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hello walkers and welcome back to city walks excuse me my name is henry i will be
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your proxy walker today your virtual travel guide on this uh treadmill travel video this
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relaxed walking video relax travel uh this one's a special one for me
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uh city walks is a channel where we go and explore places we walk around we discover
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i am i say virtual travel guide but i'm not a travel guide i'm a co-explorer if you will um we're
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going to see some cool stuff we're going to discover some stuff we're going to notice some details and we're going to have a nice relaxing
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time uh relax relaxing virtual walk
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if you haven't guessed from the title uh we are in well let me start here thank you to our
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patreon supporters you guys make these walks possible you keep uh
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you encourage me with your support i appreciate that uh and if you guys haven't subscribed to
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the youtube channel yet not just patreon supporters but all of yours please do so
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it's a big help it lets youtube know that this channel is worth watching and of course as always please
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share your comments your additions your corrections your memories and personal stories your
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triumphs and travails in the comments section below i love interacting with you guys it's one of my biggest joys
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we are in wilmington north carolina day you might recognize this courthouse here they're doing a little work
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from the old 1990s tv show matlock with andy griffith
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they filmed a lot of that show around here pardon me
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uh of course andy griffith is a north carolina native
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i grew up in wilmington from the age of seven until 16. we are right now at the water
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and market streets and we are going to wander through my memory my
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uh reality and dreams it's all melding together here um we're gonna walk along water street
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for a little bit um and i'm gonna tell you stuff and we're
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gonna see stuff a lot of uh you can see this is a nice restaurant
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up here i forgot which which one it is somewhere down here is the
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uh docksider but a bridge tender or anyway this is michael's on the
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waterfront smells delicious we are on the cape fear river i'm gonna pop over here real quick to show you the cape
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fear river um i am easily distracted just a caveat
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there and i will switch things midstream to point stuff out this
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is the cape fear river wilmington's on the cape fear
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off to the right is a bridge of the river and across the way is the uss north carolina world war ii era
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battleship and we'd go over there as kids on field trips and to explore and all that fun
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stuff downstream you have uh a bridge drawbridge and then the port of
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north carolina the port of wilmington which is a major eastern eastern seaboard
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port um there is so much cool stuff to do here
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in wilmington so much uh history that needs to be acknowledged as well as
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learned um and i'm gonna share some of this stuff
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with you as we go i don't know how many walks we're gonna get out of wilmington it's uh it's not a
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huge city but it's it is beautiful it's got a lot of cool old buildings a lot of history
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as i said a lot of personal history for me some of which i remember
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and i'm discovering as i've come down here a very surreal experience uh some of which i don't remember
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there's a lot of things that have changed i was here i think i was last here 30 years ago
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and of course uh we moved away in 1989 so that's 32 years
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let me give you a little details about our day here um it is about 11 a.m
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on a thursday in early december it's 50 degrees
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fahrenheit that's about what 10 degrees celsius
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there is a lot of cool stuff so
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in wilmington there are um it's about 100 some thousand people
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and uh what else i don't know i'm not really interested
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in talking about that stuff this time but they do it's home to the azalea festival in the spring which is a big
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festivities there's i think it's called the river fest downtown in the summer which they bring
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in lots of music they close streets down all that fun stuff i saw a sign for ghost tours we never
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took a ghost tour while we were here um i don't think they maybe they had them
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anyway you can do sightseeing on the river they have awesome museums they've got the battleship across the way they've got the riceville beach i did a
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couple walks out there yesterday uh one was pretty short but it's just a
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walk along the breach and it was really pleasant um this is the market shops here
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um and we're gonna wind our way back and forth along here i know we're kind of going into the sun
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let me get across the street that'll help a little uh
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uh cornwallis was here in the revolutionary war one thing i want to mention is the coup
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that happened in the late 1890s and uh some real
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racial uh horrific racial stuff went on
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uh where some white supremacists basically
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did a coup and took over the city and i think county government uh
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killed some black leaders in the community and they pretty much
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they pretty much got away with it uh and then
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kind of buried it this is what they call the river walk we'll go out to the river here a little bit further
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we are really close to the ocean hence the port um
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and the river is actually smaller than i remember it of course i was
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much younger back then everything seemed bigger more dramatic it's interesting the there's an osprey
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it's interesting how our perception changes over time
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but it's been a surreal experience for me to come back here i appreciate you guys
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sharing that and uh i will be
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regaling you with personal stories as we go
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you can see there's some boat tours you can take along the river
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which would actually be a lot of fun i think i can definitely see us coming back here and spending
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some time just to enjoy the area as tourists let alone
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a former resident i haven't really kept track of
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old friends from here we've moved around so much and we're only here for a day
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otherwise i would have uh i would have tried to maybe hook somebody up
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so this riverwalk goes all along the waterfront here
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oh yeah maybe the restaurant was called chandler's wharf there's bridge tenders out by the beach
