SEA WORTHY: MANTEO'S MARITIME HERITAGE AND HISTORICAL CHARM MAKE THE COASTAL TOWN A FAVORITE FOR BOTH YANKEE TRANSPLANTS AND NATIVE TAR HEELS.

AuthorMims, Bryan
PositionTOWN SQUARE: Manteo

More than 400 years have passed since the English language dropped anchor on Roanoke Island, and the mother tongue has spawned a medley of accents between its shores. Drift into the Roanoke Island Maritime Museum on the waterfront in Manteo where Charlie Parker can regale you with tales of sailing off "Lawn Guyland." The native New Yorker might even take you for "cawfee" and "tawk."

Parker, who is retired, sits down for lunch at the Hungry Pelican with a Pennsylvania-raised pal whose home state, in case "yinz didn't know," is itself a panoply of dialects. A block away at the Stock-Aide General Store, a fellow sporting camouflage pants and a three-day growth of beard wanders in and out, furtive as a house cat, ready with a dose of sarcasm when provoked. But Pete Jasin (there's a sign on the back door that says, "Beware of Pete") is harmless and claims to do "as little as paww-sible ... you know, whatevah." He's another local retiree who moved down from Massachusetts.

As if funneled down the Intracoastal Waterway, Northeasterners have traded snow piles for sand dunes, dipping their toes into the Southern flow of things. That's not to say the natives have abandoned ship; they still fry oysters and build boats and watch the tide ebb and flow -- and still speak in that classic cadence of the North Carolina coast. The dialect around here is known as "high rider" (pronounced "hoi toider").

Carl Jordan speaks in that unmistakable brogue as he looks out his window at the yachts, sailboats and fishing boats berthed at the waterfront. As the town's dockmaster, he's in charge of the 52 slips where boaters can pull in and walk to a restaurant, bar, ice cream shop or bed-and-breakfast. Condos overlook the water, and a hodgepodge of small stores selling books, antiques, pottery, peanuts and candy line streets named for Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh.

It wasn't that long ago when Manteo had a gritty, workingman's exterior, offering little to stop the beach traffic on U.S. 64. When Bob and Bonnie Morrill, a couple from Massachusetts, decided to open a pottery shop here in 1991, they inquired about renting space in what was then a construction office. "They thought we were crazy to open a shop here," Bob says, taking a break in a rocking chair at Wanchese Pottery. "At the time, the only other shop here was the bookstore, and that was it. My wife thought this would be a nice artist village at some point, and it's turned out to be."

Over the next two...

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