Off The Coast Of Carolina

Headed down south,
trying to figure it all out.
Damn, I'm worse off than I'd thought.

To the shores of my youth,
waves revealing inner truths,
Is where I'm standing where I want to be?

-T. Clemens

Escaping from LA back to the south, the land of my youth and young adulthood, always provides me with several rewards. This latest sojourn has proved no different. As always there is a battery-recharging of sorts. It's like when you were a kid and your RC Bigfoot monster truck would still run but didn't seem to have the necessary "umph" to conquer the creek bed that mere days before it had haughtily strode across with nary a pause, "damn the crawdaddies, full speed ahead!" Then somewhere in the recesses of your brain amidst the clutter of plans for your GI Joe fort, Mr. T quotes, and thoughts of that girl you secretly liked but publicly pretended to hate and were therefore mean to(a strategy I still to this day employ) you realized you hadn't plugged in Bigfoot's battery pack in days! How could you be so stupid?! 45 minutes later and the neighbor's cat once again had nowhere to run. That's how I feel; rejuvenated, ready again after several days of rest, relaxation, and southern cooking to roll up my shirtsleeves and tackle the City of Angels once again. This re-birth, if you want to get all new-age, is due in large part to a change of scenery and several days of worry free living, but there are added bonuses.

The aforementioned cooking. My first night home I was welcomed to the family kitchen by the savory aroma of my mothers homemade spaghetti sauce(a hearty meat and tomato sauce she's been preparing for years; nothing about it healthy, everything about it delicious), a salad with fresh vegetables, garlic bread almost impossibly timed to be pulled from the oven just as I ambled through the door and seemingly bottomless glasses of sweet tea that offer a mouthful of dessert with every sip. I was awakened the next morning by the intoxicating fumes of fresh coffee, the sizzle and pop of bacon in the frying pan, and calls down the hall from my father inquiring "regular or cheese grits?" and "how many eggs did I want?" My respective answers: "can't we have both" and "a thousand". It has continued like this for days; hushpuppies right out of the pan, beef stew slow cooked to perfection, chicken salad my mother made while we chatted in the kitchen, buttery corn , perfectly seasoned greenbeans, fluffy biscuits, meatloaf that seems better out of my moms oven than anywhere else on the planet, creamy mashed potatoes(the perfect ally for meatloaf!), BBQ chicken so sweet, tangy and moist it had to be formulated in a lab, and so on and so on. I shall return to LA fattened for the slaughter or not at all seems to be the plan my parents have in store for me.

I've also visited several cousins and friends and seen that great reminder that yes, time is passing, we are all getting older and time marches on whether you acknowledge it or not; children. My cousins daughter is now walking, talking, and talking back to her parents. (David,age 32: "Okay, go use the bathroom." Harper, age3: "I don't have to go to the bathroom" David: You've been asleep 12 hours, I promise you do" Harper:"Nu-uh." I'm not sure who won but Harper had him on the ropes.) Jackson, my friend Greg's one year old son, whom upon my last visit could stretch completely out on my forearm is now walking, albeit it's that toddler's walk that appears as if they've had a bit too much to drink; two steps forward, one back, sway to the side, rock back and forth, survey left and right, repeat the process.

Like Dracula returning to Transylvania, I made my usual trip to Greenville, where I once spent the better part of a decade learning lessons in life if not always in the classroom, made some of my most endearing and enduring friends, and for better or worse(depending on who you ask) shaped in large part who I've become today. Dinner with Cap and Greg, as it always seems to do, started early in the evening and continued late into the night, powered onward by deep belly laugh-a-longs as we reminisced about the past(sneaking out between intermission and curtain call to the bar; horrors of the Shakespeare summer), discuss the present("she's dating who now?!"; "the beef barn closed?!") and ponder and prognosticate the future.(there may have been bets concerning the next to become a parent and/or spouse) Then there was breakfast with the grand poo-bah himself, Don; the man who shaped me more as an artist than anyone else. Training with Don was a watershed moment, everything judged chronologically as before don/after don. Over two hours of breakfast we talked about women, the business side of art, music, film, food, cars, women a little more and generally anything else that suited our fancy. After a few more good-byes around town, I tucked the advice and revelatory truths I'd garnered from my trio of mentors into the front of my conscious and pointed the Explorer due east down Hwy-264.

I rolled the windows down and cranked the radio, choosing to leave the CD player idle in favor of the local stations that dot the winding asphalt as it snakes through eastern North Carolina in search of the coast. I was treated to gospel, classic 50's and 60's country, new country, classic rock, R&B, an assortment of genre-defining sounds and even the occasional spanish station-a testament to North Carolina's ever growing Mexican population-all hosted by DJ's who sounded as if they might be broadcasting the shows from the spare bedroom of their homes. I stopped off in Mackey's Ferry for boiled peanuts and peanut brittle and even drove extra slow through Plymouth, which has to be the worst smelling town in the state thanks to the pulp mill located there. After allowing my inner Huck Finn to guide me to a few more detours (the old mill) and pit stops (country doctor museum!) I crossed over the last bridge just in time to stop off at Sam and Omie's for a cup crab bisque and a seafood po' boy washed down with an ice cold red stripe. If you ever find yourself in Nags Head you won't be bereft of outstanding places to eat but a must is Sam and Omie's, which started as a little hole in the wall, early morning breakfast stop for fisherman more than 70 years ago and is now a little hole in the wall restaurant with a full menu(and full bar) of fresh seafood operating year round for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After lunch I strolled to the pier where after a brief discussion with a man who looked as if he might have been there when Sam and Omie's originally opened for business I learned yellowfin and red drum have been running the last few days and the place right next door had rooms available.

Now here I sit, soaking in the salt air, listening to the symphony of crashing waves and crying seagulls, a drink beside my deck chair and a stack of books beside my bed. I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest of my night yet, there's live music down the beach just a bit or I may go watch the locals karaoke the night away at Mulligans, or I may just sit here taking advantage of the solace and solitude a deserted beach town provides. For now I'm going to wait out the sunset and see where the tides take my thoughts, I'm on island time.