A lot has happened since my last blog post, some seven years ago! Last year, we moved from "the place I thought we'd live till death," Raleigh, North Carolina. I often boasted, "Raleigh has it all: medical centers; concerts; sports; retirement communities; shopping; art museums, amusements ad nauseum.
In our retirement years, we moved on April 15 in the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic to, of all places, Candler, North Carolina. Try to find it on map. Good luck. Candler is not your Raleigh. It is not Asheville, either, though we are only three miles from the Asheville city limits.
Downtown Candler, if you can call it that, is a strip of Smoky Park Highway consisting of used car lots, service stations, tire repair shops, and a couple fast food joints. It is noisy and congested with dump trucks and service vehicles, but just off the highway are quiet spots and a townhome community called "Vistas" of some sort. While we do have a view of a bucolic hillside and a goat farm, we cannot see a single mountain until we walk to the upper tier of the community where a gazebo allows views of Mt Pisgah, the highest mountain in Buncombe County. It's worth the climb, though.
I suppose by this point you are thinking I don't much like it here. On the contrary, I think I am as happy here as any place I have ever lived. I don't enjoy the sounds of weapons firing on Saturday afternoon, though. Some neighbors seem to enjoy their firearms a lot. When I hear the gunfire, I call it the "Buncombe County militia," but there is no such group to my knowledge (but I would not doubt their existence). The traffic is not as bad as Raleigh, but as tourist season starts and the pandemic ends, there is considerable traffic congestion down "main street," elegantly called Highway 23.
But I am willing to suffer the changes because of the smile of a two-year-old granddaughter who lives just a ten minute drive away. My wife and I moved thinking we would be her "back up" daycare giver, then the pandemic came and we volunteered to be her primary daycare until the pandemic ends.
We now know how the aged Abraham and Sarah felt with a toddler: tired. But what a joy one smile, one hug, one laugh brings to this old man. I wouldn't trade it for a hundred days of solitary Raleigh retirement, no matter how badly my back aches after yielding to her, "hold me, Grandpop" pleas.
So it doesn't get much better than that. But if we somehow could get some gun silencers for the local militia, things would be just about perfect.
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