You know you’re from the [Shenandoah] Valley if…
< 1 minute read
September 6, 2005, 8:06 PM
I found this on a friend’s AIM profile, and I was laughing out loud at it. I’ve lived in Stuarts Draft for thirteen years now, which means that most of my life has been spent in this area. Some of it is just SO true, while other parts of it are a stretch. So here goes.
You know you’re from the valley if…
- You think the traffic on 340 at 5pm on a Friday is a major traffic jam.
- If you go to Wal-Mart and you see at least 10 people that you know pretty well.
- The smell of manure makes you homesick.
- When people ask where you’re from and you never give the specific town… but somewhere about 30 miles away (Charlottesville,
Harrisonburg). - When you’re showing an outsider the town, they’re shocked that so many people wave in
passing… even though you don’t know half of them. - Two words POTATO GUN.
- If you remember shopping at Roses or skating at TRB’s in Waynesboro.
- If the Stuarts Draft Fireman’s Lawn Party and parade was a must.
- If you remember when 340 (through Stuarts Draft) was a two-lane road.
- You had a heart attack when we got TWO Wal-Marts!
- “Bring your tractor to school day” was a regular part of spirit week.
- You went to the Frontier Culture Museum for a field trip every year in elementary school.
- Wright’s Dairy Rite, a movie, and Wal-Mart is the ideal date.
- “Stuarts Draft” is pronounced as one word.
- You’re driving down the road and you smell cow manure, you don’t roll your window up, you just breathe it in.
- One of the cliques at your school was the “Aggies.”
- Your parents had the same teachers in school you did.
Interesting, no?
Categories: Amusing, Stuarts Draft
When I did the photo set, I never thought I was going to be documenting the last days of the complex…
3 minute read
June 19, 2005, 4:27 AM
When I shot the photos that comprised the two-part photo set Afton Mountain: Victim of Progress, I never really thought that what I was documenting would disappear so quickly. The focus of the photo set was threefold, if you recall:
Howard Johnson’s Restaurant
Continue reading…Categories: Afton Mountain, Howard Johnson's, JMU, Virginia local news
What’s wrong with this picture?
2 minute read
March 3, 2005, 11:26 AM
Categories: Amusing, Internet, Stuarts Draft
Skyline Parkway Motel… people were charged!
< 1 minute read
August 7, 2004, 1:04 AM
An update regarding the recent fire at the Skyline Parkway Motel…
Turns out that it was arson, which we were not surprised about. And the building is a total loss. Also not a surprise. The surprise is how old the three suspects are. There are two 16-year-olds and one 17-year-old charged with the Class 4 felony of setting fire to an unoccupied dwelling. I’d have thought it would have been people who were at least legally adults, rather than kids. But go figure. Anyway, though, since they are children in the eyes of the law, or as the law calls them, “juveniles”, their names were not released.
I understand why their names were not released, but I so want to put the “Nick and Adam” theory to rest. Recall that some days before the fire, the previously-blank sign in front of the motel read “NICK AND ADAM”. Recall this from a previous journal entry:
I so want to put that theory to rest and either have it be the case or not be the case, because I really want to see if people are actually stupid enough in real life to prominently place their name on the crime scene, showing to the world how stupid they are. Just remember… never underestimate the power and speed of stupid.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Skyline Parkway Motel
Photos of the Skyline Parkway Motel fire, and some other stuff
5 minute read
July 15, 2004, 1:56 PM
First of all, before I start showing you photos, guess who I saw on Tuesday afternoon at Wal-Mart. I saw Mrs. Kucs (pronounced “kooch”), my sixth grade math teacher at Stuarts Draft Middle School. That was a lot of fun. She’s retired now, so I don’t see her around SDMS when I go visit. Still, Mrs. Kucs was a great teacher. The one phrase that has stayed with me that I learned from Mrs. Kucs was “That will be fifty whacks with a wet noodle!” All in all, great math teacher, and it was great to see Mrs. Kucs again.
Anyway, after seeing Mrs. Kucs as I was leaving work, I headed out to Afton Mountain and then beyond. Going to Afton, I went by way of downtown Waynesboro, because I had a few other photo spots I wanted to hit on the way. For one, the “scar” on the mountain in Waynesboro:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Charlottesville, Howard Johnson's, Middle school, Skyline Parkway Motel, Waynesboro
It was nice while it lasted…
3 minute read
July 11, 2004, 10:38 AM
Remember this?
For those of you who don’t know, this is the Skyline Parkway Motel, which, along with the Howard Johnson’s Restaurant, and the Skyline Parkway Motor Court, I photographed on September 10, 2003 for the Afton Mountain: Victim of Progress photo set.
Things have changed since then.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Skyline Parkway Motel, Virginia local news
Strange group of people with weed eaters in the neighborhood…
< 1 minute read
May 25, 2004, 9:20 PM
Yes, Sis and I encountered a strange group of people across the street from the house today. They were using weed eaters to weed-eat the area around the creek that runs near our house. Still, we were trying to figure out what this group was. Most of the people were wearing blue pants with a red stripe down the leg. These same people also wore bright orange T-shirts, the official don’t-run-me-down color.
Then there was also a person there in a blue work shirt, and a uniformed officer from somewhere. I couldn’t make out the uniform, and I wasn’t going to break out the binoculars.
We figured it was likely that these people were inmates of somewhere, considering the bright orange shirts plus the uniformed officer. But then I thought that the sign of inmates was the that the guy supervising was always very obviously holding a large shotgun. Plus, think of the children! This is a residential neighborhood, and I didn’t think they could use inmates in a residential neighborhood.
Still, it was definitely an odd sight seeing all these people running weed eaters at once.
Categories: Stuarts Draft