There are, in my opinion anyway, three major pillars of adulthood: marriage, childbirth, and buying a home. Any or all of these may or may not happen, but whenever they do they tend to be markers of memory as well as potential sources of stress and change.
We’ve done the first, will probably never do the second, and… we’re just beginning our journey toward the third. That’s right, my wife and I are considering purchasing a house! After a while, one realizes that apartment rental is less and less attractive as that charge rises exponentially every year, and there is no return on investment. More fundamentally though, of course, is that the place just isn’t ours. So it can’t be customize to our liking as much as otherwise.
The challenge, as we’re already seeing in real color, is the startup costs. Down payments, Earnest money (whatever that means,) due diligence fees, inspection, appraisal… we’re going to be slowly nickel and dimed until we run screaming, and it’s likely going to take longer than we wished to get it all sorted. As such, this post will be first in an ongoing series, the last of which I hope to write from wherever out new abode is.
Speaking of, we got to check out our first possibility today. Getting to that point has already been a process that has taken nearly a month (a month? Wow, that time has flown). Paperwork had to be gathered and income verified before our lenders determined the amount of mortgage for which we could be pre-approved. I’m surprised that many don’t do it this way, choosing to find a home first then see if they can get the money they need to purchase it. With our pre-approval in hand, we could get a sense of what would be realistic if indeed we ever do clear all these pesky startup costs.
Anyhow, we arrived at the Southeast Raleigh property at 11 AM Saturday, early but not too bad I suppose. Her sister came along for the viewing as well as our real estate agent, given to us by the Teacher Next Door program my wife is using to spearhead this process. We entered a two-story townhome that was freezing, because it was empty and had no power. The bottom floor is not carpeted, which my wife very much preferred. The main issues were a lack of adequate storage and kitchen space, and on the second floor a carpet that needs replacing and some knicks and knacks that made the place look less appealing. Also, the master bedroom is likely too small to fit our fairly sizable bedroom set. Finally we were concerned about possible flooding in back based on the shape of that land in a large storm.
So no, we will probably not be getting that property. It was informative to take a look though, and I found our agent to be very good at really assessing what is going on in a place and relying it to us in an easy-to-understand way. We’ll just see if and when this all plays out.
Tag Archives: Family
The Tidalist: …And I Run Up 2000 Stairs
Well that last is a hilarious exaggeration, but you’ll see what I mean in a bit. Yeah yeah yeah, it’s been a month since I last wrote in this thing. It has also been a month since that wonderful, relaxing trip. But I’m still going to capture the second half of it as best I feel like. After all, memory is fallible, maleable, and all-kinds-of-things-ible anyway, and all that really matters is the story.
If what I have of it serves, and even the bestselling author John Grisham confessed to being “too lazy” to go back and make sure his book series still fit together, I stopped on that Monday May 3. This was the only day we didn’t get in the pool, well other than that Thursday when it was far too cold to do so. What we did do on Monday evening was have some delicious spaghetti with homemade meatballs. This was the only non-breakfast meal they prepared in-house, because hey we’re on vacation!
Tuesday dawned as easy and relaxing as the rest, but it was the birthday woman’s big day. As it happened, it was also the day the temperature swelled well into the 80s. Did this stop me from going outside? Is water wet? So after happily warming myself on the porch, my wife and I made our way to the store to pick up some odds and ends for the night’s celebration. First, she moseyed along that crazy endless road of highway 12 that always makes me feel like we’re experiencing the kinds of space time dilation that the theory of relativity predicts. There wan’t a whole lot to see, though.
When it came time to cut the cake, one baked by her mom and re-frosted after the first frosting attempt had gone awry and tasted strangely for some unknown reason, we teleconferences with her sisters who were not able to attend. It was fun, and of course has become the norm during these pandemic times anyhow. Then those of us who were there had Sooey’s again, with me choosing their cheeseburger and somewhat bland fries (I wish I had tried the beer-battered onion rings). The burger was quite delicious, despite that.
After eating, we went back out and, after taking a casual stroll along the sea with our niece in tow, took another dip in the kiddie pool. This time, the water was near-scalding. It felt sauna-like for a while though, and even though by the time we exited I pretty much had to, I found myself feeling uncharacterstically chill.
This chill followed me into Wednesday, as I prepared for the day’s main event, a “discussion” about a possible position within my company. Sadly, kind of as I struggled to decide if it was the right move for me, that position has not worked out to date. But that’s ok, I still gained confidence from the smoothness of our conversation.
