View from the Mountain

Getting to choose where you live

I used to have a standard speech that I gave to young employees at Apple. 

I would tell them that often in life you have to choose between where you want to live and what you want to do.

I would point out that most often it takes a long time to be able to have the job that you want and live in a place that you love. No all of them paid attention to me.

For many long years, what I did and where I lived seemed to be in sync with what I loved.

First I got to live a few dreams in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and then with a few twists of fate, our family ended up on the side of mountain in Roanoke, Virginia.

It was a place that we picked after careful consideration.  Our first stop in the states after Canada was Columbia, Maryland.  It was a place considered by many to be a paradise in a very busy metropolitan area.  However, it wasn't for us, and after a couple of years there, we made a family decision to move to Roanoke.

Roanoke felt much more like Canada than Columbia.  Perhaps it was a step back in time, but it was just the kind of place we needed to nurture our children and put down some deep roots.

There were many wonderful things that attracted us to Roanoke, but most of all it was the friendly people.  We found a wonderful neighborhood not far from Hidden Valley Country Club and its very nice swimming pool where I managed to swim many miles and watch countless swim meets.

Our children had the benefit of everything from soccer, hockey, and dance to riding ponies. While I am not sure our children considered it a benefit, my wife and I were pleased to find that not much goes on in Roanoke that doesn't get back to what my wife liked to call the "Mommie network." 

We also really loved the sense of family that came from going to Covenant Presbyterian Church.  I'll never forget one of our ministers saying he considered it a compliment that some folks felt comfortable enough to "rest their eyes" during the sermons.

Even after I became a manager at Apple and was given the option of moving back to Northern Virginia, we chose to stay in Roanoke.  It was a very comfortable place with many things that we loved from the Roanoke Natural Foods Coop and the Grandin Theatre to the Farmer's Market and Carvin's Cove.

We found friends and a routine that suited us.  Our families were located only two hours away in Mount Airy, North Carolina.  All the shopping and excitement that anyone could need was just over three hours away in Northern Virginia.  Even as the territory I managed grew, Roanoke seemed to be the best place to live.  Roanoke never let us down, there was always something to do, and even the beach was just over five and one half hours away.

While many people living in the valley worried about the difficulties that we might face on the mountain, it turned out to be a great place to enjoy a snowstorm.  Even during some historic storms, life on the mountain was never a great challenge.  Being a family from the mountain just made us a little special and gave us an identity that we treasured.

Many mornings I would roll out of bed and take a picture of the fantastic sunrises that always greeted us.  The seasons always brought a different view and a fresh perspective on life from high above the valley.  That I got much of my inspiration for writing from living on the mountain is no surprise.

As we move to the next chapter in our lives, we are now living on the watery side of the horizon on North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  We have put our moutainside home on the market, but the memories and the friends that we made on the mountain and in Roanoke will always be with us.

It was great place for our family and a wonderful refuge from many of the things that I like least about modern life. Many times as I hiked the high hills behind our home, I found a rare peace that you only find in special places.  For over twenty years, those special places sustained me.

I will never regret having chosen Roanoke for what might be the biggest portion of our adult life.  I hope the people who end up with our spot on the mountain find as much support and inspiration from the mountain for their lives as we have.

 

Homes 101

Sometimes I think that our society will one day reach its ultimate goal of being able of disposing of itself.

It was not long ago that a friend in the real estate business made the observation that she felt many of her clients were changing.

She said they no longer seemed to care about quality in their homes.  What they now want in a home is one that will last five or six years and look nice when they sell it. They don't seem to care if it falls down after that.  It seems that also means they don't really want to do any maintenance for those five or six years.

That is not how I grew up to understand one's home. The goal was to get a home and then improve it over the years.  For the most part, everyone that I knew when I was growing up in North Carolina did that.

As soon as they could, they bought a home, and at the same time started planning for making improvments on their home.  Sometimes the improvements were small because the budgets were small, but the idea of not improving your home was just not considered.

Homes were places that you planned to stay sometimes until they carried you out on a stretcher.

Often trees and bushes were planted, sometimes new rooms were added as children were born.  Over time things were replaced, rooms painted, and eventually the purchased house became a home that reflected the tastes of the owners.  In the fifties many of the appliances were so well made they almost never broke.

Mostly the work was done by owners unless the expansion got really serious and even then it was not unusual to see home owners doing finish work.

Times have changed.  People often have to move multiple times with their careers, and to a certain extent our addiction to disposable technology is creeping into our tastes for homes. Appliances no longer have long lives. The popular finish for door handles changes almost as often as Apple introduces a new iPad. People expect the latest and greatest fads in homes even when a home is entering its best years.

