Mother’s Day Is Sunday May 12th
Less Than 2 Weeks Away! |
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Art and Books By Coastal Carolina Artisans
Mother’s Day Is Sunday May 12th
Less Than 2 Weeks Away! |
Shop For The Perfect Gift Now
Join award winning island author Bob Adamov this Saturday April 27th at Islands Art & Books for a free book signing event for his latest in a series of 19 action mystery books: Holden’s Promise.
Books will be available for purchase.
You are also welcome to bring your own copy if you’ve already purchased it and have author Bob Adamov sign it with a personal message!
You can pre-order the book for local pickup or have it shipped here:
Buy Holden’s Promise Here!
When: Saturday April 27th
Time: 1:00 -3:00pm
Where:
Islands Art & Books
6885 Beach Dr SW
Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28469
910-579-7757 https://IslandsArtstore.com
Cost: FREE
Bob Adamov will also be also hosting one of his famous Coconut Commando Parties at Inlet View Bar & Grill the following afternoon, April 28th from 3:00 to 5:00 pm.
Readers will meet the characters from Holden’s Promise in person.
Investigative reporter Emerson Moore visits Shallotte, North Carolina to relax with an old friend. Little did Moore know that he would be pulled into the intrigue surrounding a suspicious boat offshore the Flounder Pier restaurant in nearby idyllic Holden Beach.
Mixed in the plot are the strange nightly explorations by a retired shrimp trawler captain on the Shallotte River near the Holden Seafood Company plus his longstanding feud with another trawler captain. Toss in a couple unsolved murders, a kidnapping and a sinking boat with two teenagers and you have the ingredients for a compelling adventure.
The family-oriented Holden Beach community finds its peaceful island life upended by the perilous incidences occurring between the Islands Art Gallery in Ocean Isle Beach and a Southport marina. The story is filled with several endearing characters and their multi-faceted relationships with each other.
Some of the pomp and circumstance may be missing from this year’s graduation ceremonies but that’s no excuse to let the occasion go unmarked. Let the graduate in your life know their accomplishment hasn’t gone unnoticed. We’ve assembled some great gift ideas for grads!
Most wonder how Dale Varnam stayed alive. Dale wonders why.
Back in the eighties, the quaint fishing village of Varnamtown, North Carolina—full of zany Southern characters—got rich, and so did town clown Dale Varnam, who perfected his own brand of crazy. Dale rose to the top of the heap in the drug smuggling biz, helping the town’s livelihood of shrimping go to pot. Although it’s not big enough to be on most maps, Varnamtown became the second busiest port of entry for illegal drugs on the Eastern Seaboard.
Dale Varnam’s misfit persona contradicts any preconceived notions of an international drug smuggler. His “good ol’ southern redneck persona” belies his past…and oh, what a past!
During the 1980s, Dale Varnam was newspaper fodder. He was depicted as a “show-off,” “hot dog,” and “homicidal nut case,” until “armed career criminal” became the headline.
The prankster extraordinaire now lives in a junkyard morphing into a grandiose roadside attraction of sorts called Ft. Apache, where a sign reads “A crazy place blessed by God’s Grace.” How did Dale get here from what he was?
It took two Dales—not just one. “New Dale” dusts off “Old Dale,” who danced with the devil for over twenty years. Between the Dales were ten years he considers a “vacation.” As an informant, he helped bring more than one hundred and fifty of those involved to grand juries resulting in over eighty indictments.
Many in Varnamtown succumbed to smuggling. This story does not leave them out; secrets are replaced by revelations, forgiveness, and healing. Forever changed, these God-fearing southern folks got caught up in crime, then caught, before eventually returning to their lives. The widespread corruption of law enforcement and politicians unfurls its tentacles through Dale’s tales.
From courting Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar to selling cocaine to Disney characters, from Playboy Bunnies mowing his yard to jungle labs where preserved tongues rested in jars, jaw-dropping events punctuate Dale’s story from beginning to end.
