Nobody Goes There Anymore. It's Too Crowded.

If God is good and I am good, in about ten years, I should be able to retire. On what exactly, I don't know.

I hope one day that I will willingly retire from Unnamed Co and when that day arrives, I will pack myself and my one remaining cat into my car and drive South.

There are a couple of little Southern towns that I have in mind. Two are in Virginia and the other is in North Carolina. I'm going to do my best to avoid the parts of North Carolina that all the people from New Jersey retire to. I probably couldn't afford them, anyway.

These are little towns you've never heard of. Very few people live there because there's no there there. In these little towns, though, there are churches and community colleges. That's enough there for me. The churches aren't for spiritual aid so much as the opportunity to socialize if the spirit moves me. (Unfortunately, I would likely have to go back to being a Baptist, which is a very high price to pay.)

To the passerby, these look like raw flat places off I-95. But in the towns, they are aging quietly, as Southern matriarchs in reduced circumstances do. They have both a stateliness and charm to them that is invisible to the Yankee eye.

Who wants to live there? There are no Starbucks. No Dunkin Donuts. No Whole Foods. Just Safeway on the outskirts of town and maybe a Waffle House off the Highway.

I will go for the cicada-sung heat of a summer's day. I will go for the sharp resinous scent of the pine trees. In April, the azaleas, hyacinths, forsythias and tulips will burst into bloom. By August, the gardens will be gasping in the heat, which won't ease until late October. There will be scarcely any snow. The thunderstorms will be worse than what I've gotten used to.

It will not be New Jersey, but it will be home.