Annual Fourth of July celebration in tiny Faith, NC with my sister Pam! Just like every family, our country has its fair share of the good, the bad, and the ugly and, just like every family, we love and celebrate our country because of and in spite of it all…and we keep working to be our best selves.

July 4, 2017, County #34 – Rowan

Main Street in Faith, NC.

Near the birthplace of Cheerwine.

View from the ferris wheel.

Funny, I thought this flag lost to the nation we’re celebrating.

My sister Pam and me.

Ready and waiting under welcome shade.

Having a birthday on Flag Day means flags are always flying on your special day. Every year I like to drive up Franklin Street in Chapel Hill to see the flags hung “in my honor.” When my daughters were small, I didn’t realize that they took that idea to heart and ended up feeling seriously betrayed when they got old enough to realize the flag display wasn’t actually for me.

Even with that history, Katy and Becca are still willing to indulge me. This year on June 14th, the three of us drove up to Roxboro to make sure my birthday was being properly honored in Person County. Like so many small towns in North Carolina, Roxboro has a thriving commercial strip on the outskirts of a town and a downtown that, in spite of valiant revitalization efforts, is little competition for the big chains on the highway.

I’ve lived most of my life in Orange County, just below Person. Orange County has a stark cultural divide, with the more cosmopolitan and populous towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro in the southeastern corner while the rest of the county is more rural and traditional. Being from Chapel Hill, I’ve grown up seeing that difference from the vantage point of my little corner. Much of what I call “Northern Orange” is actually central – it’s only northern in relation to where I live.

Driving into Roxboro from Durham, I was struck by how much of a community parts of Person and Orange County create. For many people in Orange County, it’s only a few minutes to the movie theater or grocery store in Roxboro. They surely don’t think of themselves as living north of Chapel Hill; they probably spend little time thinking of Chapel Hill at all. Their community is formed across county lines.

Human beings are a self-centered bunch. Whether it’s imagining the flags are flying in your honor on your Flag Day birthday or picturing fellow county residents in relation to where you live, it’s hard to step away from ourselves and shift our perspective to how the world might look to others. Our trip to Roxboro was a good chance for me to see my world through another lens and, with the flags flying in  downtown Roxboro, a fine opportunity for me to wave my flag!

June 14, 2017, County #33 – Person

My sister Pam recently retired to Chapel Hill which means we can go on the occasional road trip together. In April, the two of us celebrated Independent Bookstore Day with trips to Hillsborough’s Purple Crow,  Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, McIntyre’s in Fearrington Village, and The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines. Along the way we stopped at this camelback bridge that spans the Deep River between Chatham and Lee counties. I had never heard of a camelback bridge but, looking at the picture, it’s easy to see where it gets its name. No longer used for traffic, the bridge seems now to be mostly a place where people come to fish, take pictures for special occasions like proms, and take advantage of a quiet place for reflection over the still, muddy waters of the Deep River.

April 29, 2017, County #32 – Lee

When The Music Man showed up in movie theaters years ago, I was young enough that I didn’t fully understand the plot but I remember how the idea of a whole town being duped by a huckster gave me the creeps. That image was very much in my mind when my good friend Tootie and I headed to High Point to view a Donald Trump rally during the presidential campaign. We were in good spirits, expecting to have fun, more curious than anything else that so many people were showing up at Trump rallies, and wondering how anyone could be taken in by a reality tv star posing as a presidential candidate and talking like a snake oil salesman.

As it turned out, we weren’t able to get into the rally, which was held at a gated school, High Point University, an institution that has walled itself off from the community it occupies. Tootie and I drove through the working class neighborhoods that surround HPU, looking for a way in that we never found. The whole experience, the combination of the hate-filled messages on paraphernalia being sold to Trump supporters (“Lock Her Up” “Trump the Bitch”), and the depressing contrast between the country club-like university and the neighborhoods from which it was shut off, all of it left us feeling a little down.

Then, backing up to the impenetrable walls of the school, we found a dead-end street whose residents had apparently taken it upon themselves to brighten their curb with decorations and a quote they attributed to Maya Angelou, the poet who lived for many years in nearby Winston-Salem.  “When you know better, you do better.”

It was a small thing and it was a big thing, finding a glimpse of beauty so unexpectedly in an unlikely spot. After the election just a few weeks after our trip, I find myself going back to that image and holding onto to the hope that, in spite of it all, we will do better.

September 20, 2016, County #31 – Guilford