Historic Fincastle Festival

Historic Fincastle, Inc. (HFI), a local preservation organization, used to put on a festival in the Town of Fincastle annually. Then they stopped because the people who did it aged and young folks didn't care.

This would have been the 50th year of the festival if it had continued, so they had a little 50th anniversary festival to reminisce and give themselves a pat on the back.

Disclaimer: I am a lifelong member of HFI and was its president back in the late 1990s.

I went but I could not see as much as I wanted because Fincastle is a town of hills, and I can't walk up and down hills anymore.

The view from Roanoke Street looking north. These are artist booths.

A little music for atmosphere.

Looking back down Roanoke Street to the south.

Folks could buy homemade goodies.

Or look at corvettes.

Student art work.

Historic documents were on display in the courthouse.

That is a LOT of signs.

This is Rowan Miller who was touting books for sale.

These books.

This was another author selling her books. She was from Vinton.

More vendors down Main Street. I didn't go down to see these folks because I didn't think I could get back up the hill.

Nice Work

Last weekend we went to the play by the local theater group. Attic Productions, located just outside of Fincastle, puts on some splendid theater, but we don't take advantage of it often enough.

The play we saw was Nice Work if You Can Get It, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin.

We attended a Saturday matinee and it was full of people. I am pleased that so many folks support this local effort.

This play appeared on Broadway in 2012; it's first production was in 2001.

The story is set in the late 1920s. The basic premise is a rich playboy is trying to marry a decent girl so his mother will let him run the family business. This is his third marriage. In the interim, he runs into a bootlegger (a female) and the bootlegger steals his wallet and decides to use his second house as a storage facility for her illegal hooch.

Hilarity ensues.

We enjoyed ourselves, as we generally do when we manage to make it out. The play shows this weekend for its final time locally, so if you have a chance, check it out. It's a lot of fun.

The Appalachians

The other night my husband and I attended an event at the library about the mountains of our area.

We live in the Appalachian chain, which extends along the eastern part of the United States. We live in what is called the Valley and Ridge area in Virginia, located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghany Mountain chains.

The Appalachian Mountains first formed roughly 500 million years ago. They formed when Africa hit the North American eastern coast and things sort of slowly (like over a million years) smashed up. This created the mountains, which once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains. Then they began to erode. The Appalachian mountains were a barrier to east-west travel, as the mountains create a series of alternating ridgelines and valleys oriented in opposition to most highways and railroads running east-west.

That means that for a long time, the area where I live was the wild west (1700-1800s).

Anyway, to my east is the Blue Ridge Mountains, and to my west are the Alleghenies. Out my office window, which faces west, I see North Mountain, Caldwell Mountain, and Price Mountain. Tinker Mountain is also visible, though it is a bit to my south.

I have always called our mountains the Blue Ridge Mountains even though the Alleghenies are what I see every day. Blue Ridge just sounds more romantic, doesn't it?

 

A topographic view of the James River

A simple version of the areas of Virginia.

This is what the world looked like when things smashed together.

A topography map that shows our property.

Same map without my pointing anything out.

The same map except not close up. You can see Tinker to the southwest but not the
other mountains.
 

One of the fascinating facts about the Appalachian chain is that it actually goes all the way to Scotland. It runs under the ocean. Maybe that is why so many Scots-Irish folk settled here. It looks like home.

A nice generic shot of our farm with North Mountain in the background.

Interstate 81 Traffic Jam

Interstate 81 is the fast lane that connects Botetourt County to Roanoke City and the rest of the world. Exit 150, where one leaves I-81 to enter Botetourt County, has been known for traffic backups for as long as I can remember. That interchange is undergoing a reconstruction.

However, in the last two decades, the entire I-81 route has become infamous for backups. All it takes is a little ice or heavy rain or an inattentive driver and you have this:

 

Miles and miles - literally - of traffic at a dead stop with nowhere to go. Before I found my cellphone and started snapping photos, traffic further up apparently had been stopped for a while, because people were out of their vehicles, stretching, fetching sodas from the back seat, or whatever.

This was around 2:15 p.m. in the afternoon.

I-81 took 30 years to build. Construction began in 1957 and ended in 1987. The road plans initially were constructed for traffic expectations in 1970, I would guess.

