The inside scoop on a B&B

I wasn’t keen on Pickett’s idea to open a bed & breakfast. Strangers would invade our house. I would have to stop leaving my shoes and socks in the living room. When I travel, I prefer hotels, where I don’t have to interact with people.

But what was I going to do? Forbid it? Then it would be, “So long, Mike!”

So our summer home in Cluster Springs opened to guests in 1988 as Oak Grove Plantation but later changed to Oak Grove Bed & Breakfast.  The visitors stayed in two rooms on the second floor but had to come downstairs to use the bathroom that we shared with them.

That isn’t what guests want these days, so she had a second bathroom built on the second floor. I remember helping Pickett clean the newly built sink just as the new guests arrived. That’s OK—I’m good on deadline.

In those days, people found out about us through guidebooks, a much simpler forum than today’s online reservation systems. We tried lots of gimmicks: a cooking class weekend, a wellness camp, family friendly activities.  Not much worked when we were trying to get people to come to a farm in the heat of July and August.

But she was bent on expansion: the former office was converted to the Library, lined with books and my grandfather’s 1880s typewriter. When a falling tree destroyed the little rental house next door, she remodeled it as a cottage for the B&B.

I can’t fix anything myself, but Pickett was great at recruiting repair and construction help, including Joe, a 52-year-old who was a preschool student of hers in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago.

Then we made the best of a bad situation. We were terrified spending most of the year on the 14th floor of an Arlington apartment building in 2000 when covid hit. We moved to Oak Grove temporarily but decided to stay.

Open year  around, we could get steady business especially in spring and fall, when the weather is better. A major source was VirginiaIinternational Raceway.

I’m not much of a host, but I’m an experienced professional busboy. I was good at helping out at breakfast and chatting with the guests. Some of the fascinating people we met were good sources for news stories. I was especially interested in a guy who rode a bike across the state. He wrote back that his visit was the highlight of his trip.

Best is coming across musical people who asked to hear me play the piano. I have accompanied several singers and made videos with one of them. She is coming back again this fall.

We often say, “We don’t travel a lot. People just come to us.”

 

From setback to comeback

 So many people have taken massive failures in life and turned them into successes. Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey and Walt Disney are among people who were fired once, only to turn their lives around.

“Ya gotta suffer first to sing the blues” is a famous saying.

In retrospect, sometimes my biggest failures have been the best things that could have happened.

I had been running the afternoon news desk at the Associated Press Washington bureau for four years when I went to the bureau chief to complain about my pay.

He told me I was about to lose my position as part of a shakeup. I was devastated—it was a powerful job, editing and approving most of the news articles out of Washington for morning newspapers during the Watergate era. But I didn’t realize I had burned out. And maybe I wasn’t that good at telling people what to do.

Two months later I was sitting in the front row of the inauguration of a U.S. president (Jimmy Carter), helping to report on it for the same news organization. Soon I covered the economics beat, launching myself into a 30-year career as a business news specialist.

Decades later, in retirement, I was crushed when I was ousted by failing a choral re-audition at Choralis, a northern Virginia choir. I wasn’t sure I wanted to return anyway, and I was distracted by a speeding ticket on the way there.

A week later, I saw that City Choir of Washington was holding auditions.  I showed up in a thunderstorm and sang while the prestigious director, Robert Shafer, played piano and listened. 

The song he gave me was the same one we had sung at a church choir the week before. I nailed it. And then lightning struck and the lights went out. When they came back on, Shafer looked confused. “I guess you know what you are doing” he said. I knew then that I belonged there. He was the best director I had ever sung with.

In my personal life, I was dumped by my girl friend in 1977 for a guy who took her with him to work at the North Slope of Alaska in the winter. She chose freezing cold over me? I was shattered. It took me years to get over it.

And then I came across Pickett, the love of my life, who had no ambitions to go to the Arctic Circle. We have been married 40 years. A long time after our breakup, the ex-girl friend called to see if I was still available. Her marriage with her Alaska-fixated friend had fallen apart.

She wondered if she had made a mistake. “Hell yes,” is what I should have told her. But instead, I said, “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

I’m still grateful for past failures like that.

 

 

Column: The bumpy ride to old age

—I really don’t like this classic song about relationships and growing old: “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?” No, I haven’t stayed too long! I’m still on the roller coaster!

—I really liked the movie “Thursday Murder Club,” now on TV. But most of the people in the retirement home were younger than me!

— “What did you do before there was technology?” My9-year-old grandson asked me. I said, “We did have three channels of television, primitive cars and airplanes. But I should have just told him, “We played outside.”

—More than half of the people born in the same year as I was are now dead. Makes you stop and think.

