The title’s not about my past ASU career, but a recent return to Boone, N.C., where “Main Street, U.S.A.” goes by the name: “King Street.”

On Saturday morning, Oct. 22, my son Jeremy, his wife Rose and I started “up the mountain” from their home in Yanceyville to Boone. Although there’s no “mountain” in Yanceyville to be going up, the inclination to head to the North Carolina mountains makes one think: “incline.”

Our destination imparted a subtle element of “Boone-ness” to everything along the way (even Winston-Salem).

Many places are “re-imaging,” “re-imagining,” and “re-branding” themselves, something the N.C. Highway Department has been doing physically with its “fine-tuning” of U.S. Highway 421 for many years now.

Due to 421’s “evolution” (the engineered kind), some old familiar “markers” have disappeared or been skirted around. The widest sections closer to Boone seem to only be home to great rock “guardians” on both sides (divided mountains) their exposed, extensive lengths of linear, blasting core cavities perpendicularly intersecting the metamorphic, “gneissic swirls.”

Only one roadside store along the way reminded me of the former multitude of “humanly intimate” little mountain stores. Its sign, with 2-foot letters (unlike the “squint-defying” yard-sale kind) shouted”: “Ashe County Cheese!” I recall travel brochures with “Ashe County: See Cheese Made.” But as this was Wilkes County, our experiencing of this cheese’s “nativity” wasn’t going to happen, only its post-purchase “demise” with crackers or bread.

I was excited to see jugs of mountain apple cider for sale there! They brought back my memories of more flimsy roadside apple and cider stands of previous years. Some back then had looked as if they could have been easily blown down by a wolf (if so inclined).

Further on, Christmas tree farms added regimentation to the sides of some mountains. Trees ranged from foot-tall to “almost ready,” future “graduating classes” of Tannenbaums (like some fish, “farm-raised and sustainable”).

Then we passed cows on other “tilted” pastures, the bovines almost seeming to “hold on” at a 45-degree angle. One church’s cemetery stretched uphill; but the dead seemed to be on somewhat surer “footing” than the cattle.

About 10 miles from Boone we reached another kind of “fall line, this one seeming to say: “Cross over into autumnal beauty!” Up until that point, only a few trees’ leaves had turned, (but such was the case even when I was at Appalachian, that spot seeming to be Mother Nature’s demarcation line for weather difference). At a distance, the sight resembled scores of fall-colored puffballs glued to vertical surfaces for an art project (a really good one!).

In Boone, the little building which once held “Boone Florist” was vacant. On Valentine’s Day, 1973, I first bought flowers there for my late wife, Diane. The store window currently caught the sun’s reflection, but the former shop’s recesses were dark and bare, like a sunlit flower vase holding only a bouquet of shadows deep within.

Since it was a home-game football weekend, some churches were renting parking space to game attendees. A sign listed the cost and said the money would support programs of the church (unnecessary, since these weren’t those kind of churches where the minister is also a “CEO”).

With “leaf crowd” and “football crowd,” in attendance, downtown Boone was inundated with a number of shoppers which would make any struggling downtown (on the “comeback trail”) envious to a fault!

There were still many little “hippie” clothing shops (what my kids and I call them). An old record shop had “vinyl” (not siding) and turntables (not “Spencer”), along with some old floor-model hi-fi’s. My son found some old Moody Blues records. (In fact, he played one of their tapes on the way up; appropriate, since I listened to the Moody Blues while at Appalachian, and now.)

We ate at King Street’s Mellow Mushroom amidst a host of college kids surely thinking and talking about some of the same “generic college-kid things” as when I was an Appalachian student.

While walking downtown, I looked up at Boone’s “Howard’s Knob,” thinking about people in those expensive, mountain-side homes having a great view of the valley and horizon. I then decided my view was better than theirs, because they were mostly looking down, while I was “looking up!”

On the way home, I realized I had “up-dated” my long-term view of Boone with only “amendment,” none of my past recollections there being altered or tossed out in the process.

For them, (and other memories) either “memory refuse pick-up day” never came, or I forgot to set them to the curb, with their resulting “hoarding” in mind and heart.