Here's a history of the interstate from VDOT's website:

Construction of I-81 started in December 1957 on a stretch from one mile north of Buchanan to one mile south of the Rockbridge County line. Four miles of I-81 were open as early as 1959 near Pulaski. A small section known as the Harrisonburg bypass was also open in that city in the late 1950s.
By November, 1963, 85 miles of I-81 were open to the public:

52-mile stretch from Bristol extending to five miles east of Marion

15-mile stretch between Fort Chiswell and Newbern

11-mile stretch extending just south of Buchanan

7.5-mile stretch at Harrisonburg On November 1, 1964, a 15-mile segment west of Wytheville opened to the public creating a continuous 67 miles from Bristol to Wytheville. By December, 1964, 33 miles between Dixie Caverns and Fancy Hill (just south of Lexington) were opened to the public. In November, 1965, 26 miles from the West Virginia state line just north of Winchester to Strasburg were opened to the public. By December, 1965, a 22 mile section of I-81 from Newbern to Christiansburg was opened to the public. By November, 1966, 33 miles from Strasburg to New Market were opened to the public. On December 21, 1971, after much delay with funding, a 14.4-mile section of I-81 from Dixie Caverns to Christiansburg was opened to the public. The interstate was not completed, however, until July 1987 when work was finished on the I-77/I-81 overlap section in Wythe County.

The interstate is 365 miles long. From 1996-1998, the state did a "concept study" and talk of four-lanes became common, but nothing has been done.

So people sit in traffic.

I avoid I-81 as much as I can, but sometimes you simply have to use it. My preference would be not to widen the interstate but instead reconsider how we move freight, because as the photos above clearly show, much of the traffic is tractor trailer haulers. If we moved more freight by rail, we wouldn't need so many trucks (which would mean we would need to burn less fuel and we would decrease pollution, etc. etc.). But because the oil industry owns the U.S., I don't see that changes in the way we haul items from one end of the nation to the other will improve in my lifetime.

In the meantime, we always keep snacks and water in the car (along with a roll of toilet paper) because you never know when you might be caught between the guardrails and unable to move your vehicle when you travel I-81.

Update:

After I wrote this, I learned that a fatal accident was the cause of the traffic backup. My sympathies to the family.

Election Day

Today is Election Day here in the U.S.A. It is not a presidential election year, so we are voting for state and local folks.

For the first time in a long time, I have a choice of representation on the ballot in my local supervisors' district. I have a choice in some of the state races - the ones at the top - but not delegate or senator. The incumbents are running unopposed.

I have never missed a vote. Even if I have no choice, I vote anyway. Sometimes I write in names when people are unopposed (because I can). At the very least, it should let the winner know not everyone is happy with his or her performance. Additionally, it means incumbents won't get 100 percent of the vote, not that 100 percent of the registered voters will have voted.

We have rain and it's growing colder by the hour, so I bet the turn out is abysmal. Will we even have a 30 percent turn out of voters? Stay tuned.

When you feel your vote makes no difference, I am not sure what you call it, but I do not call it democracy. In fact, I wear solid black to the voting both, to protest the death of democracy. Not that anybody asks.

Locally, the Republicans have a stranglehold on most of the seats. I expect my county will go Republican; it has for years. Folks seeking lower taxes moved in in the 1990s and brought with them their desires for more government services somehow paid for out of thin air. We've had some real winners on the local governing board in the last 15 years. They represented somebody, but they did not represent me. I was a news reporter at the time and had to keep my opinions to myself.

Why aren't there more people willing to run for office? For one thing, it's not a regular person's game anymore. Unless you're a millionaire plus, you may as well forget it. Even at the local level, you have to spend thousands to get what you're after. For another, the election process has become as vicious as vultures pecking out the eyes of a calf. If you have the least little crack in your life's history, the opposition will break it open until your guts are strewn all over the floor.

Who wants to deal with that?

Twenty years ago, the candidates for the local board ran as independents. And then the political parties crept into it, and all was lost. Once that game started, there has been nothing to do but sit back and watch the dive into divisiveness and derision. No amount of sanity is going to save us now.

