Nothing could be Finer than to be in Carolina

This past week I spent time in Charlotte, NC and Charleston, SC.

Charlotte is the second largest financial center of the United States. It is a well manicured city with great use of public outdoor space. One must look up into the sky to see the evidence of how Charlotte has been hit by the financial downturn: idle cranes attached to half built skyscrapers. I counted five overhead cranes while walking around downtown. At least one of the buildings has been sold from a bank to an energy company and construction has continued, but others were frozen in time when the banks collapsed. The problem appears (to the untrained eye) to all be up in the air. On the ground, the city continues to have a lively schedule of festivals and other entertainment.

Charleston is built on a peninsula, so I was told that any trip around town that involves more than two bridges is just too far. It has always oriented to the water, so in Colonial times it was the third or fourth largest city in the United States due to its busy port. It boasts beautiful homes, amazing views and a proud history. Since it is right along the ocean, the tide often comes inland. More than once we came out of a restaurant in the evening to find the parking lot under water. This is a reality that Charlestonians live with in the way that the wind is a reality in Kansas or high altitude cooking directions are a reality in Denver.

I have been below the Mason Dixon line many times, but each trip is an education, filling in additional little pieces of my puzzle of understanding. Here are a few of the things that I learned on this trip:

• Southern hospitality means that a man would not allow a woman to take out the garbage. Period.
  
• Hardees sells fried bologna sandwiches. And people buy them.
  
• Firefly is a popular vodka drink that tastes like sweet tea. I heard about Firefly hangovers in two states.
• They have at least one billboard that says "Rush Limbaugh: Saving the Soul of America".
• There are people who think that they have never met a gay person. There are also gay people.
  
• The only stated rules on the Greyhound bus are "No smoking" and "No profanity." Hopefully other general laws of the land would be enforced as well, since I overheard someone say, "I am not going back to prison. That sucked."
  
• There is a separate concierge on each floor of the Omni Hotel. Mine even arranged a ride to the Greyhound Station for me.
  
• Those who display the confederate flag do not think of it as a symbol of slavery. They think of it as honoring their past by using the phrase: "Heritage, not Hate."
  
• Rocking chairs are so important that they have them in the airport.
• What I think of as comfortable summer weather is what happens in September. Fall is the time to get outside and have fun, after it has finally cooled off.
• They agree that Kanye West should not have interrupted Taylor Swift.
  

And so it goes, my little slice of southern American pie.