They had opted to rent a tent and have some company set it up by the ocean with chairs and the like, and while I had missed the morning’s fun prepping for the talk, my wife and I did have a picnic out there with “hotdogs by the sea”. It was pleasant just basking in the shade and listening to her describe the National Geographic-type scene of seabirds swooping down to pluck fish from the waves then soaring away with their still squirming prize.
And now we come to the stairs. I had already told her before we embarked that I wanted to climb the Currituck Lighthouse, because I couldn’t imagine what that would even feel like. The lighthouse has, I think, approximately 209 steps (remember that part I said about memory and fallibility?) But our 7-year-old niece, on seeing that, declared ‘I’m not going up those 2000 steps, y’all can do that on your own!” So my wife, brother-in law, two nephews and I went for the $10 climb, while her mom, sister and said niece stayed on the ground. Going up was the hard part, believe me! I was glad they were at least broken into sections of 7-10 steps apiece, and by that last landing I thought my heart would explode from my chest. We stepped out into a whipping wind after emerging from an indoor well, and after snapping a few queasy pictures and taking a look over the railing, my wife decided it was time to reverse course. I had worried about this part, but fortunately going down was a cynch.
A cool, rewarding hot fudge sundae from Dairy Queen and a Wendy’s burger that we had to drive 30 minutes to get made up the rest of that evening. If you do go out there, just be prepared for the near lack of name-brand restaurants.
And that basically made up the trip. Thursday was spent relaxing inside, as the temperature had dropped into the lower 60s and the drivers wanted to rest up for the long trek home the following day. I did take one last wind-chilled sit on a chez longer on the porch, gleaning what little sun I could and enjoying the roar of the ocean till I could take no more.
Hopefully more of those trips are in my future, and especially as we begin to crawl out of our shells again. The isolation had its pluses and minuses, but on the whole it was a very welcome experience.
On My Dad Mike, A Life
This has been, for my family and me, a tough day, one week before Father’s Day no less. The man who had been my father for 20+ years, Michael David Smith, has succumbed to cancer.
It’s funny, he had been a part of my life for so long that I’m a little fuzzy on when our first encounter occurred. 1995? 1996? I’m inclined to say the latter, because it was Fall and the beginning of football season, and the Panthers had already existed for a year. Mike, a child of the 60s long before North Carolina had a professional football team, was a Dallas Cowboys fan. I never missed a chance to give him grief over this, often saying “I will create a law that says you must pull for the team in your local area.” He sometimes quipped “then I guess we’ll be moving to Dallas.” (I’m ashamed to admit it now, but I had been a closet Cowboys fan before my beloved Cats took the field.
Anyhow, whenever Mike and I first met we immediately bonded. As I’ve written in my post about complex thoughts on fatherhood, I would often linger on the floor as his Atlanta Braves (MLB) played on the tv, and we would talk about anything and nothing for hours. Sometimes while watching basketball, he would tell me to stand up so that he could demonstrate a great play that had just occurred, often to comical and almost dangerous effect.
He would usually ask me to join him for grocery store runs during which he’d impart advice about finding and being with a good woman, at the end of which he would get me either my favorite candy or a can of Pringles, to which I was insanely addicted in those days. Then there were the innumerable Jeopardy shows and our friendly competitions, usually he was far better at pop culture and I knew my geography.
Not only did he embrace me wholeheartedly, but he took my cousins under his wing with ease and clear enjoyment. We had a stretch there from about 1997 to 2001 where our singing group, Off Da Top, fancied itself celebrities and performed in several talent shows. Along with my youngest sister, Mike would work with us on choreography and talk to us about his knowledge of the music business. He called himself our manager, and said we should change our group’s name to the Backseat Boys (long story for that name’s conception which you can read in an old Writing 101 post, but if we’d chosen it can you say lawsuit?)
I revel in these memories, and if anything I regret not having taken the time to make more of them. I hadn’t seen him too often, which is true of the rest of my family as well, in the last ten years. I hope that the rest of us can now start to rectify this, and am eternally grateful for my birthday dinner with him, my mom, and my in-laws that my wife organized, as it was the last time I saw him healthy. I remember the shock and sadness I felt when seeing him in the hospital bed this past November, as this last cruel journey began. I was overcome with depression, but I also prayed and hoped for the best. But as they say, death is a part of life and at some point we must all confront our mortality and that of those whom we love deeply.
To you, Mike: Thanks for letting me be your son and for your unconditional acceptance of me, even with the unusual package I present. I will always be grateful for your coaching and guiding me through my formative years and helping me to learn to be a good man to my wife and, I hope, a good human period. May you rest in peace.
