October 20, 1973: My Move to Eugenie Square
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I had another week of vacation from the Bank this year, and so I used most of it to go to North Carolina for Christmas.

I actually only had another four days of vacation time, so I didn't want to waste time driving, so I flew from Chicago down to Charlotte, where I rented a car.

My Mom has gotten her drivers license (my dad used to do all the driving for the family and she really didn't need one, but now that he's gone she needs to get around by herself), and she has my dad's last car, but I thought that it would be a bit much to ask her to navigate to the airport to get me.

My Mom continues to live in the Somerset Drive house, and it looks pretty much the same as it did when I was at Davidson. There have been some minor changes, but the house will always be very familiar to me. My Mom has gotten back into playing bridge a good bit, and we had one game together at the Bridge Club before going up to Elon on Christmas Eve.

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.

Let me see if I can use the map at right to explain. Greensboro is west of Elon, so we drove ease on Interstate 85 to get to the exit for my sister's house (the red line at the bottom of the map). So let me show how today, in 1975, one gets to my sister's house; this is the route marked by the blue line. 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 in 1972, so they have been here now for going on four years. Their two kids, live at home of course; Ted is 6 and Jennifer ("Jeffie") is 5.

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.

Now that you have an idea of the rural environent in which my sister now lives, let's get to the pictures that I took on my visit this Christmas.

(Picture at left) Oh, it's great to be a kid at Christmastime. To get a tree up and decorated, to do all the shopping that's necessary to purchase all the gifts under the tree, all the time it takes to wrap them nicely so you can look at the for a few hours after Santa leaves them, and to prepare and serve the Christmas Dinner; all of that takes a great deal of time and effort. But when you are five and four (as Ted and Jennifer are), none of it is on your own to-do list. The tree is in the playroom; the laundry and back door are in the background.   (Picture at right) Jennifer loved her huge giraffe. I've forgotten whether I found it or Judy did. Jennifer is already showing an interest in the horses that Judy has in the old barn, probably because she wants to emulate her mother, and that interest seems to extend to most animals.

Since my sister and Bob have a full house, I got Mom and I rooms at the Best Western over on the other side of Elon. I think my Mom is more comfortable having her own space.

Ted, on the other hand, is into all kinds of mechanical things. Here he is playing with the new truck that he got.

Here are the giraffe and my sister, Judy. She is a handsome woman, and sometimes reminds me of the Land o'Lakes Indian woman.

We had a nice Christmas at my sister's house, and I suspect that this will be just among the first of what will probably be a number of Holiday visits that I will make to North Carolina. My work at the Bank is pretty routine, and coming home for the Holidays will probably become part of that routine.

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

	October 20, 1973: My Move to Eugenie Square
	Return to Index for 1973