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hopefully i'm not clicking away with these zippers it's it's just on the edge of cool
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here temperature of course we get a lot of humidity here
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so you can see that that bridge is uh it's highway 74 which is on its way to becoming an
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interstate a major controlled access interstate uh but it's still a highway for now this
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is the bridge tender or chandler's wharf over here sorry uh or no
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wow talk about uh interesting memories so
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it's actually the pilot house and that was a super fan not super fancy to me at
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how old all i was um young teens uh and we'd go there i don't know when
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people would come in from out of town or something
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looks like elijah's is down here as well
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i remember i had a we came down here with my aunt and uncle
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and we had a dinner and i had just gotten braces and uh
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it maybe been tightened or something i think this white building down here on the right is the pilot house but um
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we're at the pilot house and i got a a uh salad
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with new braces and a vinaigrette
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so yeah that's the restaurant down there a vinaigrette dressing
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oh that was a mistake and that vinegar the braces the wires
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and stuff would sort of torn up the inside of my mouth
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and that vinegar hit and that was that was unpleasant
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everything's kind of done up for christmas here
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we're gonna make our way up here to front street see some of these old
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homes which are absolutely beautiful if you come down to wilmington you can
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uh it's pay parking but it's pay by phone which is an app they use
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super easy lots of cities use it you just you have to set up your account
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your car stuff and your credit card and then you just put in the location
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we're on ann street now if you're following along on a map and we are
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gonna make it right here
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see some of these old stately homes we did not live down here
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over by uh the main mall i got a horse-drawn carriage that's fun
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uh a much newer part of town but it was pretty cool though there too
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um this one's for sale i'm sure
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was uh at a discount hahaha i love these old houses
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and they're everywhere down here
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i think you know historically you hear a lot about
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uh savannah and charleston
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and i think wilmington gets uh it doesn't get enough it doesn't get a lot of press which is
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actually kind of nice uh sort of you make enough of those lists and you
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end up like bozeman montana where everybody wants to move there and i don't i don't mean to
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denigrate bozeman or the people that are moving there i certainly move there
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um but it it it causes issues and it
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it's nice to have a little secret pocket
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coming up on nunn street here as we walk along front street but these these houses are just amazing
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my i had a friend that lived somewhere down here i don't remember
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the address or anything uh and uh
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of course it was a little different back then it wasn't as prosperous a city uh before i-40 came in before the movie
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and tv studios came in uh but it's still pretty nice place
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and anyway he lived down here he came down spent the night a few times and wandered around
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get into a little trouble here and there as young teenagers are
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want to do nothing too serious
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and we didn't get caught much either look at this
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i love these giant porches i always feel like you get these decorative porches on new houses and
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kind of you're not really big enough to
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to [Music] sit out on and enjoy i love a good porch
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good covered porch oh my gosh
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this house here is built in 1826. some of these legs up against the window
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up there this is uh thomas smith house
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all these are pretty much history they all pretty much have historic placards on them
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i love this we'll make our way back here in a little bit but i just love
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these houses and then so we'd come down here for
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you know big festivals and they do a big um
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firework show on the 4th of july
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and christmas lights on all that fun stuff
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church street here where we're headed up church street for this place
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and you know all the parades and that sort of thing i love these old brick roads too they've
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maintained you can tell these houses are little
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a little smaller but still really nice
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got a little cool breeze blowing today hopefully the uh
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the microphone on this dji osmo pocket 2
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microphone will handle that successfully
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i love the the difference in plant life here
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so much so humid how you doing um
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so much moisture here so much deciduous plant life
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i didn't realize it until i was driving around and all these leaves and
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you know the detritus of having plants it's a big part of the memories from
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here coming up on second in church and i guess
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we'll go left on second
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so we're kind of headed north at this point
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not much traffic so i'll walk down the middle of street i like to do that because it gives us a little bit better
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perspective on the houses on either side
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look at the vines growing up this telephone pole
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is a base engine on that
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[Music] look at this
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[Music] see the ac units mounted
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on that uh third story roof or whatever it is
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[Music] it's a u.s navy plane [Music]
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flying over we're in the flight path of the airport today
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i think there is a navy base here but i can't remember what it is or maybe they just based the
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airplanes out of it oh man this is nun street again
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gotta remember check keep an eye on my time i could walk around here
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all day look at this place
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i see a plaque up there as with almost all of these that's the benjamin
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berry house oh it's a bed and breakfast 1854.
