The Canadas

Summer 1997 News Mark Murphy’s Visit Independence Day Asheville, North Carolina Charlotte, North Carolina Nashville, Tennessee Indiana Home Improvements, Part 1 Memories of a Gremlin Mark Turns 30 Indiana comes to Carolina Updated August 6, 2002 © Canadas 2002

Adventures in Laurinburg Some people might feel trapped in a small town like Laurinburg, North Carolina. We feel right at home. A city of about 33,000 people, Laurinburg lacks many of the things we have seen in larger cities: noise, traffic, tiny yards, endless strip malls, and abandoned downtown districts. Instead, we've found a pleasant combination of peaceful, clean, tree-lined neighborhoods and small, but lively shopping districts. We especially enjoy living in an older, downtown neighborhood, where we can enjoy many of these features without even getting into our car. We walk five minutes to church, ride our bikes to the library or post office, and regularly run our errands downtown on foot. If we had a large appetite for stimulation, we might miss the larger cities where we used to live. Living on the salaries of English majors for the past eight years, however, has helped to curb that appetite. Even when we lived in Indianapolis and Chapel Hill, a trip to Target or an evening with Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, was usually more than enough to satisfy us. Laurinburg offers exactly the inexpensive, simple pleasures that we like best: a nearby park where we can walk, a ballpark where we can watch amateur baseball, an ice cream shop, safe neighborhoods where I can run and we can ride our bikes, an excellent Mexican restaurant called Mi Casita's, and an outstanding barbecue restaurant called General MacArthur's. We also are only a five-minute drive from St. Andrew's College, a Presbyterian school of about 400 students here in Laurinburg. Huge, densely wooded, and situated around a gorgeous pond, the St. Andrew's campus is a perfect place to walk, ride a bike, or just sit by the water and watch birds. It reminds us a lot of the St. Francis campus in Fort Wayne, except that it's about 10 times larger. On my way into Laurinburg from Pembroke, I pass a sign advertising Laurinburg as a "bird sanctuary." Our yard, which is packed with tall trees and several shrubs, must be one of the city's main draws for birds. Soon after moving here, we started spotting cardinals, blue jays, doves, mockingbirds, and robins. But that was only the beginning. These sightings whetted our appetite for birdwatching, and we started looking through our binoculars and consulting our birdwatching guide. Quickly becoming conversant with terms such as "cap" and "bib," we have had a ball identifying gray catbirds, thrashers, nuthatches, and a woodpecker called a yellow-shafted common flicker. My favorite is the gray catbird, which has a funny black cap and makes a sound like a cat's meow.

Mark Murphy’s Visit

June: We love to entertain guests, especially now that we have moved to a new town. We recently got a special treat when Mark Murphy, one of my close friends at Lawrence North High School and the best man in our wedding, stopped to visit us for a few days on his way to a wedding in Greenville, South Carolina. Soon after he arrived on Thursday afternoon, Lisa and I took him out to our favorite restaurant in Laurinburg, a barbecue smorgasbord called General MacArthur's. Over pulled pig and hush puppies, Mark told us about his new job as a financial analyst at Exxon in Dallas, Texas. The next morning, Lisa treated us to one of her legendary breakfasts, and I took Mark to the University of North Carolina at Pembroke campus, where I showed him my office and this Web site. After a pleasant afternoon of relaxation and conversation, we cooked some hamburgers and shishkabobs on our miniature grill and just enjoyed a beautiful, quiet evening in the back yard. Finally, we watched an excellent movie, The Usual Suspects, that our friend Mark Gamble had recommended.

Like most of our guests, Mark loved North Carolina. After seeing Laurinburg and spending some time in our home and yard, he even said he might like to relocate here some day. We'd like that.

Independence Day

July: Because of our interest in American literature, culture, and history, the Fourth of July is one of our favorite holidays. This year, we didn't feel like traveling, as we did a few years ago for a wonderful vacation in Colonial Williamsburg. Instead, we enjoyed a fun, traditional holiday at home featuring as many American things as we could pack into one day. For one thing, we flew our Stars and Stripes and played a lot of American music, including tunes from colonial Virginia and the Civil War era, Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs," and a tape of songs performed by the 82nd Airborne Division All American Chorus--courtesy of our friend Capt. Drew Reeder. For dinner, Lisa prepared a picnic meal of hot dogs, corn on the cob, pasta salad, watermelon, and chocolate pie. Even the weather was distinctively American for a Fourth of July: sunny and 90-something degrees. Never one to let a little heat slow me down, I went for a long, leisurely bike ride in the country and through the neighborhoods. I was eager to see how other Laurinburg residents were enjoying their Independence Day. Most, it seemed, were celebrating it inside in the air-conditioning, perhaps looking with amusement on the fool riding his bike around in the heat.

