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Carolina In My Mind
Disappearing down a country road is always a cure for what ails me
By Bill THompson
Not too long ago I was
exiled to Philadelphia for a four-day business trip. I was reminded of that visit this past Sunday when the preacher at my church said we were all going to hell without God’s intervention. I thought that would certainly be a short drive from Philly.
The main thing I remember about the big city was feeling homesick — something that hardly ever happens to me after all the years of traveling. It didn’t take long for me to figure out why I was so homesick, either. Just down the street from my hotel was a fast food joint with a big sign in the window advertising sweetened iced tea. I should have known there was a difference between “sweetened” and “sweet” tea. I tried it. It wasn’t North Carolina sweet tea, which just started a whole bunch of yearnings. On the last night of my visit I lay awake in the hotel room awash in homesickness. I was thinking about everything I was missing when a James Taylor song came to me. So I started going to Carolina in my mind . . . In my mind I drive down a two-lane road, grey with the passage of time, where pickup trucks and tobacco trailers have worn shallow ruts where the summer sun softened the asphalt. The broken white line down the middle of the road is intercepted periodically by fresh strips of tar. Sunlight shimmering on the black patches makes them look like snakes crossing the road. I pass by tobacco barns, pieces of the rusted tin roof flapping in the wind. Barn sheds lean precariously over, weeds grow in patches underneath. A produce stand is selling local corn and tomatoes, and there’s a big plywood sign propped against two sticks embedded in the shoulder of the road. It says, in big red, hand-painted letters, “HOT BOIL (sic) PEANUTS.” The Ar t & Soul of Wilmington
I slow the car almost to a stop to go across a railroad track. The railroad bed is so much higher than the road I feel the back bumper hit the rails. On the right side of the road I see a big chainlink fence section with a sign at the top that says “Welcome to Your Hometown” and there are civic club emblems attached to the wire. Kudzu forms a frame around the fence and spreads like a carpet on the ground below. Just on the other side of the railroad is an old depot converted to a meeting facility where colorful flowers seem to dance beside the loading dock and herringbone brick walkways lead up to the freight doors. Diagonal parking spaces line both sides of the track. On down the road the aroma of real barbecue cooking over oak coals mingles with the smell of pine trees as I pass a small café tucked back in the woods. The distant lights of a high school athletic field lend a glow to the night sky. As evening falls I hear church bells ringing. I pass a small chapel, cars parked outside under old trees. “Rock of Ages” drifts across fields of corn and soybeans and comes to rest on wide porches where people sit actually talking to each other. I turn on the car radio and a voice with an accent as familiar as the beating of my heart says, “A big hello to all y’all out there shaggin’ to the sound of your favorite beach station. Let’s keep it goin’ now with the great Drifters, ‘You’re More Than a Number in My Little Red Book’. Shaggin’ on the strand sand!!” More than a number in my little red book, more than a one night date. All I had to take me was just one look . . . For just a little while I was transported from that dismal Philadelphia hotel room back to North Carolina. All that reminiscing, sparked by a simple craving for a good glass of sweet iced tea, had grown into a real desire to get back home. As soon as I could the day after my reverie, I headed south, hoping the dream was real. It was. b Bill Thompson is a speaker and author who lives just down the road, in nearby Hallsboro. June 2013 •
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