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love it must be a nightmare to keep these up the humidity here
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and the salt air just i think blasts these places
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uh and especially if you don't have modern siding you know just keeping things the paint
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up today it's probably uh quite
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quite a uh you know for quite an effort it's not the right word
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but challenge looks like they're doing some work on
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coming up on third street which is a major thoroughfare
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i kind of like this picket fence here this narrow narrow pickets it's a little different
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all right we're gonna make a left all right james sprunt
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author of the chronicles of a cape fear river uh huh british vice console
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two blocks west now uh it's just west
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it's down towards the river uh i think my friend
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his mom might have been a sprunt that's kind of a family name in the area
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there's a little collection of beach houses down on
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riceville beach that they called spruntville when i was there
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maybe she was a mercury
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that was another name
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look at all those uh these trees too we'll get down here and see some of these old oak trees
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they're fantastic look at this
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one of the things i like is how these old trees
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tower over the streets and sort of
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create these tunnels probably not great if you're driving a semi
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to deliver goods downtown but pretty cool to see
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all right let's cross over
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hopefully the best i guess they don't really do that
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it's an interesting cultural thing whether people in a place
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routinely stop for pedestrians and crosswalks and stuff people are really pretty good about it
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in montana could just be the road too
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look at this is this a poplar tree or no yeah it's a popper no
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is it sycamore that's what i'm thinking
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uh i came up this way because there's some buildings and big columns that i don't remember so i thought well i'll go
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check those out let's see what it is we'll loop back towards third because there's a couple places i want to share with you
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this well it might be a school in which case i'm not going to
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the sister something center so i think it's kind of a school
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church school something like that i'm gonna go straight here because i don't remember this building
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it's got these awesome minarets it's probably a church
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they're not minarets sorry they're bell towers
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basilica of saint mary i did not know
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coming up on fifth street
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love the old spanish moss i'm going to show that to you right here
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uh it's not actual moss they just call it that of course um
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but it's uh it's actually i believe a lichen
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which is a combination of algae and fungus or something like that
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um it's like a symbiotic relationship you can see it drapes over
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so much stuff it's a parasite i believe
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not a doesn't kill the trees you wouldn't notice it
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from where it is but it does i believe use the trees
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correct me if i'm wrong in the comments section below in the youtube comment section i sometimes
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forget there is a roku channel um i'm not the tech guy on that i just
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agreed to let some people run it for me and
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it doesn't really get updated and so
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i don't know if this will make it on there or not
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uh we'll get down here i think it's
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i think it's dawson or market not market anyway
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uh we'll get down here and i'll show you where we used to go to church one of the places
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but first we're gonna make a left on orange um so this goes down a few blocks to the
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right and similar all around here
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here's some good spanish moss hanging down
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man i tell you what here in the summer it gets humid and
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look at this beautiful house over here love the paint the detailed paint they've done
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again that must be such a challenge to maintain but it sure looks nice
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and then over there that upper porch with the uh kind of the curtains
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up there are pretty cool too and there's another one up there they've done that i like that style
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of course you can't really do that in livingston because
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they'll just blow away or blow the tatters this is 1911
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the gualtney house quote me martin house that's for sale if you want to buy it
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here's some lovely i think these are azaleas beautiful flowers
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then you've got these i forget what kind of trees they are they've got these beautiful red berries though
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all right so this on the right is not where we'd go to church
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this is we had friends that would go here first presbyterian this is a beautiful home here
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the rankin walker house
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i love the that style of window over there
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it's kind of tutor style whoops [Music]
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windows and stone work
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we'll go down here make a right on third and go down a couple more blocks and i'll show you st james which is where i
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went went to church some of it in fact
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interestingly enough um
