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Perfect Weekend | November

Kings Of The Queen City

By Ralph Grizzle

"Good evening gentlemen." We have just walked in the door of the Beef 'n' Bottle, a Charlotte restaurant - heck, a Charlotte institution - that has been serving thick, juicy steaks since 1948. Sporting blue blazers, white button-down oxford shirts, khaki slacks and suede bucks, we are a couple of sharp-dressed men. The hostess swoons over my companion. He is, I confess, strikingly handsome in his double-breasted blazer. He acknowledges her with a smile, then does a Fred Astaire-like pirouette. Flamboyant? No. Just young. He is my son, four years old, the top of his head not yet reaching my waist.

Alex and I have come to Charlotte, to paraphrase Thoreau, to "play deliberately, to front only the essential facts of play." We are here on assignment for Our State. Our mandate: to seek out the "Perfect Weekend" for kids. And Charlotte may well be the best city in the state for kids. During our trip, we would put Alex on a pony (his first); roar back at dinosaurs (at Discovery Place); luxuriate in our plump suite at the Park Hotel; order room service, spreading ketchup on eggs, home fries, toast and, indeliberately, the sofa and drapes (our apologies to the management).

We would spend wasteful hours in the Park Hotel's three pools (two were actually whirlpools, but please don't tell Alex); play Nintendo into the wild hours of the night, 10:30! We would ride Scooby Doo's Ghoster Coaster at Carowinds and stuff ourselves with pizza, and on this one night, just for dad, steak, salad, baked potato and Texas toast.

Seated in a booth, we order cocktails, a Roy Rogers (Coke with a splash of grenadine and topped with a cherry) for Alex, and, uncharacteristically, water, without the benefit of barley, hops and malt, for me.
Shrimp cocktail? Yes, that would be nice. How would we like our New York Strip? Medium well. From a speaker, Loretta Lynn croons with wailing pride about the virtues of being a coal-miner's daughter. The restaurant is dimly lit. Tacked to the dark-paneled walls are framed black-and-white photographs of Hollywood stars. In a corner booth, a couple of men wear caps, with four Budweiser bottles, all empty, perched on the table's edge.

I ask our waiter Tony if the restaurant gets many regulars. As a matter of fact, he tells me, we are sitting in Marge's booth. Marge, who is in her 90s, comes here every Thursday night, but she's ill and at home tonight. "We were just talking about sending her some food," Tony says to me. That's about the swellest thing I have ever heard in a big city. And that's the thing about Charlotte. Though huge, it retains at least some of the charm of a small Southern town.

We finish our steaks. The owner, George Fine, stops by and sits to talk. I ask him about the restaurant. He gives me a short history and tells me that Patricia Cornwell mentioned the Beef 'n' Bottle in her book, Hornet's Nest. While we are talking, several of the waiters and waitresses stop at our table. They make sure Alex's potato has enough butter, dotingly ask whether he wants another cherry in his Coke. I make a mental note that it's not always a bad idea to bring kids to restaurants where they normally aren't seen. For those who serve only adults each day, kids can be so much of a novelty that the wait staff lavishes you with extra-special treatment. George returns with a copy of the Cornwell book and reads a short passage to me. I pay the bill; Alex and I waltz out the door.

A Moment's Digression
Let me just say right here that I dearly love my six-year-old daughter. She is not on this trip, because she is practicing writing the letters of the alphabet, both in uppercase and lowercase, doing simple math, and making the awkward adjustment from kindergarten, where life was unencumbered by rules and regimentation, to first grade, where she begins the arduous journey of becoming a responsible adult. We'll meet her and her mom on Saturday at Carowinds. I mention all of this because I don't want my little girl to read this article in adulthood and think that her dad showed favoritism. But I digress. Let's return to where this trip all started.

Beginnings
Charlotte is too big a city for me to get my arms around. I get dizzy just thinking about all there is to do here, and so I called ahead of time to arrange my trip. The Charlotte Visitor Information Center provided me with a list of activities, phone numbers and web sites that would help Alex and me plan our Perfect Weekend.

We left Asheville just before noon to make our way to Huntersville, 15 to 20 minutes north of Charlotte, where we would visit Historic Latta Plantation, a cotton plantation that dates back to around 1800. Alex, of course, is too young to appreciate the history of the home and its antiquities, so we came here only to ride a pony and to visit the Carolina Raptor Center.

