Visit To Troy

Maybe not so topical except in my head. I drove over to Troy NC where I lived in 1953-54. It was my second visit in the past 58 years.

Note: That  year in Troy was good. My sister and I had a lot of friends; I lettered in football. My mother and father were involved in things. They  belonged to the little Montgomery County country club. One night they went to a party and my mother wore a pretty green dress.  That summer things changed, got weird (although to be honest things were weird before Troy).  My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and  we returned to Shelby so she could die there, which she did two days before Christmas. She was buried in the green dress. All of our lives made a radical turn. I have been told that I got stuck, did not progress properly - that Troy was the last normal time of my life.

But the trip today was nice. I wore my hat and greeted people with grandiosity and humility. I don't know if I learned anything. Time will tell.


Bushes and trees have replaced the little house where we lived. From the`size of bushes the replacement happened a long time ago.  My mother was happy here for the first time that I could remember (although being barely sentient I could not have said it). I recall sitting on our porch with my mother and Bookie Kearns the pretty 13 year old who lived across the street. I said something grand and stupid and my mother glanced at Bookie then  both of them regarded me with amused pity, tolerance and affection. This has been my pattern with women ever since. I seem to like it. I suspect other guys feel the same way.


Hotel Troy where my father stayed the summer of 1953. The rest of the family  came just before school started that fall. Some months after my mother died my father and I returned  to Troy  and spent the night in the Hotel Troy.  I don't remember now why we came. I might not have known then. My father seemed disturbed.


Russel mansion where Charles and Larry lived. I spent one night there. Charles sent the black man out to get some beer. I was invited because people thought I was a little wild. I almost got kicked out of school for supposedly giving the finger to Mrs. Livingston the librarian (I didn't). When I denied it she said, "Mr Weathers the truth is not in you." I was taken to the principal's office and my father was called.   Fellow students were impressed. The last time I saw Charles was during my brief stay at NC State (after we came back from West Palm Beach where we moved after my mother died). I was walking up the street and Charles drove by a red Alfa Romeo convertible with a beautiful girl all over him. He grinned and yelled, "Weathers I want to  see you."

The mansion is now for sale at a fairly reasonable 500,000. The man at the little restaurant downtown where I got coffee and cherry pie said that Charles and Larry were still alive but the Russel who had been living in the house was dead.


Inside the diner where I talked to older woman who knew people from my era. Oddly most are still alive. My friend Lowell Perry is dead. Maybe he died in Vietnam. Sensitive, existentially troubled, violent, he would have been perfect for getting killed there. My friend Mike Powell had those same traits and would also have been perfect, but he is still alive somewhere in Florida. I don't know about me. I didn't go so I'll never know. .




Although it seems unlikely, this might be the bench were Leanna Harris and I sat in romantic proximity for several hours one night.  We walked across town from the house where she were staying. The bench I saw today was  in  the same little park behind the hospital as the bench I saw 58 years ago.  I claimed to love Leanna - which I had never done before - but she returned  in a few days to Hamilton Ohio. (I think it was also a few days later when my mother went to the little hospital with a bowel obstruction then went to the Baptist Hospital in Winston Salem.) After my mother died and we moved to West Palm Beach I wrote Leanna an embarrassing rather`desperate letter to which  she replied kindly, suggesting that I move on.