According to one of the rumours floating around Floyd County, I came home to die.

That’s the story a friend passed on to a member of my family. Someone, they said, told them they had heard from someone else that I had terminal cancer and returned to Floyd County to live out my remaining days.

While I intend to die in Floyd County, I hope it won’t be for a number of years in the future and, according to my doctor, the only health problems I have can be corrected by losing a little weight and getting back in shape.

But this incident reminds me how much small communities like this one thrive on rumours and there seems to be an inordinate amount of interest on just why I came back to Floyd County after 40 years.

Friends and associates have been grilled at barber shops, beauty parlors and local eateries. Those with unending curiousity want to know why I came back, what I do in our studio in The Jacksonville Center and where our money comes from.

After the purchase of our home was listed in the January 6 edition of The Floyd Press, several locals dropped by the courthouse to check out the purchase record. That started tongues wagging because we paid cash for the property and speculation mounted on how we came up with the dough. It’s no big secret. We lived in our home in Northern Virginia long enough to pay off the mortgage and used the proceeds from that sale to buy our home here. Property values are considerably higher in Arlington County.

With everything that is happening in the world today, one would think people have more interesting things to talk about than Amy and I. I guess not but if the “dying of cancer” story is an indicator of the type of things that are being passed around, I wish they would at least get the facts right.

We have nothing to hide. I came home because we wanted to take life a little easier.

That’s all.

If anyone wanted to know, all they had to do was ask.