We found Latta's Plantation's Equestrian Center in a dusty parking lot and paid $4 for Alex to ride Goldie, a 20-year-old pony who is not only a hit at the many birthday parties where she's performed over the years but also a delight for kids such as mine to saddle up on and ride two turns around a broad, open field. Alex loved it, of course.

Just a short way from the equestrian center is Carolina Raptor Center. The center, which features one of the country's most extensive collections of birds of prey, annually receives more than 600 injured (most by cars) eagles, hawks, owls, falcons and other raptors that are rehabilitated and, when possible, released back into the wild.

Located on 57 acres, the nonprofit Carolina Raptor Center features a wooded mile-long display trail where visitors can view more than 20 different species of raptors. These permanently disabled birds have become fulltime residents of the Raptor Center. Despite their grim prognosis, these birds all appear to be healthy and are beautiful to gaze upon, from the tiny Saw-Whet Owl, the smallest owl in the Eastern United States (no more than 9 inches tall as an adult) to the Bald Eagle, one of America's largest raptors (its wingspan can reach 8 feet).

As enjoyable as the raptor center was, the fun index still favors the pony. Old Goldie will have tough competition, though, as we are just now getting back in our car and headed into the city. We're bound for the swank Park Hotel. The Park is Charlotte's only hotel that has been honored with AAA's Four Diamond Award for 16 consecutive years and Mobil's Four Star Award for 14 consecutive years.

With Alex napping in the back seat, I arrived at the Park hopelessly disheveled. The inside of the car was a wreck, empty cartons of juice on the floorboard, disposed bags of chips, hamburger wrappers along with bits of food that, theoretically, could be gathered and consumed in an emergency. On the way here, we had opened our baggage, which had been so carefully packed at home, and now, pants, shirts, socks and underwear were scattered about the back of the car. When I opened the back door and surveyed the damage, I wasn't sure whether to call for the doorman or the Red Cross.

Without my calling for anyone, a doorman came to our assistance. Bright, handsome and young, he earned my dislike instantly, because, of course, he was bright, handsome and young. Yes, I thought, I was like you once, capable and confident. Now look at me. My shirt was untucked. A dollop of chocolate had stained my shirt pocket. My hair was mussed, not in an appealing sexy sort of way but in a frightening manner that suggested that I had just escaped the lunatic asylum and was set upon having a weekend of fun and frolic in jolly old Charlotte. I checked in with whatever dignity I could be expected to muster with a chocolate-stained pocket and wild hair.

In the elevator on the way up to our room, I struggled to converse with the doorman and to keep my eye on Alex, who just now had balled up a fist and punched me in the groin. It was in that short time frame that I confirmed something I had always suspected: Being a parent has destroyed a good percentage of my more vital brain cells. In the early 1980s, I traveled the world and was supremely capable of all that travel required, finding a room in villages where none seemed to be available, grasping essential phrases of the local language, learning to convert currencies quickly in my head so that I would know what a particular room or meal was costing me in U.S. dollars.

I was immersed in this thought when the elevator door opened and I led the way out. The doorman followed even though I had exited on the wrong floor. Was there something you wanted to see here on this floor sir, his look suggested. Recovering, I surveyed the hallway, and lied to Alex, "Yes, that's the room your mom and I stayed in on our honeymoon. Now let's get back in the elevator and go up to our room."

Rather than fumble with the card to gain entry to our room, I surrendered it to the doorman. Inside, he pointed out things we would need to know about – where the bathrooms were, the location of the safe, how to operate the television and, in the sympathetic manner that people reserve for the slow or dimwitted, the way out of the room. I tipped the young man $5 and a candy wrapper, and Alex and I proceeded to wreck the room.

I like the Park because it is not only plush (or was before our visit) but also located within walking distance of South Park Mall and the many shops at Specialty Shops on the Park. These shops and restaurants are located just out the back door of the Park, which makes shopping and dining convenient.

Day Two
Here's something else I like about the Park: Charles Kuralt stayed here on his visits back to Charlotte. I thought about this and about how much Charlotte has changed since young Charles lived here as a boy in the 1940s. I can't imagine that anyone returning here from his or her childhood days would recognize the city. For starters, the downtown was demolished several years ago, well, conceptually at least. Local officials decided that the term "downtown" denigrated their city center, so they began calling downtown "uptown," which they thought had a more sophisticated ring to it. Charlottonians can go home again, but they can't go downtown. It's no longer there.