Home: Alone
In his song Still In Love, Luther tells us that “a house is not a home if there’s no one there to hold you tight”. I often think about this wordplay, that involving the terms “house” and “home”, and whether it actually has significance.
Today, the 23rd of September, marks the time when, two years ago, I moved back into what I guess I still call home for the last time. Well barring any unforeseen circumstances, of course. In contrast to this one, that Sunday was still dripping with the refuse of summer as we squeezed what remained of my belongings into my family’s car and trundled off for the small town of Pinebluff, North Carolina.
I lived there for almost exactly four months, departing on an icy late January day for my current residence. To me, “home” came to mean a place where I no longer had to worry about what I was going to eat, or making sure that the meaningful bills were paid. I did have to maintain my cell phone bill, but otherwise all of that was back out of my hands. It was a bit of a welcome reprieve, and one which I now wish I had allowed myself to enjoy more than I did.
Instead, I spent much of that time kind of to myself, and pondering how I would get back into the larger world. Granted, I shouldn’t have wanted to remain there forever, but I just think I should have slipped into the role of “brother” and “Uncle” more thoroughly, as I don’t really know if I’ll experience these roles in as profound and constant a way again, or at least anytime soon.
I have my own apartment now, of course, and had one before that September day two years ago. Yet I don’t think I ever really called those rentals home. Is this because they both have had an air of draftiness? I guess industrial, like a giant space that isn’t really meant to absorb all of the memories, emotions, etc that make up a life.
Or is it because I have occupied these units by myself. Waking up on major holidays, which I haven’t done as much since relocating to Durham but certainly did in Carrboro, with no one around brings with it an attendant sadness and distance, reminiscent of the room with “Nothing there but gloom” that Luther refers to later in his song.
Well, I had stayed with my cousin in a unit that also had that somewhat unhomely feeling from 2003 till 2009, but perhaps because he was there most of the time also, it did at least seem to hold more of a sentimental value when I prepared to depart. I do recall spending one of those weird holidays, the first time we woke to a quiet Christmas in that same 2003 year that we arrived, with store-bought burgers and a plate that arrived later in the night. It still wasn’t as tough as some of those days in 09/10.
So I say all that to ask: what makes “home” to you? Do you still refer to your parent(s) place in this way exclusively? Does it become different once or if you have children. I suspect home is a place where you really have those family roots laink regardless of what role you actually play in said family. Just some thoughts as we begin the seasons where such bonds become more profound and important: cold, drippy, less ideal for meeting people outside of the household. Chime in!
Tools To Build A Dream: King’s speech
Let the current lift your heart and send it soaring
Write the timeless message clear across the sky
So that all of us can read it and remember when we need it
That a dream conceived in truth can never die
Black Butterfly, by Deniece Williams (YouTube)
Man, I loved that song the first time I heard it. Reminds me of my recently written about first trip to the beach, as that’s the first time I remember hearing it. I’m sure I had before, as my sisters had and wore out a Deniece Williams cassette, (you know those blocky things with spools of tape that you had to flip sides in order to continue hearing?) But I think we had little else to listen to on the radio during that trip, and so that cassette was played several more times. The song was then indelibly etched into my memory. Anyway, you’ll see its relevance to this entry in a bit.
The Second Leg (Cont)
The train rattled first westward, into the small town of Belmont in Gaston County, then made stops in Gastonia and Kings Mountain NC, Greenville, Spartanburg and Clemson SC, and a town called Taquoa or some such then Gainesville Ga before arriving. There may have been more, but if so I missed those in what little sleep I managed. I found that if I turned my body just so and pressed my head against the seat, I could drift off for minutes at a time. I’d set my timer for two hours, because I didn’t want to take a chance on missing Atlanta if one could remain onboard past that point. I don’t think we could have anyway, but better safe than sorry.
As we approached, the cabin stirred and began coming to life. Someone wouldn’t or couldn’t stop coughing. A baby cried. The woman next to me told me a little of her story, particularly that she would be babysitting a tribe of grandchildren, including a rambunctious 4-year-old whom she had little hope of keeping up with. I didn’t ask that woman’s name, just enjoyed the conversation.
On disembarkation, it took staff so long to come and assist us that that woman decided to walk me in herself. We took an elevator up a level, popped out, and my sister was already there waiting.
