You Can and Can't Go Home Again

Last Friday, when Mike's parents were here, we took a road trip out to their old stomping grounds (and Mike's birthplace), Camp Lejune.

Camp Lejune isn't too far from the coast, so before we went on base, we had lunch in the quaint little town of Swansboro. It's only a few blocks worth of little shops (quilts, beach souvenirs) and restaurants, but it was nice to walk around. We had a delicious seafood meal in a restaurant overlooking the water. (Lots of our fellow patrons chose to eat outside on the deck, but the day was both very sunny and very windy, so that seemed like a recipe for being chilly and sunburned! We were perfectly content with our window view.)

We arrived back at Camp Lejune in the early afternoon, and I'm glad we were going in rather than out, because there were hundreds of cars streaming toward the exit -- all the Marines who had been released for the Easter weekend. I don't think I've been on a military base before, and I was amazed at how big it was -- it's really like a small city there.

Our first task was to go to the ID center to renew Georgia's military ID card. We didn't have to wait in line, but they did manage to take the single worst ID picture we'd ever seen! It looked like a mug shot for a hardened criminal, someone escaped from a chain gang who was about to pull a knife on you. It takes some kind of crazy reverse photography talent to make that kind of transformation!

We did a little bit of a driving tour of the base. It seems fairly spread out, and a lot of the buildings have a very similar brick architecture, a lot like a college campus (but with less landscaping).

We then stopped in at the MCX, which is like a department store (except that you have to show your military ID to shop there, and they don't have sales tax). As you would expect, they also have a wide selection of Marine-themed items. One of my favorites was these "baby dress blues", shown here. (No, we didn't actually get them!)

From there, we went to the Barrs' old neighborhood, Berkeley Manor. This is where Mike lived when he was in the early part of elementary school. We drove by his old school, which is now 1) much larger, and 2) has a different name. And then we went by their house, which apparently looks much the same as when they lived there. Mike remembered climbing on the wall out front and running around in the woods out back. There were also lots of kids around, which made Mike nostalgic for the old days running around with his buddies!

As our last stop, we made our way over to the other part of the base (Tarawa Terrace II), where the Barrs lived when Mike was a baby. As we drove down the street, we noticed that one side of it was basically a construction site, with brand new houses in the process of being built. We started looking at the street numbers, and yep, you guessed it, their old house was no more -- it had been demolished. It will just have to live in memory! Although it was a little sad for us not to be able to go back and see it, I'm sure the current crop of Marines are quite happy with the change. The new houses looked a lot nicer than the old ones.