A woman stopped by Miss Carol’s office at the hospital yesterday. She was looking for Miss Carol ’cause she had spent the weekend with some old friends that had mentioned Miss Carol and me.
Come to find out, she had visited Don and Ann, a couple we haven’t seen in several years, people that we used to party with back when Miss Carol was bartending at the BAJA. Friends that we had, unfortunately, fallen out out contact with. Christmas card folks that no longer swirled about us. You know.
Friends that had slipped off the radar screen of our daily activities until a stranger came looking for Miss Carol to pass on their best wishes. And then it all came zooming back to us.
Back in the day, Don and Ann lived in Carova Beach, which is a fairly inaccessible stretch of beach in North Carolina and home to some of the coolest people I have ever met. Carova is a tight knit community down on the Outer Banks. They have each other and a Life Saving Station and that’s about it.
The people there are extraordinary. Truly independent. To this day, you have to run the beach at low tide bringing with you everything you need until the next trip out. We consider ourselves lucky to be included as friends.
Miss Carol and me met Don and Ann, and CJ and Pam, and Art and Darylin, and Bob and Debra, and others when we bought land down there, becoming one of them, at least vicariously. We admired them and their spirit and dreamed of building a home in Carova and joining them.
But we didn’t. Or haven’t. Yet.
But, ya know, things keep rolling and people and friends ebb and flow and times change and before you know it Miss Carol is working at a hospital and bringing home a story of old friends and an old dream and you wonder anew.
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