He's got the scoop on beach

This guide goes beyond the well-known stories.
AVON, N.C. (AP) -- Visitors may find it hard to believe that there's enough history along skinny little Hatteras and Ocracoke islands to warrant a bus tour.
But Danny Couch, a local historian and raconteur, has more than enough information crammed in his head for not one tour, but four, as he drives N.C. Highway 12 and the back roads of Avon, Button, Frisco, Hatteras and Ocracoke in his 25-passenger bus.
As he takes visitors on and off the famously fragile highway, Couch is part professor, part politician and part gossip, telling the stories that get brief mentions on historic markers as well as the ones that don't -- which are often the more interesting.
"I don't want to get into the politics of highway building ... " he says, then is off and running about how N.C. 12 would be more stable if engineers had listened to the locals, who said the road should be built on the west side of the narrow barrier islands, not on the east side, exposed to the Atlantic Ocean.
He starts out saying he isn't going to address the politics of hot-button coastal issues like beach access -- then wades in anyway. If some environmental groups -- most from faraway places like, say, California -- had their way, Couch proclaims, "you won't be able to walk on the beach."
The tours include tales of the Lost Colony (some locals believe that members of the famed pre-Jamestown settlement on Roanoke Island may have ended up on Hatteras Island and mixed with the Indians there); the Civil War, when 6,500 Union soldiers crossed the island, and World War II, when German U-boats lurked off the coast of Hatteras.
The good stuff
But it's Couch's lesser-known stories that cause passengers to prick up their ears. He tells of two old-timers sitting in the parking lot at the narrowest part of Hatteras island, which has been known over the years as both "the Haulover" and "Canadian Hole" -- the latter a reference to the fact that the location is a favorite of Canadian windsurfers.
One old-timer says to the other, "You won't believe what I saw here yesterday."
"What?" says the second man.
"A car with North Carolina license tags," the first man replies.
The "Haulover" name dates to the American Revolution, when Couch says a local family started a business helping schooners cross the island without sailing two or three extra days to pass through Ocracoke Inlet.
The locals would empty the schooners of their cargo, then use a track, rollers, ropes and oxen to pull or "haul" the schooners over to the ocean side. There, they reloaded the cargo and sent the ships on their way.
Off the highway in Buxton, the barely visible remnants of a radio tower get Couch talking about Reginald Fessenden, the first person to prove that voices and music could be heard over the air without wires.
In 1902, Fessenden transmitted the first musical notes received via signal between that tower and one on Roanoke Island.
That story segues into one about Richard Dailey, a wireless operator employed at Cape Hatteras by the Marconi Co. Until his death in 1967, Dailey contended that he received the first SOS about the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. He claimed he relayed word to David Sarnoff, an operator in New York City, but that Sarnoff didn't believe the unsinkable Titanic had gone down, and told Dailey to quit sending junk on the wire.
"Dailey maintained that if they had listened to him, they would have saved several hundred more lives," says Couch, who knew and interviewed Dailey.
Sarnoff, who later founded RCA, is cited in many reports as receiving the first radio distress signal from the Titanic.
Couch's gossip delves into the lives of both locals and celebrities. One local, Couch says, sold property on N.C. 12 for half a million dollars, only to see an enormous store built on the land. Now, Couch tells visitors, the original land owner "is probably going to have to leave, because the locals are so upset with him."
Celebrities
Among the actors who have visited the islands are Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore (pre-breakup), Kevin Costner and Michelle Pfeiffer. Couch's athlete sightings include baseball greats Cal Ripken Jr. and Brooks Robinson, Carolina Panthers coach John Fox and National Hockey League star Mark Messier.
According to Couch, Pfeiffer drove around the village of Hatteras last summer in a yellow Hummer and stayed in an eight-bedroom house with an indoor pool and a few friends. Every morning they went to a bakery, where employees said the group was very nice, but "Michelle could never make up her mind about what to eat."
While some celebrities might seek out Hatteras Island for its seclusion, that was obviously not the case when Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant arrived at the local airstrip on his private jet.
"We knew it was Robert Plant because (the jet) had his name painted on the side of it," Couch says.
Couch, 44, was an English major at East Carolina University, then spent a decade working on the business side of various newspapers before he began writing a history column for The Island Breeze, a monthly newspaper for Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. His family started a realty company, Hatteras Realty, but Couch's passion remains the islands' history, and he hopes to eventually support his wife and two children through the tours he gives.
XFor more information, visit www.hatterastours.com or call (252) 986-2995/2996.
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