So go vote. I vote to honor the women who lived before me, who died so that I might exercise my right to write-in the name of a candidate, even if that person will only receive the single vote I cast. It is your civic duty, even if you're as jaded and as regretful as I am over the way the process is handled today.

Go vote because it is the right thing to do. And don't hesitate to write in Yosemite Sam if you don't like the choice of candidates.

Thursday Thirteen #510

In Petersburg, Virginia, is a private museum open to the public. Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum showcases one man's collection of old farm tractors, big diesel trucks, antique fire equipment, sports cars, and other oily things with gears.

Here are thirteen of the old tractors:

This is made from the parts of an old Indian motorcycle.

No clue. I didn't take notes. My husband could tell you, but he isn't here.



Most of these things were bigger than I was. I couldn't have climbed in the seat if I had to.

This is an old road grader.

I think this is what many people think of when they think "old tractor."

Moline tractors are more popular out west, I think.

This was my favorite.

_________

 

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 510th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

14 Santas Come to Dinner

Friday night my husband and I were at Cracker Barrel in Troutville. I was stunned to see Halloween decorations on the floor already. It's still July!

They had a butler with his head on a platter, plates, and other ghostly and ghastly items available for purchase.

We sat down at our table, and as I was complaining about the early Halloween decorations, Santa Claus walked in.

He was followed by another Santa Claus, then another, and another, until I counted 14 of them. They also had Mrs. Santa Clauses by their sides.

Unfortunately I had no camera with me, so I used my husband's flip phone. I had never used this piece of technology for photos before - and neither had he, except apparently by accident - so I had to quickly figure out how to make it work. The photos are not great but hopefully you can see that these are Santas, complete with real beards and white hair.

Apparently there was a Santa convention at Camp Bethel, which is a Christian summer camp (Church of the Brethren) with rental facilities tucked away in the Mill Creek area of the county.

On the way home, we saw a double rainbow. I took this as a good sign and stopped and bought a lottery ticket.

However, we did not win a single dollar. I guess rainbows and Santa Clauses do not bring good luck.

They did, however, make me feel better.

Is It the End (of the) Times?

I do not remember how I began stringing for The Roanoke Times back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I don't know if I responded to an ad, sent in a story suggestion, or oozed my way into what was then the Neighbors section (a weekly insert) by sleight-of-hand or deft design.

Somehow, though, my byline found its way into the area's largest newspaper, not only in the Neighbors and special projects sections, but also in the main paper. That happened mostly at graduation time when extra bodies were needed to turn in hurried stories about caps and gown.

This was the time of no cellphones. I called in stories from phone booths, crouched down with my notebook on my knees, reading the copy into the mouthpiece so the words could go into the morning edition. There was a technique to that, lost now, I suppose, where you spelled out names and said "end graph" to denote a new paragraph, and even said "period" at the end of a sentence. I did so much of it that I took the folks who had to take my calls a few boxes of chocolates, because I knew they had a tough time of it, trying to make sure what I sent made sense before it hit the press.

Newspapers were peaking then, but we didn't know it yet. The Internet was not a common item; there were, I think, bulletin boards where nerdy guys hung out to talk about computer building and atomic death rays, but pre-1990 things were different and the world would not recognizable to today's youth. The Internet then wasn't something everyone plugged into. We were still autonomous individuals working within a society, not individuals plugged into our own little devices and lost in alternative fact worlds.

Folks read the news back then, in those dark ages before the Internet. They read things on paper, not on some electronic reader. They talked about the same stories and made note of the same news, and they did not pick and chose their facts because back then people knew what was a fact and what was opinion. I don't think that is the case anymore.

The newspaper business changed over my lifetime. I began reading the newspaper in 1967, when I was four years old. Yes, truly. I would sit at my grandmother's kitchen table and read the newspaper, front to back. I barely comprehended it, but I read it. I remember distinctly how my grandmother would fix dinner and I would spell out a word to her, asking her how to pronounce it and what it meant. Even though she had only a fourth grade education, she knew what I needed to be told. She read the paper front to back, too.

I knew when I was 10 years old that I want to write for newspapers.

When I was young, there were two edition of the paper, a morning edition and the evening edition. After my husband and I married in 1983, we took the evening edition. According to Wikipedia, The Roanoke Times & World News paper ceased its evening edition in 1991 (I thought it was earlier than that, but we'll go with Wikipedia).  I remember having difficulty adjusting to reading at breakfast instead of dinner, as did my husband.