All we needed to round out our Fourth of July were a fireworks show and a baseball game. The nearest fireworks show, however, was a half-hour away, and we failed to find any ballgames on the local diamonds in Laurinburg. We settled for a drive in the country and an evening at home, where we have been spending our evenings reading to each other. For this occasion, we read the Declaration of Independence and part of a biography of one of my favorite Americans, Benjamin Franklin.

Asheville, North Carolina

July 28, 1997: On a trip back to Indiana to see our families, we went a bit out of our way so that we could visit Asheville, as well as Nashville, Tennessee. We had visited Asheville five years ago, but had seen only the Biltmore Estate. This time, we went downtown and saw a lot more. We arrived around 1 p.m. and had some excellent sandwiches at the New French Bar, which our Chapel Hill friends Chris and Mandy Goodson had recommended. We then split up to explore a bit of the downtown area, which is a charming and interesting collection of shops, old churches, and steep streets. Lisa walked to T.S. Morrison, a shop that is advertised as "Asheville's Oldest Store," where shoppers can travel into "the nostalgic past." Lisa, however, didn't find anything particularly nostalgic about the store's collection of Gummy Bears, T-shirts, and battery-operated toys. I had better luck. In addition to a nice used-book store, where I picked up a Willa Cather novel that we had been planning to read, I stumbled on the striking Basilica of St. Lawrence, which is located on a high point of the downtown.

We met outside T.S. Morrison and proceeded to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, which was the main reason we came to Asheville. Having read Wolfe's first and most famous novel, Look Homeward, Angel, a few months ago, we both were eager to see the memorial's main attraction, the "Old Kentucky Home," where Wolfe's mother ran a boardinghouse and Wolfe spent much of his youth. Known for writing extensively about his own life and family, Wolfe set much of Look Homeward, Angel in this house, which he called "Dixieland" in the novel. We felt as if we were walking through the novel as we visited the large dining room, where Julia Wolfe's servants served meals to her two or three dozen boarders; the kitchen, where Wolfe described his mother hunched over a stove; and, my favorite part of the house, the bedroom where Wolfe's brother Ben died at age 26. Wolfe was especially close to Ben, and his description of this brother's death is the most moving and most beautifully written part of the novel.

After touring the house, Lisa was ready for a break and returned to our hotel. While she rested, I did some more exploring, driving out to Riverside Cemetery to see the Wolfe family gravesite, where the author is buried alongside his mother, father, and seven siblings. Although Wolfe initially attracted a great deal of hostility for his rather unflattering portraits of many Asheville residents, many of whom he identified by name in the novel, he has developed a large following in North Carolina, and his hometown now obviously takes a lot of pride in its association with him. Before he died in 1938, the tour guide at the Old Kentucky Home pointed out, at least one citizen actually requested that Wolfe write about him in his work. Today, the town is content to remember him with monuments and various other things named in his honor. At his gravesite, I noticed that some admirers had left notes and other objects of affection. Before leaving, I walked a few hundred feet farther into the cemetery to visit the grave of another world-famous writer from North Carolina, William Sydney Porter. In a much less conspicuous spot, I found the relatively small, understated stone of Porter, known to the world as O. Henry. Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Porter worked as a bank teller in Texas, spent time in prison after he was accused of embezzling, moved to New York, and became one of the most famous writers in American history, earning a reputation for ending his stories with a twist. Like Wolfe, Porter died early of disease, and both lie in the secluded, peaceful, rolling hills of Riverside Cemetery.

My last stop of the day was the Grove Park Inn Resort, which sits on a high hill overlooking Asheville. I know of the inn mainly because of its association with novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived there in parts of 1935 and 1936 while his wife, Zelda, was suffering from a mental breakdown. The inn is famous for other reasons, however. Particularly during the 1920s, when it was one of the premier resorts in the world, the Grove Park has played host to many other celebrities, including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Today, it certainly is the most striking hotel I have ever seen, mainly because of its stone exterior, constructed in 1912 of rocks quarried from the surrounding area.

The next morning, we left Asheville for Nashville, spending several hours on our favorite road, the Blue Ridge Parkway, where we took in some spectacular views.

Charlotte, North Carolina

July 10-13, 1997: An invitation from our friends Bryant and Anita Stevens brought us to Charlotte for the first time since we moved to North Carolina in 1992. Thanks to the hospitality of Bryant and Anita, who allowed us to stay with them in their house near Lake Norman, we enjoyed a wonderful four days of conversation, sight-seeing, and outdoor activities.

When we arrived on Thursday evening, we sat down with our hosts for a cookout on their deck and caught up on all that happened to us in the last few years. On the next morning, Lisa and I drove down to Charlotte to take in some sights. Settled in the 18th century and named after the wife of England's King George III in the 1760s, Charlotte has grown substantially in recent years and now has more than 1 million people in the vicinity. We started our tour by driving around Dilworth, one of the beautiful old neighborhoods near the center of town. While in the area, we lucked upon a restaurant called Frankie's Italian Grille. Named after Frank Sinatra, the restaurant celebrates him in both pictures and music while serving excellent, affordable food. We decided that we had made a good choice when Lisa noticed that our host Bryant, purely by coincidence, had come there too!

