NC State

North Carolina - where I spent several days earlier this week - and specifically Topsail Island is one of those odd conglomerations of modern Americana that you can't do anything but appreciate. 

Like parts of Cape Cod or Hampton Beach, Topsail island is a hodgepodge of lifestyles, culture and contemporary American society. From the local fried seafood place to the overpriced beach store, you can find a Topsail Island just about anywhere in the country. But of course, then it wouldn't be Topsail Island anymore. 

You can hear the nasal Yankee twang as often as you pick up the southern drawl in a conversation. Everybody drives a truck, though only the locals have the American made pickups. License plates vary not only in number combination, but in origination. They range all across the eastern seaboard, from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Florida. 

By and large the houses are owned locally and many are rented to northerners - who aren't given the ignominious distinction of carpet-baggers, though I did hear a couple folks talking about Bill Belicheck and the "Cheaters" - or other out-of-towners. 

Like the Cape, Topsail Island has a transient feel to it, at least while I was there during what was presumably the height of the tourist season. Every Saturday the new group of renters sits in traffic to cross the bridge onto the island while last week's renters wait in equally awful traffic on the other side of the road. 

Still, the local flavor stimulates the palate. A roller-rink, open nightly, sits above the town's post office which one person described to me "could have come straight out of Mayberry."

I didn't get a chance to sample Topsail's townie-bar (and restaurant and pub), but after getting turned away at the door by a lanky looking fellow standing next to one of the town cops having his evening beer in uniform I had my fill. I did get a chance to sample the fair at the local crab shack and sucked down fried scallop, french fries and onion rings along with a couple of Coronas. 

So while the view might have been the same as you could get somewhere on Cape Cod, and the restaurants and nightlife could have been found anywhere along the boardwalk at Hampton Beach, Topsail Island deftly maneuvered between the crass empty over-commercialization of a place like Daytona Beach and the almost oppressive tightly-woven fiber of a Nantucket town.

The perfect get-away.