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we bought our house from the minister there
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who then my dad became good friends with and whose brother i ran into
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and became friends with in bozeman montana he'd retired out there
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talk about small world
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look at this i like the iron work on that porch over there on the left side
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on the orange street side so we'll just give you a view of this first prez
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it's probably i don't see a cornerstone that's probably been here for a few hundred years
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uh i will try to put a link in the description about
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the coup that i mentioned and there's another thing in the 70s i think they have some bombings
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and it's you know we're in the deep south so there's no getting around that history
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of cotton and tobacco plantations and
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the horrific slavery that powered all of that it was on which it
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was built so i will try to remember to put a link in the
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description if i don't please remind me somebody remind me um because i want to make sure that he's
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acknowledged huh it's the gibbons house i don't remember
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that it's funny that you know that when we're little we don't really know
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we don't have the context in our lives to remember a lot of these things we just
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go along with what our parents most of us with what our parents
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tell us and what they think we're important you know the little things unimportant things that
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we find important as children uh because we're hopefully being taken care of this is
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saint james over here lovely little um i don't know i don't know what the term
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is but basically this is offices and maybe a residence
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but i think it's mainly offices it's not is it the baptistery i don't remember anyway it's kind of an
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old tudor style and then it'll it sits up here on the corner
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oh adam empty first chaplain of the us military academy west point
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1813-1870 president william marin college and rector of st james church and there
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is an empty park over by where we used to live we'd ride our bikes over there and uh
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they had this awesome old i mean i it's probably a oh it's definitely a health hazard
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at the time safety hazard but we didn't care we just climbed all over cinderblock castle
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uh i loved that thing i thought that was so cool look at this old tree i don't even
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know what kind of tree that is um yeah so we'd come here go to sunday's
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church and then we got older uh we'd have church lock-ins
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i think i was on the basketball team when i was little
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i had a basketball court set up in the basement maybe it wasn't it wasn't like big enough for
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a basketball court this is market street
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hmm i love this and what's funny here to me
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is that in my memory this was brick and it
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pretty confident maybe it is maybe it's brick under the plaster but
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it is been plastered for a long time um
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and uh so it's just kind of an interesting way our
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our memories can fool us right
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they're not fixed in ink or stone
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or brick in this case
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interesting so downtown is off to the left and
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uh we'll get into a little bit of that in this walk but then i'm gonna do another walk
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to really cover that look at this spanish moss on this tree
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as we come up back up onto fourth oh that's a lot
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it's got berries on the tree so it was hasn't killed the tree
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some of these headstones are from the 1700s
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this is the temple of israel 1875
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to 1876 the jewish temple or at least it was
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july 15th is what the cornerstone says
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when i moved here from montana when i was little seven years old uh
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they you know they don't have big spruce trees here uh they have pine but it's more like a
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scotch pine look at this old place um and they do we went to the lighting of
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the big christmas tree which was actually a lie an old oak tree
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which was massive a massive old oak tree but it was so different than what i
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out over there is the bellamy mansion here is uh
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i don't know a fountain i'm sure that has a name
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we'll go across here this is fifth and market
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it's funny i think my my dad at the time owned or had started uh
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a franchise called wash on wheels there's a power washing
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company i don't think they're around anymore push a button here
38:59
but uh pretty sure he power washed that building
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a long time ago he was in a lot
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poorer repair trying not to get run over
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i think remember somebody putting soap in there in that fountain before
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sudsing over that's a fun prank
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william b gould was an enslaved bellamy plasterer and joined the union navy after escaping
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in 1862 kept a detailed war dire period live two blocks north of here
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um that's fascinating i kind of want to look that up in fact i'm going to take a picture of
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that so i can you can see
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it's still got a little bit of a old wear and tear here but uh
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look how beautiful that is it's all done up for christmas look at the iron work
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we're gonna go back here to fifth and go down a block we'll see this side looks like it's