After driving around the center of town and admiring the clean streets and new architecture of Charlotte, we drove out to the city's art museum. As its name suggests, the Mint Museum of Art is interesting for both its history and its art. It is located in the building that served as the Charlotte Mint from 1831 to 1861 and 1867 to 1913. Few people outside North Carolina realize that this state was the site of the nation's first gold rush. Several years before the discovery at Sutter's Mill in California in 1849, gold was found in the mountains of North Carolina. The Charlotte Mint was created to transform this gold into coins. Several examples of these coins are on display in the building, which was moved piece by piece from its original site near the center of town to its current location a few miles away. Even more impressive than its history is the museum's fine collection of art. The European section was closed on the day we visited, but we had no trouble spending a couple of hours seeing the American art, which includes works by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), Winslow Homer (1836-1910), John James Audubon (1785-1851), Thomas Sully (1783-1872), John George Brown (1831-1913), and William Charles Anthony Frerichs (1829-1905), one of the first artists to visit and paint the wild areas of North Carolina. My favorite paintings in the collection, however, are the ones painted by members of the Hudson River School, a collection of landscape painters who worked in the mid-19th century. Among these gorgeous paintings of grand wilderness scenes are Hudson River Scene by Thomas Doughty (1793-1856), Mt. Washington from Lake Sebago, Maine by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), Mountain Landscape by Charles Knapp (1823-1900), and American Lake Scene by Thomas Cole (1801-1848). In admiring these paintings, we often noticed a tiny person or two--sometimes depicted with just a couple of dabs of paint--amid the towering mountains and expansive rivers, and I wondered whether the artist included this human with the intent of depicting not only the sublime landscape, but the human experience of seeing the landscape. While at the Mint Museum, we also saw a fascinating exhibit on the work of Ben Long, who has painted several frescoes in churches and civic buildings in North Carolina. In addition to displaying many of Long's sketches and other preliminary plans for his giant wall paintings, the exhibit explained the complex process of frescoe painting, which involves quickly painting small sections of a wall before the paint on that wall dries. We took particular interest in seeing the changes that Long made between his early sketches and the finished product, including the deletion of a Ku Klux Klansman from a frescoe he painted for a city building in Charlotte. We also learned that Long includes real subjects, including his wife and other people he knows, in the frescoes. Because of this habit, I think, his works look more real than other paintings. The construction workers in one frescoe, for example, look like ones I have seen rather than the glorified and idealized subjects in other artists' works.

We next visited the Hezekiah Alexander House, a stone house completed in 1774. While most settlers in the wilderness of North Carolina lived in log cabins at this time, Alexander and his family--who had moved from Pennsylvania--lived this impressive home, which they built using stones from the area. Indeed, they found enough stones to make the house's walls more than a foot thick, as well as to build a large well house about 50 yards from the house, next to a creek. As elegant on the inside as on the outside, the house features wood paneling, wooden floors, evenly cut ceiling beams, three bedrooms, a large foyer, a dining room, and a small parlor or den. Near the house are a large herb garden and a log building where the family did the cooking.

After this active day of sightseeing, we were content to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing with Bryant and Anita at Lake Norman. That evening we joined them and their friends Charlie and Leah for a dinner on the water, and the next morning Bryant and Anita took us out on the lake, where we took in some sun, relaxed in the boat, and cruised past the mansions of stock car driver Rusty Wallace and other celebrities. That afternoon, Bryant took me for a drive around Davidson College, which is only a few minutes from Lake Norman. Densely wooded and filled with a mixture of old and modern brick buildings, Davidson's campus is one of the most beautiful ones I have seen. Established in 1837, Davidson has only about 1,600 students, but it serves these students--and the 144 members of the faculty--with an impressive collection of facilities. My favorite is the new, enormous gymnasium, which contains a pool as impressive as the one in UNC-Chapel Hill's natatorium.

On the final day of our visit, Lisa and I borrowed our hosts' bicycles and took a leisurely ride around a county park on the lake. Later that afternoon, Anita and Bryant took us around to see a series of open houses in the area. Although we are not in the market for a house, seeing these homes gave us some ideas. Lisa, for example, got some decorating ideas, and I got the idea that we won't be moving to Lake Norman unless we win the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes a few times.

Charlotte and Lake Norman are beautiful places to visit and are only a little more than two hours from our house in Laurinburg. We look forward to seeing them again, perhaps with our parents or other guests when they come to visit.

