The American landscape

I'm on vacation in the U.S., visiting family on North Carolina coast. I'll be back in France soon.

Parking lots. Miles of them. Of course France has a lot of big parking lots too — more and more of them. I was struck by the expanse of asphalt, surrounded by low commercial buildings, that you see in this photo that I took here in Morehead City.

My home town is a tourist town. A seaside resort. It has also become a big retirement center, welcoming Northerners who come here to live out their lives in the area's mild climate. The parking lots are probably full of cars in summertime. Even in April, the volume of traffic on the wide local highways is amazing compared to what we see in Saint-Aignan.

Speaking of cars and traffic, in a few hours (I'm writing on Sunday morning) we will be leaving Morehead City to drive over to the Charlotte area, to spend time in the town where my grandfather's family lived. It's actually in South Carolina, but just over the border, and it's a six-hour drive from here. The first time I ever went there was in 1960 — more than 50 years ago now.

Back then, my grandfather's sister, my great-aunt Ray (full name: Annie Ray), lived on a farm with her husband. They had raised four children. Going there was like going back to the 19th century, in a lot of ways. Ray and Al milked cows and churned their own butter, for example, every day. The didn't have indoor plumbing, but an outhouse on a creek down a path several hundred yards from the house. There was a pump in the kitchen for running water. Aunt Ray passed on at the age of 95 nearly 20 years ago now.