For the past four years, local economists have puzzled over the sudden onset of the Outer Banks recession. Dare's economic woes began in May, 2005, the last month that real estate inventory and homes under contract were in relative balance. This was two full years before the national recession was confirmed.
However, last
week, employees of the Dare County Tax Assessor's Office noticed this home, in Martin's Point, as they began their re-assessment of property values. The home, a box car modular unit was placed on the lot in June, 2005 and is registered to a Thomas Joad IV, and his wife, Petunia of Sharon. An interview with the real estate agent who sold the lot to the Joad's remembered them as "jus' plain reglar folk", although for some reason they appeared "right skeered of livin' anywhar ne'r the crick, so they chose an interior lot on high ground". The local Homeowner's Association often received complaints about the house, as well as the family vehicle, a 1927 Hudson truck containing rattling pots and pans that often woke residents from their slumber.
In a press conference yesterday, Dare County Commissioner Warren Judge outlined on a map the migration of the Joad family, dating back to the Roosevelt Administration. The journey began in Oklahoma, then on to California. The family migrated to the rural South in the 50's and 60's, eventually finding their way to the industrial Rust Belt during the 1970's and 80's. By 1986, Thomas Joad III's several family-owned savings & loans failed, triggering a major nationwide financial crisis. Historians lost track of the family until they were discovered on the Outer Banks this year. As Judge observed, virtually every place the Joad family settled over the course of past seventy years has been plagued by recession, joblessness, and an overall feeling of ennui, desperation, and hopelessness.
Former President Bush, visiting Duck on vacation, also chimed in--recalling the book he read in college, something about "The Really Angry Grapes" he said, that chronicled the early Joad's tragic lives.
While an angry mob formed with the intent of forcing the Joad's to leave their home, the Joad family defused the situation by releasing this statement through their attorney: "We will be leaving these parts soon. Pa is sick and my sister, pregnant and widowed, has been laid off from her job at Five Guys as a fry cook. We hear tell thar is somethin' called "Obama bucks" available in Washington, DC, and we will be movin' thar before the squirrels begin to build thar spring nests".
With the Joad's on the move, expect prosperity to return shortly.
5 comments:
As you may well have forgotten, my dad lives in Martin's Point. Even so, for the first couple sentences, you ALMOST had me going, in spite of the fact that I don't remember EVER seeing the Joad's trailer in there. 'Course it may have been back thar in them trees, on account of Martin's Point has a shit load o' trees.
Don't you love it how Russ and his buddy Bob M. always have a ha$d-on for anything Martin's Point or Southern Shores? Must be a Old Nags Head Cove virus. ;)
Don't think I've ever written about Martin's Point, don't have any particular thoughts about Southern Shores, and can't see where this post picks on either place. Just made it funnier to put the box car in a higher end place; could have been Mother Vineyard or Heritage Point just as easily. But you already knew that :)
Being a Martin's Pointer by proxy, I assure you I didn't feel picked on at all. Compared to some of the monster mansions I see on the OBX these days, The Joad estate looks more & more like my house.
Good one.
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