A Place With Space
Ever been somewhere that just makes you feel like the Chinese ideals of feng shui probably intend? Just a certain openness, where the walls are curved and thus the energy seems to flow effortlessly throughout. That’s the feeling I got when I walked into my sister and her partner’s apartment. Or maybe it had to do with being tired and slightly loopy after such a long and bumpy ride, but whatever. They currently reside about 20 minutes outside of Atlanta proper, in a town called Duluth. Man, I don’t think any other US city has as many parts to it as Atlanta does.
Anyhow, I discovered that my eldest sister’s twin, along with her partner, were also there. Party time! Dogs came to say hi, as I sat on their comfortable sectional and tried to keep my head from bouncing up and down too many times. It was about 9 AM, but after a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and grits, I finally gave over to an hour or so of sleep on stationary ground. It felt great.
We passed time catching some of the early football games, especially watching Georgia Tech, the local public university, smack Waford, a private school in South Carolina, around. Then we wanted to find a little something to get into.
Off to See King
Pic of my sisters and I standing near the MLK fountain
We decided to visit the Martin Luther King Center, to which I had been before but always seem to learn something new when I come. The most interesting part was going down into the fellowship hall at the old Ebenezer Baptist Church, where we listened to an individual first give a bit of a history lesson. I can’t recall all of what he said, but others in King’s family had also been assassinated after his death. Those were sad and turbulent times, and I’d recommend taking a look at the King Center site as well as a supposedly pretty good Wikipedia article on his life. I plan to once I finish writing this, as there is no doubt much that I don’t know. And from what I’ve been told, school kids nowadays are learning even less than we did.
“The number one question I get” that guy said “is are services still held in this building. The answer is no.” That church has been designated as a historical landmark, and services now take place in a newer facility across the street.
The speaker concludes with a near spot-on impersonation of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech, even capturing the right inflections and King’s tendency to almost ram sentences into each other. I hadn’t realized that we had permission to record it, or I may have. The only thing that would’ve ade it more real is audience interaction, but still it was pretty powerful to hear those words spoken where King himself had delivered countless other speeches.
Saturday Wind-down
The rest of the day was the kind of relaxation I’d come for: first in a spacious townhome on comfortable leather couches that we left as my sister said “let’s get out of here before you go to sleep!”
Back at their place, someone cooked up some delicious nachos with meat, sauce and the works, and I got my fingers all sticky. I loved every bite, though. Then we sat on the deck with a couple of beers and talked about life while enjoying the sweltering night.
And that pretty much made up Saturday. Finally inside to bed, sliding under sheets and, after listening to the Florida State Seminoles just manage to stave off an upset bid by the Oklahoma State University Cowboys, diving headlong into the first real, sweet sleep I’d really had all week.
Tools To Build A Dream: The sleeper
He kept dreamin’
(Dreamin’)
Ooh, that someday, he’d be a star
(A superstar but he didn’t get far)
But he sure found out the hard way
That dreams don’t always come true, oh noRead more: Gladys Knight And The Pips – Midnight Train To Georgia Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Midnight Train To Georgia, by Gladys Knight and the Pips (YouTube)
Oddly, I’ve had this song bouncing around in my head ever since I began planning my Atlanta trip to visit one of my sisters. It probably has more to do with the Amtrak that departs from Greensboro, North Carolina at 12:22 AM for Atlanta. This makes up the second leg of travel if one wishes to reach the city of peaches? peach tree city? haha I don’t know Atlanta’s knickname but imagine it’s something to do with peaches right?, from Durham.
First The Backstory
Because every character must have a backstory, and my family is full of characters.
Many of us see social media’s dark side: its tendency to isolate us and make a person more likely to hold a conversation with someone 2,000 miles away than one sitting right across the table from him. Board any bus or train these days, and you’ll note that there is an element of truth to this assumption.
However, there are some silver linings. For instance, I think that Facebook has made our somewhat scattered family more aware of what is going on with each of its members than we have been in many years. Most of us don’t really have easy access to constant transportation, or else priorities like kids, jobs, etc mean that we must stay relatively close to home. The online space allows us to celebrate achievements, pick each other up, and otherwise respond on a near daily basis, bringing some real closeness back.
So, my eldest sister responded to one of my recent Facebook posts by saying that she would really like it if I made the journey down to Atlanta someday. I thought about it, and decided why not sooner rather than later. I go to see my cousin most holidays, and while I will always enjoy hanging out with him and would do so whenever possible, a little variety is, as they say, the spice of life. Daring to do something different creates unexpected opportunity, as I most certainly discovered throughout this vacation. I left Friday and returned yesterday.
The First Leg
As the Friday workday drew to a close, I was already feeling concerned due to a wave of tiredness brought on by Sunday night’s lack of sleep. How does that make any sense, you ask? Well, I never really get the chance to fully catch up if that initial workday is offkilter, at least not till the next weekend. I figured what the hey though, after that long overnight train ride I would be way out of sorts anyway.
