Pleased to Meet You
We moved to North Carolina for several reasons. But learning more about my grandparents was not one of them. The fact that I had roots in Winston-Salem rarely crossed my mind as the move date approached. Shortly after arriving, though, I was frequently reminded that my grandparents (Mimi & Poppa), once lived about an hour from here. Lately, it seems like little events are revealing new pieces of information about them.
Mimi and Poppa were very socially active, had a lot of friends, and my grandfather had an important job at RJR Tobacco. But when they were alive, I didn’t really know much about these things. Or I probably did–but wasn’t that interested. As a pre-teen and teenager, my visits to Winston-Salem meant I spent a lot of time in the basement away from the grownups. They had both passed by the time I was about 16 or 17 years old.
My dad and I visited Winston Salem a few months ago. I saw his childhood neighborhood (Ardmore), and even the schoolyard bench where he had his first kiss. We wanted to walk around Old Salem and parked next to the Moravian cemetery, where the men and women are buried in different sections and the headstones all look the same. It struck him that his father, my grandfather, was buried close to where were standing. It struck me that I had no recollection of ever seeing his burial site. After walking around for a few minutes we found the humble marker–it must have been a few hundred feet from our parked car.
Yesterday, Sarah and I drove through Southwestern Virginia, which we believed to be much prettier than Eastern Kentucky, but lacking the dramatic vistas of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge. Sarah insisted we stop in Abingdon, home of the Martha Washington Inn and the Barter Theatre. Abingdon is a wonderful little town, with a thriving, walkable downtown. Some notable fans of Abingdon include Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and Washington D.C. designer, Pierre L’Enfant. It turns out, I’ve just learned, that Abingdon was also a favorite destination for my grandparents.
November 28th, 2005
