New Bern, North Carolina

It's my last night in North Carolina, and Kristin and I are spending it watching the "Saved by the Bell" movie on Lifetime. We didn't totally waste the day, though. After I finished blogging this morning, we hopped in the car and drove to exciting New Bern, North Carolina.

You're excited, right?

You should be, because New Bern, North Carolina, shaped American society as we know it.



New Bern, North Carolina gave Pepsi Cola to the world, and gave a choice to a new generation.

Or something.

That wasn't why we went, though. I wanted to go so that we could visit Tryon Palace, the home of the first governor of North Carolina:



It was a really nice afternoon. We toured the main house, kitchen office, and the stables:















and then toured the grounds:











Then we had lunch, stopped at an antique mall, and headed home.

It was a nice day to end a nice trip.

The Ava Gardner Museum

Yesterday Kristin and I decided that we should drive an hour or so to nearby Smithfield, North Carolina, so that I could visit their local attraction (other than the outlet malls):



The Ava Gardner Museum.

I've been hearing about this museum from Kristin for several months, starting with a phone call:

"Hey, I was out driving around, and I saw this museum for that old movie star lady you like!"

"Which one?" There's a Bette Davis museum?

"It was a short name... I think it started with an L..."

"Lana Turner?" I'd go to a Lana Turner museum. I started googling while we were still on the phone. "There isn't a Lana Turner museum in North Carolina. I don't think there's a Lana Turner museum at all."

"Are you sure? It was a museum, and they had a sign and everything."

"Where were you?"

"Smithfield."

"Google says there's an Ava Gardner Museum."

"Yes! Ava Gardner! She was a movie star, right?"

"Yes..." Now, I can guarantee that Kristin has never in her life seen an Ava Gardner film, or if she has she has no idea who was in it. "Remember The Aviator? With Leonardo DiCaprio? And that scene where he was all hermit and creepy and peeing in the jars, and he had to go testify, and Kate Beckinsale has to go in and convince him to shave and clean up?"

"Yeah?"

"She's playing Ava Gardner."

I know it's a horrible example, and probably an insult to the long career of Ava Gardner, but it was the most recent example that I could think of. Using examples like that is probably one of the reasons why a few months ago I also had to explain to Kristin that Joan Crawford isn't actually starring in Mommie Dearest. I am part of the problem.

Anyway, we were met with slight disappointment when we reached the museum.



I knew that would happen.

"It's closed?"

"Yes. I told you when we were going to dinner that the museum closed at five."

"Like we listen to everything the other one says when we talk."

She has a point. I've tuned out a number of stories about her job this weekend. We still looked around a little:





We were late to the museum because we spent our day doing other things.

First, before we got on the road to Smithfield, we stopped by the Salvation Army, which we missed during our thrift store tour of town the day before. I don't give money to the Salvation Army due to their abysmal track record on LGBT issues, but I guess I'm willing to buy things from them, because Kristin spotted this:



and it was only three dollars. Shenandoah (released in 1981) isn't normally a Pyrex pattern that I collect, but the 401 is a handy size to have in the kitchen (good for beating a couple of eggs, a single serving of soup, etc.) so I picked it up. Kristin bought a stovetop popcorn popper pan, the fancy kind with the hinged lid and a crank to turn the popcorn inside, and then we got on the road to Smithfield.

Which we detoured off of, because of me.

See, as we were driving along, I saw a billboard for the Selma, North Carolina Antique Mall, "The Largest Antique Mall in the South".

"You want to stop?"

"Yes! Yesyesyesyes!"

So we stopped.

And, oh my God... The Pyrex:



Booth after booth of Pyrex:



So much Pyrex that in some of the booths they organized it by color, shelf after shelf of Pyrex moving through the many shades of the rainbow. And after a few hours at the antique mall, and booth after booth of reasonably priced (in some cases shockingly underpriced) Pyrex, you're probably wondering how much I bought, and if it will all fit in my car.

Well, here's my massive Pyrex haul from the antique mall:



Early American 441, in gold on brown, which means it is the dip bowl from the Early American chip and dip set.

That's it.

They had a lot of Pyrex, but not a lot of any of the things that I was looking for. This is one of the few non-extremely-rare pieces I was still missing from my Early American set. Early American is my jam:



My Pyrex jam:



and now that I have this piece all I'm missing is the 404 mixing bowl (which I could buy online but refuse to pay fifty dollars for), a lid for my 503 refrigerator dish, and the brown on white 963 (I have the gold leaf on brown version in middle of the stack in the second photo above). Everything else in Early American is really, really hard to find and expensive (the 4 quart roaster, the shallow square dish, a gold leaf on brown 443) and will probably never be part of my collection unless there is a magical lucky find somewhere, someday in the wild.

For yesterday, though, I got my six dollar 441, so I was pleased.

We also did a little bit of shopping in downtown Selma, which is pretty much all antique stores:



and I found another treasure:





The Spider-Man rock opera from 1975, on vinyl.

Now I'll have to get a copy of the CD, so I can listen to it.

So, yeah, after we did antiquing and thrifting and outlet shopping and then had a late lunch/early dinner (Did you know that Cracker Barrel has a light menu? If you didn't, you probably don't want to.) the Ava Gardner Museum was, sadly, closed.

Maybe some other time.

