Survival
We left Arlington at 1:30 p.m. Friday, headed to Floyd. Stopped in Manassas for gas ($1.95 a gallon for 87 octane) and headed back west on I-66 at 2:15.
This would be tight. The reception for the Floyd County High School alumni show at the Jacksonville Center started at 7 and traffic is always heavy on I-81 on Friday afternoons.
Colleen
Colleen had the deepest green eyes of anyone I?ve ever known ? the kind of deep, emerald green that comes from an Irish heritage.
?So pleased to know you,? she said when we first met. ?My name?s Colleen.? The name floated off her tongue in a pure Irish brogue.
Although we saw each other almost weekly, it would be more than a year before I learned her last name. First names only at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
She finally revealed it at a coffee shop after one of our meetings. It was very Irish last name.
La Touristas
Tourista season is upon us. Mabry Mill (above) is open, the weather is warm enough for musicians to play outside at the Jamboree on Friday nights and traffic is increasing at our studio in The Jacksonville Center. Speaking of the Jamboree, you can listen to National Public Radio’s report on their web page.
Defeat
After many attempts to isolate and rid a development web server of a pesky Trojan file that disabled some function and hid files from both view and use, we threw in the towel and set up a new server, transferring the development web site to it.
I’m cleaning my Glock and looking for some hacker with too much time on his hands.
The Trojans Attack
Looks like it’s gonna be one of those weeks. One of our web servers started flaking this morning, refusing to allow users to sign on.
At first we thought it was a virus or Trojan horse but both the anti-virus and anti-Trojan scanners reported no problems. Yet certain files that should have been on the server were missing and when we tried to restore them, the system said they were already there.
God’s Revenge
All right. Who pissed off God?
Last week, we drove through the same violent thunderstorm in a windy and wet trip from Floyd County to Arlington. On Sunday, sun warmed the highway as we left Arlington for the return trip.
The Old Mill Pond
Visit any site about Floyd County or this part of Southwestern Virginia and you likely will find at least one shot of Mabry Mill. According to the National Park Service, the Mill is one of the most visited (and most photographed) sites on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
But unless the Mill is somewhere in the photograph, who knows if it was the inspiration or location for the shot.
This shot is an example. The early morning sun cut a path of light across the pond in front of the Mill, but it could have been a pond most anywhere. The light — and the duck — are the focal points of the shot. Mabry Mill provided the setting but the mill itself added nothing to the photo.
No So Simple
The question seemed simple enough.
“Why,” a lunch companion wanted to know recently, “did you come back to Floyd County after all these years?”
Like many teenagers longing for a life of adventure, getting our of Floyd County became an obsession. I even went to summer school so I could skip a year of high school, graduating early just to escape what I then saw as limiting opportunities in a Blue Ridge Mountain Community.
Dubious Honor
Got an email today from a reader congratulating me on my inclusion in the Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers gallery on the web site of the same name.
Don’t quite know what to say.
History
This pantry has sat on our farm for generations, offering cold storage for canned fruits and vegetables.
Nowadays, it stores rakes, ladders and a lot of cobwebs, but I remember fetching applesauce, beans and other foods from the shelves stacked with Mason jars.
Some were in cans tfrom the cannery on Canning Factory Road near Floyd and most of it came from the apple orchard that is long gone or the garden that has gone unplanted and unused for years now.
Nowadays, the cans of fruit and veggies come from places like Food Lion, Kroger, Slaughters or the Willis Village Mart.
Like our orchard, the canning factory is long gone and the pantry/cellar just outside the house is a storage shed and reminder of things past.
Some will try to tell you it’s the same.
It’s not.
Like so many other things in this country of ours, the simpler times are long gone, along with the innocence and pride that accompanied those times.
A lot of people have moved into Floyd County in recent years hoping to recapture some of the feelings of those times but such a search may be a futile cause. In the best of times, the past serves as a lesson where we learn not repeat the mistakes of history.
But more often than not, we ignore the lessons of the past. Like this pantry, reminders of the past remain but their original use has long gone and most likely will never return.