The cab deposited me at Durham Amtrak Station, and after stepping inside of its frigid confines to retrieve my boarding pass, I insisted on waiting in the mugginess that threatened rain.
“I’m not built for cold!” I told the woman behind the counter as she slid the ticket into my hand. Maybe it’s a sign of how many times I’ve passed through that station that she was saying “Hi, Mr. Miller” before I even got all the way to the counter. And her voice didn’t even sound like one of the people I know for sure.
The train is supposed to leave at 5:24, but that big thing is almost never on time. Yet for a holiday weekend it did remarkably well, rolling in at 5:39. A passenger ran up to assist me, because she hadn’t seen that one of the other women who works in there, my favorite, was making her way out. As I made my way down the aisle, a pair of hands popped out to suck me into a row and I settled in.
“Hi,” I said, because I must always attempt to greet the person sitting next to me. I allow them to decide if they wish to converse further.
Immediately, this person was interested. It seems that she rather suddenly lost a significant amount of sight, especially her central vision. I don’t know much about how sight works, but apparently this makes it hard for her to identify faces, view things that are either too close or too far away, and results in a classification of legal blindness. Understandably, she has found the adjustment challenging. I talked about how I can empathize due to the fact that I have lost so much hearing over the years and have to keep re-thinking how I handle social situations. Unintended feelings in others of having been snubbed by simply not knowing that our attention was being requested was definitely a common issue.
I’m never sure to what degree I am helpful in such situations, but this is a big reason why I am always open to talking to people about my blindness, heck we may as well say deafblindness at least if not wearing hearing aids, and how I cope. I’m just hoping that she can use technology that she already has, like the iPhone, to at least mitigate some of the changes. I will continue to do what I can.
The train arrived in Greensboro pretty much on time, after another minor delay while we awaited the passing of the Raleigh-bound train. I was interested, because I would finally get to enter their vaunted station.
On entering, I met a nice individual who made sure I had everything I needed from arrival till departure. We got to their little coffee shop just as it was closing, and I snagged a Mountain Dew. Then, she dug up menus from somewhere and I placed an order with a place called, I think, Big City Burgers for, you guessed it, a burger and fries. It seems that any restaurants in that general vicinity will deliver to the station, which is pretty cool. Given that I had six hours to wait, I had contemplated taking a cab somewhere. I guess this saved me some dough, though.
I didn’t do much else, except wolf down that sandwich, listen to some of the college football game between Syracuse and Vilanova, and read a little. The wait didn’t seem that bad, so long as my wonderful entertainment device was charged and functioning. And speaking of, if you have a smart phone or tablet and don’t have an external battery, I recommend getting this one from Amazon. It has changed my life. Well ok that’s probably an exaggeration, but you get my point.
The Second Leg<
Because the train left from Greensboro’s station, it departed right on time. This time, I was seated beside an older woman who wrapped up in her blanket and dropped off pretty quickly.
In fact, the whole cabin felt almost otherworldly, with the whistle sound drifting in as if on a fog. This may have had more to do with the mode in which I had my hearing aids set. I’d wanted to see the lounge on this train, if that were even possible, but figured it would be hard to summon someone with everything so quiet. No stations were called either, and after a 45 minute stop in Charlotte, we largely just kept on rolling.
Continued in next entry, as it stretched on into Saturday like my flight to Madrid nearly 10 years ago. Stay tuned!
Beached
I stand on the edge, listening to the awesome roar of wind and waves, and feeling the water slide up and down my legs, up and down. I note the shifting sands underfoot, and think to myself that I am slowly being sucked down into a deeper and deeper hole. And I’m amazed at the idea that, some 3,000 miles away, on the other side of this great body of water stands someone who is probably doing the same.
Few things are to me like going to the beach, an activity I sadly haven’t engaged in for at least ten years. The mighty ocean is the closest most of us will ever come to deep Space, and from what I’ve learned, is actually less known about than said overhead environment.
I can still recall my first experience with the ocean and beach. It is probably more primarily stitched into my memory, because not two weeks later Hurricane Hugo slammed into those shores and took out many of the structures we had just enjoyed. Hard to believe that was 25 years ago, but it was. Man am I getting old.
