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A couple weeks ago, a nice woman e-mailed me to make sure I wasn't dead.
She noticed I hadn't been in the paper in a while, asked her husband about it, and he thought the Lord had looked up my name and pressed the SEND button. It felt good to report that I was tanned, rested and ready. Bearded, too.
For those of you new to Charlotte (which, if this is the Charlotte I remember, is most of you): Hi, my name is Tommy, I write a column for the paper. I've been gone since last August on a fellowship at Harvard University. Repeat after me: The bah is not fah from the cah.
Today was supposed to be my first column back, but Mark Sanford decided to make news Wednesday, so I wrote. In retail they call that a soft opening. Today we cut the ribbon.
One quick housekeeping item: Some of you might remember that just before I left, I had surgery to remove a small benign tumor from my heart. Everything's fine. My cardiac rehab was walking around campus. I even shed some pounds along the way, despite severely depleting the world's population of lobsters. (You can buy them off the boat up there for 3 bucks apiece. We'll now pause for quiet weeping.)
The three of us – Alix Felsing, my wife; Fred, the wonder dog; and me – had a blast up North. We had a great time being college students again and made a bunch of lifelong friends. So I didn't check the news in Charlotte that much. Let me go through the archives here and catch up.
Looks like Jake Delhomme threw five interceptions. That's a pretty good season. Oh, wait. That was one game. Says here Bank of America proposed to Merrill Lynch, tried to break off the wedding, but went through with it when the government showed up with a shotgun.
Something's weird. Every time I type “Wachovia,” the spellchecker wants to change it to “Wells Fargo.” Apparently, on Election Day, voters took a long and thoughtful look at the candidates for judge and chose Bill Belk. And if I'm reading this right, the big issue at City Council was not growth or transportation or the tanking economy. It was goats.
You kids got into the liquor cabinet while I was gone, didn't you? Maybe this is a good time to talk about Charlotte from the outside looking in. Maybe this is a good time to tell you what I missed.
I missed the smell of cut grass and wild onions. I missed the word “y'all” and people who know how to use it. I missed red clay. I missed cold beer and blues at the Double Door, shrimp tacos at Cabo, 2 a.m. omelets at the Landmark. I missed DeAngelo up the middle and Stephen Curry for three and sunset at a Knights game with seats down the first-base line. I missed coming down 77 from the north and seeing the Bank of America tower pop up on the horizon like a prairie dog.
Mostly, though, I missed you guys. If you glance down to the bottom of this column, you'll see an astounding array of ways to keep in touch. I'll be in the paper Thursday and Sunday (plus when news warrants), on my blog daily, and on e-mail and Facebook and Twitter until the caffeine wears off.
Sit down for a second. Let's talk. It's good to be back.
Tommy:704-358-5227; facebook.com/tommytomlinson; Twitter @tommytomlinson; blogging at http://ttomlinson.blogspot.com.
