A couple of days ago, I came across one of Buck Rumpf's columns, from last month, one in which he addressed whether
Clifton Forge Main Street should be allowed to host a “beer garden”, as part of its “Fun Friday” festivities. I must have been in one of my “curse and confound Horton P Beirne and all his works” sort of moods and seem to have missed it, when it first ran in his daily. After eleven column inches of helpful advice on how to stop the proposed sale of alcohol at the event, Buck claimed that he would take the “easy way out”, suggesting that if people continued to attend, all well and good, but if people “stay away, you can bet the beer issue will be dead”.
Personally, I think the
easy way out would have been to say nothing about the issue at all, but time seems to have proven the shadowy Mr Rumpf at least partially correct and only a month after he wrote the issue really does seem dead. I had reckoned the community was not ready for the idea of alcohol at a public event, so imagine my surprise when, about an hour or so before this month's “Fun Friday”,
we ran into Wilma McClung and were told a beer garden was on the program once again.
After a leisurely dinner at
Jack Mason's, I was more inclined toward a quiet nap on the back porch, but civic duty called and, collecting our camp chairs from the car, Carolinita and I headed up Ridgeway for our fair share of the beer-soaked debauchery.
Wilma said that Mercer would be playing and, as we approached, there on the stage stood a man I immediately recognized, though until that moment I did not have a name to go with the face. One of the more charming – or perhaps maddening – aspects of small-town life is that everyone knows everyone, at least by sight. You simply cannot go about your business in a place this size without seeing, and being seen, by the same folks, over and over again. There are people here that I have waved-at every few days or so for years, without ever knowing their names.
An excellent case in point is Mercer Johnson, who lives within spitting distance of here. I have known him for years, but unfortunately only as “that carpenter guy”. Little did I know that he was also a drummer in the Silverbacks, the band that entertained us that Friday.
All in all, it was a pleasant evening, despite the constant threat of rain. The crowd was not excessive, but genuinely seemed to enjoy themselves. There were hot dogs and ice cream for sale. We set up our chairs near the top of the bank plaza, with a clear view of both the stage and the beer garden.
That fellow in the purple shirt is our mayor, Mr Don Carter, caught here by our candid photographer in mid-debauch. Originally, C and I were sitting more or less to ourselves, but we were soon joined by the McClungs and other neighbors, at least one of whom had only just moved to our street. I saw Butch Reid there, owner of the Antique Mall, in Lexington. We noted how well our neighborhood was represented at the event and then he proceeded to rap me for missing the 105th-birthday bash for the
Masonic Theatre, 4th of July weekend. He had a point.
With all due respect to Buck Rumpf, his concerns do not seem well-founded, at least not in retrospect. The crowd I saw was entirely peaceable and family-friendly. There were children and parents with little ones in strollers everywhere one looked. There were probably more people outside the beer garden than in it, but I am certain that the only thing that might have kept people away was the threat of rain – and rain it did, though thankfully not until nearly 9:00 and the end of the show.
The next “Fun Friday” is August 27th and we are looking forward to it.
My beloved is downstairs making pesto. We bought a little goat cheese and fresh pita bread, yesterday, so looks like we shall be having pesto ‘pizzas’ for dinner this evening, with capers and sliced Roma tomatoes picked fresh from the vines out front.
I think it is difficult to imagine a more tasty time of year. We were late getting our tomatoes in the ground this year. I no longer recall why, but I do not think we have suffered for it.
Where Carolina grew up, there was an abundance of fresh seafood and the tastes of those early years left her with a life-long love of fish and shellfish of most every kind. A favorite these days are mussels and when she found out that Stephen Greenblatt, down at Vic's Family Restaurant, serves them up steamed on his menu each night she just had to try them.
I just love these coat hooks and this shot turned out better than I expected, if I do say so myself, especially considering the low-light conditions and a glass of their eminently drinkable house chardonnay. Much of the original Art Deco interior seems to be intact at Vic's, too, and I find these little details enchanting. It is a style that survived in many places, when I was a child, but seems to have been largely renovated into oblivion in the decades since.
The view from our front porch, peeling paint and all. That charming, 1860s Victorian belongs to our friends Karen and Steve. I took this one a week ago last Sunday, after a shower.
I love that view. After a summer rain, with shreds of cloud tangled in the trees like that, I think it looks just magical. I fell in love with my back porch the first time I sat there, about nineteen-years ago.
That is dill in the foreground and, in the back, that lavender looking stuff is Russian sage. Both are kind of leggy and tend to flop over, every time it rains. On the plus side, when you brush against either one they smell heavenly, so I do not mind them falling over so much.
This is Back Creek, just south of beautiful Mountain Grove, Virginia. We usually drive up Route 42, along the Cowpasture River to Millboro, and then take Route 39 west. The drive is gorgeous and takes about an hour from Clifton Forge.
My sister and I spent a lot of our childhood splashing around in that creek, in the swimming hole on the Ryder farm, a couple of miles upstream, here in the ford, and further downstream at the Landes Hole, where our Grandaddy Mike would take us on lazy summer days. I think our parents may have even taken us even further downstream, to the Piet Hole, but I could be wrong. Carolina and I have gone swimming there and in early summer there are parts that are over our heads today.
Tiny Brandywines, in this case. It has been so hot I am half-surprised they set fruit.
We had dinner at Jack Mason's Tavern, last Friday, and as we arrived our friend and neighbor Wilma McClung was just leaving, hurrying home with a “Cobb Wrap” for husband Tom. After we exchanged the usual pleasantries, she asked whether we were staying for “Fun Friday”, but all I could do was stare at her blankly.
Looks like rain, today.
Echinacea purpurea, growing in a flower bed out front. Carolina bought this one at Greenbrier Nurseries. The label said it was a white cultivar and obviously the label lied.