I think that Myrtle Beach, South Carolina hadn’t yet become as crowded as it is nowadays. My family, always interesting navigators and especially in the era before widespread GPS was available, turned a 4-hour trip from Charlotte into an eight-hour trip. I think the more surprising thing there was that we pressed on until 1:15 AM, finally arriving at the Driftwood Motel and more or less dropping straight into bed./p>
That next day, I was taken aback by the smell of salty air and water that almost seemed alive somehow. I was also, maybe irrationally? I don’t know, afraid of being stung by jellyfish. I wasn’t brave enough to go any farther than waste-deep, that’s for sure. Once we stepped clear of the water, I think we only actually visited it one time, it evaporated pretty quickly, leaving me covered in crystals.
Then a fierce rainstorm blew in. The hallway of our motel had a balcony/viewing area, and my sisters looked out and said the tempest caused the ocean to look even more beautiful.
“I can see England in the distance”, one of them erroneously said. I thought maybe she could.
We went to Myrtle once again in the mid 90s, for a high-priced family reunion in which we spent a fair amount of time in a cold banquet room eating rubbery vegetables. I think most of us were wishing we’d just booked a cookout on the sand. We did stay in a nicer hotel though, Tropical Seas, which had a cool indoor/outdoor pool that would allow you to swim between them.
I visited two other times, both with the Charlotte Beep baseball team. One was to the incredibly nice Ocean Isle Beach in 1999. This trip was punctuated by the woman who was to drive my cousin and me down from Charlotte having crazy issues getting us into the rental car. For reasons known only to her, she thought the car had only two doors when it actually had four. She thus leaned the front seat all the way back and had us clammer over it, squeezing in there like crazy people. I showed her the back door when we got to a gas station and needed to relieve ourselves. I didn’t have time to wait for that fun again!
And my final trip was with that same team to Charleston, SC, where that year’s beep ball tournament was being held. My most memorable part of that experience was sitting on a huge deck, with sand blowing into my delicious shrimp meal and making things a bit gritty.
A trip with my high school out onto the Atlantic just off of the North Carolina coast showed me that I might have difficulties riding the waves on a boat, as I got kind of seasick. I enjoyed my only ride on the Pacific, though, a cruise through the relatively calm Marina del Rey, just off the coast of Los Angeles. I would like to stand on a beach of that ocean someday, as I hear it’s even more ferocious.
And that’s a little about one of my favorite experiences. I love the ocean and would consider living by it, if doing so wasn’t so frought with danger. I don’t know, maybe there’s some location where I could do so relatively safely.
Have you visited an ocean? What was it like? Ever been swimming in one?
Going On A Coaster Ride
As this summer is ending far more quickly than I would like, I thought it would be fun to continue reflecting on reasons why I enjoy the season so much. The only experiences I’ve really written about thus far are attending summer camps and old-time traditions of ice cream and car-cruising with the family. For the next few entries, I will talk about my trips to amusement parks, public pool jaunts, and standing beside the awe-inspiring Atlantic Ocean.
Have you ever been to an amusement park? It’s hard for me to imagine that one hasn’t, especially in the US and I guess most European countries. With that line of thought, I wonder exactly how many amusement parks there are.
In my hometown of Charlotte, we have Carowinds. I think I saw in an article that someone wrote about his experiences with the Thunder Road and White Lightning roller coasters that this park opened in 1976? It is built right on the North Carolina/South Carolina line, which creates a fun photo opportunity of shooting oneself while standing in both states. I think many of the coasters traverse the line as riders hurtle along as well.
The first time I can remember going, I was probably 7 or so. I think back then, they’d give out vouchers to attend the park for kids who had achieved perfect attendance at school. This is likely the only way our family of seven, including my cousin; my mom, dad, and Aunt could have gotten into the park at the same time.
We would stop by Bojangle’s to procure giant boxes of chicken and biscuits that we would leave the park to consume around lunch time, in lieu of the expensive fare provided inside. Better make sure the stamps on our hands could clearly be seen!
Back in those days, we had a big hatchback, and so a lot of us kids would squeeze in back with the trunk flung wide open, trying not to be sucked out by the roaring wind. I wonder if that sort of thing could even be done today? Probably a bit crazy, but fun.
Man, was I ever the cry baby back then. And it didn’t help that my biological father would pick on me constantly about it, calling me “sissy” in particular. He kept urging me to try riding Thunder Road, even though I was probably too short to do so then anyway. Not to mention terrified just by the sound and screaming people! Back in those days, I enjoyed smaller stuff like the Octopus, Metiorite (“Enjoy your flight, on the Metiorite!”) and swings that more like sucked you high into the air and spun faster and faster while doing so.
I eventually did try the coasters though, probably at age 10 or so. All that anticipation builds while standing in line, and I nearly got sick before getting on.