We have been fortunate to have bought four new or nearly new homes in our lives.  We know from experience that getting a new house from the point of being just a house to being a comfortable home takes a while. Sometimes it is even years.

I don't think our family home where we raised our children and lived for twenty-three years got to its best years until we had been in it for over twelve years.  It was only then that we had the money to make changes to fit what we had learned about our home and matching it to our needs.

That home of ours in Roanoke, Virginia is now for sale. I think it is in the best shape that it has ever been.  It is a little sad that now that we have the home just like we want it and in its best shape ever, we have decided to move on to another home.

We recently had a contract on our Roanoke home fall through.  One of the things the supposed buyers worried about was that some windows on our house were still original windows and might at some time in the future need replacing.  The idea that they were quality windows to have lasted this long didn't seem to cross their minds.

I thought the worry about possibly having to replace windows showed an amazing lack of understanding of home ownership.  Homes are subject to weather, and those on the side of a mountain like ours and at the coast like our other home get a pretty good dose of impressive weather.

A thirty mile view doesn't come without a few challenges, but I have always thought that a well built home can handle most of what Mother Nature throws at it.  That we have endured 70 MPH winds on the mountains just makes me proud that we have a strong, safe, home. Usually there are benefits that balance the challenges of weather.

During those twenty-three years, I have observed a lot of leaves falling from our big pin oak.  I have never had to rake one leaf in those years, they just blow away.  Often when the valley is cooking in heat, we have a breeze to make life in the South a little more comfortable.

Over the years we have made many improvements to our home.  We even added one of my favorite parts of the house in 2001, a sunroom/breakfast room and a new deck.  Anyone with a deck, even one made with composite materials and a wrought iron railing like ours knows that it takes work to keep them in good shape.  So far, I still do all that work, and each spring when I get the deck in shape for summer, I feel proud that I have it looking so good.

Wood trim on houses also ends up needing needing repair work once in a while.  Since our first home was two hundred years old with hand hewn beams, doing a little trim replacement seems easy compared to fighting with walls where nothing is square.

I sometimes wonder if the lack of appreciation of home maintenance comes from so many young people not knowing how to do it.  Over the years, you learn a lot from taking care of a home.  It is not unusal to find people in my generation who know how to do copper plumbing, electrical wiring, and finish carpentry.  I have a radial arm saw in my shop.  I'm guessing not many in the generations following ours even know what it is without Googling it.

In the end, a home is like a lot of things in life, you get out of it what you put in it.  The sweat equity always ends up adding more pride in the long run.

As I walk from our kitchen to our master bedroom, the view of the Roanoke Valley is just part of my life.  When I roll out of bed in the morning, I get to see the sun rise over in the mountain and create an original work of art each morning.

A home is much more than a house.  It is place to draw inspiration for each day, and a place that you know you'll feel safe.  I'm going to miss sitting at the kitchen table looking out over Roanoke while writing.  However, maybe the next person will find as much to love about our home as we have.

That will make letting go a lot easier.

 

Southwest Virginia's Traffic Challenge

Sometimes it takes a series of events to really shock you into realizing how much things have changed. 

On March 2, 2012, I headed out to Blacksburg like I have so many times. 

I was going to have lunch with a friend and then go to a business meeting, and finally I was going to take the back way to Catawba and meet my wife and some friends for dinner at the Home Place.

The ordeal that I faced getting too and from Blacksburg completely changed the plans for the day.  It gave me lots of time to wonder whether my family would have even ended up living in Roanoke, if I had found traffic this bad on my first visits to the valley.

Twenty-three years ago in the spring of 1989, our family made the decision to move to the Roanoke Valley in Southwest Virginia.  With deep roots in North Carolina, we had been drawn back the United States not quite two years earlier after sixteen years in Canada.

Our first stop in the US after Canada was Columbia, Maryland where we moved in August of 1987.  It turned out to not be the spot for us. After most of a year covering Virginia higher education for Apple, I was given the opportunity to pick where I wanted to live.

Most of that first year covering higher education was spent in Blacksburg.  I stayed so much in what was then the Blacksburg Marriott, that they pretty well kept the same room for me all the time.  During the months that I visited Virginia schools, I got a pretty good look at the state.  Roanoke impressed me most of all the options for a place to live.  It didn't take long to convince our whole family that Roanoke was the place for us.

Our children ended up going to Oak Grove Elementary, Hidden Valley Middle School, Cave Spring High School.   We also got to experience the pleasure of having children at the Roanoke Valley Governor's School.  There weren't many Roanoke Valley opportunities that our children missed from hockey and girls soccer to riding ponies and dancing with Ardell Stone.  I even took my son to hear Bob Dylan at the Civic Center. Many times we enjoyed the Grandin Theatre.

