Floyd County has its share of dangerous drivers on the roads: Those who venture over the center line on turns, drive 15-to-20 miles per hour over the speed limit, fail to turn on their lights in the rain or a dusk or dawn and those distracted by talking on cell phones while hurtling down the highway.

But the dangerous drivers who scare me the most are some who drive the school buses that take our children to and from the county’s five schools.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve watched a school bus run the stop sign at Barberry Road and East Main Street in Floyd. Sometimes, three or four school buses in a row will run the sign without pausing. Last week, I had to brake hard and bring my Wrangler nearly to a stop when a bus pulled out onto Main Street without stopping.

I’ve clocked school buses running at 55 miles per hour or higher in the section of U.S. 221 north of Floyd where the speed limit is 45.  Some of them start speeding up as soon as they pass Floyd Pharmacy and hit 50 in the 35 mph zone. Recently, I followed a school bus on the dirt section of Sandy Flats Road that runs between Shooting Creek and Harvestwood. I was running 35 and the bus pulled away easily on the narrow, rutted, dirt road.

I’m sure most of the operators of the county’s school bus systems are careful drivers who consider the safety of the children they ferry to and from school. But we have some hot dogs who drive dangerously and it is only a matter of time before some of our children are killed or mangled by their irresponsible actions.

They call the project "Empty Bowls," a local program started by Floyd potter McCabe Coolidge and his wife Karen Day. Along with New River Community Action and a lot of volunteers who cook soup, bake bread, concoct desserts and help put the event together, the project raised more than $5,000 this year for the "Backpacks for Kids" project that provides backpacks with food for needy children.

The crowd gathered before the doors officially opened at 11 a.m. at The Jacksonville Center Sunday and the soup and food flowed.

For $10, eaters picked out their own bowls and then picked from a variety of soups while listening to music from local musicians.

This is the second year for what is now a firmly-established annual event on Floyd County’s charity schedule.

 (The photos are the top of this article are a slide show. Click on the "Next" and "Previous" clinks to scroll through the photos)

Jeff Walker of Floyd thinks I should be more "temperate" when it comes to chastising local Congressman Rick Boucher for his lavish use of "earmarks" (AKA Congressional pork) to buy votes in Southwestern Virginia.

Citizens watchdog groups have long cited Boucher as one of the kings of pork in Congress and he has no qualms about spending millions upon millions of federal funds to cultivate support from his district.

Two other Virginia Congressmen appear often on the walls of shame when it comes to pork: Rep. Bob Goodlatte and former Rep. Virgil Goode, whom voters had the sense to dump in the last election.

Says Walker about Boucher:

I have to say that critical comments about the Federal facilities funded through the actions of Boucher ought to be tempered as well, as our Representative he has kept his eye on the ball. We can probably agree that there is a role to be played by the Fed in taking on projects that are not appropriate for private initiatives.

This is what I love about the hypocrisy of local bias. What Walker sees as Boucher keeping "his eye on the ball" is, in the eyes of watchdog groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, just plain, old-fashioned pork.

And it is.

An example:

$400,000 by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) for horseshoe crab research at Virginia Tech.  According to a March 28, 2008 Richmond Times Dispatch article, “The horseshoe crab’s blood is useful in intravenous medications and has cancer-fighting properties.”  This is a crabby case of corporate welfare; companies that need the research should pay for it.

Or this:

Dan Casey of The Roanoke Times wants to charge tolls for those of us who use the Blue Ridge Parkway to get from Point A to Point B.

Writes Casey in Thursday’s Times:

If you’re in a hurry and you need to get from Clearbrook in southern Roanoke County to the eastern county section of Bonsack, there is exactly one quick and hassle-free road you want to take: the Blue Ridge Parkway.

So many Roanoke-area drivers have happily discovered this nifty National Park Service shortcut that it’s often swarming with rush-hour motorists. Some wags already call it the "Wal-Mart Expressway."

Spend any weekday evening on that gorgeous blacktop ribbon and you’ll see what I mean. Long lines of hurrying-to-get-home commuters zip along at 50 to 60 mph or so, unimpeded by traffic lights, stop signs or typical traffic bottlenecks.

That’s one of the reasons it’s time to reconsider an idea floated but rebuffed in the past: tolls, or some sort of fee system, for parkway users who get a free ride now.

If you’re thinking, "That darn Casey is one of those infernal parkway bicyclists who doesn’t like all that traffic," you’re partly right.

But what you may not know is that all those motorists are helping to wear out that beautiful road much faster than the National Park Service’s repaving budget can handle.

As one who often uses the Parkway as an alternate route from home to Roanoke, my first thought is "wow, Casey must be smoking some of Floyd County’s primary cash crop." The last thing we need in these over-taxed times is yet another way to separate cash-strapped locals from their hard-earned bucks.

Park roads often serve as commuter routes. In the Washington area, the George Washington Parkway, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and the roads that wind through the National Mall — all parts of the federal park system — serve as primary routes during rush hour. I used them often during our 23 yeas in the National Capital Region.

Yes, the Parkway is far, far behind in maintenance projects but the crumbling roads exist not so much because commuters are pounding the pavement into dust but because the feds diverted much of the Parkway’s budget to other areas — like the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You find potholes and cracked pavement on the Parkway on areas not used by commuter traffic. Try driving south of Meadows of Dan and the pavement will pound your fillings loose.  The road there is in far worse shape than the stretch that runs from U.S. 220 to U.S. 460 in Roanoke County.

A major repaving and rehab project is underway on the stretch that runs down Bent Mountain but attention is needed elsewhere.

Perhaps the Parkway would be better served if elected representatives like Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) spent more time getting the Parkway funds for maintenance instead of concentrating on funding monuments to themselves like the Blue Ridge Music and Rockey Knob Visitor’s centers.

Perhaps those of us who drive the Parkway would be better served if the political appointees who run the Parkway would budget funds for upkeep instead of using limited resources to create Gestapo-like "criminal interdiction teams" to harass users of the region’s primary tourist attraction.

(Edited on March 28, 2009)

Enough rain has fallen on the area lately that some are actually starting to complain about all the wet stuff. Usually, a few days of rain is dismissed with "we need it" and folks move on. But rain and the late winter snow storm that brought March in like a lion has soured some on all the wet stuff.

After four straight years of below average rainfall, the water tables in the area are up because of higher than average wet weather in March.

Even with a wet March, the region needs a lot more rainfall to make up for the dry conditions of past years. The snowfall at the beginning of the month helped restore nutrients to the ground during the week it took for the foot of white stuff and three-foot-high drifts to melt.  But we could have used three or four such snowfalls over the winter months.

So let it rain. We need it.