Redneck Riviera

By James Hooker

After being laid off from his executive job with a California high-tech company, a man and his wife decide to leave the “rat race” and move to a tropical island on the coast of North Carolina. The culture of the island and its people are completely different from this cosmopolitan couple, who struggle to adapt to the island’s Southern, down-home, Redneck residents.
From food to local traditions, the author documents his humorous journey, in a classic tale of a “clash of cultures.”
What could possibly go wrong when Yankee meets Redneck?

About the Author
James Hooker has spent over thirty years in research and technology in California’s Silicon Valley. He is a former vice president of global sales and has travelled extensively throughout Asia Pacific, Japan, and Europe.
He and his wife have been married for 21 years.
After living on North Carolina’s coast for four years, they moved north, and currently live in Rhode Island, where he continues to write, with the assistance of their two cats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889256663

Book preview

Prologue

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step. I felt like mine had started by falling into a dark abyss.

Buddy, we’re going to set you free.

I was still startled by the phone’s ringing. On the bedstand the clock blazed red. 5:00 a.m., meaning I’d been asleep, or passed out, for less than two hours. Jarred by a hangover and in the fog of alcohol and sleep I couldn’t put the words together. And I knew I couldn’t stand.

Who...?

Listen, we can work The Deal for you.

And then I knew. It was finally over. My heart was pounding, and although I’d known The Call would come it sucked the breath out of me.

When? I asked, a stifled croak. Do I still have a week?

Yeah, but not much more. Buddy, you know the game. The clock’s ticking.

And like that, a click, and silence again. Only the raging red of the clock. 5:01.

The night before had been a brawl. I’d gathered my Japanese team together in the hotel and had given them a party as thanks for their years of hard work. I’d told them the end was coming before this trip and had awarded bonuses and severance early. Still, tensions and emotions ran high. They, like me, felt betrayed. The evening that followed was a frenzy of heavy drinking and emotional outbursts. By the time it was all over and the last of the team had wobbled out, still sobbing, it was almost 3 a.m.

I raised myself slowly from bed, staggered through the darkness of my hotel room, and pulled aside a corner of the curtain to blearily peek down at the sheets of rain that had engulfed Tokyo’s Yakuza Station below. The morning was as grey and menacing as the whiskey-induced Beast coming alive in the back of my skull. I fell back on the sofa, running the words of the call through my brain. Fuck me. The Beast was roaring awake now.

I had only one task for the day: to finish packing and get to Narita Airport for my flight home. In my current state I felt like I was facing an ascent on Everest.

So first, I had to put The Beast in my head back in its cage. In the darkness I fumbled for the phone, picked up the handset, and ordered a pot of coffee.

Then I closed my eyes to shut out the faint light and stop the room from spinning, trying to resurrect the sequence of events that had led to this moment, and the abyss.

Chapter 1

Departures

Tulips, cryptocurrency, housing, gold. All bubbles happen the same way. Demand for a product outstrips supply, and irrational enthusiasm among investors begins to drive up prices in whatever sector is affected. Surging prices fuel more buying, and the cycle feeds on itself.

Starting in the late 1990s, cellular usage was raging, as cell phones became commonplace. At the same time, computer technology, driven by the popularity of laptops and demand created by the Internet, began accelerating. Both developments depended on one thing: telecommunications networks.

These were the years of the Great Telecom Boom, when large telecommunications OEMs raced to fill newly created demand with optical fiber networks, a faster, far superior technology to the data-rate-limited, copper-wire-based networks previously used.

Every company in this space rushed to deploy their own proprietary optical fiber networks, which, as they all claimed, would usher in an era of unprecedented, high-quality, optical-based telecommunications.

In this same space, second-tier companies raced to design and build the laser-powered equipment that would enable operation of these new optical networks.

At the bottom of this technology chain were third-tier suppliers, like my company, who manufactured optical components for the second-tier equipment manufacturers. We were a sleepy little Silicon Valley company with anemic growth and a stock price that had hovered in the single digits since I’d started five years earlier. I was by now Vice President of Global Sales since I had both experience in sales and foreign markets.

We were profitable, but boring by the standards of the first-tier players and Wall Street. For the past two years I’d spent my time fine-tuning the lethargic U.S. sales team and building sales in Asia Pacific and Japan through direct in-country sales managers and distributors. The pace of my job was slow, often grinding, but predictable.

Until, that is, the day when one of our engineers developed an optical filter that could multiply the amount of data transmitted over an optical fiber by orders of magnitude.

Within a year my company had been transformed. Sales had increased ten-fold as this new technology became an industry standard.

Within weeks of going into production, my company was targeted for acquisition by a large second-tier customer in a massive stock swap that had created none of the synergy that had been promised prior to the acquisition. What had been created, however, were instantly redundant corporate entities, meaning people like me. Our new parent would buy all the components we could supply, and so our own sales force became unnecessary. That meant me. And my Team.

