Coloring Book Time Machine
In 1976, artist Kitty Mitchell was still Kitty Martin, and, she says, “a very silly person,” when she decided to draw Ocracoke through her eyes in a series of cartoons that became the Ocracoke Coloring Book. Kitty sold the coloring books from her studio and art co-op for $5.
For the spring of 2015, Ocracoke Preservation Society has reprinted The Ocracoke Coloring Book to sell in the museum gift shop. Now you, too, can own this one-of-a-kind guide to Ocracoke – for just $14.95. (Inflation happens.)
It will take you back to the good old days when Ocracoke was a dry town (back then, locals offered these directions to beer-selling establishments – “Go north until you get to a stoplight, and make a left” – without mentioning that the first stoplight was at Whalebone Junction!) and most everything to do here was free.
Kitty’s cartoons (her “biggest inspiration” was Mad Magazine) depict flora and fauna, island scenes, romance in the dunes, and many insider tips for enjoying your visit – she recommends fishing, body surfing, kite-flying, crabbing, clamming, and cruising. Today, even with beer and liquor sales around every corner, and plenty of ways to part with your money, it’s amazing how much hasn’t changed. Ocracoke is still “a great place to visit: miles of undisturbed beaches, quaint little fishing shacks, good eating, nice people, bright sunshine, blue skies, warm water, and shootin’ stars.”
Kitty only did one printing of the coloring book in ’76. Some family friends with a print shop volunteered to produce them for her, and she ordered 1000 copies, about 500 of which she sold. Many times parents would buy a copy for the kids, then come back for another for themselves!
“I would’ve sold more than 500,” she said. “But the other half got ruined by termites that tunneled up through the wooden floor [they were stored on] right into the pages.”
It wasn’t the only time insects played a big role in Kitty’s relationship with Ocracoke.
Ten years earlier, in 1966, Kitty begged, cajoled, and managed to talk her parents into buying property on the island. At the first place they looked, they were chased away by a “black cloud of mosquitos. There were no mosquitos on the water, so we bought a piece of sand and camped on it.” That piece of sand is on the shores of the North Pond, where Kitty and her dad and brothers (with some help from Hardy Plyler) built a house in ’73. Kitty still lives there today with her husband, Gary Mitchell (of Molasses Creek fame.)
Kitty had visited Nags Head as a child, but on her first trip to Ocracoke she says “I had this feeling when I drove off the that this is home.”
Her other home was Pittsburgh, PA, but she spent every summer of her college years on Ocracoke, waiting tables at the Pony Island Restaurant. She made the permanent move to the island (“before the ink was dry on my final exams”) upon graduation. Kitty caught the “mail bus” from Pittsburgh to Ocracoke. Yes, you read that right; in those days (1975) you could take a Trailways bus from Pittsburgh to Norfolk, where the bus picked up the mail for the Outer Banks. Passengers and mail switched to a smaller bus in Manteo, which brought them both all the way to Ocracoke.
Kitty enjoyed waiting tables, but “just had to do art.” She painted signs, designed the Pony placemat still in use today, and opened an art co-op in what is now the hardware store. And she drew the cartoons that would become the Ocracoke Coloring Book.
She says she took captions from postcards that were sold on the island, and drew cartoons to go with them. Although the Ocracoke depicted in the coloring book is instantly recognizable today, Kitty pointed out a few of the changes.
“Corkey’s Store had these crazy, bright flashing lights that you could see as well as the lighthouse from across the harbor,” she said. They're memorialized in the coloring book. And as for the cartoon on surf fishing, it’s true that the local kids used to catch tons of fish, right from under the noses of visiting fishermen with the best rods and reels money could buy. The Coloring Book came out when Jaws had made a splash in theaters – that’s why there’s a shark dot-to-dot on another page.
Kitty lamented that the trawlers don’t come into the harbor like they used to. “There’d be thirty boats tied up, and music and dancing on the docks,” she reminisced.
After half her coloring books gotten munched by critters, Kitty had no luck in finding another printer that could reproduce it cheaply enough for her to resell, so she set it aside for other artistic pursuits.
Kitty was happy last year when Amy Howard at OPS approached her about doing a reprint for the Museum's gift shop. Now a whole new generation of young’uns can color in the page showing romance in the dunes.
The Current knows at least one little colorer who is enjoying Kitty's book. “I think it’s funny. I like all the jokes in it and I like the cartoon pictures,” said eight-year-old Mariah Temple.
In addition to being Ocracoke School's 5th grade teacher, Kitty is embarking on a new adventure with her daughter, Katy Mitchell. They are opening a new coffee shop where the old Hemp shop used to be on School Road. The Magic Bean will open in mid-April.