Nashville, Tennessee

July 29-30, 1997: Visiting Nashville, a city we have wanted to see for years, meant driving a few hours out of our way on the way back to Indiana to visit our families, but the trip was well worth the effort. Founded in 1779 and originally named Nashborough after Revolutionary War General Francis Nash, Nashville is famous for its association with country music. As Waylon Jennings sings, "Old Hank made it here, and we're all sure that you will." In addition to Hank Williams, the singers who have made it in Nashville include Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and Loretta Lynn. Indeed, just about every major and minor country and western musician has some association with Nashville. Clint Black, Wynona Judd, and many other stars live here, and of course scores of performers have appeared at the Grand Ole Opry.

The Opry house, now located at Opryland just outside the city, was our first stop. Just getting there, however, was an adventure. We left Asheville, normally only five hours from Nashville, at 8 a.m. and expected to arrive in plenty of time for the 3 p.m. show at the Opry. But a rock slide in the Blue Ridge Mountains had blocked Interstate 40, and we took a long, tortuous detour on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is both one of the most beautiful and one of the slowest routes in the country. Winding along the side of mountains at 40 miles an hour or less, we spent more than four and a half hours driving to Knoxville, Tennessee, which is only about two hours from Asheville on Interstate 40. Still three hours from Opryland, we just tried to accept, though with disappointment, that we were going to be late, perhaps by a half hour or more. When we showed up at the theater three hours later, however, we found long lines of people, and Lisa marveled that so many other people were as late as we were. I asked a woman in front of us in line if we would have to wait for an intermission. Not responding directly to my question, which probably made no sense to her, she said the doors were supposed to open at 2, but no one had opened them yet. Looking at my watch, which read 3:25, I asked her what time it was. She said, "2:25." We had forgotten about the time change! According to time in North Carolina, we were a half hour late; in Tennessee, though, we were a half-hour early. Within 30 seconds, the doors opened, and we leisurely strolled in, took our seats, and relaxed.

The Grand Ole Opry began in 1925 as a radio show called "The WSM Barn Dance." Coming on the air one day after a radio program of opera, announcer George Hay said: "For the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera, but now we will present, 'The Grand Ole Opry.'" The Opry, which drew large crowds over the next two decades, moved to Ryman Auditorium in 1943 and stayed there until 1974, presenting many of the most famous acts in country music: Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and many others. That year, the Opry moved to its present location in the Opryland amusement park, and it continues to draw both country stars and large crowds. We enjoyed attending the Opry because it has so much history--maybe a little too much. Nearly all of the performers we saw--Porter Wagoner, Little Jimmy Dickens, Skeeter Davis, Bill Anderson, and others--were about as old as the Opry, as were their jokes. The closest we came to seeing Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Martina McBride, Lorrie Morgan, and Joe Diffie was gazing longingly at their pictures on the front of the program.

We have the good fortune of knowing a Nashville native, Brian Carpenter, who attended graduate school with me at Carolina. After checking into a comfortable guest house at the Commodore Inn, which Brian had found for us, we joined him for dinner at a fabulous restaurant called the Sunset Grill, where had the pleasure and frustration of choosing from scores of exotic dishes. Lisa finally settled on a filet mignon, which turned out to be best steak she had ever tasted, and I had a fine jerked chicken. Later, the three of us split a dessert trio of pecan pie, chocolate cake, and coconut clusters. Even more than the meal, we enjoyed catching up with Brian, whom we hadn't seen since moving to Laurinburg in April.

There's no better way to tour a city, I think, than to jog through it in the morning. Unlike driving a car or even riding a bike, jogging allows me to see things up close and stop easily to read signs or go into buildings. For me, running is even better than walking because I can cover three times as much ground in 30 to 45 minutes and get in my daily exercise to boot. I like mornings because most areas are quiet and uncrowded and because I can spend my time productively before the attractions open. On our second day in Nashville, I got up around 6 and went for a jog around the Vanderbilt University campus, located just a mile or so southwest of downtown. Founded in 1873 by the industrialist George Vanderbilt, who donated 1 million dollars for the project, Vanderbilt has a campus of breathtaking beauty. The red-brick buildings and their stone columns are majestic, and the landscaping is beautiful. My favorite structure is the Social Religious Building, which sits atop a hill at the end of a huge courtyard in the middle of Peabody College, now a part of Vanderbilt.

Later in the next morning Brian picked us up and took us to the Pancake Pantry, a modest restaurant known not only for its pancakes, but for its celebrity customers. Because it is only a few blocks from Music Row, where several record companies and recording studios are located, stars such as Garth Brooks and Clint Black sometimes pop into the Pantry for breakfast. We got a taste of both of the Pantry's specialties; while we were eating some of the best pancakes we had ever tasted, Michael Johnson--who wrote the song "Bluer Than Blue"--sat down in the booth behind us. After breakfast, Brian took us for a driving tour of downtown Nashville, which has a more distinctive and appealing personality than most large cities I have seen. On our tour, Brian pointed out Music Row, the renowned honky tonks along Broadway, Ryman Auditorium, the riverfront, beautiful Centennial Park, and Nashville's most distinctive landmark, a full-scale replica of the Parthenon.

