An Innkeeper? How Did That Happen?

 

“You want to start a what?” I asked Pickett in amazement.

 

“A bed and breakfast. It would be perfect for the house in Cluster Springs.

”

So began a 34-year adventure that I have enjoyed but never bargained for when I was a teenager growing up in the California suburbs.

 

I tend to stay in motels myself when I travel, but now I had the opportunity to meet all kinds of interesting people and not even have to leave home at Oak Grove Bed & Breakfast.

 

Pickett, who grew up in the 200-year-old house, loves to show it off to visitors. I am no repairman or bellhop, but I can help out with breakfast. After all, I was a PROFESSIONAL  busboy in college.

 

Most guests have been wonderful. Friends come. Families with kids. Foreign travelers. A bike rider crossing the whole state. Even business and government people who gave me good tips to write about.

But there were a few who were a real challenge.

 

One traveler lost his car keys in the Staunton River while boating. We loaned him a car to drive to Richmond, where his son delivered spare keys from Washington.

 

There was the couple who was told to stay out of the attic, where there was a school over 100 years ago. Its children had written with lampblack on the walls, and when the guests entered the attic anyway and saw it, they thought it was haunted. They left in the middle of the night without telling us. They even demanded a refund, and we even gave them some of their money back.

 

Then there was the man just a few weeks ago who called Pickett with news that someone was banging on the front door at midnight. No one was at the door, and Pickett went back to bed. It turned out that the knocker wanted to use our Tesla charger. When she reappeared at the charging port, the man called the police, and vehicles swarmed to our B&B only to see the woman charging her car.

 

Certainly the most difficult for me was the time I was asked to make breakfast when Pickett was traveling. A woman who provided a two-page list of her dietary restrictions did agree to a parmesan cheese omelet but only if the cheese was from Italy or France.  At breakfast, I spilled a glass of water on her. She didn’t complain, but her sister didn’t want her dish and asked for an alternative. I came up with French toast, which I hadn’t made in years. In her devastating online review, she wrote that it was really just fried bread. Well, she wasn’t completely wrong.

 

I was never asked to make breakfast again.

 

But these were exceptions. Almost everyone is friendly, helpful and kind.

 

 

A Tenor? Oh, No!

On a train carrying the San Francisco Opera Company cast to Los Angeles, the small child climbed on the lap of the famous singer, Salvatore Baccaloni. “So, young man,” said the accomplished vocalist, “are you going to be a tenor like your father when you grow up?” The small boy scowled back: “Nobody’s gonna make a tenor outta me!” The boy was me.

 

As a teenager, I resisted my father’s attempts to interest me in singing and in classical music. I did play piano, particularly jazz, but I did not get interested in voice until I saw my daughter Sara’s high school chorus in Arlington almost 50 years later. It was stupendous. “I want to do that,” I decided.

 

I really enjoyed a gospel chorus, but to improve my singing, I took voice lessons. My teacher, Charles Williams, told me, “You have a beautiful instrument that you have been misusing all of your life.” When I told him I was singing bass, he said, “Get out of there. You are a tenor! In fact, a first tenor.” A tenor? Oh, no!

 

I carried this newfound voice to extremes, singing solos at our Methodist church in Washington and joined some of the best choruses in the city. I auditioned on a stormy night for City Choir of Washington, where I was handed a song by possibly the city’s leading choral director, Robert Shafer. I couldn’t believe it: this was the same song we had sung at a church service the week before. After one verse, the lights went out as lightning struck. When they came back on, Shafer looked confused and said, “I guess you know what you are doing” and I was in!

 

In Southside Virginia, I have sung either in choruses or as a soloist at First Baptist, First Presbyterian, Clarksville Presbyterian, Mt. Carmel Presbyterian, Double Nickel in Clarksville, the Summer Community Chorus and in six seasons of The Prizery’s Summer Theater.

 

Still searching, I experimented with country, gospel, jazz, pop, rock, opera, Broadway and classical. I couldn’t swing like Frank or rock like Elvis. But then a big turning point came when I sang “What a Wonderful World” at Sara’s wedding seven years ago in front of our Cluster Springs home.

As I practiced the song for my teacher, he broke into tears. This happened twice! Many in the audience at the wedding cried too.

I think I found my niche.

 

You can see some of my music by searching for: “Pickett Craddock Mike Doan” on YouTube.

 

 

 

It's a Dog's Life (But Not Bad)

 

 

One reason we aren’t moving back to Arlington: Our dogs would never stand for it.

 

For years we spent only summers at our 400-acre home in Cluster Springs while living the rest of the year in a one-bedroom apartment in Arlington. When India, now 5, was a puppy, we would frantically rush to the elevator on the 10^th floor, hoping we could make it outside in time. A few times, we didn’t.

 

 Now that we have moved here permanently,  India and her 10-year-old brother Niko confront us every morning insisting on a walk. These standard poodles won’t go by themselves, and maybe that’s a good thing. We are forced to exercise, and they’ll stay away from the road.

 

Frankly, I have a love/hate relationship with dogs.  I was bitten by them first as a newspaper carrier and later as a bike rider. I never had them as a kid, but I married a dog lover (Pickett Craddock) and have a daughter, Sara, who is passionate about them. Many times she would take a stray dog home and as she teared up, I would make her give it up. Now she has four dogs in a house next door and even runs a very successful dog grooming salon there.

