A Great Place to Start Your Second Life

March 07 2008 by Daniel Wallace

I’ve lived two lives. In the first life, I was a boy in Alabama, and in the second I was a man in Chapel Hill. This is where I was when my father died, and when my son was born. In the basement of a house a half-a-mile from Franklin Street is where I wrote my first published novel, and one night—let’s say it was a Wednesday—I met the love of my life at the last place I ever expected to… a bar.

In the movies, they call this the “cute meet,” when the two main characters who will end up falling in love and getting married and living happily ever after first get together. Me: young writer looking for a place to eat. She: a beautiful young social worker/former bartender, subbing for a friend at Crook’s Corner. I sit at the bar, order a beer and a burger, and we talk. She consents to go out with me, though she will later concede I was not much of a tipper.

Two years pass, and one day—let’s say it was a Wednesday—we decide to get married. We take my son and her best friend with us down to the courthouse in Hillsborough and fifteen minutes later (he was one fast-talking magistrate), we were husband and wife.

So what does Chapel Hill mean to me?

Everything.