Meet Chewy (aka Chewbacca), the newest, most energetic and rambunctious member of Chateau Thompson. Part Chow, part God-knows-what else, we found her as a three-month old pup at the ASPCA in Roanoke. Amy named her before we got home and she immediately lived up to the name, chewing up everything in sight, including shoestrings, shoes, paper and wicker furniture. Every time we take her outside, Chewy heads for something edible, be it a leaf, a bug or a clump of grass (left). Nothing is beyond this dog’s voracious appetite and now, at four months, she tips the scales at six pounds plus. In her first two weeks here, Chewy has discovered certain truths to be self-evident — bees sting, carpenter ants bite and a little bundle of orange fur named Jekyl may be a kitten and half her size but can still hold his own in a fight. Toilet manners are still hit and miss (mostly miss) which is why Chewy lives on the screened-in back porch until the call of nature becomes second nature in morning, afternoon and evening walks.
Took my coffee down to our front yard gazebo this morning and watched the dawn turn into day. Sat in the swing and let the light of the rising sun filter through the trees and bathe the structure in its warm glow.
Recent events have brought this memory to mind. It happened about this time last year.
Eating some breakfast at Blue Ridge Restaurant the other day when a local approached.
“You that photographer up at the dairy barn?” The locals call The Jacksonville Center “the dairy barn.”
“Yep.”
“Where you from?”
“Willis.”
“Nah. I don’t mean where you’re living now. Where you from?”
“Willis.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Graduated from FCHS in ’65.”
“Then what are you doing with them hippies up at the dairy barn?”
“Making new friends. You should try it some time.”
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Michael Miller, a writer, photographer and self-admitted “bad banjo player,” puts Floyd in proper perspective in the New River Valley Current section of the Roanoke Times Tuesday, just one day after the paper missed the real story of Floyd’s musical tradition.
Floyd is what Blacksburg wants to be. Or maybe it’s what Blacksburg secretly wants to be when it’s not taking itself so seriously.
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I don’t get my hair cut in Floyd’s one barber shop. It’s not worth the time or the money to endure to the tirades of some of the regulars who can’t stop bitching and moaning about the "hippies" and "the Mexicans" and "the outsiders" who they say are destroying Floyd’s way of life.
Continue reading …So, The Roanoke Times came to Floyd on the pretense of writing about the local music scene as part of their coverage of The Crooked Road. But what did they write about? Roni Stoneman.
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