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I grew up in a brand new suburb (post-war low-cost) in East Raleigh – (Gatewood on King Charles) but I spent a couple of weeks each summer in “the country” – my aunt and uncle’s farm just down Honeycutt from Falls of the Neuse Road – folks, that was then The Country, first place I ever experienced total darkness, with beans in the field and cow quarters in the freezer – so when a Road Worrier column in the N&O mentioned flocks of turkeys becoming roadkill out on Knightdale-Auburn Road, I knew better. “WTF?”, I thought – turkeys are a sight smarter than that. I went out for a look. “Damn!” I thought to myself as I hit the very stretch of poor asphalt described in the column. “There they are. Goddamned turkeys. Wandering the highway like – well, like chickens. What the hell are those things!?” I stopped and took the pictures above. They are Guinea Hens, I didn’t know what to call them but I knew damn well they weren’t turkeys after I though about it a minute. And don’t you just love living in a town where a 12 or 15 minute drive gives you a sight like this. Or the biker mailbox right down the road.

Raleigh’s beauty really does reside in its ironic juxtapositions. Southern town, government seat, North Carolina city (a recent oxymoron), it retains in its skyline a tracery of trees

that well justifies “City of Oaks,”

yet wallows in the worst kind of woundings of the landscape.

I live in a historic district, yet they are literally scorching the earth across the street from my house

(though I’m not greatly upset overall by Greg Paul’s Blount Street project). One of the most Southern things about Raleigh is that fact you can find such big natural settings

inside the beltline – Crabtree Creek’s huge watershed shapes Raleigh in so many ways.

But just as important to Raleigh’s unique character is that you can find bait shops and cows and friggin’ guinea hens just outside the beltline. I hope that part somehow gets preserved, too.

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