Art Newton.