It’s probably more of an adventure for blind folks, as we can’t see what’s going to come beyond that hill. I was always amused by the clicking sound it makes as we slowly work our way up.
“Ah, I don’t think this is gonna be too bad.” I thought.
Till we leveled out, and woosh! Down we flew, with screeching metal and the shrill roar of voices reverberating off of the tunnel walls until those sounds became indistinguishable from one another. I felt the bar press toward my lap as I rose a bit from the seat and pulled the bar down towards me. There would be a few seconds of reprieve, allowing me to think it was over, then off we shot again! After that, I couldn’t get enough.
On that day, I rode Thunder Road, the Carolina Cyclone, (first time I’d even gone upside down on a ride,) and the Carolina Gold Rush. I was never brave enough to ride White Lightning, because I’d heard about it jumping the tracks and getting stuck a few times. I think they eventually shut that one down, if I’m not mistaken.
The ones that really terrified me though were the water rides! See my previously mentioned fear of water. There was one called the Waterlog, which would bump ominously against the side of its enclosure as we raced downhill toward the pool there. The sides were so low that I feared losing an arm or plain being thrown from the boat. In retrospect though, I suppose I enjoyed it.
At both Carowinds and Six Flags over Georgia in Atlanta, I rode what is basically the same stand-up coaster. At our park, it’s known as the Vortex, while down there they called it BatMan. A sighted person showed me how frighteningly close we come to the ground on one of the big turns on that thing.
Probably the most unnerving experience I know of someone having on that ride happened to my sister. She squeezed on the bars as the ride sped around the bend, and the bar came up as if unlocked! This caused her to hang in the air for the remainder of the ride, hoping she’d have enough strength to hold on until it stopped. Thinking of that makes me feel queasy. I think stuff like that may be why they’ve installed belts on most of those rides nowadays to offer additional security.
So which parks have you visited? What were the names of your favorite coasters? Do you know if they still exist?
Random Rambles, and Monkeying with Site
So at this moment, I don’t have a good topic to write about. However, I feel like pounding on the keyboard anyway, so this is what you’ll get.
I now officially own this patio in front of Dunkin Donuts. I’m here again, for the 200th time, so often that people in every business along this strip know my name. Someone even randomly gave me a $10 gift card, which helped to fund my delicious, traditional ice cream sundae on July 4th. This sundae consisted of vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and chopped nuts.
As I told someone else via Twitter, the tradition has its roots in middle childhood, when my mom would load her seven kids (including my cousin) into the family minivan, roll through a McDonald’s drive through, and get us all either sundaes or cones. I’ve always favored sundaes, because they tend to be a lot less messy. Plus, some cones taste like eating cardboard. I do kinda like the flavored ones, though they make the already sweet ice cream perhaps a bit too sweet.
Anyway, we would speed down the highway heading out of Charlotte for nearly 2 hours sometimes. Music from the Quiet Storm (remember that concept?) would finally lull us into a state of sleep that mom would have difficulty rousing us from once we finally turned back into our driveway. I know she’d be relieved though, as we would then drop straight into our beds. I’m guessing for her, this also served as good thinking time, a chance to just let everything float away on the cool, country-scented wind.
Speaking of which, there’s a fairly brisk breeze blowing out here as I sit and listen, with an umbrella flapping noisily overhead. Today and tomorrow are to be mid 80s, but then on Tuesday we’re gonna suddenly shoot up to 99! Hello, full-on summer.
In celebration of that, I activated the Beach theme on this page. I actually have no idea how that looked or if it worked, so eyes can tell me what they see. I just thought it sounded cool, and like something I’d like to be thinking about right now.
And finally, just six more days till my trip out west! Las Vegas Nevada, or as the flight attendant in The Goldfinch called it as they landed: “lost wages”. I certainly won’t be losing much of my wages there, as I plan to play the slots only once or twice, mostly so I can tell you what it’s like.
I find it somewhat amusing that I’d chosen to read this book without checking the reviews, and thus not knowing that a significant part of it takes place in Vegas. It confirms what happens to me every time I go somewhere, that area suddenly seems to become prominent in the news. Well area, object, person, whatever I’m noticing at the moment. I know, I’m important! Haha. Other instances of Vegas can be found in this NPR story on lack of youth employment opportunities there, and an article from the travel site Skift about how Vegas is marketing itself as a more welcoming summer tourism destination.
