Mooresville, NC home re-discovered

The boys, all three of them, had a day off from school for Veterans Day yesterday. I decided to take us all to Charlotte for the day. There were several possibilities but it became apparent that the NASCAR Hall of Fame was the crowd favorite, even if it wasn't my first choice. The boys had a great time there. When we finally left there we still had some time available before we needed to start back home. We decided to seek out the fire and rescue museum, which was purportedly only a few blocks away. It took us only once around the block to realize that the "for sale" sign on that block was for the old C.F.D. Station 4 facility, which had once contained the museum; no longer. We were kind of bummed.

I decided to head north on I-77 (we had come to Charlotte via US-321, Gastonia and I-85) and see if I could find the house we lived in for a few years when I was 10-13 or so. Despite all the development around Mooresville, NC, I found the right street right away. According to my mom, it didn't even have a name back when we lived there, it must have been a rural route. Now it's Deerwood Lane. The houses that had been there when we were there looked remarkably familiar; there were several newer homes too. I drove to the end of the street and found our house. My folks had had it built new. Yes, it did look smaller than I remembered it.

There was a man mowing the lawn on a riding mower as we pulled up. I stopped the car and got out and waved him down. I gave him a very brief introduction and mentioned that I had lived in the house nearly 40 years ago. He got a puzzled look and stared off for a second and said that his family had been living there for nearly 40 years. It didn't take long to confirm he and his wife were the ones who had bought the place from my parents when we moved to Durham. Incredible. We then started in on some serious catching-up. He has three sons, one about my age. I mentioned that my dad had died a couple of years ago. They had lived in Morganton, NC before coming to Mooresville (about 45 minutes from our home in Black Mountain).

Small world. I had forgotten the camera (and phone) in our mad dash out the door in the morning, else I would have gotten a picture. I intend to write to him and follow-up and see if I can coax him into taking a picture for us. Most of the pictures I have of that house are on slides that I have not ever tried to convert to digital images. I may have to get busy on that sooner rather than later.



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