DATE: Saturday, April 12, 1997              TAG: 9704120315

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Anne Saita

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

BE KIND TO STRANGERS - YOU MIGHT BE ONE, TOO

In a few weeks, we'll all turn into tourism directors. Befuddled strangers bearing brochures and sunburns will walk up to us for help in locating landmarks, beaches, churches, stores, the nearest newsstand or restroom.

They are lucky, for most residents are kind to visitors.

We try to help the boater looking for a decent meal in downtown Elizabeth City. And we stop to direct the carload from Connecticut when the desperate driver rolls down his window and yells, ``Hey, how do I get out of here?''

Everyone I know around here is obliging to tourists, even those whose queries carry a trace of contempt. Maybe especially to those whose queries carry that trace of contempt.

I think it helps to put yourself in the tourist's shoes, as I did recently.

I wanted to introduce my children to the simple pleasures I'd once enjoyed as a resident of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains. So I returned as a tourist to an important part of my past. And, of course, I bragged that this vacation would go smoothly because I knew how to get everywhere.

It had been a dozen years since I'd driven to an obscure site called Natural Chimneys in the tiny town of Mount Solon. It seemed to take almost that long to reach it the other day because I kept getting lost.

I told myself the route had been altered; truthfully, it was my memory. I had forgotten a few turns but blamed all the errors on the distractingly beautiful countryside.

That got me as far as the next stop before my two young traveling companions began to catch on.

I managed to get in the wrong turn lane while passing through Bridgewater, a two-stoplight town. So I did what any confused motorist with out-of-state plates would do: I caused a minor traffic jam trying to pull into the proper lane.

I noted the chicken factories on the drive through Dayton. Elder daughter Elise reminded me they are called poultry processors, and, by the way, she was no longer eating chicken.

I once boasted as a local reporter that I could get anywhere in Harrisonburg within five minutes. Suddenly I found myself stumped after returning to the same intersection for the third time. I finally had to roll down my window and ask a James Madison University student for directions.

That hurt, but not nearly as much as three days later, while running in Blacksburg.

I spent four years living in that college town and have visited many, many times since. On this particularly cold morning, I deviated from my customary jogging course and ended up disoriented in an older section of town. It took an extra three hilly miles before I found my way home, my legs and lungs screaming in protest the entire time.

So I returned home to Elizabeth City, a little sore in the legs and with myself.

I realized that soon I will technically become a tourist in northeastern North Carolina, too. We're moving to Cape Cod this summer.

I spent my honeymoon at the Cape and vividly recall the view outside our bedroom window. Beyond the boardwalk was Martha's Vineyard; below it was graffiti that said ``Tourists Suck.''

I will carry with me warmer memories of my stay here. But I realize when I return many years from now I will find that I will come back as a stranger.

With the way the place is constantly changing, I could easily end up lost on an unfamiliar road in a neighborhood that didn't exist when I lived here.

But I will remember how people here treated tourists, and I won't hesitate to ask for directions.

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