State

face," Taylor recalled. "I reached out and splashed water in his face.” The alligator took off in one direc¬ tion. Taylor took off in the other direc¬ tion. That was a close call. But not as close as the time Taylor almost drowned. He got stuck on an object in the mid¬ dle of a lake. His tank ran out of oxygen and he blacked out. “I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to get unhooked." Taylor said. He regained consciousness when he popped to the surface. The poisonous snake that once struck at him missed — but just barely. Recoveries, Unlimited Taylor has been in the golf ball re¬ trieving business for more than three years now. He said that in addition to diving for the balls in the water haz¬ ards. you can also retrieve them by dragging a roller across the pond. “But the best way to get them is diving, there's no doubt about that.” he revealed. He said there is more to the business than just diving in and finding the balls. "For example, you have to know how often to go." he explained. "If the course has only two or three thou¬ sand rounds of golf a year, you only go once a year." But he said that you have to dive more often at courses such as the ones at Myrtle Beach, which have many rounds of golf a year. After he retrieves the golf balls, he grades them and washes them up. He said studies have shown that balls can stay in the water several years without their distance or accuracy being dam¬ aged. He sells the best grades — or pearls — for about eight dollars a dozen. That is considerably less than the same balls cost new. Taylor has his own company, Re¬ coveries Unlimited, which sells the balls he salvages. "I enjoy the work and make a pretty good living at it," he said. "But there's a lot of travel involved." He said he can work fairly close to home during the warm weather, but when it gets cold, he has to range as far away as Florida. » V I ПИШИ) Я ffiV ; Vi 7Z, акт During (He Civil Wor yeo n. North Corolino and many of its counties* ond municipalities i**ucd their own currency. When Tar Heels Issued $3 Bills North Carolina issued more paper currency Ilian any other slate, and a lot of it ended up in David Cox’s col¬ lection. By FRANK III. ROBERTS There are still a few North Carolina S3 bills around. They arc not in circu¬ lation of course, but they arc in the hands of collectors such as David Cox Jr. of Hertford. The 70-year-old retired land sur¬ veyor has a large collection of bills, scrip, and bank notes dating back to the 18th century, making up what he claims is the most complete collection of Tar Heel currency, a collection so valuable that most of it is kept in a vault at the Peoples Bank and Trust Co. in Hertford. Cox, a Perquimans County native, prefers not to reveal the worth of his 20-ycar-old collection, but that is the only thing about it he won’t discuss. "North Carolina issued far more paper money than any other state in the union," he said. "They began circulat¬ ing it in 1712." Cox's oldest piece is dated 1758, but the rarest in his collection is an 1861 two dollar bill issued during the Civil War. “There were less than 200 made," he said, adding "they were printed by the Deaf and Dumb School in Raleigh." Smithsonian Has Some In the Cox collection is money, scrip, and bank notes from the Revolu¬ tionary and Civil wars, money distrib¬ uted by counties and municipalities, and scrip issued by banks, corpora¬ tions, business organizations, and in¬ dividuals. The hobby began almost by accident "when I opened a locker my father used to have," he said. "There were a few North Carolina notes in there. He had never told me about them." Cox has been talking about and dis¬ playing his collection. Some of it is on loan to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. He has had displays at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, and at North Carolina and Virginia coin shows. And he has donated part of his collection to the North Carolina De¬ partment of Archives and History. He has retained a Colonial collection of 90 bills issued between 1758 and 1785 "but when the state joined the union in 1786 it became illegal for North Carolina to produce its own money," Cox said. But the state did issue some more THE STATE. JULY 1974