While no place is perfect, Southwest Roanoke County turned out to be a really good place for us to raise our family. Like several other people that I knew, I managed to get promoted to the point that I was able to keep the privilege of living in Roanoke instead of having to move.

I truly considered it a privilege to stay in Roanoke because I often got very close looks at many other urban centers which did not look like nice places to raise a family.

Also like many others who called Roanoke home, most weeks I left Roanoke on Monday and was gone for the much of the week.

Still Roanoke was a fine location even when I ended up having people working in North Carolina who reported to me.  Roanoke was centrally enough located that I used to have meetings at Hidden Valley Country Club. My team covered higher education from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.  Roanoke was a convenient, inexpensive location for meetings and getting to Roanoke was rarely a problem in the early nineties.

In the mid-ninties, I took a different position at Apple.  I spent a lot of my time from 1996 through 2005 commuting up Interstate 81 to Reston, Virginia where I managed Apple's federal business.  After Apple I did a variety of things relating to the federal market and still kept the Roanoke to Reston commute.

It turns out Interstate 81 has defined a huge portion of my life even before my career with Apple.  I made trips up and down 81 when the highway was being built during the late sixties and early seventies when I was in college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In forty-five years I have seen Interstate 81 go from being a reliable way to get from one place to another to a nightmare for travelers.

In the summer of 2006 I took courses in Hickory, North Carolina.  I would leave on a Friday afternoon, and almost every trip I had to get off Interstate 81 and use back roads to make it to North Carolina.

Now the highway is even worse.  A trip on Interstate 81 either north or south of Roanoke is often an ordeal for those on the road and those waiting for I81 travelers.  As I found on my March 2, trip, Highway 460 can be as bad or worse.

That March 2, trip turned into a nightmare.  My roundtrip from Roanoke to Blacksburg took over three hours and involved using shortcuts that no through traveler would know.  Had I not taken those shortcuts, I suspect my trip to Blacksburg and back would have taken four hours.

We now spend much of our time on the Carolina coast so we haven't kept up to date with the blasting schedule for construction on Interstate 81.  We're more like the people traveling down Interstate 81 from other states who have no clue what a mess they will find between Roanoke and Blacksburg.

On March 2, I left home at 11:30 AM and got on I81 at the Salem College exit.  Seconds after getting on the highway, I saw a sign that Interstate 81 was closed for blasting.  I also saw a VDOT sign recommending that I not get off of I81 at the last Salem exit because of congestion.   Probably for the last time in my life, I trusted what the VDOT sign said and waited for the Dixie Caverns exit where VDOT wanted me to leave 81. As a side note, traffic when I got on 81 going north was already stop and go because of an accident north of Roanoke.

Waiting was the operative word, since it took me forty-five minutes to go the eight miles or so to the Dixie Caverns exit.  Once there, I thought perhaps I might make it to Blacksburg by 1:00 PM.  However, not far after Shawsville, Route 460 stopped moving.  As it crept along, I finally saw Route 636 (Seneca Hollow Road) and decided to take it and some other back roads through the Ellett Valley to Blacksburg.

At about ten minutes to one, I was getting ready to turn up the mountain to Blacksburg, and in the distance I saw a rail crossing close and several Norfolk Southern locomotives go across the road.  I knew that any hope making it to Blacksburg by one o'clock was gone.  After waiting for the long line of empty coal cars to pass, I continued to Blacksburg and stopped at Our Daily Bread for lunch.  It was ten minutes after one.  My trip from Roanoke had taken an hour and forty minutes.

Of course I had missed the 12:30 lunch with my friend.  I had a nice lunch at Our Daily Bread, and headed over to the Corporate Research Center for my meeting.  At 3:30 PM, my meeting was finished, and I pulled onto 460E and headed back towards Interstate 81.  Just before I got on Interstate 81, I saw a sign that there was congestion on the highway between mile markers 130 and 139.

It was then I made the fateful decision to take 460 back to Roanoke. An hour and ten minutes later, I was sitting in barely moving traffic still miles from Salem.  When I finally got close enough to Salem to take the road over to Greenhill Park and then Riverside Drive, I thought I might make it home by 5:00 PM.  I was wrong.  Riverside Drive finally slowed to a crawl as many other residents were also taking my shortcut.

