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Durham Shock
When I moved to Durham, North Carolina, I experienced an immediate culture shock. The city was big, hot, flat, noisy, and scary. A stark contrast to the rural, mountain living I was used to. I regretted the move as soon as I’d made it that hot, humid July.
In retrospect, the middle of summer was probably not the best time to move to Southern city. The heat was so unbearable that, for the first few weeks, I only left the apartment in the evening, after the sun went down, when it was the coolest. I would venture out to get the mail from the box, then disappear back in the air conditioning of the apartment until night fell again the next day. There was no reason to leave on Sundays.
And the locals must have known that I felt that way, because early my first Saturday in Durham, a van of Sunday-dressed ladies arrived and knocked on my door. I stumbled across the moving boxes and disassembled furniture that littered the floor to open the door, only to be greeted by smiles as bright as the July sun and an invitation to church. They left me handfuls of literature, which I added to the pile of pizza and Chinese takeout flyers.
I wasn't used to such attention. Back in my rural hometown of Stony Hollow, New York, people knocking at the door usual asked for directions or the use of the phone. We never received invitations or coupons. Probably because Yankees consider such solicitations rude, but in the south, this was my first encounter with that famous hospitality.
I happily ordered a pizza with a coupon from the first flyer. It was too hot to leave the apartment and go anywhere anyway. And I'd probably just get lost trying to traverse the complex 15-501 that seemed to go north, south, east, and west in a giant upside-down T. It was better to stay inside and wait for the food to come to me.
In addition to the heat, there was another reason I didn't want to leave: fear. The sound of sirens howling was constant, day and night. In Stony Hollow, if we heard a siren, it was a rare occurrence and the emergency crew was probably on its way to one of our neighbors.
Because my Dad was on the volunteer rescue squad and fire department, we had the benefit of knowing where the trucks were headed before the sirens sounded. The Lectron radio located in my parents' bedroom would sputter to life and announce what and where the emergency was. Sirens rarely caught us by surprise.
But in Durham, I was startled regularly by the sound. Sirens woke me in the middle of the night and made me jumpy throughout the day. I never knew where the emergency was, but the sirens sounded like they were right on top of me. I never knew what the emergency was, but it seemed like there were an awful lot of them for one place.