Dear Ellen,
We are in Nags Head, North Carolina. We are in the parking lot of the Avalon Fishing Pier. We are not fishing. Monney just likes the name Avalon. We have Snapples and a bottle of Early Times. It is a hot night, even for June.
I love Nags Head, but it also makes me sad. The Pink Shell is gone. Though this beach retains a lot more character than a lot of tourist beaches in these parts, I still grieve that my favorite dirty motel in the whole world - or at least at this beach - is gone. The times we had at that place: The night I was so drunk I couldn't walk the twenty feet back from the beach; the time Laurel bought a vacuum cleaner at a yard sale the motel owners were having, only to find that it wouldn't fit in the car and we ended up tieing it onto the roof; the long talks Ingrid and I had about death and boyfriends.
Progress sucks. The Pink Shell (or "Sweet Pinky", as Monney calls it) was another victim to the tide of high rise box hotels. Virginia Beach lost its last two jewels years ago when the Halifax and the Avamere (an entirely different class - much nicer than the Pink Shell) were taken out one by one to make way for a big ugly box.
But the Pink Shell was a tiny haven against all this commercial crap. The beach the way it was when I was a little girl. It was right on the beach, but with no beach view, thanks to nice high dunes. It wasn't filled up with the people you normally see at the beach - there were some of the standard tourist flock there, but mostly you'd see old fat guys with fishing poles, quiet couples, folks that couldn't afford to stay in the new ugly boxes. The parking lot wasn't asphalt, but concrete, and weeds grew up through the cracks. And of course the Pink Shell had the greatest showerheads. From the days when motels had showerheads that you wish you had in your own house.
And it was dirty.
Not like dirty sheets or dirty furniture. It was cleaned regularly enough. But being at the beach is not like being anywhere else. The ocean eats away at everything near it, not just the shore. And the Pink Shell had been eaten. Sand everywhere. The paneling was old and scratched, the carpet was sometimes coming up in the corners. Most of the rooms had kitchenettes, but the appliances were old and the mismatched pots and pans even older. Screens had some holes here and there, but golly, a beach motel with screened porches? What more do you want?
There's a pickup full of noisy boys trying to get the attention of some girls waiting in line for snow cones. The heat of summer fades as daylight says goodnight for another day. We're finishing our Snapples and heading back to the Orville and Wilbur Wright Inn, which is fine of course - it's a nice little place. But tonight we'll lie back, drink too much bourbon, and dream again of sweet pink cottages with faded burgundy trim.
-Adele, Nags Head, North Carolina