December 22, 1972: The Continental Bank Christmas Party
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From the Christmas Party at the Bank, I headed out to O'Hare airport to catch my flight to Charlotte and Christmas with my Mom, Judy and Bob, and Ted and Jeffie.

I only got a week of vacation this first half-year at the Bank, and I used part of it to go home after my Dad died and the rest of it (including some additional days they gave me) to go home now for Christmas. I will be flying to Charlotte and back, and then using my Mom's car around Charlotte and for our trip up to visit my sister and her family in their new house outside of Elon, North Carolina.

By planning ahead, I got a good deal on airfare, so it cost me less than $200 to get my roundtrip to Charlotte. My Mom, who has gotten her drivers license already, was able to pick me up at the airport.

We spent the evening together and on Saturday played down at the Charlotte Bridge Club. On Sunday morning, Christmas Eve, we drove up to Elon to my sister's house.

I want to show a bit about where my sister is, but the difficulty I have is that between my visit this Christmas and the time at which I am writing this online narrative (mid-2019), a lot has changed, physically, in Elon, Burlington, and North Carolina, with the result that the way one gets to my sister's farm today is much different than it was on this visit.

In 1972, the first part of getting to my sister's new house is the same. One simply takes I-85 from Charlotte to the Burlington area. At Greensboro, I-85 becomes coterminus with I-40, and they both continue east towards Raleigh.

At left is a more detailed map showing how to get to my sister's farm from the Interstate. Greensboro is west of Elon, so we drove east on Interstate 85 to get to the exit for my sister's house (the red line at the bottom of the map). At the time of this visit, one gets to my sister's house by following the blue route. The exit for Elon College (even that name has changed, as Elon College has become Elon University the town has changed its name officially to simply "Elon") puts you on Huffman Mill Road- actually one of the streets which, if you follow it northeast, will take you to Burlington, NC, the larger city just east of Elon.

So just off the exit from the Interstate, you almost immediately have to double back on Garden Road which goes back along the north side of the Interstate and dead ends into South Williamson Avenue. Here, you turn right and head north, go across US Highway 70, continue north and eventually through the center of Elon, and finally, as you continue north/northwest, you will come onto Elon-Ossippie Road (where you reach a red line again) that leads to my sister's farm.

In the first decade of the 21st century, development south of Elon and Gibsonville led to a huge new shopping area along Interstate 85 (Alamance Crossing), and so a new exit was constructed for access to the expressway. At the same time, a bypass was built around Elon, so that so much traffic wouldn't be going right through the center of town and right through the campus. So now, to get to the side of Elon on which my sister lives, you can get off Interstate 85 at that new exit, and take the much-faster bypass around to her side of the college town (green route). This will bring you back to the old route, and you can turn left and once again be on Elon-Ossippee Road. But this new bypass, and the new, more straightforward, and faster way to get to my sister's house is still decades in the future, so today we'll follow the route that I've learned quite well in the few years that my sister has been living where she is now.

My sister has a really nice farm a quarter mile west of Elon-Ossipee Road. She's been in Burlington since college, and when she married Bob they bought a piece of land and built a house on it. That was just last year. Their two kids, live at home of course; Ted is 3 and Jennifer ("Jeffie") is 2.

Judy and Bob bought the land and then built a house on it; the only structure they kept when they bought the property was the old red country barn down by the road. That's where the other residents of the Barbour ranch reside; those would be my sister's horses. (There are also other four-legged residents, but those are dogs and cats.)

There's an aerial view of my sister's property at right, but of course it doesn't show the farm as it looked this year. The biggest change between then and now (as I write this) has been the construction of a new, modern, cement-floored barn up near the house, to take the place of the vintage dirt-floored old one. (I will visit here during its construction years from now, and I created an album page for the pictures we took of it under construction.)

I always like visiting my sister and Bob (and the kids, of course), not least because it is a chance for me to get out of my city environment and into a more pastoral one. It's good for the soul. Mom and I spent Christmas Eve here (contributing our own haul to the presents underneath the tree), as well as Christmas Day, returning to Charlotte the day after Christmas.

So what about the pictures I took? Well, they concentrated on my sister, Jeffie, and Ted, and I got some pretty good ones. They ae in the slideshow below. To move from one picture to the next, just click on either the backward or forward arrow in the lower corners of each slide. And track your progress through the nine pictures by referring to the index numbers in the upper left:

1/9 2/9 3/9 4/9 5/9 6/9 7/9 8/9 9/9 < >

Mom and I spent Tuesday at home, and my flight back to Chicago, the last event of a pretty tumultuous year.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	December 22, 1972: The Continental Bank Christmas Party
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