As telecom stock prices soared and the race for acquisitions raged, however, no one noticed a seemingly obvious issue. All these companies were creating overlapping, duplicate networks. Deployment began outpacing demand. Most of the domestic and foreign optical networks were still dark, meaning they were not powered, and so carried no data.

At the same time there emerged a financial crisis in Asia that sapped what little life was left in our market. Demand for our products slackened, and both domestic and international customers began cancelling orders. Within a quarter our profits began sinking.

Rats appeared on the deck.

Streamlining and rightsizing became the order of the day. As water began seeping through the seams, I came to realize grimly that the only best outcome for me was the ability to choose the timing and conditions of my own departure. Leave on my own terms. I rationalized that this might look better in a future interview.

So, I’d offer to leave voluntarily, perhaps take a couple of weeks to get things in order, meaning shut down. But I had to move quickly.

With luck, perhaps I could swim free of the sucking wake as the ship went under.

***                       ***                       ***

In the days before that last trip, my girlfriend and I had talked about my leaving, as the pressure had mounted. She worked in the same company as an engineer, and we had been good friends long before we moved in together. We had the same instincts. Now, as layoffs started, she felt the approach of the hurricane as strongly as I did.

So, on most evenings we talked about options. And timing. And next steps. Even before the crisis, she had seen me come home from trips exhausted from lack of sleep and  chronic jet lag. I had been falling asleep at the dinner table, dozing off on weekends. She was a perennially upbeat woman, but I now saw the strained look in her eye, the tension in her smile. It was beginning to wear on her, too.

Still, we were luckier than others, we kept telling each other, as much a prayer as reassurance. I had stock options, which would cushion us for a while, as would my severance. We had no children. And we had savings. I had recently talked about writing a book on Asian business. We could batten down the hatches, tie everything down, and let the hurricane pass. It wasn’t the end of the world. I could tuck my passport away for a while. There was some comfort in that.

So, on that last weekend before my final trip to Japan, I knew what I had to do, and had resolved to do it as soon as possible. At breakfast on Saturday morning, I told her it was time, and she nodded slowly, smiling, but she still looked scared. And I felt like I was leading her onto a dark and narrow path. I hugged her, and she hugged me back, but that was it. We didn’t talk about it again and tried to put it aside for a couple of days, but it followed me like a shadow.

Monday morning. Crisp and taut, I walked as nonchalantly as possible into my boss’s office, standing at semi-attention, which I rarely did. He looked up from his desk but said nothing. I laid it out for him. Calmly, quickly, he said all the words that sounded right but came off as hollow. Invaluable, asset, leave a big hole, but I could see his face relax as his body reclined in his chair, as if he’d been released from some physical pain. It hit me in that moment. He was getting ready to pull the pin on me. I had beaten him by days, maybe hours.

One more trip to transition out, I offered, as calmly and professionally as possible. Talk it over with H.R. and call me in Tokyo. If I can leave with my vacation time and a severance, I’ll be gone within a week.

Give me a day to figure it out, he said. I knew he’d give me my terms; I’d allowed him to avoid confrontation, which he’d always hated. He could also look like a hero to his handlers for ridding them of an expensive problem, which he loved.

And then, his parting shot. We’ll miss you, buddy. He called everybody on his staff – even the women – buddy.

And then the pretense ended. He sat forward and looked back down at his desk, as if to resume some urgent task that awaited on his empty blotter. Conversation over. I turned abruptly and left.

Fuck you, buddy, I wanted to call back, but something larger now loomed. I had a life to shut down.

One last trip to Tokyo. One final farewell with my Team.

***                       ***                       ***

It’ll be okay, she said, repeatedly, as if partly to comfort herself. We’ll start a new life. No more corporate America. You’ve been killing yourself with the travel anyway." And I always smiled, as if in agreement, but more to reassure myself as well.

The night after I returned from Tokyo I ended up in my office late, staring at my dark laptop screen, thinking about nothing but the coming end. I went blank. When I came to, I looked at my watch and realized I had been sitting there, in a dark trance, for twenty minutes. This had to be an inflection point, I thought, but I felt lower than at any point in my life. I grabbed my jacket, tossed my badge onto my now empty desk, and turned my office lights out for the last time. I didn’t look back, and don’t remember breathing until I was in my car.

When I came through the door at home she greeted me with a welcome hug and a strange, cryptic smile.

I looked at her, suddenly not tired but curious. She had that effect on me.

While you were off gallivanting in Tokyo, I was working for us here, she beamed.

Gallivanting? I smiled.

I have a great idea, she chirped. We could go somewhere where it’s warm. A leisure town. There was, I noticed, a travel magazine open on the kitchen counter. She pointed to it, beaming.

"You mean like Florida?’ I asked, envisioning myself standing in line at a deli counter behind a clutch of cranky seniors in Bermuda shorts and orthopedic shoes.

Noooo, she replied. I found this terrific article about the coast of North Carolina. There’s this little town...