Sometimes we find some of the most interesting places along the NC Coast when we aren’t even trying!
Dale Varnam’s 28-acre Fort Apache in Supply NC is one of those places that you stumble upon in wide eyed wonder that brings to mind the old saying that “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure”. He likes to call it a” Contemporary Art Museum”.
Driving down the old Stone Chimney Road heading towards Holden Beach, you will come upon an open toilet with a couple of legs legs protruding from it.
Even before you enter the premises through the front gate you will encounter stuffed dummies sitting in police cars while an enormous bus called the Crack Head Express warns passing drivers of the perils of drugs and to “stay off the rock.” Several cowboy-like figures hang from nooses.
This odd spectacle is just one part of a huge collection of random junk and artwork that comprise this 28 acre spread named Fort Apache. Much of the material comes from regional film and theater work.
Back in 1957, Varnam’s father, Olaf, started a junk yard and scrap metal repository just up the Lockwood’s Folly river from their family homestead of Varnamtown. Over the ensuing years it has metamorphosized into a stockpile of American memorabilia and oddities that are stuffed, hung, parked and placed in every available space.
Varnam can’t remember exactly why he named it Fort Apache, and it has drawn stares from people driving down Stone Chimney Road through Brunswick County for years.
“I guess I’d just call it art,” says 66-year-old Dale Varnam the owner of this odd roadside attraction.
Varnam collects the props from movie and theatrical sets, and puts them out for people to look at.
But Varnam said he also wants to make people think.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it’s hard to tell the dummies from the real people.”
Varnam’s past is also well-known in the area as he was caught up in a federal drug raid that made headlines in the 80’s known as “Operation White Tide” .
That part of his life started when Dale graduated Shallotte High School in 1971 and fell in love with money. He the found the best way to gain loads of it was trafficking in drugs.
He didn’t cared whether the cocaine he was unloading was pure or not as long as the money was.
“It was pure greed that I was addicted to,” said Varnam, now 65. “It was in 1972. I started dancing with the devil. I became addicted to money. I didn’t care about the drugs, or drinking. I just brought the drugs in for distribution. I never sold it retail to dealers on the street.”
In 1988, Varnam avoided prison time on three dozen cocaine trafficking charges after helping investigators indict 70 others in the wide-reaching sting.
Four years later, though, he was sentenced to 35 years after pleading guilty to several breaking and entering charges.
Varnam left prison in 2001, and became “saved and baptized,” and soon was dedicating himself to creating his unique version of a “theme park”.
Varnam and his cornucopia of the bizarre has been the location for a movie “Don’t Know Yet”, the subject of a documentary “Another Man’s Treasure”, and an episode after of the television series when back in 2011 The History Channel’s “American Pickers” spent a day indulging their curiosity.
“They called two days before they came to tell me they were coming,” Dale said.
The cast and crew of “American Pickers” arrived in Brunswick County and spent more than 10 hours digging on Dale’s property.
“So many people had told them they had seen my stuff and told them they needed to check it out,” Dale said.
In the summertime his business attracts a lot of attention from out of town and out-of-state guests who drop in to see what his displays are all about and to hunt treasures.
“They did their history on me,” Dale said. “They knew I like to help people out. I try to help so many people to keep them from going down a bad road. I’ve been down that road. There is the old Dale and the new Dale. If you dance with the devil some day you have to pay the piper.”
Dale said he did sell them some items but the thing they wanted most he wasn’t ready to part with.
“They loved my old cars,” he said. “They really wanted the cars from ‘The Godfather.’ I have all the papers and they knew what they were. But I held on to my cars. I did promise to contact them if I sold them.”
They bought a few signs, flight jackets and little cars. Dale said he was pretty sure they bought things that won’t air simply because there is so much to look at.
Dale said the guys were really down to earth and he enjoyed spending the day with them. “I was proud to have them,” Dale said. “And proud they were here with the new Dale instead of the old one.”
My Right Hand to Goodness: The Life and Times of Crazy Dale Varnam