12 Things That Make North Carolinians Realize They’ve Gotten Old
Old age doesn’t announce itself with a marching band. For North Carolinians, it shows up in small, unmistakable recognitions.
One involves a Krispy Kreme. Several involve a basketball game past bedtime.
Here’s how the years let a Tar Heel know they’ve arrived at senior status.
Half the Fields Used to Be Tobacco
Driving North Carolina’s back roads, you see ghosts.
That subdivision was a tobacco field. That shopping center, tobacco. The whole county used to turn gold and green every summer, and the cured-leaf smell hung in the August air.
You remember topping and suckering in the heat, the barns, the auction warehouses, the way RJ Reynolds and the tobacco money built half the state.
A young person sees farmland turning into cul-de-sacs and shrugs.
You worked a summer in tobacco, so you see a whole vanished world, and feel every year of the distance between then and now.
A Food Lion Deal Sparks Real Joy
There comes a day when you feel a jolt of pure delight over a Food Lion BOGO, and that day isn’t a young person’s day.
Out comes the MVP card. You check the Shop & Earn rewards like a lottery ticket. A “reduced for quick sale” sticker on a perfectly good roast can make your whole trip worthwhile.
Younger shoppers breeze past the markdowns without a glance.
You plan around them, you know which store marks down on which morning, and you feel a small thrill when the register total lands lower than you expected.
Getting worked up over saving two dollars on a roast is one of the surest signs the years have done their work.
The Carolina-Duke Game Now Ends Without You
There was a time you could watch every second of a Tobacco Road showdown, overtime and all, then bounce up for work the next morning.
Those days are gone.
Now you make it to halftime, maybe the second-half tip, and wake up on the couch to a final score and a stiff neck.
It stings extra because you remember the giants.
Michael Jordan as a skinny Carolina freshman. Jimmy V sprinting around the floor in ’83, looking for somebody to hug. A young Coach K with dark hair and something to prove.
When you watched all of that live and now can’t last until the final buzzer, the math is cruel but clear.
Hurricanes Have Become Your Personal Timeline
Ask yourself when something happened, and you won’t reach for a year. You’ll reach for a storm.
That was right before Floyd. The year Fran took the oak tree down. Back when Hazel came through, the one grandma never stopped talking about.
A lifetime on the East Coast means your own ranking of hurricanes, complete with strong feelings about which one got overhyped and which one nobody saw coming.
The young transplants panic at the first cone on the evening news.
You check the supplies, fill the bathtub, and measure the new storm against forty years of the old ones.
Experience like that arrives one way only: slowly.
A Dozen Krispy Kremes Is No Longer a Snack
The Hot Now light still glows like a beacon, and your foot still hits the brake on instinct.
The difference is what happens after.
There was an era when a fresh dozen vanished on your drive home, no consequences, maybe room for a Cheerwine to wash it down.
These days, three glazed and your body files a formal complaint.
The other nine sit on the counter, issuing threats.
You once treated a Krispy Kreme dozen as a personal challenge. Now you split one with your spouse and call it a splurge.
The doughnuts didn’t change. Your body did.
The Barbecue Argument Is Settled, Forever
Somewhere along the way, you planted a flag in the great barbecue war and never moved it again.
Eastern style, with its vinegar and pepper and whole hog.
Or Lexington style, with that tomato creeping into the dip.
A younger person might stay diplomatic. You have opinions cured harder than the pork.
The moment you catch yourself lecturing a younger relative about how “that’s not real barbecue,” gesturing with a hush puppy for emphasis, the transformation is complete.
Nobody holds barbecue convictions that strong at 25.
It takes decades of church plates and pig pickings to get that gloriously stubborn.
You Can Recite the South of the Border Billboards
If you road-tripped to Myrtle Beach as a North Carolina kid, you carry the billboards in your bones.
“You Never Sausage a Place.” Pedro’s weather report. That giant sombrero tower rising off Interstate 95 at the South Carolina line, ninety miles of buildup for a fireworks stand.
The signs counted down the whole sticky drive south, a roadside countdown to vacation.
If you can still quote those puns from memory, decades later, you’ve officially logged some miles.
The kids in the backseat now have screens and headphones.
They’ll never know the special boredom of watching for Pedro.
You Know Every Word of Mayberry
Flip to an Andy Griffith rerun and you go still, content, and word-perfect.
You know the one with the rock in Otis’s jail cell. You know about Barney’s one bullet. You can whistle the theme and feel your shoulders drop two full inches.
Mount Airy, the real-life Mayberry, is a trip you’ve either made or keep meaning to make.
A younger person finds the show slow and black-and-white and dull.
You find it the most comforting half hour on television.
Loving Mayberry that deeply is its own kind of birthday candle, lit a little brighter every year.
Every Word Out of Your Mouth Is Vintage
The grandkids have started giving you funny looks, and your vocabulary is the reason.
You cut the lights off. You push a buggy through the Food Lion. You mash a button instead of pressing it, run to the store directly instead of soon, and get ill when the traffic backs up on the bypass.
None of it sounds the least bit odd to you. All of it sounds ancient to a teenager.
You realize you’ve gotten old the day a grandchild asks, plainly baffled, what “fixin’ to” means.
The mother tongue didn’t age. The speakers did.
NASCAR Wasn’t Always Like This
You remember stock car racing before the luxury suites.
You remember North Wilkesboro Speedway when it roared, the short tracks carved out of the foothills, Richard Petty in the cowboy hat and the shades, signing autographs until the last fan went home.
You remember when the sport belonged to the Carolinas, to the moonshine runners and the family teams working out of a country garage.
A younger fan came in during the glossy era and knows nothing else.
You watched the King win on a bullring half a county from home, so you feel the years every time a race looks more like a corporate retreat than a Saturday night.
The State Fair Is About the Food and the Bench
October rolls around, the North Carolina State Fair opens in Raleigh, and you make a beeline for exactly two things: something fried and somewhere to sit.
The rides belong to other people now. The Scrambler and the Zipper that once meant a thrilling night out now look like a lawsuit with a safety bar.
A turkey leg, a bag of cotton candy, a deep-fried something-or-other, and a bench in the shade.
That’s your winning ticket.
You know you’ve gotten old when the midway lights still dazzle, but your body negotiates hard for a funnel cake and an early exit.
A Cookout Tray Was Once a Whole Evening
Once upon a time, the Cookout tray was the height of a good, cheap night for you.
A burger, two sides, a drink, and a hand-dipped milkshake off a menu longer than a CVS receipt, all for pocket change.
You could feed a carload of friends after the football game and barely dent a five-dollar bill.
The young folks still pack the place at midnight, same as ever.
You look at the late-night line, do the math on the calories and the bedtime, and point the car toward home.
The tray still tastes like being nineteen. The trouble is, the rest of your body keeps insisting it isn’t.
9 Things Boomers Wish They’d Known Before Claiming Social Security at 62
Ask retirees who claimed Social Security at 62, and many will tell you they’d do at least one thing differently if they could go back.
That’s because the earliest claiming age comes loaded with consequences that aren’t obvious until you’re living with them.
9 Things Boomers Wish They’d Known Before Claiming Social Security at 62
18 Disturbing Facts You’ll Wish You Never Learned
The facts we’re about to share will make you set your coffee down and stare at the wall for a second.
Warning: You can’t unread these.
