Relics

I’ve been home for three days now and it was only this morning I unpacked.  I got home late on Wednesday and Thursday evening’s threat of storms kept me away from my washer.  There was no need to wash on Friday night because I knew there would be much laundry on Saturday.  So I unpacked and began the weekend’s laundry today.  It makes perfect sense to me.

Unpacking clothes is the easy part; open suitcase, dump in washing machine.  What I find annoying is unpacking all the other stuff that went into the bags at the beginning of the trip and then putting it all back to its rightful place.  Remember the Wet Ones?  Where do these go now?  What about the door prize I won, a wicker tray in the shape of the state of Georgia?  Maybe someday I will meet someone from Georgia who has one in the shape of Mississippi and we can trade.  Until then I stuck it in my pantry with all of the other wicker-type things I don’t use either.

I did enjoy Raleigh, at least what I saw of it.  Aside from the hotel and convention center most of my sightseeing was either from the rental car’s window at night while searching for a Walgreen’s, or from the inside of a restaurant.  And let me tell you, Raleigh has full authority to brag on their restaurants, especially the ones that sell fried chicken.  Those folks know how to cook a bird.

We ate lunch and dinner at a couple of great local places, but breakfast is my favorite meal when I’m travelling.  Whenever I visit a new city I like to find a good place to eat breakfast.  Monday morning I drank hotel room coffee and ate left-over pumpkin cornbread from my Sunday night meal.  What’s the saying, “waste not, want not?”  After a leisurely couple of hours in my room I ventured out into the downtown area around the hotel in search of my breakfast spot for the next day.

I convinced one of my coworkers to tag along and off we went on a blind walkabout to see all we could see in the three hours we had to kill before our first meeting of the day.  At each corner I scanned all directions for a tell-tale sign of a local diner.  I looked for words like "cafe" or "eats" written on small signs or outlined in neon.  I was getting discouraged until I saw one vintage neon sign that said Busy Bee Café.  I was fooled.  It might have once been a breakfast/lunch diner, but today it houses a trendy lunch/dinner place with its own brewery.  Down from it I did find a coffee house.  Its menu-written-in-chalk-on-the-wall promised a good breakfast, but it was not exactly what I had in mind.  It would have to do.  "I'm coming here tomorrow," I told my coworker, and we turned to make our way up another block and back towards our hotel.

That's when I saw Mecca, literally.  A long neon sign spelling out Mecca Restaurant rose high above a tiny store front with a laminated menu stuck awkwardly in the window.  I squinted to see through the hazy glass and I saw all I needed to seal the deal: booths and bar chairs upholstered in red vinyl.  “No, I’m coming HERE tomorrow,” I told her.

On Tuesday morning I set out for Mecca in the dark of the morning. I needed to be there early so I could make it back before the first conference session of the day.  I was early.  When the doors unlocked and the neon light flicked on I went inside.  Small booths with high back wooden benches for seating lined the left side of the shotgun building.   Each booth had its own arched mirror with art deco etchings and two shaded sconces for lighting, one on each side of the mirror.   On the right side was a bar with red and cream colored vinyl upholstered bar chairs.  The gray and white octagon-tiled floor led my eyes straight ahead to the kitchen and out through a screened door that opened to the street on the next block.  There were stairs beyond the row of booths that led up to what I can only assume is the dining room pictured on their website, a more modern room last updated in the late 1950s, if I had to guess.


I sat at the bar and ordered a plain breakfast.  The food was decent, but nothing great.  It would have been more convenient and cheaper for me to stop at the many fast food places I passed along the way, but I didn’t go for the food, I went for the atmosphere.  I sat alone eating and taking in all the details of a bygone time.  I thought of chatting up the waitress, but I’m not a chatter-upper for one, and for two I didn’t want to disturb the ambiance.  I just wanted to soak.  

I ate slowly and admired the woodwork behind the bar and all of the relics that had accumulated on the shelves and walls over the lifetime of the business, such as the art-deco clock from the Self Winding Clock Company permanently stopped at 2:00.  Was that 2:00 a.m. or p.m.? I might have learned the story if I had chatted-up that waitress.

Places like Mecca are relics in their own right.  They are leftovers from a time when downtown was the heart of a city and all daily business from shopping to paying your electric bill was done by foot and in person.  Somehow a few of these places manage to survive and keep on going even through the economic woes of downtowns.  I for one am thankful they do.

The rest of the trip was typical of any conference I’ve ever attended; sessions, exhibits, meetings, etc.   I learned new things, shared a few ideas and nodded off a couple of times, as per usual.  The best part, even better than the Mecca, was meeting up with friends I have made over the years at these same conferences and friends from work and spending a few hours laughing and just having a relaxing good time.   As the name of the restaurant implies, you might say my trip was a pilgrimage of sorts.  It wasn’t a religious experience, but it was a time of renewal of information, affiliations, and appreciation. And fried chicken; can’t forget the fried chicken.