It was just a few minutes after five o'clock when I pulled into our driveway.  It had taken me an hour and thirty-five minutes to get back by way of 460.  The total round trip to Blacksburg was three hours and fifteen minutes.  Back before Interstate 81 became a nightmare, I made the trip of 235 miles to Reston, Virginia many times in three hours and thirty minutes.

For several months in 2006, I worked in the Corporate Research Center. Even then it was rare that it took me more than forty minutes to drive the 35 miles from our Roanoke home to Blacksburg.

My March 2, trip almost makes me laugh when I think back to the debates about the Smart Road connector shaving five or ten minutes off a trip to Blacksburg from Roanoke.

Had the traffic been this bad when we moved to Roanoke, I would have never been as successful in my job which depended on frequent road trips to various universities and colleges from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.

As I think about the challenges of using Roanoke as a homebase, it is pretty clear that someone in a job like my the one I had with Apple with would be crazy to locate in Roanoke in 2012. 

Interstate 81 is no longer a dependable route for a business person.  The air travel options out of Roanoke worsened during my career, and I doubt they have improved since I stopped flying out of Roanoke.  I feel fortunate that my last Roanoke to California air trip was in 2003.

The sad thing to me is that the piecemeal efforts of VDOT are actually bringing more immediate harm than any possible future good can hope to balance.  I drove through the similar construction project in Lexington for years.  The waits were not nearly as bad as they are in this current project, and now that the Lexington project is finished, I still hardly see a difference in Lexington traffic.

Unless the Virginia House can shift its focus from trying to contol the private lives of women to solving real problems, the traffic on Interstate 81 will strangle southwest Virginia.  Interstate 81 doesn't need just a few climbing lanes, it needs more lanes period.

Since 2004, I have been driving south on a regular basis from Roanoke to Emerald Isle.  I have watched as North Carolina has upgraded many roads in those six years. 

The North Carolina portion of my trip improves every year.  My last trip of 320 miles from the beach took just six hours including a stop for lunch and two other stops.  While gas is more expensive in North Carolina, I will pay a few cents more per gallon any day rather than go through what I went through travelling between Roanoke and Blacksburg on March 2.

While I am now a registered voter in North Carolina and can do little to persuade Virginia's obstinate politicians, I hope my friends in Roanoke can find a solution to their traffic mess.  Strangulation by traffic is not a pretty sight.

Southwest Virginia deserves a better fate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Barbecue is fast food, you must be in Eastern North Carolina

Barbecue is something that I remember from my earliest years.  When I was a youngster growing up in Lewisville, NC in the fifties and sixties, I remember a family friend from Kernersville bringing us homemade barbecue each year.  I vaguely remember that it came from a contest at a local fair.

I can't remember the name of the barbecue place in Winston-Salem that we used to frequent when I was a teenager, but I do remember that the barbecue is similar to that served today by Stamey's of Greensboro.

It is easy to observe that growing up near Winston-Salem, NC is akin to growing up close to the cradle of barbecue, which many would argue is Lexington, NC.  Even today, there are fifteen barbecue restaurants listed in the Winston-Salem area.

There aren't many states that have a barbecue trail, but North Carolina does.  I will admit to eating at a number of the spots on the trail including Carolina Barbecue in Lexington and Allen & Sons near Chapel Hill.

However, I have my own favorites. Perhaps the barbecue that I enjoy the most comes from Moore's of New Bern.  However, like many great barbecues, they are stubbornly local.

A few years ago while traveling the Interstates of Eastern North Carolina, we discovered Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q®.  It has become one of the spots that we enjoy occasionally.

I say "occasionally" because we know that we cannot eat there often. I am reasonably certain that there isn't a healthy food item on their menu, but sometimes you just have to enjoy some barbecue. It is part of our culture in North Carolina.

While there are no salads on the menu, the Smithfields restaurants are amazingly fast, exceptionally clean, and friendly.  The food is consistently tasty.  The barbecue even varies just enough to keep you guessing just how spicy the first bite might be.  The fried chicken and Brunswick stew are also tasty. The Brunswick stew is so meaty that it is a meal in itself. I like that slaw comes standard on the barbecue sandwiches. It is near heresy to have a barbecue sandwich without slaw.

We hit the Smithfield's in Morehead City for lunch the other day just about noon, and it was packed.  We placed our order and hardly got seated at the table before someone was bringing us our meal.  They have a senior discount every day, and our hearty lunch for two of barbecue, fried chicken, Brunswick stew, and hushpuppies only cost us a few cents over $10.  We drink their tea mixed with two thirds unsweetened tea since the sweet tea is very sweet.  I am not surprised that I have yet to be in a Smithfield's where the service was anything but exceptional. 

