The last time I spent a night in Raleigh was on my 29th birthday in 1993. It was my first visit back to NC after moving to California, and a friend (who shall remain nameless) and I went down for the evening. To make a long story short, he got a DUI and I found myself walking around downtown Raleigh at 4AM with all his credit cards trying to withdraw enough money to bail him out.
I haven’t even CONSIDERED driving drunk since that night.
This trip was a little less adventurous, but satisfying all the same. I left about noon, stopped in Gibsonville for gas (“You lucked out. It’s going up 11 cents a gallon in about an hour.”) and headed for Chapel Hill to meet Becky, which was a quite wonderful thing. It was rather like meeting someone I already knew. We talked for about three hours and made tentative plans for dinner, and then I braved I-40 at rush hour en route to Duncan’s new house.
We had dinner at a pizza parlor (which I could almost swear I got drunk in many years ago) and then drove around quite aimlessly, as Duncan and I are known to do. With info from the phone book, we headed for Zebulon, in search of a Piggly Wiggly. It was closed (permanently) but we were rewarded with a beautiful 1940s-era Red & White store (still in operation) which I vowed to photograph the next day for Bottles.
When we got back to the house, I realized that I’ve spent significant time in houses belonging to Duncan before there was any furniture in them. Come to think of it, I actually lived in one of his apartments for a week before he moved into it once.