I picked up the magazine. On the cover picture to the article was an obviously prosperous and self-satisfied guy, white haired and perfectly coiffed, looking down at the camera from the bridge of his motor yacht. He was smiling, white teeth glistening. I did it, he seemed to say. You can too. The background was ablaze with sunshine so pure and radiant I could almost feel its warmth.

More pictures, all in radiant color. A quaint town of small houses, tiny businesses along a quiet main street. It drew me in. And palms everywhere. I felt myself smiling, too.

Palms! I stammered. It’s got palms.

Isn’t it glorious? she asked. It’s so quaint. You could write your book there. I could teach. I’ve always wanted to try that.

I nodded, thoughtfully. It almost looks like one of those Caribbean towns you see in travel brochures.

I know, I know! But we’d still be in the U.S. She was clapping her hands with excitement. It’s called Treasure Island. Isn’t that cool?

It was working. That’s the funny thing about inflection points. You never see them coming. I was nodding now. Just like explorers. We could set out to find a new part of America. On the road. Together. I couldn’t stop staring at the pages. Let’s have a drink to celebrate!

Always ready, she lifted a bottle of champagne from behind the counter, and we both broke out laughing. Suddenly my day seemed very far behind me.

What we didn’t know at the time was that we weren’t setting out to find a new part of the country. We were setting out into another world.

***                       ***                       ***

Having stepped into that abyss, the first few days after my departure felt like I was in freefall. The world moved past me with incredible speed, with me thrashing amid the void to gain my balance.

But a sense of stability gradually took hold once we began stepping from our current life into the next. Events surrounding the move took on a life of their own, swirling around us like powerful funnels of a maelstrom that carried us forward, in continuous motion. There was much to be done, and little time or energy left to mull my departure.

Finances worked in our favor. The company had rushed my settlement, probably thinking I might change my mind. Between that and the several months of accrued pay from vacations I hadn’t taken we had a comfortable cushion. Luckily I’d sold my remaining stock options just before our business started to collapse. My timing was perfect; the stock market was daily lopping off huge chunks of the Company’s stock price, keen as it was to the smell of blood. Finally, because California’s economy was still good at the time our home had appreciated.

All good omens, I thought.

My girlfriend had left the day after I did. Her department was in the middle of layoffs, so her offer to leave was granted, and her offer to stay two additional weeks was waived. Unlike me, she felt no sense of loss, and was thoroughly enjoying the new adventure. Now the engineer in her kicked into gear, and she began staging this next chapter of our lives like a military campaign, coordinating everything from a notebook.

We’d both always moved quickly, a holdover from the corporate world, and I loved that about her. But the pace at which we were moving now surprised even us. What might have taken others months to accomplish we determined to do as quickly as our collective energy would allow. My mood brightened by the day as we tasked at a frenetic pace. House put on the market, car carrier scheduled, utilities cancelled, clothes donated. After all, what would I need with suits on an island?

And finally, with events in motion at home, we scheduled a trip to the island that lasted four days but seemed like hours. Like everything else in the past month, it moved with breathtaking speed: the flight across the country, the rental car, the hours-long drive to the coast from inland, and finally, crossing Crocker’s Cut and the blue water of the Wilmington River onto the island itself. The Journey had an ethereal quality to it all.

Upon crossing the causeway, the first thing I noticed were the palms, dotting the island in every direction. Then the quaint stores, the main street with two lanes and as many stoplights. There was a humid, lazy, tropical feel to everything that the article had not been able to capture.

We were captivated.

***                       ***                       ***

What do you think so far? I asked on our first morning, as we drank coffee on the rickety little balcony of Cottage 3 of the Island Motel. $26 a night, free coffee and cable. This wasn’t the Silicon Valley. This transition, I realized, might be a challenge. Reality was setting in.

I think we need to find a realtor today. And get cell phones, she replied, browsing her list of To-Do’s for the day in The Notebook she carried everywhere.

Not that, I laughed, and it occurred to me for the first time how lucky I was to have her on this journey. What do you think?

It’s kinda slow. Not much going on. Do you think there’s a supermarket here?

Add that to your list. But the people. What do you think?

Well... Here she paused, cocked her head a little and bit the tip of her tongue. This was her most pensive pose. They move at a different pace, don’t they?

Yeah, I replied, we’re not in California anymore.

We had passed a few locals on the streets, and it was true that they seemed to move at a very different pace than we did. They didn’t seem unfriendly, just... different. I couldn’t add any substance to what I felt.

That’s another thing, she said, tilting her head to the other side. Did you see how that woman last night looked at us? Kind of a curious look, like we were aliens. She was referring to our server at dinner at the Island Café the night before.

Yeah, I replied. That same look we got from the guy behind the desk when we checked in.

I noticed, she said. Maybe it’s your shirt. You don’t see many polo shirts that shade of pink.

Hey, now, I replied. This shirt was expensive.

It had to be, she smiled, obviously enjoying herself. They probably don’t sell many of them.

I had to admit that it took some time for me to pick this color. I didn’t buy casual outfits very often and was trying to cultivate some tropical flair.

Anyway, I said, deciding to change the subject.