Around 1995, The Roanoke Times & World News became The Roanoke Times. In 2013, it became the property of Berkshire Hathaway (owned by Warren Buffet et al). I am not sure it mattered then who owned the thing. The paper had changed so much by 2013 that it was (and is) only a shadow of the journalistic endeavors I recall from my younger years.

I think I knew the death bell was tolling when they eliminated Prince Valiant from the funny papers, (not sure exactly when that happened and it's an odd thing to mark decline by), but I also found it painful to watch the quality of reporting diminish as the historical knowledge of the community left with older journalists who either moved on to other things or were let go in favor of youngsters who would work more cheaply. I'm sure other people have their own markers in time as to when they think the paper really began to falter.

It didn't help that I was married to a firefighter who came home and told me of things going on in the city that never made it into the newspaper. What, I wondered, was the paper for if it wasn't going to report on the reality of the world that makes up the City of Roanoke and its surrounding areas?

Yesterday the newspaper announced that it was moving its presses to Lynchburg (where the News & Advance is now a sister paper thanks to the Buffett purchases) and relieving 53 people of their jobs. The press release promises no change in delivery (we will see) and better reliability of printing.

I don't think the paper is dead. I expect it will last another decade, at least. Maybe it will last much, much longer. I am no fortune teller. But I must say, I have never seen a profession shoot itself in the foot like the newspaper business has.

It is as if the paper at its finest was a Ben & Jerry's, offering up 51 flavors of ice cream. Then it slowly cut back to 45 flavors, and it lost a few customers and advertisers, so it laid off a reporter or two. Then it cut back to 30 flavors, and lost more advertisers and customers. Instead of adding back the flavors, the bean counters cut the flavors back to 15, then to 10, and now they only serve Neapolitan ice cream and expect to remain in business.

When a product falters, good business demands you make the product better, not worse, but the newspaper business has not done that. They have made the product worse. They can blame the Internet all they want - and I am sure it has some culpability - but the decline started when money, not news, became all that mattered.

I shall hope this is not a bad sign for The Roanoke Times. I want to keep reading it until my eyes close and the casket covers me. But I fear for not only this paper, but others, including the little local paper for which I wrote for 30+ years.

Some things have value that is not monetary. The news is one of them. One cannot put a value on insight and truth, but we have tried.

And look where it has taken us - into the bogs of a no-mans land, where only devils dare to play.

The Lakeside Room

Continuing my mini-tour of the Salem Museum in Salem, VA, I present to you an entire room dedicated to Lakeside Amusement Park.

The park began in 1920 with a segregated swimming pool. Within a few years, the land owners added rides. The swimming pool use ended in 1967 but the rides remained. The pool was filled in so that the new roller coaster, The Shooting Star, could be constructed.

Lakeside was a summer destination for many families in our area until it closed in 1986. The park was flooded in 1985, and while it reopened briefly after repairs, it was not able to survive the flood and then a lawsuit that resulted from the death of a grounds worker after the reopening.

I visited Lakeside numerous times as a child, with my parents and also without them, and as a teenager I ventured to the park to listen to entertainers who played at the Pavilion there. I seem to recall hearing Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn ( maybe?) and a few other country singers there, including Juice Newton who was popular at the time. 

I remember bumper cars, cotton candy, throwing up from the Tilt-a-Whirl (I wasn't the only one), the Sky Lift, which went over the parking lot and gave an intriguing view of the area, a miniature train, a super slide (which would burn your legs if you wore shorts and slide down it in the summer), the Ferris wheel, a carousel, and an arcade area of some type.

The Lakeside Room at the museum has a huge miniature of the roller coaster along with lots of photos and other memorabilia.

The model of The Shooting Star roller coaster.

Not only did this bring back memories, I was also fascinated by the detail and design of this model.

A horse from the carousel.

Pennants, postcards, photos and other items about Lakeside Amusement Park. 

A close of the Sky Lift (my favorite ride) and the Shooting Star.

This link takes you to a video from WDBJ7 showing the construction of The Shooting Star. It is five minutes long and includes footage of the flooding of the facility and the aftermath.