Cap'n Dell's Stories
by William Odell Spain
$19.95 paperback, 219 pages
Published: June 2002
ISBN 1880849-45-3

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Pamlico County was a different world in the 1920's, '30s and '40s. People paid twenty-five cents to pile into the back of the two-ton truck belonging to the owner of a local sawmill for a ride to Aurora to watch the movies for another eighteen cents; a father explained the wonders of the universe to his young son as they sat side-by-side in the two-seater outhouse at night; and every year around Thanksgiving, the whole family got up at daybreak to do their part in the annual ritual of hog killing.

"I think we were a caring community," writes William Odell Spain in his book Cap'n Dell's Stories. "Everybody knew of others' needs and, one way or the other, came to their aid. It was the most enjoyable time in my entire life. I will remember it as ling as I'm able."

And remembering it is what Cap'n Dell, as he's called, does best. As a fisherman who lived off the sea for most of his life, this well-known storyteller has written a collection of sixty stories that cover not only his life, but the lives of his friends and neighbors in and around Hobucken in simpler times. A long-time writer and researcher whose stories have appeared in the Pamlico News for many years, Cap'n Dell is a true chronicler of his times. He bases his stories - from the humorous to the touching to the historical - on memory, interviews with family and friends, and the kind of extensive research that has won him praise from people who understand the value of his contribution to the area.