 

One of her dogs has caught my fancy, though. He is a big 5-year-old hound—named Ethos of all things—who won’t be bossed by anyone. He refuses to come in when called. If you let him out, he won’t come back until he is hungry. He roams the 400 acres all day and often all night, howling like the dog in Sherlock Holmes’ “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” I love it! When cooped up in apartments, he tore up a basement and enraged neighbors with his howls. But here he roams free, the way he was meant to.

 

 I don’t really have a dog. Niko and India are loyal to Pickett. Three of Sara’s dogs are beholden to her. But Ethos answers to nobody. He’s my kind of dog!

 

 

 

 

Summer Theater's Surprising Coup

 

They pulled it off! The Prizery’s Summer Theater is back, and it’s good!

Things looked bleak just a few months ago: The pandemic shut down the program for two years. Long-time director Chris Jones retired. The new director, with an ambitious agenda, suddenly left just before live auditions for actors from throughout the Southeast.

 

Newly hired Melanie Cornelison Jannotta bravely went ahead anyway with ambitious plans for A Chorus Line and Footloose through video auditions. A cast was assembled, and then…..the new staff couldn’t find enough homes in a pandemic-weary town to host all the actors and crew.

 

Undaunted, Cornelison-Jannotta scaled the staff down to 10 with a skeleton crew and a new show: “Xanadu.” The remaining cast had to learn a new musical in only a few weeks’ time.

 

 I was skeptical as I looked in on early rehearsals while helping with publicity. But I admired the upbeat attitude of these 20-somethings, who would make this show work no matter what. 

 

Well, what a surprise! At Sunday’s show, which was well attended, the music was superb as the talented Jessica Sanzone belted out hits made famous by Olivia Newton-John, sometimes on roller skates. Jonah Barricklo commanded the stage as Sonny and learned to skate just in time. Nash Dawson stood out as Danny McGuire with a great voice and amazing dance steps. Caylin Keliehor and Claire Wilson were hilarious singing “Evil Woman” and in other roles.

 

The story of a muse from Mt. Olympus falling in love with an artist on Earth comes together a lot better on stage than in the 1980 movie. Songs are richer, and “Have You Never Been Mellow” and “Don’t Walk Away” have terrific harmony.

 

Just a few quibbles: Sometimes it was hard to understand lyrics, and the sound got a little loud—but maybe it was my hearing aids. And I sure would like to see local actors back. It was what made Summer Theater so great in the six seasons that I performed in it—the mix of local youth mentored by out-of-town professionals. The kids’ parents came and bought up tickets. But this year’s production had to be put together in no time, and I’m sure that the locals will be back next year. 

 

A job well done, cast and crew!

 

There are still four shows left, Thursday through Sunday. See www.prizery.com.

 

 

Perils of Graduation

 

“Get off that sofa and find a job!” my dad told me in June of 1959.

“What? I just graduated from high school, and it is the summer before college. It’s time for a break,” I thought but didn’t dare say. What’s the matter with daytime TV?

“I want you to go up the main street and ask every store owner to hire you,” he said. When that didn’t work, I went door to door trying to sell TVs. Next, he got me a one-day job somehow picking string beans with seasoned farm workers in California’s blazing hot San Ramon Valley. I made only $2.70 and spent $1.80 of that on sodas. ­­­­He told me afterward, “You never have to do that again.”

I finally found work in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin District as a busboy, lodging at a fleabag hotel. I did get to see Willie Mays and the Giants play several times in their second season in San Francisco. However, the Tenderloin was no place even then for a 17-year-old boy, and my father should have forbidden it. 

As one who hopped on freight trains during the Depression, he thought it was good for me. However, a drunk climbed off a fire escape into my fifth-floor window, thinking he was locked out of his own room. I screamed for help. He was lucky I didn’t push hm to his death. I was moved to a room without a window.

For a long time, I thought my father pressured me too hard to get a job until I had an encounter 50 years later with my 20-year-old daughter. She complained that her course load in community college was too heavy. “I would like to drop from 12 units to 9 to have more time for myself,” she told me. “Fine,” I said. “You can pay me $200 a month rent.” She quickly changed her mind. Later she thanked me.

OK, Dad. You were right after all!

 

Small-Town 4th

 

No, this wasn’t the fireworks show at the Washington Monument. This was better!

 

Where else but in a small town can you drive up to a tiny place like Elmo, park a half block from the main road and watch a parade of fire engines, antique cars and people waving flags on pickup trucks? Then wander through the small crowd and find people you know?

 

Or spontaneously decide to see the Fourth of July show at Constitution Square and park easily? The grandchildren can jump in a moon bounce and run across some kids they already know.

 

And then there is a fine local band, Public Consumption, performing, and it’s easy to find a place to put your folding char. Then, a surprise: Your friend Alexandra Martinez, who stayed at your B&B before moving here a couple of years ago, is the main attraction. That wouldn’t have happened in Washington.

 

She sings a great medley of songs, some that she just learned as a fill-in performer. Then, in front of thousands of people, she singles you out by name for introducing her to “Georgia on My Mind,” which we once practiced together at my house. She improvises some lyrics: “Please move your car. It is blocking the fireworks truck” without missing a beat.

 

Soon “God Bless America” and a spectacular 15-minute fireworks show.

 

 Yes, God Bless America!