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youth, bloody and gray-white, whose leg had been ripped out with a fish knife....
But that was a long time ago, as time is measured now.  Fifteen years and maybe more than that.  Since then the Coast Guard has acquired wings and the Navy has dismantled its winged maternity ward.  There are doctors here and there along the Outer Banks, notably at the Point of the Cape, where Leighton Avner shepherds a family of 200 youths and has time beside to get around to civilian emergencies before they become emergencies.
And now, since Dave Driskill loads frozen steers into the hold of a winged freight car, the shadow of wings on the yellow sand doesn't terrify anybody.  After all, it's nothing but the grocery wagon headed for the camp at Rodanthe, or hidden away in Buxton Woods, or set down starkly between two dunes on Ocracoke Island.  People know the guttural roar of the Hornet, and the yellow wings of the Fairchild.
If the wings are not yellow, and the roar is less throaty, they know that instead of three or four sections of frozen steer or some other stuff that would spoil long before a truck or a boat could bring it from the Island; if the wings are dark red, they know that Dave has aboard someone who aims to fish off the Cape or out the Inlet.  That, or some returning native who is impatient to be back down here.
Nobody ever shivers now when the shadow of wings flicks them.  Airplanes have become friendly things, neighborly things.  Even the great hosts of gray ships that roar southward to maneuvers and north again, these are friendly things.  They waggle their wings when they pass above a village, just like the flying grocery wagon waggles its wings when it passes over.  Even the great Flying Fortress setting out on its mission to a stricken people in South America, past to salute The Monument for good luck-flying people are still a little, a good deal, superstitious-and dips its wings.
Wings are not any longer portents of grim happenings along the Outer Banks.  They are neighborly things, more neighborly, even, than the wings of endless flocks of geese, of gulls and of ducks whose mottled shadows fleck the sands, and whose honkings in the aggregate can drown out the roar of even the engines of the mercy-bent Flying Fortress.  Only the geese mistrust the shadow of wings in these times.  They just don't like any wings but their own....
And that is how it has come to pass that, down the Banks, they have heard with such enthusiasm that there is to be an airline down there, ships that fly on a regular schedule, that make the whole length of the Outer Banks from The Monument to Beaufort Inlet in less time than an hour.  The enthusiasm down under the Cape is-well, it would be something for people who live along the proposed airline that will bisect the State from Norfolk to Knoxville to contemplate-and emulate.
Regular airline traffic is on the verge of reality, a line connecting Roanoke Island with Beaufort-Morehead on the south, reducing the travel time between these points from 14 hours by automobile or bus, and longer by boat, to less time than an hour, and fetching mail and express down and carrying it
[[Image]]  Wings Over Hatteras.  Driskill's cabin Stinson, made necessary since the Bankers are no longer afraid of the shadow of wings on the sand, circles the tallest lighthouse in the world.

and so they took off and flew around South America, and then around most of North America, and were brought down by something that has since been named The Depression.
Things like that have not happened very often lately.  But they are remembered.  Flying past there the other day on one of the experimental flights of the new airline, Driskill pointed out the capacious hangar build to house the great Bellanca until they were ready to be off to circle the nearer continents.  All this is set down because it is pertinent to the fact that Driskill came back.
Four years ago, when the National Park Service undertook to save the Outer Banks between the Virginia Line and Ocracoke Inlet from complete disintegration, they brought a thousand men down here and set them up in five work camps, ranging from Currituck Light to Ocracoke, and this side of Arctic Circle they could not have set up five camps in more remote, more inaccessible places....It's a two-day journey from the end of the nearest bus line to the camp hidden in the woods at Buxton.
When men work they eat, and a thousand men can do a lot of eating when their appetites have been whetted by such winds as swirl around the lighthouse at the Point of the Cape.  And there isn't much sense in expecting them to eat wholly out of tin cans.  They have to have fresh meat and fresh vegetables.  Getting it to them seemed an insuperable matter until Clarke Stratton, the youthful fellow from t'other side of the Mississippi river who superintends the project-now become the National Searchore-came across an unused Fairchild freighter in some government depot.
Maybe he had been reading the magazines about flocks of airplanes that fly between remote gold mines and bases of supply.  Anyhow he

country, didn't need to be asked a second time if he would become skipper of a flying grocery wagon.
III.
Driskill's log-book would tell an improbably tale of tonnage and of flying hours down the Banks, and nowhere is there a line that tells of any minor disaster.  It is one perfect flying country in the world.  There is a landing field somewhere

it, for all they  jettisoned most of their established notions of touring while Toby Tillet was bringing us across on the Oregon Inlet Ferry.
One vehicle of the expedition had missed the ferry, being sleep-ridden that morning, and the ferry just can't wait all day.  We had gone on without them.  Stopping here and there while they marveled at three acres of Canada geese who blinked sol-

at the crown of the tallest lighthouse in the world.  Far off there was the thin end exhaust of an airplane and in a little it was abreast of us.  Its wings waggled and after a little it circled back....Mrs. Faber said, again incredulous, "Why, it isn't going to land is it?  They don't land just because you wave at them, do they?..."  She was just plain thrilled.

