You Can't Go Home Again

Except you can, and we did. Highlights from North Carolina & Georgia.

Last month, Jason and I traveled back home to North Carolina for a visit. My hometown has been changing for a decade, but it kicked into overdrive during the pandemic. When people were promised the opportunity to work from home forever, they left their cities and moved to Black Mountain, buying up houses, driving up prices, and changing the vibe from depressed factory town to… the Best Little Beer Town. It makes me feel a lot of things. It’s nice! It’s disorienting. It’s exciting! It’s artificial. It’s…

When I was growing up, there was absolutely nothing cool about my town. It was always pretty, but when it came to places to hang out, there were slim pickings. There was the Chinese restaurant that is now a Daycare Center That Looks Like a Chinese Restaurant. There was the coffee shop where my high school drama department parked for hours, drinking milkshakes disguised as coffee, gossiping mercilessly about the girl who got felt up in the theater catwalk. When I was growing up, a fun night out was stealing antenna balls from strangers’ parked cars. 

Formerly Tong Sing; Currently Kathy’s Kiddieland

These days, there’s an adorable shaved ice spot in a former car repair shop. There’s a restaurant serving up smash burgers on a twinkle light patio that used to be a parking lot. My friends have even opened a black box theater in the same furniture factory where a disgruntled employee murdered two of his coworkers. Look, I’m happy for progress. I’m happy for these kids who have whole patios to hang out on, who probably don’t slut shame their fellow drama students. But I don’t want to try the new farm-to-table restaurant when I’m home. I want to eat the trash food that raised me. I want to eat Long John Silver’s shrimp straight out the drive thru, ruining the rental car for the rest of the week. And then I want to rot on my mom’s couch watching college basketball, telling no one that I’m home.

All of this to say, it was a really nice visit. And I was in town for the grand opening of The Refillery, a charming store resembling Rose Apothecary, which took over the space previously occupied by the town’s only dry cleaner. For days, we wondered hopefully about what The Refillery might be. A spot for a sweet treat? A restaurant that serves normal, unsmashed burgers? Unfortunately, no. It’s a whole store where you bring your own jars to buy bulk shampoo, conditioner, and laundry detergent. (And if you need to dry clean your clothes, you gotta drive to Asheville.)

We also took a short weekend trip to Atlanta. Atlanta was our first home together, and I was in the mood to retrace some steps. The strikes-contraction-yada-yada made the last year a little harder for us. Looking back, our years in Atlanta were probably our hardest. I felt the need to go back to a place we chose to leave to remember how we always come through our hard times. During our first year of marriage, Jason worked the night shift at a classic rock station, while I worked all day at my assistant job. We passed each other in the mornings and evenings, barely seeing each other. Then his radio station changed formats, and Jason struggled to find work. He took a job at Bodies the Exhibition, a touring exhibit plagued with controversy for using the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners without their families’ consent. We were both living in a city we didn’t want to live in, doing work we didn’t want to do. As we were learning (shakily) how to be together, Jason’s own family was coming apart. Adult children of divorce! It was a lot.

So what a wonder, then, that when we were there, all the bad memories took a distant backseat to the good ones. We saw two old friends who took care of us then (helping load our moving van with box after box, up and down three flights of stairs on an unbearably hot July day) and are still taking care of us now (with freelance work I love). We laughed about all the ways we stretched our tiny paychecks to still have fun. Jason checking out CDs from the library and burning illegal copies of them. Getting a styrofoam To Go box at HomeTown Buffet (RIP) for one person, stuffing it full beyond reason, then turning it into meals for days. There were multiple concerts we attended because Jason was both underemployed and knew exactly when to call a radio station to win. One time, we won 10 tickets to see Poison–an entire row–because it was a trivia contest, and he was the only person who knew the answers. I flipped some seats on Craigslist, then we spread out across the rest like we were sitting on a couch. Even in bad times, we still have a good time. In the case of Poison, it was a bad time. The band got into a fist fight on stage and had to be separated by roadies.

In general, I think my memories of Atlanta will be a little sweeter now. Especially after our meet and greet with Scott & Cat’s pup Pheebs.

Before we left, we hit up Jalisco, a Mexican restaurant in a strip mall that used to be our favorite place. I was worried it wouldn’t hold up–how could it? But when we got our same old orders, we loved them the same old way. That’s one memory that remains unchanged for the better.

For my recipe this week, I’m including a link to the queso dip that is a staple from Jalisco and the other Southern Mexican restaurants of my youth. It involves white American cheese and there is nothing authentic about it, but authenticity is overrated, especially when it comes to dips.