The back-page column of any publication is prime real estate. It’s a showcase, a “Shazam!” and a “Hot damn!” of a location. So how did I get this gig? I suspect it was all because of my eastern North Carolina “bona frieds.” After all, I was born in a doctor’s office a hundred yards from “The World’s Largest Frying Pan” in Rose Hill, Duplin County. My mama pushed me out on a sunny Sunday’s child September afternoon and was rewarded with a Swanson’s Ham with Raisin Sauce TV dinner delivered by a nurse shortly after.

Talk about the good life.

Although I’m mostly a humor writer these days, I’m dead serious when it comes to my abundant love for the quirky eastern third of our state. Down East, we tend to feel perpetually underappreciated. Sometimes that fries our collective tater, causing us to almost reflexively complain about being overlooked. The exception is our beaches, which no manner of whitewater mess in the mountains or waterparks in the Triad or lakes in the Triangle can compare. It’s downright amusing to watch them try. (This reminds me of my friend’s confession that his humility is the quality of which he is most proud.)

But seriously! Wide beaches that only diet when smacked by a northeaster. (Please do not say “nor’easter” on account of we don’t live in Bawston.) I’m talking beaches for miles and miles, the less crowded ones proudly unburdened by tackiness and paid parking which, come to think of it, are one and the same.

I love the name of this magazine, EastBound, because when written like that it’s less a destination than a state of mind, which I suspect was the whole point. I’m bound to eastern North Carolina in a way that is almost holy. It’s a fertile land populated by hardworking folk whose communion of choice would be a hushpuppy snapped in half and dipped in vinegary barbecue sauce. Talk about a religious experience. (I’m not saying dipping that puppy in the awful tomatoey stuff favored by the rest of the state will send you to hell but I’m not NOT saying it either.)

Growing up Down East, most of my friends worked in tobacco to earn money for school clothes. Me? I preferred slinging hash at a country restaurant where a significant number of the regulars were missing limbs after too many gallons of teeth-meltingly sweet tea (and yet . . . ). Other sources of income included a brief stint buying likker for my friend in her 50s who was terrified the clerk would tattle on her to her 80-year-old daddy.

Back in the day, every ABC store in every small town in eastern North Carolina had either a wall constructed around it or a rear parking lot so your nosey-ass neighbors couldn’t see your car there. Some particularly repressed towns had so much shame, they had a wall AND a rear lot.

My, oh, my, how things have changed. Today there’s a brewery in Burgaw just 500 feet from the nearest church and nobody much cares. The shame has disappeared like deviled eggs at a family reunion and I think that’s probably a good thing, sanctimony being such a useless emotion no matter where you live.

To be East “bound” is to be biologically and philosophically incapable of passing a farmstand with an honor-system cash box. To be East “bound” means there’s a better than even chance you’ll have to pull the car over to quietly admire the rainbow prism in the water spraying from an irrigation gun in a bean field. To be East “bound” is to personally be related to a self-taught fiddler (or guitar picker or banjo player or piano pounder) who brags he can play “Cat Shit and Honey” so good you’ll have to open a window when he’s done. (‘Nother words, there’s a lot of homegrown musical talent here.)

Our language is lush and speckled with humor. It’s an eastern North Carolina thing that many have tried to imitate. Pity.

This is my homeland. Like Jesus, I’ve never lived more than 35 miles from the place I was born. You wouldn’t either if you’d ever eaten a whole fried chicken turned with a pitchfork. What could ever be better than that? Yeah. That’s what I thought.