Charlotte Three Decades On

I’m writing my blog from the comfort of my Hampton Inn room in Charlotte where I sit alone, needle pointing, watching movies and having major Deja Vu. My purpose for spending a Saturday night alone while Russ and Shay hold down the Durham fort is that I am here solely as a driver. Carter and her 2C Camp Cheerio friends planned a reunion in Charlotte for this weekend.

The overwhelming love of camp and each other made this one-month-out-of-camp get together mandatory. Of course ten fifteen year olds can’t drive themselves so I volunteered to fire up the old Land Cruiser and stuff it full of as many kids from the triangle and Greensboro as I could fit. One generous Charlotte Mom, Melanie offered up her house for the girls to stay at. The plan is that the boys are staying at William’s house, but boy planning is totally different than girl planning so I hope that Mom knows what’s going on.

Hearing girls, hanging out the window of their Mom’s car, scream out “CCCAAARRRTTTEERR,” as they pulled into the meeting spot parking lot made my heart happy. The friendships developed at camp are different than all others so I am happy to act as a bus driver. The bonus is I get a night in Charlotte.

Thirty years ago I used to spend a lot of time here selling mail opening and extracting machines to the growing banking and remittance processing businesses here. North Carolina was the southern most side of my five state territory. I quickly learned that flying to Charlotte on Piedmont Airlines was the way to go, especially since I was trying to rack up enough frequent flyer points to fly to Greece. I miss Piedmont Airlines.

Although Charlotte was always the biggest place in North Carolina it is different now than it was then. Back in the day I used to stay at a Holiday Inn, that was until one morning when the room service clerk delivered my bagel and cream cheese order. Since my job often required me to visit a client’s site very early in the morning I would eat breakfast while doing my hair, it was the 80’s after all and hair was a big production.

This particular morning the clerk brought me blue cheese rather than cream cheese. I called the front desk to let them know of the mistake I discovered after taking a bite. The response of “We don’t have blue cheese,” was an unwelcome discovery. That was when I looked more closely at the small paper cup the odorous cheese had come in. The Holiday Inn did not know they were growing their own blue cheese without a license. I never stayed there again.

Food in Charlotte is much better now than it was then. Beside the mold problem I used to only eat BBQ here. Yes, it was good barbecue, but it was not all that healthy. Today as I pulled into my hotel I noticed than I was surrounded by good restaurants as well as fancy prepared food store Dean and Deluca.

So as Carter and her friends were frolicking at Carowinds in the heat, I was enjoying a yummy lunch of spinach salad and chili lime shrimp at Dean and Deluca – No mold was encountered.