My grandmother's house was located on the main road through town, across the street from a gas station where we would buy cold pop for $.10. There were two small movie theaters located one block from each other. I went to watch a double feature horror showing BY MYSELF when I was eight. That two block run to my grandmother's home in the dark was one of the scariest runs of my life. (I still can't believe I was allowed to go hang out at a movie theater by myself for four hours at age eight. My older brother didn't want to go, and I was determined.) I loved sitting on the front porch swing to watch summer afternoon thunderstorms. My grandmother would remove her false teeth and hold them in her hand while chomping them at us. I could never figure out how she did that. I remember trying in vain to pull my teeth out. It was (to me) one of the great magic tricks of all time.

When my dad gets to reminiscing about his childhood, it is a lot of fun to hear his stories. He loved growing up in small town Clinton, NC. Unfortunately, his stint in the USAF took us to the west coast and we ended up in Oregon - so far away from our NC family. We only got back to see them a couple times in my youth. I only reconnected with one of my cousins a few years ago. Otherwise, I do not know most of them. That is something I wanted to change with our children. We wanted them to know and love their extended family.

North Carolina is a beautiful state. My parents grew up about 55 miles apart. (Mother was in Clayton, NC.) Dad said they may as well have been 3,000 miles apart, because in their day you just did not go very far from home. They met at Wake Forest and were married almost 58 years, before my mother passed away in May.

One of my biggest regrets was not taking our children to NC to visit my grandmother before she passed away. They would have loved the trip. The best part of our trip to the BYU/UVa game a couple years ago was meeting some cousins in the Virginia Beach area, spending time with them. They were the ones who were talking about coming to Provo just a few weeks ago for the BYU/ECU game.

I have not spent much time in North Carolina, but I have often sang the words from James Taylor: "In my mind I'm going to Carolina." I have wondered many times how differently life might have been growing up in NC. (We were baptized into the LDS Church in Oregon, so that was a big win. Not sure how all that would have worked out in NC.)