After saying goodbye to Brian and thanking him for his extraordinary hospitality, we spent our last hour in Nashville in Centennial Park, where Lisa rested in a lush garden while I visited the Parthenon. Built for the 1897 Centennial Fair to reflect the rich culture of Nashville, then known as the "Athens of the South," the Parthenon is modeled after the Greek building where Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and other ancient intellectuals congregated. Builders originally intended to make the structure only strong enough to last as long as the fair--about six months. Residents liked their Parthenon so much, however, that the city supported a renovation to give the Parthenon a longer life. Today, as it enters its third century, the building is undergoing a third renovation. Impressive enough in its size and general outline, Nashville's Parthenon also is authentic in its details. Inside, I saw a 40-foot-tall statue of Athena, modeled after one that used to reside in the Greek Parthenon, as well as replicas of the friezes that appear on the facades of both the original building and the replica. Like its predecessor, Nashville's Parthenon also promotes culture. In the basement, I saw an art exhibit featuring works by Albert Bierstadt and other giants of the Hudson River School, a group of 19th-century American painters known for their depictions of grand landscapes.

Delighted by our short visit and eager to visit again, we left Nashville and set out for our next stop, New Harmony, Indiana.

Indiana

July 31-August 10, 1997: On our way up to Indianapolis and Fort Wayne to visit our families, we stopped in New Harmony, the site of two extraordinary settlements in the early 19th century. In 1814, George Papp led about 800 German Lutheran separatists from Pennsylvania to this area alongside the Wabash River, just a few miles north of the Ohio River, to wait for the Second Coming of Christ. The founded the city of Harmonie, where they built several houses, a granary, a church, a tavern, a brewery, and other buildings. For the next decade the city thrived as the Harmonists, who abstained from hard liquor, sold beer and whiskey, along with tools and clothing, to people thousands of miles away in America and 10 foreign countries. Despite their commercial success, the settlers abandoned Harmonie in 1824 and founded a new city near Pittsburgh. In Walker's Guide to New Harmony's History, Janet R. Walker writes: "After ten years on the Wabash, Harmonie was almost complete and very productive, but Christ had not returned, the west had not grown as expected, and few disciples had immigrated from Germany. Father Rapp still did not have the large markets that he wanted. Also, he may have believed his flock was more dedicated and pure while challenged by the harder labor of building a town" (2).

In 1825, a Scot named Robert Owen purchased Harmonie, and another type of settlement was soon under way. This time the focus was not the peculiar combination of economics and religion, but the equally peculiar combination of economics and scholarship. "Owen envisioned a center for educational and social equality," Walker explains. "He believed character was environmentally determined and with such perfect environment as he would create with his new communal social order, all society would be perfect" (2). Later, the successful geologist William Maclure and other scholars took part in Owen's venture. By 1827, however, the grand project dissolved. A librarian I met at New Harmony's Workingman's Institute suggested that the intellectuals who congregated here perhaps were not cut out for the isolation of the Indiana wilderness or the physical labor required to make New Harmony succeed and that Owen's son Robert Dale Owen, who became the community's leader after his father left in 1827, lacked the leadership qualities of his father. Even though they abandoned the socialist experiment and reverted to capitalism, many residents remained in New Harmony and continued their intellectual work, particularly in geology.

Lisa and I came to New Harmony as tourists interested in exploring the history of these settlements. In our self-guided bicycle tour through the town, we saw the Harmonist Cemetery, where the people of the first community buried their dead alongside Indian Burial Mounds, but used no tombstones because they believed in equality in both life and death. As a result, the cemetery, which is enclosed by a brick wall, simply looks like a small park. We also saw some of the Harmonists' houses, which they left unpainted because they expected Christ's appearance within 10 years. From the era of Owen's New Harmony, we saw the Workingman's Institute, which Maclure founded as a means for laborers to develop their intellects.

New Harmony is more than a relic, though. Indeed, what impressed us even more than the settlements of 170 years ago was the community as we experienced it in 1997. As soon as we arrived and checked into our hotel, we were struck by the beauty and peace of the place. Our room at the New Harmony Inn contained hardwood floors, a four-poster fed, and a balcony overlooking a nearby pond. As the sun was setting, we took a walk around the grounds and discovered that they are designed for spiritual retreats. Visitors can feel inspiration in the physical features such as a small waterfall and wooded trails, as well as a tiny chapel and plaques featuring inspirational words from Ludwig von Beethoven and Henry David Thoreau. For people who need a little more structure, there is the Roofless Church, a large, enclosed area where visitors can reflect in corner grottoes or on benches overlooking a beautiful field. The next morning I went for a jog and took in many of these peaceful sites, as well as much of the town and the nearby Wabash River.

