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Posted By Russ Emerson on June 15, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Today is something of a milestone for me. It was five years ago today that I arrived in North Carolina, after having pulled up stakes and left California.
Relocating long-distance was nothing particularly new for me. I’d gone to college in the Midwest, and I’d been stationed in Texas and New England — not to mention in Korea. But those moves were necessary; I had to go to college, and I had to go where Uncle Sam sent me.
However, coming to North Carolina was a purely voluntary decision. Indeed, it was the answer to a few “problems” I had: I wanted out of San Jose, and I wanted to buy a house.
With my employment situation at that time, I had several different places to which I could move. Chelmsford, MA was out of the question, what with the “Taxachussetts” reputation and the vast surplus of Kennedy sycophants. I narrowed my choices to Austin, Texas and Raleigh, NC and spent no small amount of time debating the decision with myself.
I’d been stationed in Texas; combined with my relo-research, I was roughly familiar with things there. But I had never laid eyes on any part of North Carolina. While I was torn with indecision, Fate intervened, and I was sent on a business trip to visit the company offices in Raleigh. It was love at, if not first sight, then first week’s stay. My mind was made up.
Less than a month later, I had to make a second trip to the Raleigh office. I decided to see what I could do about finding an apartment during my brief stay. I wasn’t overly optimistic about my chances, but my perspective on apartment hunting had been warped by my four years in San Jose.
In San Jose in the late ’90s, apartment hunting usually consisted of the following series of actions:
- Wake up Sunday morning at 4am, shower, shave, get dressed (business casual preferred.)
- Go outside to wait for the Sunday paper to arrive.
- While waiting, warm up the car.
- As soon as the paper is in hand, discard all but the “apartments for rent” section of the paper.
- Drive like a maniac to the first/best address spotted in the ads.
- Queue up behind the 50 people who got there before you to fill out an application.
- Repeat weekly until new apartment found and leased.
- Auction off a) arm, b) leg, or c) rights to firstborn child to cover the rent expenses.
The rental market in the Raleigh area, to my great relief, was nothing quite as cutthroat as that in the Bay Area. I had an afternoon free during my trip, and in two hours I had found a good place and had a signed lease in hand. I could afford to pay for the apartment standing empty while I wrapped up my affairs in San Jose.
Less than a month later, I had checked out of my apartment in San Jose, hired a mover for the big stuff, packed the small stuff into my SUV, and hit the road.
On June 15th, 2000 I arrived in Raleigh. And, in an odd coincidence sure to make the reader think of pregnancy, nine months later I moved into my very own built-for-me house, where I still happily reside.
I’m a native Californian, third generation, born and bred. But unless something particularly unusual happens, I’ll never live there again. North Carolina is now home.