Fifteen years ago, my girlfriend and I were in our first fall semester of seminary in Richmond, Virginia, when her parents invited us to join them for a long weekend in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It would be our first road trip as a couple. It felt exciting and also momentous—we shared a suitcase for the first time!
Traveling to North Carolina wasn’t exactly new to us. She and I had both grown up and gone to college in the Tar Heel State. We’d even made trips home together, including to see her parents. Still, this time would be different, not just a long drive but a road trip.
It was a road trip, because we were intentionally planning to eschew expediency in favor of meandering through our home state. It would be a trip where the journey would be just as important as the destination, memories in the making. And there would be snacks. Lots of snacks. Preferably sweet and salty.
With a big Ziploc bag of trail mix spiked with chocolate chips between us, we started off in my Subaru, jamming along to one of the mixed CDs she had made for us. But an hour into the drive, I began to live into my vision of this trip being more than an extended vacation with people I had already begun to think of as my future in-laws. A road trip provides the opportunity to really get to know someone, including their past.
I suggested we take the exit for Oxford, just over the North Carolina line. As we drove, I told stories about my family connections there.
This little town in Granville County is pronounced “Ox-ard” by locals like my maternal grandmother. She grew up on a farm with her six siblings. When I was a boy, I visited the family homeplace for a couple of Thanksgivings. I’m sure the traditional turkey and fixings were served, but I have a distinctive memory of a green Jell-O salad. My girlfriend wrinkled her nose at this detail.
I hurried on to tell the story of my great uncles who had built in the attic an elaborate miniature town encircled by a toy train track. When I was ten years old, I was deemed trustworthy and allowed to climb the stairs to this holiest of holies. I will never forget the tiny locomotive with real steam puffing from its smokestack.
That train, along with the model town and the homeplace itself, was long gone by the time of our road trip. But the Baptist church was still there, its brick sanctuary as solid as ever. We took a lap around the graveyard where my cousins and I had played hide-and-seek behind the marble slabs engraved with the names of my ancestors. Standing before the grave of my great-great-grandmother, I told my lovely road trip companion the story I’d heard as a child—how Great-Great-Grandmother Corrie Gooch had chased General William Tecumseh Sherman off her property with a straw broom! All stories are true, and some of them actually happened.
After a trip like that down memory lane, I wanted to prolong our festive mood. Remembering that the scriptures teach us that wine gladdens the heart (Psalm 104), we decided our next stop along the way would be the nearest vineyard.
Because our road trip was before smart phones with GPS and Internet access, we found ourselves following the interstate signs south of Winston-Salem to RayLen Vineyards and Winery in Mocksville. We had grabbed a couple of burgers from a drive-thru along the way, so by the time we arrived, the sun was high in the blue sky above the ripening grapes in rows of vines. My girlfriend said it reminded her of Napa Valley.
It turns out that Joe Neely, the owner, had indeed been inspired by the vineyards of California. As he poured sips of various wines for us in his tasting room, Mr. Neely told us that he had named his winery after his daughters, Rachel and Helen. At that point in my life, my drinking expertise was limited to cheap beer served in plastic cups during my undergraduate years. As we sipped Mr. Neely’s award-winning wines, I faked sophistication using phrases like “fruity on the nose” and “bright finish,” drawing giggles from my girlfriend. She and I ranked the wines on our paper list with smiley faces—a time-honored tradition, I’m sure.
RayLen Vineyards is off I-40, well past Winston-Salem and Highway 421 to Blowing Rock. My plan had been to catch I-77 north in Statesville and then on to our destination. But…my college alma mater was only another thirty miles away—why not take another detour? She happily agreed and rolled down the window, letting her long hair blow in the wind.
Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory is now a university with campuses in Asheville and Columbia, South Carolina. But at the time of our visit, you could stand in the quad outside the Rudisill Library and pretty much see everything. Stretching our legs, my girlfriend and I strolled, hand in hand, under the brilliant red and yellow leaves still hanging in the trees as students hustled past into the Rhyne Building where I’d taken classes toward my history major. Then, I heard my name!
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Weisner hurried across the quad and embraced me in a bear hug. More than seven years before, the same campus minister had called my name on move-in day as I nervously walked to orientation with my parents in tow. Pastor Weisner made it a habit to memorize the names and photos of every incoming freshman student. He wanted everyone to feel welcomed.
After he regaled my girlfriend with various tidbits and factoids about his beloved school, his hands fluttering around the great nest of his beard, I told the story of the chapel service on the day after 9-11. How the auditorium was packed to the hilt with students and faculty, many of them crying openly. How Pastor Weisner had read Psalm 27 from the pulpit, “The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” He and I both got a little teary at this memory.
In that memorable chapel service, it had been his presence, even more than the words, that had brought me a sense of hope. Something about how this pastor stood, straight and solid, and how he held silence between the verses of scripture, letting the emotions sink in. I had grown up in the church as a pastor’s son, but it was that moment when I wondered if I might one day step into a pulpit.
The sun was setting behind the oak trees. Before we got back on the road, Pastor Weisner gave both of us a great bear hug and made us promise to keep in touch, a promise that we have kept throughout our fourteen-year marriage.
Road trips are about the journey. About showing someone little pieces of yourself—places and people that, though in your rearview mirror, are still a part of you. Even fifteen years ago, I felt that I would long remember this road trip. Sure enough, she and I laugh about it to this day.
But the immediate future was in Blowing Rock, still an hour away. As I drove the Subaru up Highway 321, my stomach growled. Laughing, my future wife reached into the bag of trail mix. There was just enough left for us to share.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC. His forthcoming book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons: In the Time of the Coronavirus.”