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i mean you know it's 180 years old 160 years old or more
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in a harsh environment but it was hot here in the 1860s
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and especially if you were not a free person this is the carriage house visitor
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center must be part of the plantation house um
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we looked at st james earlier and i i was told that um
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cordon wallace used that as a stable for his troops when he was here i don't know if that's true or not
41:41
these old houses across the way
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i kind of want to find there's an old theater called failing hall that we would go to
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on school trips or to see like peter pan or something
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i don't know 0.1 miles
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oh good we'll see it down here in a minute a lot of attorneys at law here
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see if i can get across without getting run over
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we're on princess street by the by
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not everything is old and mossy covered
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as you get downtown you get a kind of a mix of modern like this
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i think we recall going you know it's christmas time as i film this i think i recall
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um going to see the christmas carol at
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bailey hall which is up here on the right and we'll take a look at it
43:28
in a minute coming up on 4th street
43:36
i think beyond that might be the public like now
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somewhere down here is the public library and got a lot of memories of that as well
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such an amazing place to go as a kid with all those exciting books and discovery new books
43:54
this must be the law and justice center over here on the left i think we will cross
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sorry that's what happens when you're a little
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bit indecisive though on me i was being invested i said okay alien hall is up here on the right
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[Music] the judicial building is this modern cement thing on the left
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and i guess that's part of the the columned bit with the
44:32
food truck out front and then this is thalion hall not much to look at from this side but
44:38
we'll go around the front and it's really a beautiful old building
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i'm not sure what this is this red brick probably part of the uh
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yeah what do you call it lawn justice center
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new hanover county sheriff's department right there
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all right coming up on oh major general joseph mcneill way
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i'm pretty sure it was third street um
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we'll take a look at phthalian hall over here look at that yep right here
45:41
look at this in my this is one of the weird things
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in my mind this was smaller but it is massive
45:55
it's getting a little bit of a facelift here a little touch-up
46:00
look at that that is downright european
46:18
i guess it's the old city hall
46:25
it's hard to fit into this wide-angle lens
46:45
it's like these kids might have gone to a thing or on a maybe a field trip
46:51
we won't get too close to them i'm actually going to cross over and go down a block
46:59
hey hold on i'm going to show you this thalene hall that's the box office the modern entrance
47:05
really i remember it being a really interesting old antique
47:11
historic internal theater a theater on the inside that yellow brick building is the county
47:18
library and i can remember the smell
47:24
of the library all those great books
47:35
going up to the kids area and searching through all the fiction and
47:40
discovering new adventures such a great memory that's such a great
47:46
thing about those libraries they are here's a wider shot of failure
47:52
they really they really are so instrumental i mean i don't think i can overstate the
47:58
importance of reading here we'll get a better shot of alien
48:18
and we're coming back towards princess street
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we're going to take a peek down uh princess street but we will cover that
49:01
later we are going to go down to market again
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huh william hooper one of north carolina's three signers of the declaration
49:23
of independence his home was here
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there's a great well least i remember being great haven't been in 30 years but a
49:47
museum i think it's a county or city museum up to left at market street
49:52
i just remember having some really cool dioramas talking about pirates and
49:58
blockade runners and all that sort of stuff and just being a really cool engaging
50:05
museum it's up about i don't know four or five blocks up there i think
50:14
and there is st james again isn't that funny
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i'm going to go across the street and show you this
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this interesting building over here bergen wright building
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so this is open for tours if you ever want to do that
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there's a planter i think it's just a historical home a little garden over here
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the winter sun is low enough that it plays with the exposure
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on this camera the auto exposure
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i think this building right here i recall correctly used to be a movie
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theater and when we very first moved here
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we came and saw a rerun of
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song of the south which is rare rabbit and that sort of thing an old disney film that is no longer
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available because of all the racist tropes in it
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and while you know i'm not
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this is paper cut book paper cut books and we are back at market street and
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second and this is where i'm gonna take a break uh because i'm gonna start i gotta move
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my car for one thing and also i uh i'm gonna do that second walk here
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in wilmington which i hope you will come back for in a few days to to enjoy
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uh here at second in market you can see welcome to historic wilmington downtown
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um so i hope you'll join us for that uh thank you for joining us for this if you haven't subscribed please do so comment
52:56
please comment love the comments uh let me know about your north carolina memories your wilmington or riceville
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beach memories or other vacation memories um any additions or corrections or things maybe
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you think i didn't quite cover that i should have uh i would appreciate that i think this is mistletoe
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up in this tree here anyway um we will see you again soon from
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wilmington until then keep on stepping