Thrift Shop Tour of Greenville

Yesterday Kristin and I spent most of the day driving all over her city, visiting thrift stores, antique stores:



consignment stores, and the one comic store that Kristin knew of:



We started our day downtown with a nice breakfast at The Scullery:



We met our mutual friend Aaron there, and I had a bagel and cream cheese (the verdict on North Carolina bagels is "not bad; better than Tennessee") and split an order of sausage balls with Kristin. For those unfamiliar with sausage balls, they are a Southern delicacy made of bulk sausage, cheese, and flour or (more often, but it depends on the recipe) Bisquik. They are delicious, but you probably shouldn't eat too many. I've been known to make them for tailgating:



After breakfast we walked around for a while, and saw the cute little downtown area:









Greenville is a cute little town in the same way that Cortland, where I went to school for my undergrad, is cute. It's an older little town where the college is the biggest thing, so they love their local sports team:



and they have stores and restaurants and places to go, but a limited number of them. There's a definite difference between living in a place like this and a place like Knoxville, which is a small city, but that doesn't make it a bad place. I found their empty streets:





random artwork:





and Civil War Memorial:



charming. I found their still-living Confederates:



less charming.

I've heard all the arguments about, "That flag is my heritage!" and "That's our history and culture!" and I don't consider any of them to have merit. It is a history, culture, and heritage built on oppression, slavery, and racism. You cannot subtract one from the other. You can't say, "I love our heritage except for the slavery part" because the slavery part is entwined. The genteel Southern plantation culture collapsed for a reason: it was not sustainable without a slave workforce. If you continue to resist this idea, and still proudly display your Confederate flag, then you are a racist whether you admit it or not. There's no argument.

I still thought the rest of the city was really cute, though.

Every rest stop in North Carolina

Yesterday, at the end of a rather long drive that Google maps said would be five hours but could only actually be five hours if I drove about 110 miles per hour I pulled in next to Kristin's car:



Not my best parking job, but I'm in the lines, ok?

Thank God I have a small car.

I stopped at every rest stop on Interstate 40 East, once I crossed into North Carolina:



I realize I've stopped at that particular one before:



when we went to Asheville for a day trip, but I stopped at every rest stop but one this time for two reasons: first, that I was drinking a lot of diet Mountain Dew in the car to stay constantly alert, so I had to pee a lot, and second because I was trying to figure out how to get 10,000 steps for the day in while spending most of the day in the car. To do that, I walked a couple of laps of the rest area each time I stopped the car, reading plaques:



checking out vending areas even though I didn't want any snacks (I packed my own):



and walking down to see scenic views:





and dead bugs:



On my way back up from the scenic view a pair of ladies stopped me to ask about it.

"Is it worth the walk?"

I shrugged. "There's a little valley. It's only a minute's walk either way."

They didn't look particularly enthused after they walked down there, so I got in my car and drove away before they could walk back up, just in case they wanted to blame me for ruining their day by tricking them into gazing upon boring, unfulfilling mountains. At 249 steps, it was worth it to me, ladies.

Most of the drive was uneventful, with four exceptions:

1) At one rest stop, a man kept talking on his phone through his entire pee and poop, and didn't wash his hands when he was done. Mister, your caller can hear you. They can hear everything.

Everything.

2) Beeping horns in tunnels almost got me into an accident.

I don't know if it's a tradition everywhere, but whenever I've driven through a tunnel in the Smokies:



people always beep their horns through the tunnel. I even explained this to my parents when they came to visit, to their amusement, and insisted that they do it as well. Yesterday I found out that everyone doesn't share this tradition. As we started going through a tunnel, I got ready to beep my horn, the semi truck behind me and to the side of me started wailing on theirs (which is really, really loud in a tunnel)... and the car in front of me freaked out, slammed on their brakes, and almost swerved into the tunnel wall.

Ooops.

Good thing I didn't beep.

Also a good thing that I was following at a safe distance (because I am a very safe driver; please remember that as I move on to the next point) and my normally good driving reflexes were supersensitively heightened by a 20 ounce bottle of Diet Mountain Dew.

3) At one point, I accidentally drove 85 miles per hour in a 65 zone.

I know, right? I broke a law.

Most of the way I was doing 70 mph to 80 mph, well within the flow of traffic, but at one point Green Day's "Fuck Time" (sorry for swearing, gentle readers) came on the iPod and I was rocking out and singing along and all of a sudden I was like, "Ooops, I'm doing 85," which is not an acceptable excuse if I should happen to get pulled over.

Nobody's going to pull you over, my inner voice chided. Do 85 for a while. Live a little. Grab life by the balls, dude. YOLO!

Maybe my inner voice is right, I thought, in my other inner voice. Maybe I should do 85 for a while.

Just as I thought this, I drove past a 40 foot tall cross by the roadside.

On the other hand, you're gay, and driving a Beetle, which is like being kind of supergay in the part of the country where they erect giant crosses by the roadside. Do you really want to deal with the kind of cops who work in a place like this?

Suddenly now my inner voice is the voice of reason? What an awful thing to think, full of stereotypes and assumptions and fear of authority.

Why, I should keep going at this speed, just to prove that the police here are good and sweet and kind.

Enjoy getting tazed, bro, voice of reason countered.

I slowed back down to 80.

4) The good people of the Raleigh-Durham area have no idea how merging works. Seriously, is this not covered in Driver's Ed in North Carolina? There's a stretch of road there were there are over a dozen roads merging in from the right. When this happens to you, there are a few different options:

1) Move into the open lane to your left.
2) Maintain a basically constant rate of speed, so that the cars merging in from the right can work around you.
3) If traffic is moving slowly, allow zippering.
4) Slam on your brakes every single time you're approaching one because Jesus Christ, there's a merge up ahead!

If you selected #4, congratulations.

You live in North Carolina.