Besides Morehead City, some of our favorite Smithfield's locations are in Jacksonville, Newton Grove, and Siler City which might be the westernmost of the chain. The barbecue at Smithfields is eastern NC style vinegar-based barbecue so that might explain the lack of penetration into the red-sauce territory of western North Carolina.

We lived for years in Roanoke, Virginia, but it seems harder for authenic barbecue to keep a foothold up in the mountains. I don't even want to talk about the poor excuse for barbecue that I once tasted near Rocky Mount, Virginia.  However, I am happy to hear that Bastian's Barbecue is opening back up in Roanoke.  It is a worthy mountain-bred barbecue with a taste of its own.

In fact it you want to read one of my first pieces of on-line writing, you can check out my eloquent argument for barbecue being the great American meal and consequently the perfect Fourth of July food.  I extol the virtues of Bastian's barbecue in the article and define exactly what needs to be served with a great Fourth of July meal.

Fortunately we don't have to wait until July 4 to celebrate great barbecue.  Emerald Isle's 21st Annual St. Patrick's Day Festival is only seven weeks away.  One of the few things that I will stand in line for is some of Bobby Petrea's barbecue, and his booth is always one of the most popular at the festival.  It is also one of the few places you can get his barbecue without hiring him to cater an event.  Bobby is a local barbecue legend.

Then it won't be long until the annual Newport pig cooking contest.  I have pictures on-line of the 2007 event.  As the weather warms, I might just have to have visit Tryon Palace this spring to check out the flowers (and Moore's Barbecue).

Barbecue makes me proud to be a North Carolinian.

 

White Lady Peaches, a special summertime treat

I will confess to being a food person.  I love to find great food, and I enjoy eating it.  Whether it is a fantastic piece of salmon or some great home grown tomatoes, I think eating quality food is not only a treat but good for you.

When I tasted this White Lady peach from Jamison's Orchard in Roanoke, Virginia, I knew that I would have to write about it so that it could join the collection of great food that I have talked about in my blog posts.  A peach as good as the White  Lady deserves to be memorialized.

I know that I have never tasted a peach like the White Lady.  The first bite made me think that it had been infused with sugar.  I wasn't surprised when I went back the next day, and all the White Ladies were gone.  I consoled myself by going home and grilling a few lesser peaches.

Most people understand that the closer you get to the farm, usually the better your food is.  We lived on a farm in Canada for sixteen years in the seventies and early eighties.  I raised purebred Angus cattle, milked a Guernsey cow, and collected eggs from our hardy band of chickens who ate snow in the winter instead of drinking water.  We also had a huge garden which produced wonderful English peas, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, squash, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, and more potates than we could ever eat. My wife made homemade bread, yogurt, and even churned butter.

I was also raised in the Piedmont of North Carolina where gardens, fresh foods, and canning are a tradition.  With that kind of background, I like to think I have a head start on most people when it comes to finding great fresh foods.

We also are fortunate to be near Jamison's Produce and Orchards when we are in the Virginia mountains overlooking Roanoke and close by Winberry's Farm when we are staying on the North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks near the beaches of Emerald Isle.  Both are excellent sources of wonderful locally grown produce.

Our fresh produce season on the coast starts usually in the middle of April with the first ripe strawberries.  The real excitement for me comes with the first homegrown tomato of the season which is usually around the first of June.  When we have a dry fall, our tomatoes can last well into December.  I have picked them as late as December 19.

Between the middle of April and the middle of December, we enjoy wonderful local produce and some fantastic locally caught fish and shrimp from places like Clyde Phillip's Seafood between the bridges in Swansboro.

Each area has specialities. The cabbage, squash, peaches, and apples seem to do particularly well in the hills and mountains around Roanoke.  Tomatoes, blueberries, cantaloupes, watermelons, and sweet potatoes are specialities along the coast.  A Bogue Sound watermelon is a true special summer treat.  If the moisture is there corn seems to do well in both areas.

After the watermelons come in, we know the coastal produce season is starting to wind down.  By late August, much of our produce at the coast comes from the north.  During August we can stay local by heading to Roanoke, where we often get to re-visit what we have enjoyed on the coast during July.  Corn and tomatoes really hit their stride in the mountains during early August.

Last year, we had an unusual fall, and there was a time when pumpkins and watermelons were at the produce stand together during early October. 

In September and early October, we get a special treat along the coast, Epsicopalian lobsters.  Two of the area churches have lobsterfests which we always try to attend.

By late October, we see the last of the local produce, huge bags of sweet potatoes that have been cured and are ready to winter in our garage.

Then it isn't long to the Thanksgiving feast, and not long after that I am planting tomato seeds for next year's crop.