More sometime soon, maybe not till I get out there or back. I’m trying to decide if I wanna bring my laptop with me, though I fear that’d have to be checked and could thus be damaged, or just stick with the iPhone. I’ve blogged from the iPhone before, but we’ll see if I feel like doing that while on the go. Truthfully, I’ll probably be on the move too much to do it anyway. I have at least twelve people to meet. In any event, you’ll still hear about the fun. I also hope you’ll see some pictures, again if I find eyes to snap them with my iPhone. And there’ll be plenty of audio for us blind folk who thoroughly enjoy it. I’m all inclusive! To those who will be out there with me, have fun, and I can’t wait to hook up.
Writing 101-3: Off Da Top!
Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you?
Hmmm, I’m not entirely sure about three important songs. I would say though that it isn’;t a stretch to think that all of my favorite stuff came during the best musical decade ever, the 1990s. And one of my favorite things about the Internet is that it allows me to live in that decade continuously, the same way that adults listened to their oldies stations as I grew up.
I can think of at least one song that defined my life for a stretch: In The Still of the Night, by Boyz II Men. This is because its random singing led my two cousins and I to create a singing group. Remember that concept? I don’t think many of those exist these days, as most are solo artists. But, I suspect that history will bring it back in eventually.
I’d told this story in my other blog, the one that has since met its end, on the day Soul Train’s Don Cornelius passed. Perhaps it’s appropriate to try capturing it again on the day we lose another major music icon: Casey Kasem. If you didn’t grow up listening to his distinct voice deal out the top 40 songs of each week, well you missed a treat. I always looked forward to either his countdowns or Walt Babylove on the R&B side, which he did until deciding to emphasize gospel more.
Anyway, back to the formation of our little group. My cousins and I had just completed a rousing game of basketball with an adult, one of my cousin’s fathers in fact. How appropriate for Father’s Day? We then piled into his car to go and find some delicious, refreshing ice cream, probably at Dairy Queen.
Said song came onto the radio, and for some reason we don’t entirely recall we just began singing it. My youngest cousin took the lead vocal, I sang bass and my other cousin did the “shoo-wops”.
“Hey, that was fun!” we said once the song concluded.
It really surprised me that I was even able to do this. All of my life, I’d been told by many that I couldn’t really sing, or play instruments, (have tried to learn the piano from time to time and had gotten decent at the trumpet when in elementary band) so I’d largely become discouraged from even trying. My cousins told me more than once to stick with it though, and working with some fantastic choral instructors and singing in a couple church choirs, I began to expand my range.
RELATED: Sang With The Choir!
Due to our group’s origins, my dad suggested that we should’ve called ourselves the Backseat Boys. Lawsuit, anyone? We instead went with the name Off Da Top, because of course we wrote songs off da top of our heads! My Aunt chided us for the less-than-professional spelling, but hey why can’t we have a little fun. Like Musiq. Or Xscape.
Over the years, we continued to develop. Naturally, many of our initial favorites were Boyz II Men tunes. I especially remember singing It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday onboard the Catawba Queen as we cruised Lake Norman while at a summer camp sponsored by the Metrolina Association for the Blind (MAB). The restaurant area was staffed by college-age women, and one each came to rub on our backs as we sang. I nearly lost the ability to stay on the correct notes. Haha. They also shut down the PA music, so that everyone onboard could hear.
There was another time at a Raleigh ice skating rink. My cousins and I weren’t particularly big fans of this recreational activity, so we sat at the table with drinks in front of us and worked on Chi’s Baby I’m Yours. We’d made an error, and as we stopped to retry that spot we suddenly heard a loud burst of clapping. There had appeared a rather large contingent of young women, traveling with some kind of youth center. They opted to join us in singing Kirk Franklin’s Stomp. The preacher and leader of God’s Property? I think many members of that group came from Charlotte’s Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, our family’s original home church.
Our dream, like anyone who would have been doing such a thing, was to achieve stardom. I think in retrospect that it is quite fortunate we did not, as we had no idea what that would have actually entailed. The great memories we do have though, like winning a talent show at UNC Charlotte, performing to an incredibly excited congregation at First Missionary Baptist in Southern Pines with our own rendition of We Shall Overcome in celebration of Black History Month, and the like may in fact never be surpassed.
Even as my disorder continues to take away my hearing and make singing more of a chore than a joy, I will always continue to enjoy music. So, if I’m a bit flat or sharp or slightly off rhythm, try not to be too harsh! Off Da Top hasn’t performed in many years, but we have floated the idea of giving it a shot again someday. Who knows.
What about you? Can you sing, at least as we define it? Heck, to me anyone who sings just to feel that passion flow is good enough in my book.