Well, now I'm not saying it was a Neil Armstrong moment or anything. But planting a foot on the dark asphalt of Fayetteville Street for the first time in 30 years, kinda grinding the front part of a shoe on it, did feel a little exploratory. Armstrong's words about a small step for man and a giant leap for mankind were not applicable, of course -- let's keep a little perspective here -- but it did feel like an historic moment for North Carolina's Capital City and, yes, North Carolina's Main Street.

Raleigh workers labored feverishly to prepare the street for its re-opening last Saturday, and they made it. The four-block mall that had been a downtown Raleigh centerpiece had vanished. I saw no blemishes or holes or obvious signs that the job was incomplete. But, of course, not much of the street was visible, covered as it was with humanity in all its garishness and glories.

And glorious it was, even for those skeptics who worry over what the city of Raleigh has to do to keep up the considerable momentum the reopening of Fayetteville Street has created. For this day, however, the mood favored celebration, not contemplation.

Looking down Fayetteville Street from the State Capitol, you viewed a multicolored sea of people, families mostly, moving up and down the street slowly, likely owing to the heat and to the need for, shall we say, an observational pace. It was a moseying day, to be sure.

The canvas of merchants and tenants for the streetfront is incomplete, but one soon-to-open restaurant was handing out menus. At the Raleigh City Museum, business was hopping. This is quite a place, underappreciated for its considerable number of photographs and exhibits (it's also a work in progress), and a good yarn-spinner of the Capital City's history. Several visitors were overheard to say they'd never been before but wanted to return. The place has a good feel to it, you know.

Sorry, but just as one has moments at a family reunion remembering absent friends and kinfolk, so a few of us natives couldn't help but ponder some places from the Fayetteville Street of our youth -- the one that was dying in the mid-1970s when 'twas thought a mall was the answer.

I tried to place the location of the old Ambassador Theater, a place of brass and carpet that seemed immense, the place where many a big-screen story opened in Raleigh. The one I remember best was "The Sound of Music." The screen then seemed as wide and high as the horizon outside. There were live shows there, too. No trouble, though, in walking across the Capitol grounds and remembering the peanut man. It was always possible to know when kids had run their parents' nerves to the cliffs' edge -- they got brought downtown, got a bag of peanuts and were told to feed the pigeons for a while.

Walking along, I look right from Fayetteville, onto Hargett Street. The Odd Fellows building used to house all the offices of the out-of-town newspaper correspondents. Across the street -- think I've got the location right -- was where Jimmy Thiem's record shop was, and it was likely the first beatnik sighting in Raleigh. (Note to those under 100 years of age: A beatnik was later called a hippie and now is called ... oh, never mind.)

Further on down toward Memorial Auditorium, the crowd is moving around a little and I wonder if anyone in it could recall the stories out of the Sir Walter Hotel, where legislators were wined and dined and wheeled and dealed. And over there was the S&W cafeteria, a two-tiered place that bustled at lunch and dinner. Mainly, you can remember all the waving, one family to another.

And how many in this crowd, pouring water over themselves and giggling and enjoying the sunny day together, could remember the Broughton High School homecoming parades and those for the inauguration of the governor, or the most important, the one featuring Citizen Santa?

But Fayetteville Street in those days was alive with more than giddy public events and politicians and bid-ness people. It was the site of civil rights demonstrations, and even some marches and confrontations, I'm told by those in the generation ahead of mine, that opposed civil rights. If you want to know where a city's Main Street is, you ask about things like that, about where it was that the community came together in happiness and sadness and protest and anger. In Raleigh, that was Fayetteville Street.

Now, let's hope for new memories (and better parking) and, yes, for other demonstrations and vigils and the like that will help us all take the pulse of this community, just as it did in its heyday. This much is true for now: That pulse quickened and strengthened Saturday last, when Fayetteville Street was returned to us.