Septuagenarian Adventure Day Two

Southern Virginia in October is beautiful!  Rolling green hills; barns, crops, and farmland, winding slow roads--I could travel these roads for days, or maybe rent a little house in one of these hills for a month or two.

We spent the afternoon in Galax and Floyd, Virginia, two special little towns on the Crooked Music Trail.  The pace is slow, the people friendly.  We talked with strangers-- about arts, crafts, politics, dulcimers, and barbecue sauces.

We connected with women who share our political outrage and frustration. "The old hippies and young people are liberal, but the old timers around here are not," one told me.  "Women have got to band together and stop all this men-telling-us-what-we-can-do-with our own bodies," another said.

Abby, Lindsey, Bernadette, Jess, Michelle, Abby, Judy, Lyn--it's amazing how much people open up about themselves in short chance meetings on streets, at cafe tables, and rooms filled with local crafts and homemade pies and bluegrass music.


One, a young woman with Down's syndrome, is a hostess at the Galax Visitor's Center;  two manage art galleries; one works at a barbecue cafe in Galax and took the time to give us a most lively impromptu guide to this stretch of Blue Ridge.

Now that her children are grown up, one is working on her Masters degree and plans to fulfill her delayed dream of  teaching English--though she also takes care of her 91-year-old mother with Alzheimers.  Her mother's mood, she says, is way better "when she's making something instead of just doing puzzles."  I asked her to show us the quilt they are working on together.

"This is something she can still do," Lyn said.  "I cut the squares of linen and she embroiders the circles, then I sew them all together."

"You are a great daughter!" Betty said as we admired the circles of thread on linen.

"Oh, but she did everything for me!" Lyn said.

Jess,  our waitress at a Roanoke Diner, and Betty struck up a conversation about grandmothers raising granddaughters--a subject both know from different sides.

Traveling, you take the time to follow up on hunches, and Betty recognized a shared thread in Jess' story even before she heard it.

"I didn't get along with my mama," Jess said.  "She's actually kind of a mess.  But my grandma raised me."

"Well, after meeting you, I can tell your grandmother did a good job!" Betty said--and we left with tears in all our eyes,  Betty hugging someone else's granddaughter.

"Y'all come back, please!" Jess  said.  "I want to see y'all again!"



                                       These are a few of the memorable faces of our Thursday

Lindsey at the Galax Visitor's Center

Abby--soon to take ownership of my favorite gallery in Floyd