Goodbye Belke

Joyce emailed me...she's my cosmic twin (we were born on the same day mere mins apart). And we roomed together one year at ECU. Anyway, her news was that the Belke store at the Carolina East mall was closing this weekend.

Talk about memories... her email mentioned one of our favorites... we used to go to the mall on Saturdays in the afternoon, before happy hour. There were a few girls who didn't have cars and would ask to go...one set that went almost every trip with us was a tall blonde and a short blonde...we called them the bookends now.. neither Joyce nor I can remember their names. The tall blonde would hit the men's cologne counter at Belke and literally bathe in "Grey Flannel"...why? Because her boyfriend who went to NC State wore it and she said it was her way of being close to him. On the way back to the dorm, I would crack the window and complain. I remember doing that often... until Christmas came and those of us who rode to the mall with the bookends took up a collection and bought her a bottle (my idea...) and dared her to spray herself with that gunk again. To this day I hate that smell...

I had forgotten about that. Funny how you forget little things and someone reminds you of them and you die laughing for a long time.

We loved going to that mall, most of the time to get away from the dorm and do some window shopping. Joyce reminded me about a habit I had...at the candy counter I would buy "Gummi Bears" and sit down on a bench and proceed to bite their legs off because I had a nightmare once that I bought some gummi bears at the mall and they climbed out of the bag and I chased them all over the mall but ... they got away.

You know.. I still do that..

Another time during a Christmas season, we ran into DJ JD... he was with a girl but stopped to chat a minute..and he said we should throw snowballs at Santa.

And the last memory that rings out is one that Amy used to rag me about... we were sitting on a bench and a guy came over and talked to me for a long time... I had no idea who he was. After he left I asked Amy if she knew who he was and she started laughing, "WW (one of my nicknames was Wicked Wanda), that was one of the Elbo Room bartenders... you didn't recognize him because he didn't have a beer in his hand, he wasn't standing under a black light and also he's two feet taller behind the bar."

Ah... yea... now that makes sense.