Almost six hours at the National last night plus barely three hours of sleep meant that a beach nap was seriously in order today. Conveniently, I had plans to leave this morning for the beach to visit my sister and her husband and their gaggle of male friends for a couple of days. Tired eyes aside, I hit the road as soon as I got up, eager to stretch out on the sand and make up for last night's brevity.
I got as far as Coinjock before I decided to stop for lunch. Mainly I needed a Coke (not being a coffee drinker but in serious need of caffeine) but it was late enough in the morning to qualify for lunch. And actually I was hungry.
As kids, when my Dad would drive us to the Outer Banks, he always made some sort of joke when we passed the U-R-Next barbershop in Coinjock on the inter coastal waterway. In subsequent years, an overpass was built and Coinjock's marina added a restaurant; I knew because of a billboard I'd pass. Today I got off there to see what Coinjock was looking like these days. Could that barbershop still be there?
The wooden restaurant did indeed sit right on the waterway and had a nice deck outside, the perfect place to eat, caffeinate and watch the fast-moving water go by. The menu informed me that Coinjock was an Indian word for mulberry, although in modern times, there have been no sign of mulberry bushes.
My server LeAnn, a lifelong resident of Coinjock and nearby Grandy ("I've lived my whole life on one side or the other of this water," she told me), brought me my Calabash shrimp sandwich and Coke in what seemed like no time at all. Maybe she could see how needy I was.
The enormous pile of lightly battered fried shrimp on a sesame seed bun with house made cocktail sauce was just what I needed, but the three Cokes were lifeblood themself. The homemade chips came with their own Ranch dressing for dipping. Life was good at lunch.
LeAnn told me that the water can move in either direction or be completely still; since it has no current, it is completely at the mercy of the wind. I enjoyed its sound rushing by me as I sat outside eating with the beach-bound as well as locals.
When I asked LeAnn about the "new" overpass bridge, she deferred to an older couple, locals who could answer my question since she didn't remember a time when it didn't exist. Before they left, they came over to wish me a good trip. And LeAnn confirmed that not only does the U-R-Next barbershop still exist, but she still takes her boys there for their buzz cuts.
Legend has it that kids around there use to pay Ring Around the Coinjock Bush, at least according to the informative menu. My guess is that they didn't always have buzz cuts though.
But only because the U-R-Next Barbershop hasn't always been there.
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