Bonus Features

Roadside Virginia: 14 black & white photos

Farewell to Dan River Mills

1938: Statement from a Mill worker at the Dan River MIlls

askingLeah

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HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011

January 6, 2011, near Stoneville, North Carolina

We have begun our second year of traveling around the country in a non-Jack Kerouac manner. No driving 24/7 across the country to Laredo or California for us. We set off for Atlanta early on New Year's Day. Amazing, we had planned to leave New Year's Eve. Only one day behind this time. Late on the afternoon of January 2 we pulled into a campground on the Dan River near Stoneville, NC. A little over 300 miles in two days...a long distance record. (We spent the first night of the New Year in a Wal-Mart parking lot near Midlothian, Virginia.)

We are slow travelers not slow drivers, maybe we will go 100 miles in one day, but then we will sit by a river, or some big trees or the ocean for days, weeks sometimes even months. We look at our pictures, drawings and notes and sometimes the best we can come up with is, "that was a great Pink Drink Recipe* Roy had, let's try it."

ON THE ROAD AGAIN (SLOWLY)

...or "Why we never get very far"

Traveling from around Richmond, VA to Danville, VA and to the campground in the rain proved to be highly diverting. These are some of the things that caught our eyes and (Roadside Virginia: 14 black & white photos) slowed us down.

US Highway 360

• Birthplace of Secretariat (Sully said we had to stop! He wanted his picture taken.)
• Why had the little white "Church of God of Prophecy" been abandoned?
• The mist rising off a small lake near the Appomattox River was beautiful.
• Was the statue of a white angel surrounded by beads and trinkets next to the railroad track watching over a place where a young girl died?

Danville, VA

• The whole time we drove around the downtown area we saw only one person
• Blocks and blocks of what appeared to be empty tobacco warehouses where once "The World's Best Tobacco Market." dominated the town. During the Civil War six of these warehouses served as POW prisons for Union Soldiers.
• The huge Dan River textile plant building on the river was empty and crumbling... (Who didn't have a Bed-in-a-Bag** at some point in their life?) The brand survives, but the jobs have slipped away to India. The history of the Dan River Textile company is a history of optimism, growth... then labor disputes, poverty, a lost highway vote, and production moving to India where it is cheaper. The huge issue of out-sourcing is as large-as-life in small towns like Danville, Virginia.
• A mural of The Wreck of the Old 97 high on a wall overlooking the river. We could hear Johnny Cash singing from far far away.
• And for eight days, April 3-10, 1865 Danville was the last capital of the Confederacy.

We drive slowly because, beyond beauty, there is so much history just lying around beside old state roads and in the smaller shrinking towns of this country. Much is gone. We are left just asking questions and wondering. Google helps.

Living in New York City I was always conscious of so much going on all the time; thousands of people always moving, art, theater, marathons, flagship stores, subways, star-sightings, parades, traffic... EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW! Rarely could I see thru the morass to the history and events that had gone before. Sometimes I saw shadows of the past and there were the honorary street names to remind me of who made New York New York. Whenever I noticed one, I would think about what that person did... and of course that he or she must have lived here or died here...

My friend Leah was kind enough to take and send this picture of the sign for Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard (86th Street and Broadway). You can read about her history with Bashevis here at askingLeah.

*Roy's Pink Drink Recipe (More about Roy and his encyclopedic mind later)

• 1 Cup Rasberry Vodka
• 1/2 cup Chamborg
• 1/2 cup orange liquor
• drop in a couple of raspberries and only drink one.

**For those of you who are not familiar with it, a Bed-in-a-Bag is a completely matched bed ensemble that you can carry home in a matching bag! "Turn your bedroom into a master suite with just one purchase!" There are anywhere between 7 and 12 items in the bag.

• 1 comforter
• 1 neckroll pillow
• 1 bedskirt
• 1 flat sheet
• 1 fitted sheet
• 2 pillow cases
• 2 Euro Shams
• and a decorative pillow

...and it now reads "IMPORTED"