bleached and hidden in the sand.  The ghosts of men who died in them no longer haunt the dunes, and so tragedy is not there any longer, but there is still something grim about it when you look down at the stark ribs of a ship there in the sand.  There is not, up here, any escaping them.  Not a mile in all the reach of the Outer Banks is clear of its wreckage, and once these ships went

of this country's story.
On the ground there in the sand when you are faring southward in an automobile, it is sort of game, a hopeful game-to see how far away you can pick up the lighthouse.  From Little Kinnakeet-where there used to be a village and there is not any more-is good seeing.  Up here you can see it from Rodanthe, and you begin to climb a little.  Instinctively, I suppose, as ships at sea veer searward when

shore."  By now the Bankers have begun to think of it as that, to feel the name, a name that, somehow, has security in it, security laboriously won from the sea by men's hands, hands that were strong because the flying grocery wagon has not failed them ever and-what's more-has made this winged thing which was born here a symbol of a new neighborliness with the world up yonder in the yellow haze that hangs always above the banks.

[[Image]] There is no escaping the grim romance of the seashore.  This set out to be just a picture of the dragline in the foreground, but the dot in the line of the second wave of the surf is the boiler of the "Sheridan" lost in one of the sea's worst tragedies.

Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico Does Year Round Job Without Fanfare
Continued From Page One.
coast guardsmen in the cutter's 16 foot speed boat or standard 20-foot motor launch.  Thus far, all of them have been brought in without loss of life.  For heavier duty in the wounds, the Pamlico is equipped also with 26-foot and 19-foot surfboats.
Some of the cutter's work here is educational.  As Lieutenant S. F. Gray, commanding officer, explained, "We try to get kids to come ashore when a squall is coming up by waving them in.  We try to teach proper handling of sail and row boats when we sight them in apparent inexperienced hands."
Probably the busiest two weeks the Pamlico and her crew every experienced were those following the September, 1933, hurricane which lashed the Eastern North Carolina coast.  While part of the crew in motor launches delivered telegrams, transporting laborers and other citizens and supplies from New Bern to Bridgeton while the mile long span, swept away in the storm, was being restored, other members of the crew searched for boats rolled on high and dry land by the abnormally high tide that accompanied the storm.
One boat, for instance, drifted from New Bern across Trent River and far inland over a 10-foot embankment. Members of the crew felled trees, laid rollers on supporting timbers and rolled the boat back into the water.  A day or two later, the Pamlico's assistance files show, she freed a tug with five foot draft blown hard aground in 31/2 feet of water.  
Evidence of the dependence coastal residents have placed in the Pamlico was contained in a letter received by her commanding officer three days after the September, 1933, hurricane.  Coming from Sea Level, a small fishing community in Carteret County, the letter asked, "I am writing to ask you if you will try to get my boat for me.  My husband and sons were drowned in the storm, and I have no one to help me."  Of course the cutter did what she could, although no report of assistance accompanies the letters in her files. 
Several days later the Pamlico, in response to a request, freed a lumber barge belonging to the Waters-Steir Wood Products Company of Washington, N. C., and blown aground in the storm.  The cutter's commanding officer received this letter of appreciation from the company:
"Will say if all branches of the federal service were as prompt as yours, everything would certainly be running on more even keel.  Your men certainly worked very faithfully and did just as little damage as possible to the boat.  They certainly understood their business and did their duty well."
Recovering bodies of youths or seamen drowned in North Carolina's waters is another job the Pamlico pursues faithfully.  Sometimes its hooks locate the victims, sometimes they fail, but the Pamlico stands ready to try again on call.
Four weeks ago, a CCC youth was drowned in the Pamlico River at Washington.  The cutter spent three days in a futile search for his body, abandoned the hunt but returned a week later to try again.  The body was recovered that time.
Four years ago a member of the Pamlico's crew rescued a child who had fallen into a fish pond here.  The coast guardsman, passing the pond, chanced to see the child lean over the rail and topple into the shallow water.  The guardsman waded into the pond, pulled out the youth.  Although no resuscitation was necessary, it was believed that without the prompt action of a man who knew his business and how to act quickly, efficiently and calmly as coast guardsmen, the child might have drowned.
The Pamlico's duties are varied, although one of them-combatting rum running-went out with prohibition.  But it still answers to almost every  Federal Department in the navigable waters of North Carolina-Pamlico and Albermarle sounds, Neuse, Bay, Pungo, Alligator, Chowan, Pasquotank and North rivers and the Inland Waterway canals.
