We are into our third week on the trip now, so we left Florida and headed to North Carolina on Tuesday, June 18th. As soon as we saw this sight below, I knew we were almost "home."
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| "South of the Border," an iconic landmark along Interstate 95 |
"South of the Border" is a touristy destination that is located out in the middle of nowhere, just south of the South Carolina-North Carolina border. It is only about 20 minutes from Lumberton. Daddy and Momma used to take us to the restaurant there when we were little, for a nice evening out. There was a gift shop that we loved to look around in, and Daddy would usually buy us a stuffed animal to put on the bed. My bed was covered in stuffed animals! How I wish I had a picture of that now. The tower in the picture above is way bigger than the one that was there when we were little. I believe the old tower is still there, but I couldn't get a picture of it from the road.
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| Lumberton has a Starbucks now! |
One of our first stops was the Starbucks in Lumberton. It was tea time for Linda and I was craving an iced coffee. Since we had always wanted Lumberton to get a Starbucks, but they didn't until after we moved away, we had to go there just to make sure it existed!
After we left Starbucks, we decided to ride over to see our house on 17th Street. We also went by the house on Walnut Street that our good friends Mike and Scott lived in while we were in Lumberton. They are our best buddies and Linda and I absolutely love them like the brothers we never had. All four of us had some really good times back in the day, at both of these houses. Linda and I bought this little (only a little over 900 sq.ft.) house when we put my parents' house on the market. It was definitely a fixer-upper, but we fell in love with it from the start. With the help of Mike and Scott, we managed to get it looking pretty good, both inside and outside. Linda and I loved this little house and would have taken it with us when we moved out to Yakima if we could have. As you can see in the video below, we loved to plant bushes and trees while there, and that hasn't changed since we moved to Yakima! It's interesting to notice that our house on 17th Street has grown into a jungle, but Mike and Scott's house on Walnut Street looks like the yard has been clear-cut, which is a crying shame because their yard was absolutely beautiful. I guess it all depends on what different owners of the house want it to look like.
Next, we decided to cruise by my parents' house on 14th Street. This is the house I grew up in since I was in the third grade. It was in a neighborhood with lots of children the same age as my sister and I were, so we loved living there.
We decided to spend our first night in Lumberton at a nearby motel, just so we could relax and unwind from the drive. The entrance to the Comfort Inn said it all:
I had been hankering for one of my favorite down-home Southern meals ever since we entered the South, but for some reason it hadn't materialized. So, on our first night in Lumberton we had supper at a nearby chain restaurant and I had the biggest piece of Chicken-Fried Steak I had ever seen!
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| Guess where we ate supper |
LUMBERTON, DAY 1
On our first full day in Lumberton the first order of business was to go see my 89 year-old cousin, Patsy. I made my way to her house over the very familiar roads of my old hometown. Things had not changed much in the last twelve years, except for the fact that more landmarks of the past, like the lions in front of the McLean Mansion and the tobacco warehouse on Godwin Avenue, were gone. I pulled in Pat's driveway and was greeted at the door by Pat and her daughter, Lynn. We sat in her living room and chatted about the good times we used to have back in the day, and about relatives no longer with us. Before I knew it we had to say our goodbyes because I had a luncheon to attend. We hugged and Lynn took this picture of us.
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| My cousin Patsy and me |
As soon as we knew for sure we were going on this trip, I contacted a few people and scheduled a small lunch get-together in Pembroke. This is a small town about 15 miles from Lumberton, where I worked in the office of the Fleetwood Homes of North Carolina mobile home factory for 31 years. I saw a ton of people come and go through the office of that manufacturing plant over the years, and a lot of physical changes to the property. There were a lot of good times, but also a lot of not-so-good times. But on this day, we all gathered at a local restaurant and had a fantastic meal and some great fellowship. And, as an added bonus, Linda and I both got to get our fix of good ole southern BARBECUE!! If you've never had it, you just don't know what you're missing.
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| Lunch with dear friends |
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| I'm standing in my old parking space |
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| My office buddy and best friend, Sheila, standing beside the window in her office |
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| The BEST of Fleetwood Me (invoicing), Doug (production), Sheila (shipping), Alexa (service) |
The property is now vacant. But we managed to get a few pictures and then we stood around reminiscing about the good old days. Before too long the sun beating down on us was getting to be too much, so we hugged and said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, until next time. It was so good to see everyone, though. Like coming home.
We headed back to Lumberton, checked out of our motel and headed over to where we would be staying for the next few days...The Luther Henry Caldwell House.
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| The Caldwell House |
Next week the blog will feature a tour of this historic old Queen Ann-style house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lumberton has lost a lot of the old houses like this to so-called "progress." We are thankful that the Caldwell House has been spared that fate! Tune in next week for lots of gorgeous pictures.
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