In my continuing effort to downsize, usually thwarted by better things to do or by sentiment, I came across a picture that I am pretty sure was taken in the summer of 1974. It was of “my gang” (most of them at least) from my high school years. We were Christiansburg High Class of 1971,…
Category: CHRISTIANSBURG DAYS
Imogene, My Mom, and January 1953
This past week was my birthday, another trip around the sun in trendy parlance. A good time to reflect, or at least put down on paper, some random thoughts that pop into my mind regarding my many trips in that orbit. While I was giving my approach to the subject some thought, I remembered an…
Leon, gone but not forgotten
Panel 48W – Line 9. If you go to the Wall – the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. – that is where you will find “Leon David Willard”. Born in Christiansburg, Virginia, on April 13, 1948, killed in action on August 13, 1968 in Long An Province, South Vietnam. You can find the details at the wall-usa.com. In…
Snow Day
Snow day! What a glorious sound! Even now the words make me smile, fill me with a lift of excitement. Last week we had a beautiful snowfall in North Central West Virginia, enough to lead to cancelation of the local schools. It brought back great memories. It has been over 40 years since I last attended the schools in…
The Military Classic of the South (Thanksgivings Remembered)
Thanksgiving always brings back especially fond and warm memories of my early childhood. The time frame for these recollections is the period of my life from age five or six till the beginning of adolescence, when my parents apparently became either aliens or lepers, driving a need to distance myself from them. But from the…
Frankie Loria (50 years remembered)
Frank Paul Loria. I hope the name still resonates through the halls and annals of Virginia Tech football. I am sure it does. Frankie, as he was known in my current part of the world (as I will explain later), was a 2-time All-American safety at Tech in the mid-1960’s – he played during the autumns of…
Colonial Heights (a lesson in fairness)
Colonial Heights. To most young boys growing up in Christiansburg, Virginia in the early 1960’s, these 2 words were magical, almost mythical. It meant one thing – the Boys Invitational Baseball (BIB) Tournament sponsored by the Optimist Club of Colonial Heights, Virginia. Started in 1957, the tournament involved 16 Little League teams (11 and 12…
Musings on being a Lawyer
I am a lawyer. There, I’ve said it. We all know that the first step to recovery is admitting your condition, so there you go. My main client refers to his brother as a “recovering lawyer”. The law was not my first ambition. When I was in grade school I wanted to be an architect….
Serious
I have a hobby of trying to come up with a single word to capture the essence of people I know, usually an adjective. It is not that people are that easily pigeonholed, but rather certain people have a dominant characteristic that they exude, that is central to the core of who they are. The…
CATS (and stuff about dogs, too)
I am a “cat person” now. I started to say I am “officially” a cat person, but I doubt there is a certification process. If there was one, it would probably involve something like the Nissan Heisman House on the tv ads, where the residents would be women in their 80’s who each own 8…
Bud-Hoo 