North Dakota presents another challenge to the question of what constitutes visiting a state. I took a train through North Dakota (lengthwise!) so technically, I was there for a while. We stopped at Minot and discussed the boom in that area with other passengers. However, my feet have never touched North Dakotan soil.
50 Memories: North Carolina
North Carolina has played a huge part in my life: we spent a week in the summer and every other Christmas in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains. My grandparents’ house was on a hill surrounded by woods, a farm once full of tobacco (and later host to a single, elderly horse), and the homesteads of several other family members.
My Mom grew up in Lake Junaluska – a smaller town thirty miles west of Asheville. Occasionally I’ll encounter people who’ve heard of Lake Junaluska. Invariably, they are Methodists from the east coast who attended one of the church’s many summer youth programs in the area.
Our summer visits to Lake Junaluska always included a hike up Water Rock Knob – a local, family-friendly climbing spot. There was always a walk around the lake itself and a trip to Maggie Valley to shop in the small boutiques. We’d follow my grandfather around as he worked on the farm and visit the fire station they later remodeled and named for him (he was a hero!). The rest of the time was spent fighting over the hammock or wandering through the woods to find a fresh water spring that was allegedly the site of my aunt Mary’s first kiss. Allegedly because I never found the spring; she surely got her first kiss there or somewhere on that hill.
The occasional summer also included a trip to Ghost Town, the sporadically-opened nearby amusement park perched atop a lower, rounder mountain. The key draw was the ski lift ride required to enter and exit the area. We looked forward to Ghost Town each summer because we never really knew if it would still be there. It was our be-roller-coastered Brigadoon.
One summer, my dad forged through swaths of poison ivy to build us a fort out of felled logs. Every summer thereafter included a camp out at The Fort with sleeping bags and our family friends Kip and Megan.
North Carolina introduced me to rhubarb, boiled peanuts, and bread-and-butter pickles. I pick up a jar of bread-and-butter pickles at the grocery store from time to time, but they are never as good as the ones my grandmother made. It’s always like that, isn’t it?
50 Memories: New York
We lived in New York for just about 2 years. This meant that for the rest of my life I’d be saying, “No, I went to Junior High in a suburb of Rochester, not New York City,” because most people forget there’s an entire state attached to that city.
In New York I learned to ski, so I’m forever in the debt of the Empire State. I also experienced some of the worst embarrassment of my life over my bad skin. I haven’t really been bothered to get embarrassed since, so I suppose it was best to get it all out of my system in the course of two school years.
I’d been through New York several times before living there – on the way to Vermont for a family wedding, on the way to Cape Cod, etc. The time that stands out the most was the summer of 1996. Kerry and I were flying from Texas (where we’d been visiting friends) to Maryland (where we were meeting up with our aunt and cousins to head to Ocean City) and we got off the plane at BWI to see … our dad.
It was jarring at first because he seemed so out-of-context. He wasn’t supposed to be there so we knew immediately that something was wrong. It was. We wouldn’t be going to the beach that year because our uncle was in the hospital. Dad, Kerry, and I drove back up to Rochester and stopped in New York City along the way. We got to ride the Staten Island Ferry. Other than that, we were too sad about our beach-less-ness to take in much of the city.
50 Memories: New Jersey
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