I wish local officials had the foresight to make the city center easier to get to for the thinking-impaired. The problem is that Charlotte streets have either too much or too little continuity. For example, Queen Street seemed to be ubiquitous throughout the city whereas nearly all of the streets that cross South Boulevard vanish. That's right. They cease to exist. Tyvola becomes Fairview Road; Sweden turns into Sharon Lakes; Starbrook morphs into Arrowood; Woodlawn becomes Runnymeade.

This adds a certain dimension of challenge to finding your way around Charlotte, and I found myself constantly ending up at Starbucks, possibly the same one, to ask directions. This always resulted (in addition to my being dangerously caffeinated) to instructions that were as complicated as biblical passages where such-and-such begat such-and-such. "Take South Boulevard to Woodlawn, which turns into Runnymeade, across Queen . . . "

We were trying to find our way to The Charlotte Trolley, located on South Boulevard. In recent years, a nonprofit, volunteer committee vowed to return to service the vintage electric streetcars, which buses replaced in 1938. The committee has succeeded in establishing the first two-mile route from Dilworth into uptown. We wanted to ride on the restored streetcar Number 85, but we could not find the station.

Our vague notion was to park our car in Dilworth and take the trolley to the Convention Center, then walk to Discovery Place. But after six cups of Starbucks coffee, we gave up on trying to find the Trolley Station, which, for those of you who want to confirm our aggravation, is at 2104 South Boulevard.

We arrived at Discovery Place ready for action. Dopily, I had two cameras hanging from my neck so that no moment of Alex's childhood would go unrecorded. I can't imagine that we will ever find time to look back over the burgeoning collection of film and photos of our children, but just in case, I was documenting even more.

Our first encounter was with the dinosaur display, which we enjoyed immensely. The lifelike creatures roared at us, and we roared back. Next, we saw an engaging film, Journey Into Amazing Caves, at Discovery Place's Omnimax Theatre. We studied a Burmese Python, behind glass, which smells with its tongue and grows to weigh more than 200 pounds. We spent our entire day at Discovery Place, breaking for wood-fired pizza at Brixx, just a few blocks away, and trying, unsuccessfully, to get someone to take us to the top floor of the towering Bank of America building ("But the midget and I work here, honestly," we pleaded.")

Back at our hotel that night, we cooled off in the pool (all three, wink, wink), had dinner at South Park Mall, and "westled," as Alex pronounces it, on the floor and on the bed back in our room. An hour before bedtime, we immersed ourselves into the electronic bliss of Nintendo until late night.

Day Three
On our final day in Charlotte, my wife and daughter joined us, and the Grizzles made haste for Paramount's Carowinds. I had been here as a teenager, but since that time, the theme park has improved immensely. It's not that Carowinds was bad back then. It's just that it is so good now. There is a whole section of the park devoted to kids five and under, which provided an appropriate level of thrills not only for the kids but also for Marjorie and me.

My heart dropped to my stomach on the bright-yellow roller coaster known as Taxi Jam, and I was not at all embarrassed to be the only rider taller than 44 inches. We lunged down frightening hills on Scooby Doo's Ghoster Coaster, hands and arms extended high above for added effect. We rode the Carousel, got soaked on Powder Keg Flume and became nauseated just looking at Top Gun, The Jet Coaster, where you are flung about at alarming speeds with legs dangling. "Slam through six stomach-swirling inversions and four Gs of unforgettable fun," reads a park brochure.

In the planning stages of our trip, I thought we would tire of Carowinds after three or four hours. We arrived just after noon, though, and left well after dark. Carowinds provided us with some of the best entertainment we've ever had as a family. Should the park want to recognize this unabashed endorsement with complimentary season passes, please write to me in care of the magazine.

We left the park in high spirits, traveling the long, lonely road back to Asheville. The kids fell asleep in the back seat of our van.

Pulling into the driveway back home, Marjorie carried Britton into the house. I lifted Alex and his pillow. He was fast asleep, worn out, no doubt. That night (he told me this the next morning) visions of ponies, raptors, dinosaurs and roller coasters danced through his head.

Alex will grow up one day. His childhood will fade like a shooting star projecting into the dark night. He will become an adult. In those distant years, should he ever think he has ceased to be someone special, I hope that he will remember that for one brief weekend, he and his dad were kings in the Queen City.

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