From Turnpikes to Dirt Roads..

If you've read some of my other blogs you might have caught the hints about me not being from Carolina. Yes, it's true. I was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and was raised for the better part of 9 years in Palisades Park, New Jersey. It's a fun story.....if you're not part of it ;)

2005. Palisades Park. A town only 1.3 square miles in area. Population 18,000. The "small town" of New Jersey. I was 9 and life was simple. I woke up, did school, did homework, ate dinner and went to bed. Every now and then I'd change it up and eat dinner then do homework..just to keep things interesting. I had known that we were moving to North Carolina at the end of December and, boy, was I dreading it. I'd heard all these stories about the various "creepers" in the South. ;) I'd heard about their deep fried...well..everything, and their cold sugary tea. Regardless of the fact that everything I knew and loved was right here, we were just gonna pick up our little world  and drop it into the Middle of Nowhere, North Carolina. I mean, who even moves to North Carolina? Why couldn't we have just moved to Florida like everyone else does? A few of the many questions that were storming through my childish mind. Many a night would I cry myself to sleep, leading up until December 27th and many, many more nights would I pray that I'd wake up and find that we weren't moving after all.

The day came all too fast. It was December 27th and our stuff was all packed into some silly U-Haul. I said goodbye to my window sill, my creaky closet door, and the dust bunnies, and we were off. Good grief, was the car ride long enough?! Of course, I valued every minute of it as precious time to think about the "foreign country" I was headed to. How do you make new friends? Are people there even gonna be my age? Will I have to get a Southern dictionary to understand their accents? The car ride was unbearably nerve wracking. When we reached Roanoke, Virginia we finally decided to stop and get some food! Knowing my luck, of course, we picked the one place in all of Roanoke that was pretty sketch. A perfect introduction for my life in the South. What in the world are grits? What's Sun Drop? Why does everything come with gravy? What is that guy over there chewing?.. 'cause it sure doesn't look like gum! Oh, the agony! Thankfully, we hastily ate and got back on the road.

We reached North Carolina..finally. But..where were all the street lights? Seriously, you expect us to live here..we can't even see here! Not a single car on the road...sure, that was definitely a perk. "Welcome to Reidsville"..I felt anything but welcome. I thought for sure we were gonna see Bo and Luke Duke around a corner somewhere or maybe even Jethro and Ellly May. Thankfully, we reached my house before any of those characters showed up. You couldn't even see your hand in front of your face, but the stars sure looked bright. Come to think of it, did we ever even have stars in New Jersey? Well, it didn't matter 'cause these stars put all stars up until that point to shame. That day, everything changed. I went from hot tea to cold tea..from rolls to biscuits..from cream of wheat to grits..from turnpikes to dirt roads.

End of first transition.