How I Got to South Boston VA...and Why

We should have owned California by now. Like Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford and the other rich titans of the 1800s, my family settled early and made the right decisions. In 1851 they opened a bank and a hardware store in the town of Placerville, right near where gold was discovered three years earlier. But the good fortunes disappeared when the next generation made bad loans and the bank went kaput.

 

I loved growing up in Califonia’s Bay Area, but as a journalist, I was drawn to Washington, the major league of the profession. Lonely in the big city, I went to a Methodist church, also attended by a woman who grew up in South Boston, Virginia. “She’s a single woman. You ought to get to know her,” said a good friend who was playing cupid.

 

I was captivated by Pickett Craddock, a preschool teacher, who had inherited a 400-acre family farm at Cluster Springs, a place I had never heard of. I invited myself down to see her on the Fourth of July weekend in 1981, when another couple with a small child was also visiting.

 

There was no A/C, plaster was falling off the ceiling and there were planks loose in the 160-year-old building. “Pickett, this place is a bottomless pit,” warned her friend, who was an engineer. I gulped. What was I getting myself into?

 

A former tobacco plantation in the South was never my childhood dream. Not for a kid from the suburbs of San Francisco, in the place and time of the movie “American Graffiti and its hot rods and drive-in joints. What are these awful bugs? Why am I sneezing so much? What strange language are these people speaking?

 

Slowly I dipped my toe in the waters, driving the horrific trip back and forth from Washington eight to 10 times a year. I got to know the place better. I didn’t want to just be the spouse of a local girl. One summer I auditioned and got into a musical with the Prizery Summer Theater. That happened again five more summers. Hey, these people are really neat!

 

Using her skills dealing with contractors, Pickett got the place fixed up enough to open it as a summer bed & breakfast. This bottomless pit suddenly had class! We didn’t have to go everywhere–interesting people came here.

 

When I retired in 2009, we were still Inside-the-Beltway stalwarts in the winter, but we got a call from Pickett’s son in California. “The pandemic is coming. Get out of your Arlington apartment and go to Cluster Springs right away,” he said.

 

Dutifully following his advice, we spent the next year down here but kept paying the horrific bills for that apartment in Arlington, though we were never there. Should we move for good?

 

One day during the pandemic I visited Tunnel Creek Vineyards, which had opened the week before in Roxboro. I sat at the piano and played a few songs and the proprietor said, “Can you come back on Saturday?” My jazz piano teacher told me, “You are one of only 10 jazz musicians on the planet with a job right now.” I was paid to play there for three months until my aging hands couldn’t take the eight hours of playing every weekend.

 

I sang solos or joined choruses at three local churches, and I got involved in other groups. I didn’t miss the heavy D.C. traffic. The bed & breakfast business took off during spring and fall, which seemed to be more popular than summer.

 

And then I got this column in the News & Record. When I was writing national news, I rarely got feedback from readers, even if millions of people may have seen or heard my AP story. Now I encounter people I barely know in town who give me good comments. How could I possibly leave?

 

How to See and Hear Bertter

It’s amazing how much technology is available for people with visual and hearing impairments. There are a lot of advantages to living in the 21^st century.

 

I have macular degeneration myself, meaning that my central vision is not up to par, even if the peripheral vision is fine. Glasses don’t help. It makes it difficult to see average-sized type in a book or newspaper.

 

There are lots of work-arounds:

--You can easily magnify type on a computer or tablet. Because I occasionally sing and play piano at the same time, I often print out the lyrics in large type and mark the jazz chords on top in large letters with a magic marker for performing in front of others.

--The cameras on tablets are remarkably useful. Before I go to a church service, I photograph all of the hymns and read them off a 12-inch ipad.

--A phone app can be used as a magnifying glass with a light and with adjustments for choosing distances. You can get a full-page magnifier to put on top of a book page.

—There are talking thermometers and a product called Seeing AI, which tells you out loud the name of the object where you have pointed your phone.

--Audiobooks are remarkably helpful. Computers, phones and tablets also dictate texts of any online publication, e-book or website. When I read back what I write for this column, I tend to miss typos. I can have the computer read back what I write and when it says a funny-sounding word, I know to fix it.

—Voice commands allow you to tell phones and computers what you want. You can dictate texts with remarkable spelling accuracy.

—On the highway, a GPS is useful to anyone, but its turning instructions are a big help if the road sign is hard to make out. On many newer cars, safety precautions include lane assist for keeping you in your lane and automatic stops when an obstacle gets in the way.

 

And there is aid, too, for people with hearing problems, which I also experience.

—Hearing aids today can be equipped with Bluetooth receivers, which send the signal louder from your phone straight to your ears. They’ll connect, too, with the music or audiobook on the phone, as if you were wearing headphones, like a teen-anger. You can groove to the Rolling Stones during a boring lecture or sermon, while the speaker thinks you are inspired by his or her words!

 

So think twice before you curse the latest technology and long for the good old days.