Beautiful weather, a couple of field trips, and time with family and friends made for a great four days in and around my hometown of Indianapolis. On the first full day, Lisa and I joined my parents for a day trip down to Spring Mill State Park near Mitchell, Indiana. There, after a picnic lunch, a visit to a cave, and a hike along a creek, we visited the highlight of the park: a Pioneer village from the early 19th century, when the location of a grist mill and saw mill in the area made for a prosperous community. Today, this village, which is made up of buildings originally located and other from nearby locations, is extrodinary not only for its appealing appearance, but for its historical interest. In addition to the attractive mill and street wall--both constructed of stone--and colorful garden, Lisa and I saw several features we had not seen at any of the many other pioneer buildings and villages we had visited. The first couple of houses we visited, for example, featured 'dog trots,' breezeways useful for packing wagons. Another house, one that belonged to the owner of the mill, was extraordinary for its design. Constructed of logs that had been carefully sawed to be straight instead of rough-hewn logs, this house looked much more modern than most log houses. The inside was even more modern. Instead of one or two large, open areas, like the ones we have seen in other early pioneer cabins, this house contains more than a half-dozen rooms arranged in quadrants on two separate floors, as well as a detached summer kitchen. Finally, one of the strangest sights in the village is the nursery. Following the sign and not sure whether we were going to see a building designed for nurturing plants or people, my mom and I discovered a half-circle of tiny chairs and had our answer. This early version of preschool must have been one of the first of its kind in the Indiana wilderness in the early 19th century. A bed and china cabinet in the adjoining room suggested to us that the teacher lived there.

The following day, we visited our friends Chris and Angie Prince, who had a party that day because of the Brickyard 400 stock car race in town. In addition to seeing Chris, whom I've known since we went to Mary Castle Elemetary School together, I had the extra treat of seeing his parents, Terry and Margaret, and his brother, Richie, who used to play baseball with us back in the days of ghost runners and pitcher's hand. We also visited with some other old friends, Steve and Deb Lawrence, who still live in Indianapolis.

We visited Fort Wayne mainly to attend the Henry-Degitz family reunion, knowing that most, if not all, of my brothers and sisters would make the effort of being there, too. That way, Mark and I could see everybody in my family at the reunion, and then spend time with individual families as our schedule allowed. Fortunately, we were able to see a lot of my brothers and sisters outside of the reunion celebration. We saw Mom and Dad first, on the afternoon we drove into town. There we also saw my sister, Jess, who lives with Mom and Dad, and my brother Karl who is staying with them. We all had supper together, a meal of pot roast and Yorkshire pudding which I thought was great, but Dad found it a little dry. Mark pointed out that next time DAD makes pot roast, it will probably be perfect.

Then we dashed off to see my niece Lindsay play her last game of T-ball at Lawton Park. Chris and Carolyn were there with Allison and Sam, their 3-month old boy to watch Lindsay play. She did well: she got a good hit, scored a run, and fielded a ground ball in left field. The game and season ended with the team cheer, "We Love T-Ball Forever, Even If We Quit!"

We spent the night at Chris and Carolyn's home, where we would stay throughout our visit. We moved into the guest room to discover that Carolyn, my sister-in-law, had prepared the room beautifully, with a dozen peach roses, a basket of fruit and chocolates, a photo album that recorded Chris's and my childhood, and a gift -- a book of Mary Cassatt's paintings showing the different portraits of motherhood. I read the book to Lindsay and Allison, who were delighted and confused by the Cassatt painting "Baby Reaching for an Apple," in which a mother carries her babe au natural through an orchard. The girls puzzled, argued, and truly agonized over why anyone would take a baby out picking apples straight from the bath. I left it up to them to decide the mother's motivation.

The next day Mark spent the morning and much of the afternoon swimming with the girls in Chris and Carolyn's pond, as well as touring the barns, playhouse, gazebo, and miniature amusement park that make up the Henry compound. I, on the other hand, began bonding with Sam. They can have their merry-go-round, llama barn, raft, and gazebo...I was content to look at Sam's beautiful face, slate eyes, and huge, glossy, face-splitting grin. Before our visit to Fort Wayne ended, we were sold on Sam and ready to smuggle him back to North Carolina. Of course, Carolyn would have noticed him missing right away -- and he couldn't have fit in the car anyway. It was filled floorboard to dome light with baby bathtubs, clothes, hampers, strollers, bouncers, exer-circles, and every make of layette I could imagine.

All of these goods were thanks to my brother Chris and, again, his fabulous wife, Carolyn, for throwing Mark and me a baby shower. As if their hospitality weren't enough, Carolyn put on a shower that amazed everyone. Cucumber sandwiches, artichoke salad, shrimp cocktail, vegetable pastries, crab dip, croissants, roasted pecans, fruit salad, and one of the most beautiful cakes I have ever seen kicked off an afternoon of my sisters and sisters-in-law offering me their advice, maternity clothes, and lots of brand-new items that the new baby will need.