— When I knock down a spider web, I don’t know if I feel bad for ruining a spider’s dinner or glad that I just saved a butterfly’s life.

— On the advice of ChatGPT, I just learned how to get through to a real person at my cable TV company. “When they give you a list of options over the phone, just use the word “cancel,” it said. I got through!

—A B&B guests who owns a lot of houses told us one way he he approves tenants in a tight housing market: He looks inside their cars to see how messy they are..

— We keep hearing about how peaceful it is in nature. But have you noticed how vines keep trying to strangle trees? I tell you, it’s a “plant-eat-plant” world out there!

—A hang-gliding relative once told me, “The only sports worth doing are the ones that could kill you.” Hm. I have loved biking and skiing, which can be dangerous. Billiards, bowling and bridge? No, thank you.

— In gardening, my wife is the creator, and I am the destroyer! She may plant bulbs for pretty flowers to bloom, but my role is to hack away at the bamboo and tree branches that threaten. Got to defend the family!

—When we started out, my wife wanted a Victorian house, and I wanted a California-modern style home. We couldn’t agree. Until the realtor found us a house with a Victorian style front, with a built-on modern rear featuring large glass windows. Sold!

 

 

 

 

 

Who am I really? Make a guess

“Cellophane, Mister Cellophane shoulda been my name. Mister Cellophane. ‘Cause you can look right through

me, walk right by me and never know I’m here.”

That song from the musical “Chicago” fits me nicely. People didn’t tend to notice or remember me (at least until I started this column). 

Being invisible benefits: I was not bullied as a child. As a reporter, I went unnoticed (until I went in for the kill!). I don’t get into many arguments. I haven’t offended many people with these nonpartisan writings.

But onceit got me into trouble with my boss. “You never have any opinions,” he told me. That is a problem when you are editor of a magazine (Satellite Orbit) with a staff of seven and a circulation of 300,000 readers. (If I had expressed my opinion about him, I’m sure I would have been fired.)

In college, a very drunken senior went into a rant about each classmate there. When he got to me, he said, “Doan, you are a nonentity. We don’t know anything about you!” I looked it up: It means non-existent. Good. I liked it that way.

You could look back on my college career and not know what to think. I started off on the college newspaper with a bunch of student radicals. And this was at UC Berkeleyin the 1960s, the national capital of rebellion, just like Rome is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.

The staff sang revolutionary songs by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger at parties. They demonstrated at the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings in San Francisco. We went on strike when the student government didn’t like us endorsing a leftist candidate. My name even showed up with the others in a state government report on subversive activities.

So as a junior, what did I do for a second act? I went to the dark side. I joined a fraternity.

The radicals considered me a traitor as I cut my hair shorter and began wearing button-down shirts and white socks, the uniform of these reactionary, elitist Patrician snobs.

No more singing “We Shall Overcome” at Saturday night parties. Now, it was sorority dances, paddling at initiations and crooning to guys’ girlfriends…though that was past the era of panty raids.

I even became the fraternity president, a leader in the overlords of oppression, and met regularly with the ultra-establishment fraternity council.

Had I finally seen the light? We’ll, no. I had been lonely.

So, what did all this make me? Well, you’ll never know. Not here anyway, Signed: Mr. Cellophane.

(The song in the video is actually “Waving Through a Window” from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” with the same theme.)

 

The good side of Halifax County

 

Halifax County has gotten a lot of bad media coverage lately. It’s time for a change, to write about what is good about South Boston, Halifax and their surroundings.

1.  We have the a champion kids’ softball team. The Halifax South Boston Dixie softball team won the Dixie Darlings World Series title this year.

2.  One of the best major league pitchers is a local boy…Andrew Abbott, who played in the all-star game this year.

3.  You always come across someone you know when you shop at Food Lion. And you won’t stop talking for at least 15 minutes.

4.  Unlike most small towns, we have some classy restaurants, including Molasses Grill and Paco’s.

5.  Top-notch auto racing tracks include Virginia International Raceway and the South Boston Speedway.

6.  The Factory Street Brewing Company has become a major entertainment center, with rock concerts like the one Labor Day weekend. And the Prizery is envied by nearby communities as a great theater venue.

7.  A new state-of-the-art high school just opened in South Boston.

8.  The Tobacco Heritage Trail is maintained very nicely. It is never crowded for biking, walking and horseback riding.

9.  People of all ethnicities are generally friendly and tolerant of different opinions.

10.                           Kayaking, canoeing and fishing are popular on the Wild Blueway that includes the Bannister River in Halifax.

11.                           We have a historic past, including the Crossing of the Dan during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War skirmish commemorated at Staunton River Battlefield Park.

12.                           One of the darkest and best places in the country for star-gazing is at Staunton River State Park.