As all other Coast Guard vessels, the Pamlico is under the Navy Department in time of war and the Treasury Department in time of peace.  She is empowered to enforce all federal laws upon navigable waters, assist ships in distress, protect life, enforce and aid in enforcing customs and revenue laws, afford medical aid to fishermen and sailors aboard ships, collect and compile statistics on marine disasters and enforce navigation and motor boat laws.
Under the Commerce Department, she is entrusted with enforcement of navigation and fishing laws, promoting safety on waters in marine parades and yacht regattas.  It is under this department that recently the cutter dispatched a group of guardsmen in a motor launch to stop every power driven boat and inspect its numbers, determine if it had proper running lights, life preservers, fire extinguishers and otherwise compiled with regulations of the Commerce Department.
Under the Labor Department the Pamlico enforces immigration laws, and on presidential order is called upon to suppress armed expeditions and cooperate with the Red Cross in emergencies.
And tat is not all.  The Coast Guard code says:  "While carrying out its law enforcement and other duties, the Coast Guard renders all practicable assistance to any person or thing that lies within its sphere of action....It shall build up in every community it operates a reputation of pleasant and cooperative relations."
In New Bern and the area that Pamlico operates, the Coast Guard does just that.  Whenever there is a parade, the cutter crew marches.  And her officers freely  make chapel talks in the schools on request.
For 32 years the Pamlico and her crew have so served the North Carolina coast.  Built at Wilmington, Del, at a cost of $67,750 under authorization of Congress, January 12, 1905, the Pamlico was christened by Mrs. Appie Caho of New Bern when commissioned on July 26, 1907.  Although the Pamlico has had several major overhaulings, she is in substantially the same condition today as she was when launched.  Her beam is 30 feet and her displacement 455 tons.
Although equipped with two guns, they are seldom fired, but watch out if you ever encounter a member of the Pamlico crew in small arms shooting.  The crew holds five "highest merit award" placques for small arms competition in the Coast Guard, winning them in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936-37, and 1937-38.  It also has a second place placque for competition in the Coast Guard races sponsored by the Havre de Grace Yacht Club in 1931.
Practically all the older officers in the Coast Guard have at one time or another served aboard the Pamlico. Principal among them is Commandant Rear Admiral Russell R. Waesche.  Lieutenant Gray, the Pamlico's present commanding officer, came up through the ranks from the Coast Guard Academy at New London, Conn., from which he was graduated 11 years ago this May.  He has been executive officer on the cutter Yamacraw, served three years shore duty in Chicago where he represented the Coast Guard at the World's Fair, been in charge of the St. Mary's River patrol on the Canadian border and served two years each at Boston and Norfolk.
Several times in the past five years persistent rumors that the Pamlico would be decommissioned were heard both in New Bern and Washington.  Each time coastal residents flooded Congressmen and the Coast Guard with protests, and the Pamlico is still here.  Some day she will have to go, but it will be only over the strong opposition of coastal residents who will expect the Coast Guard to provide them with another cutter just as good a servant as the Pamlico has been.
TRAILERS BECOMING SHORTER IN MOVIES
Hollywood, Marh 25.-(AP)-There seems to be news for moviegoers in Tom Baily's informal report that the average length of trailers is 100 feet less than a year ago.
Baily heads a company here which  makes most of Hollywood's trailers (400 a year) for most of the country's theaters.  He has been campaigning for years for shorter trailers and finally has got them down to 150 feet.  That is less than three minutes' running time.
Baily says that with a good script (oh, indeed, trailers are "produced" like features) the salient selling points of almost any picture can be told.  Producers want them long, to get in everything, but exhibitors always chop them off anyway, wherever they please, if they don't like the footage.  This often ruins the continuity.
With many theaters changing programs from two to four times a week, audiences may see from four to eight trailers at a sitting.  Thus another reason for shorter trailers.
Trailers got their name from the fact that they trailed the feature and originally were used as "chasers," to get audiences out of theaters.  The colloqualism has become accepted, but Baily and his national screen folks thought "trailers" lacked dignity and renamed them "prevues."  The name didn't catch on.  So they've compromised on pre-vue trailers.
Bike Jaloppies
Oakland. Cal-(AP)-There are jaloppies even among bicycles.  Investigation of a safety squad from Oakland policy department showed that only 22 bicycles out of 190 at Frick Junioh High School were "safe."