Big Dave Tayloe Made World a Better Place
25.09.11
A few minutes before dawn last Sunday, Ajax the Wonder Dog and I went for a walk along the Pamlico River.
Our pals Whit and Buffa had invited us down for a long-overdue weekend at the rustic cottage that’s been in Buffa’s family for decades, the kind of unfussy river camp where the coffee percolator is older than most of the houseguests.
For the record, that vintage percolator makes about the best cup of morning coffee you’ve ever had.
Big Dave Tayloe, the family patriarch, a legendary family physician from Little Washington, who bought the place for a fishing and hunting camp back in 1958, two decades after it was built, passed away last year. He was, by all accounts, true to his name, bigger than life and twice as funny, whether he aimed to be or not.
My favorite Big Dave story is the one where his daughter Sally drove him to services at tiny historic St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Bath one morning with his hearing aid whistling. She suggested to Big Dave that he turn down its volume, which worked beautifully until the rector began quietly reading the lessons, whereupon Big Dave thundered across the pews, “I can’t hear a God-*&$#@ thing he’s saying!”
Source: Southern Pines Pilot