Carrboro United masked staffers practice staying 6 feet apart before meal pickups begin.
Rising Ti de
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Acme’s owner and chef shares his perspective on the unity of the Carrboro community during hard times By Kevi n Cal l aghan
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PHOTO BY DAVID JESSEE
years old and, oh, only 8,300 miles from my home. For at least an hour, I stared in disbelief as they went about t was my third day in Hong their day. Kong, and I’d been oddly drawn During the last few weeks, I’ve to the many small boats that thought a lot about the Tankas. were woven together like a net. I thought about their shared People walked among them and fierce commitment to home easily in flip-flops. There was the and community; how, literally, urgent hum of commerce – fish their lives are lashed together on being sold, along with T-shirts Cars line up in front of Cat’s Cradle to get preordered meals. a very fluid foundation and the and onions. The Tankas, or fact that they made it work. For “boat people,” had lived on this a millennium. vast flotilla of boats – their floating homes – for centuries. What As stay-at-home orders took hold in North Carolina to combat dumbfounded me was the fact that most of them would spend their COVID-19, there was a new and palpable shared sense of place in entire life among these boats without ever once setting foot on land. Carrboro. Home was no longer a mere structure in a neighborhood Not once. That was their choice; nothing kept them from venturing or a place where you parked your car – and your ass – after work. onto land. The mere 100 feet between us was farther than these men Home quickly morphed into a network of people and businesses and and women would travel in their entire lives. And there I was, 21 interests. The fluid foundation of this community became bound