In Baby's Corner

Though I have lived in this area all of my life, I had never once been to Mountain Lake in Giles County. This is the spot where parts of the iconic movie, Dirty Dancing, was filmed. It's one of my favorite movies.

Sunday we went for a little drive and this is where we ended up:

 

This little building is a museum dedicated to the movie.

 

 

It was mostly photos on the wall, but I loved every one of them.

 

 

Everybody knows what that means!

 

 

 

Jennifer Grey was very good in this movie.

 

 

There was a lot of glare in the museum, so it was hard to get good photos.

 

 

I liked this wall about the cast.

 

 

 

Jennifer Grey, aka "Baby"

 

 

I think this was my favorite.

 

 

That dance scene on the log was a classic!

 

 

We made a donation. Regular readers will remember my mother died of pancreatic cancer, too, as did my husband's aunt. The Patrick Swayze Pancreas Research Fund has been established at Stanford University. You can make a donation online if you're so inclined. Or mail one in. Pancreatic cancer is one of the leading types of cancer deaths, yet is it among the least funded as far as research. Thousands die each year from this particularly grueling disease.

 

 

This movie will always have a special place in my heart. It makes me smile and it lifts my heart with the song and dance.

 

Nobody, but nobody, puts Baby in the corner!

Goshen

Virginia is full of small communities that once were thriving areas. Botetourt County has a number of them - Lignite, Spec, Nace, Trinity, Woodland, Haymakertown, to name just a few. Most of the rural localities in this part of the state have these little population areas.

There is even a book called Lost Communities of Virginia, by Terri Fisher, et al, which documents this mostly Appalachian evolution.

Not far from the Goshen Pass, the town of Goshen is one of those communities. It was once a thriving resort and industrial community. Now it has about 400 residents.

There is still some local industry, though.

One large company makes wooden palettes.

We drove through the community while visiting Goshen Pass. Like many of these places, the fire department building was the newest and nicest municipal building. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture.

Most of Goshen that we passed through looked like the above, sort of forlorn and forgotten.

This water tower has an interesting character, though, and I was taken by it. Even with the graffiti.

The state apparently restored this bridge. I found a youtube video about it. You can watch the promo for the video here: it has some interesting footage of the town as it was developing. The bridge was originally built in 1890 and it was restored by the state in 2001.

Beatin' the Bass

Another interesting shop we found in Staunton was Fretwell Bass.

This was a music store full of, well, bass instruments.

I had to go in. Not because I play the bass, but because I play the guitar, and I love music.

Besides, how could you not stop when you glance in and see something as shiny as this?

This is a 1930s aluminum bass.

This is a line of bass fiddles along the wall. I don't know that I have ever seen so many bass instruments in one place.

Old instruments often are hard to beat. They have a sweet, mellow sound that newer wood simply cannot match. I know I prefer the sounds of some of the older guitars to the new ones in the stores today.

The bass fiddle is used in symphonies and in blue grass music, just to name a few. You also hear it in jazz, country and western, and many other formats.

Big Things of Metal

Before we headed out for our weekend in the Shenandoah Valley, a friend sent me a link to some large metal work in Staunton.

If you click on the link you will see photos of the work.

We looked for the items at the link but did not find them. However, we did find these:

A very large teapot.

Big flower pots on the other side of the tea pot.

The fireman's helmet at the Antique Fire Engine Museum.

The Camera Museum

The Camera Heritage Museum is located in Staunton, VA. It bills itself as the largest camera museum on the East Coast.

The cameras included dageurreotypes, view cameras, spy cameras, Leicas, Nikons, Canons, Kodaks, and Polaroids.

A display of old daguerreotypoe photos

A daguerreotype camera.

One of eight cameras built in the early 1900s specifically for newspapers to use to take pictures of baseball games.

This is owner David Schwartz. He can tell you anything you want to know about the history of photography.

This camera was owned by O. Winston Link, who in Roanoke is a hallowed name. He was a famous photographer who took a lot of pictures of trains, among other things.

My husband looking at some of the many cameras.

Nikons and Canons and Kodak, Oh My!

More cameras.

Still more cameras.

If you have an interest in photography, this is definitely something to see.

Thursday Thirteen: Visiting the Reaper

The Cyrus McCormick Farm is located just outside of Steeles Tavern, VA. It's a National Historic Landmark. The facility is now owned by Virginia Tech and the historic area is adjacent to the university's Shenandoah Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Cyrus McCormick, in case you've forgotten your history, invented the reaper.

The reaper allowed farmers to increase their productivity and reduced labor costs. As far as farm machinery goes, the reaper is the granddaddy of all inventions, second only to the plow in terms of its usefulness.

This is a mill located on the McCormick property. It was used for milling grains.

This is the mill wheel. It does not take much water running through the sluice to make the wheel turn and do its work.

A sign noting that this area is a National Historic Landmark.

A second building on the site proclaims itself as the blacksmith shop where the reaper was created.

The tools that created the Virginia reaper.

This is a facsimile of the original reaper.

The case to the right holds a lot of little models of reapers.

The walls of the buildings had many newspapers, pictures, and placards of information.

This is the inside of the mill. These are the gears that work to make the grain.

More newspapers about the great invention. One of them said, "Eureka, Eureka! A boon for farmers and wives alike!"

This log indicates the time frame of the nation. It shows when the tree was just a twig in 1603 and the College of William and Mary was founded, then follows on up the years with George Washington, the American Revolution, Cyrus McCormick's birth, the reaper invention,
the Civil War, and ends with the moon landing in 1969. I thought this was neat.

A stone marking the birthplace of Cyrus McCormick.

My husband looking over the backside of the mill.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 252nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

When Firemen Were Firemen

The Antique Fire Engine Museum in Staunton is located inside one of the city's fire stations.

It's a single room, with one star attraction.

A 1911 Fire Engine.

This is a 1911 Robinson Chemical Fire Engine. The firefighters call it "Jumbo."

My husband discussed the fire truck with a firefighter who was staffing the museum when we were there.

The folks in Staunton think this is one of only two remaining trucks like this left in the world. The other is in Arizona.

The 1911 truck has lots of shiny brass doohickeys on it.

The Staunton Fire Department formed over 200 years ago; it is one of the oldest fire departments in Virginia.

More shiny doohickeys.

Still more shiny doohickeys!

There were other firefighter-related items, too:

A street alarm box.

An old firefighter's helmet.

An alarm bell that would have been inside the station.

Another alarm bell.

A really old-fashioned kind of alarm bell!

A memorial to the fallen firefighters from September 11, 2001. When the towers collapsed, 343 firefighters died.

A big metal firefighter's helmet located outside the museum.

This is a photo of a postcard showing the entire 1911 engine. The museum room was too small for me to get a really good shot of the beautiful machine. This doesn't do it, justice, either, but I wanted you to see the fire engine in its entirety. I think it is a marvel.