Around the World in Eighty Blogs

The brainchild of Shannon (Everyday Stranger), Around the World in Eighty Blogs features bloggers posting today about their fair cities. Here's my take on.....

Raleigh, North Carolina (also see here) We moved here in the fall of 1969; we had just had our second baby, mr. kenju was starting a new job, we had sold our former home and were looking for an apartment and trying to find a pre-school for our first-born. It was both a trying and an exciting time in our lives. The only thing I knew about Raleigh before we moved here was what Barney and Andy said about it on "The Andy Griffith Show". If you remember, Barney always stayed at the YMCA on Hillsborough Street when he came to town. It sounded only slightly less like "Hicksville" than Mayberry, where the fictional Andy and Barney hailed from. And in 1969, that wasn't too far from the truth. But they had a spanking new mall, the likes of which I'd never seen before and they had few sailors in uniform* so it seemed okay to me. It was also the state capital, and I knew it was a good thing to live in the capital if you ever have reason to need state government for anything. What that might be I didn't know, I just thought of it as a good thing.

*We had lived in Norfolk, VA previously, and I was decidedly weary of all things Naval by the time we left there.

I remember seeing the Governor's Mansion and all the state government buildings shortly after we moved here; little did I know then that many years later I would be involved in decorating that Mansion for Christmas or doing flowers there for the filming of a TV show (as I did in the 90's).

Raleigh is home to many colleges and universities; NCSU, Meredith College, Peace College, Shaw U., St. Augustine College, the new law school for Campbell U., and we're only a stone's throw from UNC in Chapel Hill and Duke and NCCU in Durham. Because of that, plus all the technology and pharmaceutical research companies in the area, we have a high per capita income level and a very high level of college grads. That helps to make Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill one of the preferred areas in the country. Over the past ten or so years, we have consistently been high on several national magazine lists of the best places to live in the USA. That has resulted in a population explosion here; at one point we were gaining approximately 1,000 new residents per month. A problem developed, since our city services had a hard time keeping up with all the new residents and our roads were not built for the amount of use they were getting. Thankfully, the increases have slowed down over the last few years.

We are almost equidistant from the mountains and the coastal regions, providing for easy travel to vacations in either location. Our weather is fairly consistent, and although we usually get snow at least once during winter, it is not of long duration. (I really hope that will be true of the winter of 2009!)


After living in an apartment for 18 months, we found a home to buy. We lived there for eleven years; the longest I had ever lived in one place up to that time. We discovered that Raleigh was a very good place to raise a family. Our children went to after-school programs at the very same YMCA that Barney mentioned on Andy's show, played in Pullen Park and attended schools that had high marks in testing and student achievement. The only real quarrel I've had with Raleigh over the 40 years we've been here is with the school board. So many changes were made over the years that one of my children went to seven different schools between first and twelfth grades, and only one of those changes was our choice.

Over the years, my husband was asked by various employers to move to another city, and most of those moves would have involved promotions and raises. Each time, we made the decision to remain in Raleigh. Most of the time that meant that he had to change jobs/companies, and we were lucky that his field made that possible without too much trouble or worry. We thought it was best for our children to remain here and keep the family stability we had come to prefer, rather than to move willy-nilly every time someone wanted us to be somewhere else. We have never been sorry for those decisions. We've been in our current home for 27 years, and have no plans to leave it or Raleigh. Whenever someone asks me where we plan to retire - I always answer right where I am now - in Raleigh!