Perhaps it is fitting that I spend my retirement years working, part-time, for the little weekly newspaper where my career in journalism started as a part time, after school, reporter 43 years ago.

As I sit on my mountaintop writing this, I realize that I am less than 50 miles, as the crow flies, from my first full time newspaper job as a reporter for The Roanoke Times. that gig lasted four years before I headed West for 11 years and then back East to Washington in 1981.

At first I thought it was an earthworm on the floor of our kitchen but it was too skinny to be a worm. And earthworms aren’t black. About four inches long, it lay coiled towards the center of the floor but slithered quickly off towards the kitchen sink as I approached and into a small hole between the linoleum and the bottom of the cabinet under the sick.

I opened the cabinet door just in time to see it slither down into the opening between the bottom of the cabinet and the kitchen sink drain pipe and into the crawl space under the house.

OK. This is war. All-out war. Man vs. the driveway. But this time, man will be armed.

After three months of using shovels, picks, hoes, wagons and rakes to fight a losing battle with an ever-eroding surface on the 35-degree, 450-foot long slope that, in one rainstorm, went from a smooth driveway to Floyd County’s most-challenging offroad trail, I’ve decided to bring in the big guns.

A power grader.

It never fails. I do a photo layout of faces from the crowd at The Friday Night Jamboree and someone posts a whine about "where are pictures of the musicians?"

As if I’ve never posted photos of musicians. Good grief. No photographer in Floyd (and there are many) has taken or posted more photos of musicans.

You want musicians? OK, you got musicians.

The highlight, as noted in a previous post, of last Friday night’s jamboree was the return of fiddler Clyde Williams (above) and his old time country band, a longtime crowd favorite.

The Jamboree is long on tradition and two groups that play there most often are Clyde’s and "Barbershop Grass" (left).

But the music at the Jamboree is more than just the musicians on stage.

Some of the best bluegrass around can be found from those who jam on the streets outside (below) and some come each Friday to hear the street musicians and never make it inside. It’s all part of the fun of Friday night music in Floyd.

The music may be what attracts the crowds to the Friday Night Jamboree but, for a photographer, the people are the show.

Young and old, short and tall, skinny and not-so-skinny — the mixture of bluegrass music fans and those curious enough to see what the fuss is all about make each visit to the Jamboree interesting.

Friday’s mixture included a collection of Radford University students checking out the show along with visitors from as far away as Turkey and Japan.

Friday also marked the return of crowd favorite Clyde Williams to the Jamboree following surgery on his hand and a fourth group kept the music hopping until close to midnight. Floyd County Store owner Woody Crenshaw is expanding the facility with additions to the building, a new stage and sound system and a larger dance floor.

Other plans for for an ice cream and soda fountain and lunch counter, But the Jamboree is, and always will be, the music and the people. It’s Friday night in Floyd, the music is humming and everyone is having a good time.