Moving to a movie town
by Jon Worley

Since 1987, the only year I have not changed residence at least once is 1996. In all, I've lived in four dorm rooms (in two years), four apartments by myself, two apartments and two houses with my wife Barbara (one of each before and after nuptials). I've lived in five states and changed time zones twice.

It's time to saddle up once again.

Barbara got a job at the News and Observer in Raleigh (though the position is in the Durham bureau), and we move down sometime during the first week of December. The uncertainty comes because this time, the movers (paid for by the new employers) insist on packing our stuff themselves. Hey, anyone who wants to pack up 3,000 CDs and a thousand books is welcome to that task.

My father-in-law, chair of the business department at a small college outside of Nashville, is appalled by this requirement. Something like the moving company will be charging the N & O more, which means less profits for the McClatchy chain (which owns the newspaper) which means less pay for Barbara. Personally, I never bought into trickle-down economics from any viewpoint. I think his main opposition stems from a fundamental problem with the working man screwing the corporation.

In any case, our stuff will get loaded on the truck as soon as it is packed. Which might be November 30. Or December 1. Or December 2. Whenever, after the truck departs, we will load up our own cars and drive down to Durham.

We've got a place about three blocks from the old Durham Athletic Park. That's the stadium featured in Bull Durham. The movie. I've lived in many places where movies have been shot, but I've never moved to a city that I know only from a movie. Kansas City has been used many times (The Day After, the Robert Altman film Kansas City, City Heat, Truman, etc.). I lived in Battle Creek just after location shooting for The Road to Wellville wrapped. The Tampa Bay area has been home to bits and pieces of movies (the honeymoon scenes from To Die For, for instance). Today, I took in Enemy of the State, which was set in Baltimore (for the most part, anyway). Even closer to my chalet in not-quite Amish Country, Beloved and For Richer or Poorer (the latter a movie that no one around here likes to claim) both shot locations in York County, Pa.

But this is different. Bull Durham is one of my favorite movies. And while I had never been within the city limits until last week, I felt like I sorta knew the place based on the movie. For one, it was immediately apparent that almost all of the location shots were done in Durham, not some other "suitably southern" spot. I even spotted an old railway overpass which the team bus passes underneath about 10 times during the film. I was comfortable there, and a lot of that had to do with the movie.

Yeah, I know that a movie does not present an accurate picture of a place. It can't. A movie is the result of someone's imagination, and no matter how accurately the director wants to portray the location, the imression left is still that of the filmmaker. No more, and no less.

I'm aware of all that. And, sure, there's a reason the stadium is called the "old" Durham Athletic Park. The new one is much larger, and takes up about four times the space of the old one. The old Durham Bulls played in the class A Carolina league. The new Durham Bulls are the AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a team which plays its home games about a mile from our old house in St. Pete (I'm not even going into that deja vu moment). The new park is high on amenities and low on charm, part of the "new Durham", whatever that might mean. Largely because of the movie, the charm of small-time minor league baseball has left Durham forever.

But hell, I digress. I don't know a damned thing about the city, or its neighborhoods, or its history (well, tobacco, but past that) or anything. I know Bull Durham. And I know that's enough to piss a few people off down there. Just another Yankee trying to draw from that ever-decreasing pool of southern charm.

Fine, fine. But one of the reasons I thought moving to Durham would be cool (perhaps the only reason other than I'm quite tired of my current surroundings) is because of the movie. A movie I've watched dozens of times. A movie which, for better and worse, has presented the definitive picture of Durham, at least as far as the average American goes.

A picture I think I can live with. Even if viewed through rose-colored movie glasses.

Jon Worley just can't wait to watch the truck start rolling down the road.

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