December 15-16, 1979: An IST Meeting in Los Angeles
	Return to Index for 1979

Christmas this year found me going home again to be with my family- Mom and my sister Judy and her family.

In the last few years since my Dad's death in 1974, I have either flown down to Charlotte to be with my family, or, on a couple of occasions, I have driven. It takes a bit more than a day to drive down there, but if I get an early enough start I can do it in one. This year, I have some large gifts for the family that I really couldn't ship, so driving was my choice this year.

I actually left Chicago on the 21st and drove down to Indianapolis where I stayed with my friend Mike O'Brien. I had met him when I played bridge in Indianapolis. He and his Mom and Dad have a large apartment in downtown Indianapolis, with a guest room for me.

When I knew Mike in Indianapolis, he and I did quite a lot together after meeting at a bridge tournament. It was through Mike that I met Bill Tobe, who lived in Chicago and became a friend of mine when I moved there in 1972. Bill was also a bridge player.

Mike liked to do all sorts of things. We played bridge and tennis, and played some par three golf on occasion. His dad was the real golfer, and when I visited him from Fort Harrison on weekend, his dad could always be found watching golf on television. His mom was a very nice person and quite a good cook, and I ate with Mike and his family a number of times. Their apartment, high up in a build now called CityView on Meridian, was at the time one of the nicest I'd been in. It was a three-bedroom, two bath unit on the southwest corner of the highrise with amazing views of downtown Indianapolis. It was at 3801 Meridian, 38 blocks north of the center of the city.

During my first three years in Chicago I came down to visit Mike and my friends at Fort Harrison every couple of months or so, but after I went to work for Cullinane, my traveling kept me from coming down more than once or twice a year. Even so, Mike and his family were happy to see me on this trip, and I them. As it turned out, this would be the last visit I would make, as Mike soon moved to Kansas City for work.

On the morning of the 22nd, Mike's Mom fixed some breakfast and then I started ot on the 500-mile trip down to Charlotte. I arrived at my Mom's new condo in Charlotte in late afternoon.

I just had time to do some jogging while my Mom fixed dinner, and afterwards we went to play in the evening duplicate game at the Charlotte Bridge Club.

The house I grew up in is in South Charlotte a little north of Woodlawn Road and just a block off Park Road, but my Mom no longer has that house. She sold it in 1977 and moved to a new, more modern condo further south, also off of Park Road. Below, left, is an aerial view showing where my Mom is now, and at the right is a view of the condo, taken from the starred position and looking basically south:

Here's another case where the views available to me in 2019 don't match up with the reality at a particular time in the past. The new condos right along Park Road were not there in 1979; they won't be built for another 25 years or so. My Mom's condo development is a small one; there are just two buildings with six units in each. All the units are the same size- two bedroom, two bath units. My Mom's condo is the first-floor unit on the north side of the north building.

My Mom likes the condo; it is just the right size for her and much easier to take care of than the house she used to have. It is also a good deal more modern, having been constructed in 1977 (the house she sold was built in the 1940s). Everything my Mom needs is nearby, including a grocery store and pharmacy. Before Bill moved in with her, she could walk to both of them, and about the only driving she did was to the bridge club. Now that she and he are together, he as once again assumed the role my Dad used to play- being the "man of the house" and taking care of the chores like driving.

I spent the 23rd with Mom, playing bridge and eating out. On Christmas Eve, the two of us drove up to my sister's house, and I got us rooms at a local motel. I want to show where, exactly, 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 (early 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 this Christmas.

Today, to get to my sister's farm, I followed the same route that I have driven for fifteen years to get near to her house. Getting from Charlotte to the vicinity of Elon is a simple matter of getting on Interstate 85 north from Charlotte towards Greensboro, and staying on that highway after it becomes coterminus with Interstate 40 and heads more east to Raleigh.

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") put 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 have to double back on Garden Road which actually goes northwest more towards Elon (blue route). It connects to South Williamson Avenue, which you take north, across US Highway 70, through the center of Elon and out to the north, eventually angling off to the northwest.

In the first decade of the 21st century, development south of Elon and Gibsonville led to a huge new shopping area along Interstate 85, 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).

Anyway, once you get to the north side of Elon, my sister's farm is about three miles to the northwest, off Elon-Ossipee Road.

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 twelve or thirteen years ago. Their two kids, live at home of course; Ted is 11 and Jennifer ("Jeffie") is 10.

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 Greyfield Farms, as Judy has begun to call it, reside; those would be my sister's horses.

There's an aerial view of my sister's property at left, 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) was 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 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.

When Mom and I got to Judy's house on Christmas Eve afternoon, the first order of business was for me to get all the bulky gifts that had caused me to drive rather than fly out of the car and into Judy's playroom, where I arranged them under and around the tree. The one gift that had made driving necessary was the large package leaning against the wall to the left of the tree.

It was a large embroidered artwork that I had found on my recent trip to Hong Kong. I actually bought three of them- one for me, one for my Mom (which I also had with me), and one for Judy. I was also glad that I'd made my work decision so that I could enjoy Christmas without worrying about it, and that was the major bit of news that I brought to everyone on this trip home.

On Christmas Morning, it was time for the kids to attack the gifts that had been left for them:

Here are Ted and Jeffie attacking the various envelopes left on the tree.

That's Bob, playing with Ted and a friend.

I guess I was the same way when I was ten or so, but both Ted and Jeffie can get pretty hyper by Christmas morning, what with the sensory overload of all the gifts, and sometimes they can be a little tough to deal with.

At left is Jeffie playing with a toy that I don't recognize. More than anybody I know, she has a one track mind. It seems as if it isn't about horses, or connected with them in some way, she just isn't interested. My sister is similar, but, perhaps due to her age and mine, the effect isn't as pronounced. Although I certainly remember growing up that Judy was much more like her daughter; it was always horses, horses, horses.

The day after Christmas there was a hunt that Judy and Jeffie went to, and I went with them to watch the hunt. Before the hunt, we stopped to pet some Shetland ponies that were in a pasture next to where the hunt began:

The hunt was being held on land that the Hunt Club leased from the owner of these ponies, but I guess that I should have asked permission from someone before going into the pasture. As it turned out, when we all returned to the car, there was a local policeman wanting to know who we were!

Mom and I stayed at Judy's until the 27th; I kind of surprised my sister when I took the picture at left, right after dinner on our last day while she was doing the dishes. I wouldn't probably have said this growing up, but my sister is a really great person.

I took Mom back down to Charlotte on the 27th, and we played bridge one more time together.

I left for Chicago early on the 28th, and after driving straight through, I arrived back home about midnight.

I really enjoyed my trip home, but now I am looking forward to a momentous January, as I finish working for Cullinane and become an independent contractor.

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

	December 15-16, 1979: An IST Meeting in Los Angeles
	Return to Index for 1979