I hope I have just a little of the energy that Carolyn has to keep and care for a 7-acre farm, 5-bedroom house, and 3 young children with the skill and grace she does and still buy flowers and gifts for guests and prepare a table full of fabulous food for a baby shower.

The following day was reunion day, which started with breakfast at Chris and Carolyn's, followed by Mass at the reunion, lunch, and then reunion festivities. I visited with the few siblings that I had not seen either at the Green Frog pub, the baby shower, or at Mom and Dad's. One of the difficulties of coming from such a large family is making time to visit every brother and sister adequately. The number of siblings combined with their own children who are now practically adults makes having anything more than a brief chit-chat nearly impossible. I hardly spoke to my brothers Jerry, Tom, and Mart at the reunion, and had only brief talks with Erik, Matt, and Louie during our visit. I wonder if it's not only a matter of too little time, but maybe too much distance. Living so far away from them separates me from my family's concerns, interests, troubles, joys, and everything else that makes up life.

While in Fort Wayne, I went on several field trips with Lisa's dad, Jerry Henry. Like me, Jerry has extraordinary sightseeing stamina, and together we tramped all over northern Indiana. In South Bend, for example, I saw the University of Notre Dame for the first time. In addition to admiring the famous gold dome and the gorgeous campus, we stepped inside the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Knute Rockne Memorial, college bookstore, even a residence hall. One of my favorite spots is the grotto, where Jerry lighted a candle for the baby Lisa and I are expecting. While in South Bend, we also visited the campus of St. Mary of the Woods, where Jerry showed me a remarkable church, striking in both its modernity and beauty. Finally, we stopped at a restaurant called Tippecanoe Place, located in the house where the Studebakers lived while the famous automobile was manufactured in South Bend. Later in the week, we visited the Auburn-Cord-Duesenburg Museum in Auburn, Indiana, and saw scores of classic cars manufactured in the 1920s and 1930s.

While staying at Chris and Carolyn's home, Lisa went on a brief excursion together. On our way back from the nearby rural town of Leo, where we had breakfast one morning, we stopped to visit the Spencerville Covered Bridge, built in 1873.

Home Improvements, Part 1

Summer: After a few weeks of recovery, we have returned to working on our new house. Lisa bought an old sideboard for our dining room, and we worked together to remove the ugly green paint someone had put on it and then to refinish it. We also installed a cabinet in the bathroom and a wall mirror in the bedroom, repaired a screen door, refinished a chair, and hung border in the bedroom. Outside, we installed an electrical outlet and a security light in the carport, transplanted some grass in a bare spot in the yard, and planted a small garden. We also have been busy trimming trees, pulling weeds, picking up sticks, fertilizing and mowing the lawn, and generally trying to improve a lot that--although inherently attractive--needed some care after years of neglect. Nature has chipped in with some rain, too, and we now have a greener and tamer yard.

Finally, we proudly hung a quilt that my mom made for me as a graduation gift. In addition to the words "Mark Canada, Ph.D., U.N.C. 1997," she stitched 22 large stars and 110 smaller ones, which she explained in this note: "I believe a handmade gift is a special gift of love. So this is my gift of love to you. It has twenty-two large stars for all the years you went to school (including kindergarten). It has one hundred ten small stars for you always give a hundred ten percent to anything you do. I hope you know how proud I am of you Mark, but even more I hope you know how much I love you." As I told my mom back when she gave it to me in May, her handmade quilt is the most wonderful material gift I have ever received, and I will treasure it forever.

Memories of a Gremlin

Summer: All of you who knew me in high school know that I drove a Gremlin back then. Some of you may even remember the typing table my dad rigged up to hold the driver's seat in place after a drunk rammed the car from behind. For others, the dominant image is that of the dual CB antennae that made the machine so closely resemble its namesake. I suppose if I had had a choice, I might have traded the thing in for a Corvette convertible, a Camaro, or simply anything outside the AMC line, but I would have lost a lot in the bargain, particularly all the character that car built in me and all the mirth it brought my friends.

As I was leaving work at Chick-fil-A one night back then, one of my co-workers asked why I parked so far away in the parking lot. I don't remember if I responded, but another co-worker suddenly spoke up, explaining that my Gremlin was a powerful sports car and that I was trying to protect it from damage. I remember being amazed that the first person bought the story. She was rather gullible, but I would have thought she would see through this one. Maybe it was the racing stripe--yes, it really did have a racing stripe--that convinced her.

Then again, maybe both of those people knew something I didn't. Last week, a decade after I last revved up the Grem's engine, I saw a different Gremlin riding nobly on a trailer designed for race cars. It, too, had a racing stripe, and the gentle pink and white exterior gave it a decidedly Caribbean appearance. A source of pride for Gremlin owners everywhere, it would have made even Roger Penske turn his head. I didn't ask the driver of the car pulling it where it was headed, but I'm certain that somewhere it is roaring around dangerous ovals, enchanting fans delirious with excitement, going bumper to bumper with Pacers and Hornets, and, once in a while, taking the checkered flag.

