I went to the Carolinas (both but don’t remember which was the focus of the trip) to visit Auntie Clara’s family for the summer. I must have been about ten years old. She was a friend of my mother’s not a true relative but the fact that she was an auntie “made” her family. We took a Greyhound bus down with a shoe box filled with sandwiches, fried chicken and plain cake. Oh and my favorite: green salad in a Hellman’s jar with oil + vinegar.
It was so foreign to me. Wooden shacks jumped together to make a bigger residence; a wood burning stove to cook on (the food was fabulous) and provide heat; church was all day on Sunday and the burial ground looked like red lumpy ground with some graves separated by bricks and others, shells and colored glass bottles. I recall being fascinated because bugs walked across them. Nice people but I never returned.
Actually I traveled further when I spent summers in the Caribbean but never considered that “exotic”. Just like being home except they had mango trees in the yard, LOL.