 

 

 

Good Manners Class Gives Me Hope

 

I am so impressed with the etiquette classes I am reading about on the TJM Community Center Facebook page. At the six weeks of instruction in Cluster Springs, kids are taught to respect boundaries and to treat each other with respect.

 

The goal one day: “At the end of this seminar, I will be able to understand what dating etiquette is and how I can use this in my daily life.”

 

The class taught kids to “identify good character in an individual being considered to date.”

 

The session also explained how to eat at a five-star restaurant using a table place setting and how to tie a tie.

 

Another class taught social media etiquette. The youth were also instructed on how to introduce themselves to someone with eye contact and a firm handshake. Other topics included self-grooming,

 

These are the kinds of things they don’t teach in school. I can think of a lot of adults who could use this instruction!

 

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You are following a historic route if you ride or walk on our Tobacco heritage Trail. The Richmond and Danville Railroad was the last link from Richmond to the rest of the Confederacy not captured by the Union. The trail is built on the right of way, where the tracks were removed. When Richmond fell in 1865, President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet fled by train via the route to Danville, where they established the last capital of the Confederacy for eight days.  

 

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What’s this? Our grandchildren pooled their candy into one bowl to share with the family? When I was a kid, we insisted on keeping it all for ourselves. But when my daughter went trick or treating, we would take part of her stash and give it out to latecomers at our door.

 

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Horror movies were all the rage at Halloween. I can’t watch them anymore. If I want an adrenalin rush, how about: A huge bill from the IRS. A lab test showing some horrifying disease. Smoke coming from front burners left heating on the stove too long. Who needs a scary movie?

 

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My Pet Peeves: What Are Yours?

 

Do you remember Andy Rooney on “60 Minutes?” He would have asked these same questions. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old curmudgeon (which I surely am), please tell me:

 

·      Why do green and red peppers in the grocery store have plastic wrapped around them?  And why are there little tags on each apple?

·      Why do so many stores keep one of their double doors locked, while the other is open? Was the manager in a hurry to get to work and didn’t have time to open the other?

·      Why do restaurants stuff the paper napkins so tightly in the napkin box that you can’t get them out without tearing them to shreds?

·      Why are there commercials on streaming services that I already pay for?

·      Why do sports broadcasters keep saying “they’ve got to put points on the board” or “they’ve gotta execute?” Well, duh!

·      Why do public radio and TV stations all do their necessary but annoying fund raising on the same week? I know—it is a conspiracy!

·      Why are packages so hard to open? I’m sure there is loud laughter in the board room as executives think up ideas to irritate consumers.

·      Why do I get so many emails now that start with “Hey?” Hey is for horses!

·      When someone repeats an obviously fraudulent post on Facebook, why don’t they just erase it when the error it is pointed out rather than just comment on it? “Guess I was had.”

·      Why are the last 80 comments on a newspaper article online always two people fighting with each other?

·      Why do football teams love to “ice the kicker?” The timeouts just to rattle the guy kicking a field goal just waste my time.

·      What’s with intentional fouls in basketball? No other sport rewards you for misdeeds.

·      How could signing a waiver online really protect the company in court? Nobody ever reads the waivers anyway.

·      Why are so many business voice mail messages so long, often saying, “To better serve you, please listen closely as our options have changed?

·      Why do wait staff serve drinks to the left of your plate instead of the right? I know—I was a PROFESSIONAL busboy.

·      Why do so many drivers fail to use their turn signals? CRASH!

·      Why do some people start every sentence with “I mean” or “Like”?

·      Why does the GPS router take you on narrow winding roads just to save you two minutes? I’m not in that much of a hurry and I don’t drive for Uber! There is no setting to avoid that.

Mdoan96@yahoo.com

What I like about South Boston (and Halifax):

 

After coming here for 40 years in the summer, we finally moved from the Washington D.C., area to Halifax County full time early in 2021. Here is what I like about the area:

 

·      You can see stars at night. And the moon shadows are dazzling, especially with snow on the ground.

·      The only traffic jams happen when the train comes rolling through.

·      When there’s a show at the Prizery, you’re in New York City. When it’s over, and you leave, you’re in South Boston, where it’s easy to get home.

·      The town has two newspapers. San Francisco doesn’t have two newspapers. Your child’s sports photos, even of middle school volleyball, may show up in the paper.

·      Downtown merchants are friendly. When one store owner asks something personal like “how old are you?” you know you are in for a conversation.

·      The YMCA has been beefed up. Classes are more stable than in bigger cities because the teachers don’t tend to move away.

·      Cage’s Sculpture Farm is a true prize that we encourage our guests to see.

·      You don’t need to parallel park often. I couldn’t get over the easy parking at the Harvest Festival and for parades.

·      I love the box turtles that show up after a big rain. I have to put them back on their feet after the dog turns them over.

·      Housing is not expensive. Neither is auto repair.

·      You always come across someone you know at local events. That rarely happened in Washington.

·      The Tobacco Heritage Trail is never crowded, even on Saturdays.

·      There’s plenty of opportunity to use your interests in the arts---and in writing this column.