Mark Turns 30

August 21, 1997: I'll be honest. I liked being in my 20s. Turning 30 didn't bother me that much, though. Having spent the last decade not only enjoyably but productively, Lisa and I feel that we are in a great position to savor the next decade, as well as the ones to come. I have my Ph.D. and a job I enjoy at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and we have a nice house in a state we love. Blessed with good health and wonderful friends and families, we look forward to starting our own family and meeting many more exciting, rewarding challenges in the coming years.

Lisa, who makes my entire life wonderful, outdid herself to make my birthday week special. In addition to making me treats all week--homemade bagels and yogurt, cupcakes to share with my colleagues at work, and a peach pie--she gave me two very personal gifts. First, she had my diploma from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill framed. I can't wait to hang it in my office. A little more whimsical but no less personal, her second gift was a tribute to my love for milk: a decanter and set of glasses, each adorned with a cow. Overjoyed, I've been happily filling and draining them the past few days.

We received another gift in a weekend filled with the most beautiful weather we have had since spring. After months of humidity and temperatures in the upper 80s and 90s, we saw three consecutive days of sun, blue skies, cool breezes, and temperatures in the 70s. After coming home from work on Friday, I read and relaxed in the sun for a while and then went for a jog. Later, after a special birthday dinner that she had prepared, Lisa joined me for a walk in the park. On Saturday, after another walk and a little yard work, we left Laurinburg and drove to the larger community of Aberdeen, Southern Pines, and Pinehurst, where we found a little more entertainment than is available in Laurinburg. We had lunch, and then Lisa, knowing just how to make her new 30-year-old feel like a kid again, took me to a batting cage to hit baseballs for the first time in a long while. I had a blast. Next, we went for a stroll in Pinehurst Village, a tidy, charming area of shops and homes near the famous Pinehurst golf resort. The homes and especially their manicured, gorgeously landscaped yards interested us more than the shops, and we spent a half-hour or so walking through this three-dimensional magazine before stopping for an ice cream soda. Before heading home, we stopped by the Sandhills Community College campus, which I had heard was beautiful, and found one of the best-kept secrets in the Sandhills part of North Carolina, if not the entire state. The Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, maintained by the students and faculty of the college's landscaping school, are a wonderful treat for gardeners such as Lisa, as well as for anyone who enjoys natural beauty. We spent about an hour walking through acres of flowers, trees, creeks, and arbors, all carefully arranged according to plan. There is, for example, a fruit and vegetable garden, where we found grape vines, blackberry bushes, and plants growing tomatoes, corn, and peppers. The hillside garden is a peaceful area of vegetation around a rocky stream, and the wetlands trail winds through trees, water, and lush greenery. My favorite is the Sir Walter Raleigh Garden, an English landscape garden as elegant in its beauty and orderliness as anything we have seen in Williamsburg, Virginia, or Charleston, South Carolina. We're eager to return to the gardens with guests, not only to revisit these areas, but to see the several that we didn't see this time, including the conifer, holly, succulent, and azalea gardens.

On Sunday, another beautiful day, we babecued some ribs and ate them with our friend Jamey Henderson, who came to visit us from Fayetteville, where he is stationed with the 82nd Airborne. One of my former students, Jamey helped us move into our house in Laurinburg and has been a great friend ever since. Still feeling a little isolated down here in our new neighborhood, where our immediate neighbors have been collecting Social Security since we were in diapers, we were glad to be able to spend an afternoon with someone whose CDs come with lyrics, not interest rates.

Indiana Comes to Carolina

September: We love North Carolina, but we miss Indiana from time to time, especially Bloomington and our alma mater, Indiana University. In our whirlwind tour of the Hoosier State last month, we didn't get to IU to get our dose of the Indiana Memorial Union, the beautiful campus, downtown, and our favorite restaurants. Even though we didn't go to IU, however, IU came to us this year when the Hoosier football team came to Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill to play the Carolina Tar Heels. One of my college buddies, Pete Amstutz, got some tickets, and Lisa and I joined him and his girlfriend, Bridget Fitzpatrick, for the game. Because Pete bought the tickets from IU, we sat in the Indiana section, where the panorama of red and white and the general Hoosier hoopla made me feel a little nostalgic. More passionate about the school and the campus than its sports, I was happy to wear my Indiana ballcap and experience this nostalgia, but I didn't feel especially torn over the question of whether to root for the Hoosiers or my more recent alma mater, Carolina. In fact, I suspect Lisa and I confused some of our neighbors by politely cheering for both teams. We were happy that both teams played well and--we admit it--happy that Carolina won, 23-6. With a little luck, maybe we will see another battle of the alma maters in March on a wooden floor.