13.                           There are no traffic jams—except maybe when the train comes through town.

 

Dogs part 2: Our conversations

You know I am a word person. When I communicate with my dogs, I have to use words. I can even imagine what they are saying in respect. Here is  a typical conversation:

Mike: Why are you staring at me, walking around in circles? Oh, you want to be fed!

India: Come on, meal time was five minutes ago. What’s for dinner tonight? Yum, yum.

Mike: Here you go, bon appetit!  Oh, look at how Ethos is eating up his dry food so fast. He loves it! India, why are you just standing there, sniffing this gourmet meal?

India: Ewww! Yuck! Why did you serve me this crap again? I want something better. How about a filet mignon?

Mike: Beef is getting too expensive Oh, here’s a little wet dog food to make you eat it. Boy are you spoiled!

India: Well, I’m finished. At least I don’t climb up on the counter and eat your dinner like Ethos does! Now, let’s go for a walk.

Mike: Oh, all right. Why can’t you just run loose like your brother, Ethos, does? Why do you need company?

India: It’s my job to get you outside. You could lose a few pounds anyway!

Mike: OK. Hey, why are you harassing Ethos out there?

India: I want him to play, and he won’t do it. He runs off.

Mike: Of course, he will if you keep biting him! Say, while we are out here, why is Ethos howling?

India: Because he is a hound. That’s his job. Don’t you know that?

Mike: Why do you keep barking at squirrels? Do you think you can catch them by shouting at them?

India: I’m frustrated because they won’t come out of those trees. But say, I want to prove to you that I am a good hunting dog. Here is a prized turtle that I have found!

Mike: You finally found something that is slower than you! Why do you keep dropping them on their backs?

India: I like to see them suffer.

Mike: I’m turning it over. Stop looking so proud. Bad dog!

India: To prove I can still hunt, I will go after another fast animal: a gopher. Look! I’m digging a hole in the dirt and sticking my nose in it and will bite my way through the until I find it!

Mike: I’m so glad that you are the dog and not me.

-0-

Comment from my wife after she read this column: I didn’t know about this! You talk to India more than you talk to me!

 

 

 

 

Dogs Part 1: Hating and Loving them

My relationship with dogs started off poorly. I loved my puppy, Skippy, in kindergarten, but he disappeared when our fence was taken down for new construction.

Then I was counseled by a neighbor, wizened by her extra years of experience and seniority, who took me under her wing. “You mistreated him,” she said.“That’s why he ran away.” She was seven years old.

I took this hard and didn’t warm to dogs again,especially after being bitten by one on my paper route. They were noisy, scary and impossible to control.

But when I met Pickett, I noticed that she had a Dalmatian. If you wanted her, the dog was part of the deal, I learned. Pretty though Nina was, she seemed awfully hyperactive. I got along well with the neighbors until Pickett moved in. “Get that dog off our property!” I kept hearing.

Next there was Brandy, whom she borrowed from a friend. Brandy showed no loyalty to us and would run off with strangers on our walks. Then came Tara, who became blind, deaf and incontinent in old age. Then Bonnie, who seemed to provoke dogfights in the local dog park.

Would I ever be free of this? We had Sara, who was utterly fascinated with birds when we went there to adopt her in Honduras. As she grew up, she kept bringing home stray dogs and I kept making her find owners. I warned her future husband, Lance, about this, but he was more tolerant than I was.

I kept telling my family that I didn’t like dogs, but they knew I was an old softie, and they talked me into getting a second.

I was getting accustomed to Niko, a poodle, but he tended to eat inanimate objects like sponges and hearing aids, and he died in old age after eating a sock.

The other poodle, India, used to run the farm with Niko, but she must have been heartbroken when he died. Now she won’t go anywhere without us. And she keeps coaxing me to go for a walk with her. Well, I am starting to enjoy it!

Then Sara took her love of dogs a notch higher and became a professional dog groomer. In the year she lived at Oak Grove with her family, she ran the business in the house next door, with dogs arriving by car every hour.

But just before she and her kids left to join her husband in Blacksburg, she begged me to keep one of her dogs, Ethos, a combination Doberman and coon hound. We agreed.

Ethos was a rescue dog who did not do well in apartments and small houses. He had gotten Sara and Lance into trouble twice by tearing up basements and howling at night when they lived in West Virginia.

At Oak Grove, he runs the 400 acres whenever he wants, he won’t come when he is called, and he eats absolutely anything. He’s my kind of dog!

He loves bed and breakfast guests, and he makes them pet him until they push him away.

After all of these years avoiding dogs, have I changed? I am in love with this dog! He knows the land here better than we do from his daily inspections. He belongs here as much as we do!

(Continued next week)