The Floyd Country Store

The Floyd Country Store sign is a beacon for cloggers, pickers and fans of bluegrass music.

When I lived in Virginia, I used to go to Floyd twice a month to eat at Oddfellas Cantina and go to the Friday Night Jamboree at The Floyd Country Store. I’ve been telling Lauren about it for years and we’ve never had the chance to go, but, much to her delight, I finally took her to Floyd for an evening of great food and great music.

If you’ve never been, Floyd is an interesting town. Nestled in the midst of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it has managed to embrace a couple of decade’s worth of artists, hippies, and back-to-the-earth farmers while staying true to its traditions. Friday night is and always has been one of those traditions.

On Friday night, the farmers, artists, teen and grandparents dust off banjos and fiddles, clogs and taps and come into town for the Friday Night Jamboree at The Floyd Country Store. By day, The Floyd Country Store is a fully operating country store with a lunch counter, barrels of candy and sundries. On Friday nights, they push the racks to the walls and clear out a dance floor in front of the stage built into the back of the store. Bluegrass and Old Time musicians come from all over to perform at the Friday Night Jamboree, and everyone, and I mean everyone, dances, sways, taps and sings along with the bands.

The stage at The Floyd Country Store Friday Night Jamboree.

My favorite thing about it is how it brings the community together. You think of bluegrass as the music of an old white man, but the dance floor at the Friday Night Jamboree says otherwise. A seemingly disinterested teen is suddenly clogging with her mother and grandmother–three generations of women cloggers keeping perfect rhythm with the bass, heel and toe taps filling the places where the drums would be. A black farmer chews his tobacco and twirls, feet flying, on his face–ecstasy as he shakes off the dust of his day. Grandmothers too frail to dance tap their feet and sway in their seats. Around the walls, newcomers coax one another onto the floor for a song or two.

On the dancefloor at the Friday Night Jamboree.

Outside, the streets are filled with impromptu jam sessions. In alleys, on corners and tailgates, in parking lots and storefronts strangers stop to lend their voice or guitar or fiddle or banjo to the chorus.

In an alley beside The Floyd Country Store, a group of musicians sing gospel hymns and pick for their own joy, nevertheless, a crowd forms and they play for ours.

Waiting to jump in.

Banjo and bass join an alleyway jam session.

Fiddling in earnest.

When the night finally draws to an end, The Floyd Country Store closes up shop and everyone heads home for another week and another Friday Night Jamboree.

The Floyd Country Store at closing time.

Writing in the Rain

While Lauren and I were on Bald Head Island for the North Carolina Food and Wine Weekend I got to thinking, what is there to do on Bald Head Island in the rain? A couple of days later I got a call asking for an entry for the Bald Head Island Limited Blog. Check out my list here.

And while you’re at it, check out the picture of Old Baldy I took.

Old Baldy during a break in the storm.

On the Blue Ridge Parkway

My wife, Lauren, and I went to visit my family in West Virginia over Labor Day. To get from Wilmington, NC to Logan, WV you have to endure two things: 1) Interstate 40, one of the most boring drives ever, and 2) an eight and a half hour drive, half of which is on I-40. Sirius Satellite Radio makes both of these things better, but the trip is still long and dull. We decided to break up the trip and stay at a bed and breakfast in Floyd, VA and enjoy the Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store (more on that later). To get there we took the Blue Ridge Parkway for the last hour of the drive and it could not have been better. The scenery is beautiful and the temperature dropped 12 degrees when we got into the mountains. Here are some pictures from the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge Parkway from our car.

Barns and a wide-open blue sky.

Groundhog Hill is one of the greatest names ever.

Those groundhogs get all the best real estate.

The little barn on Groundhog Hill.

A fawn by the road stopped long enough for this.

Haybales.

North Carolina Food and Wine Weekend on Bald Head Island

My wife and I went to a wine dinner at the NC Food and Wine Weekend on Bald Head Island and I wrote about it for the Bald Head Island blog. I’ll write a little more about it later.

Going Green, The Old Thing To Do

Go Green–A popular slogan that’s become nothing more than a marketing ploy to most people, producers and consumers alike.

I keep thinking about how I can “go green” in my everyday life. The idea of getting all new Energy Star appliances, installing a solar hot water system or replacing all of our windows with new, energy efficient ones is just financially out of reach. I still get 30+ mpg out of my 2000 Ford Focus. My wife and I use our own bags at the grocery store, we visit our local farmers’ market religiously, we grew our own herbs and vegetables this summer (and we’re going to try growing some lettuce this fall) and I recently bought two rain barrels from Coastal Water Watch in Brunswick County, NC. These are small steps, and, with the exception of the car, steps backward rather than forward in our effort to go green.

Think about it. Producing your own food, buying vegetables that are locally grown, saving rainwater to use later. These are all very old-fashioned ways of going green, and all very easy ones. Last night as I watered our flowers and herbs using, for the first time, water from the rain barrels, I couldn’t help but feel good about what I was doing. I didn’t go to the water hose and waste the money, time, energy and chemicals to use the city’s water, I just used what I had collected. Houses used to have cisterns and water collection points, and farmers and ranchers still rely on gathering rain to water their crops and livestock, but we’ve gotten away from that for some reason. Using my rain barrels has me wondering what other steps backward can I take to be a little more green and a little more conscious of my impact. Something tells me that neither my wife nor my neighbors would appreciate a chicken coop in the back yard, but I can expand my farmers’ market purchases to include eggs. I think I’ll try that. Maybe the egg people have those crazy green ones.

Death Valley Poem 2

Ubehebe Crater to Teakettle Junction

Near the edge, a gust of wind
pushes a butterfly beyond the rim.
Seven hundred feet of clear air to the bottom.

Fighter jets    silver
streaking                    gone behind Tin Mountain
back again      looping one
around the other.

Coyote cross the road ahead.
First one
then one and one and another
six total, crossing with heads down.

With each mile the air gets cooler, but
foreign, still: too sharp, sound becomes
animate, and in this clear cool air I can see too far.

Death Valley Poem

Teakettle Junction to Racetrack Playa

Dozen and a half teakettles hanging like moons.
They carry the afternoon heat like a handful of bees.
A wind-chewed sign at the center of their orbit.

Six miles to the impossible furrows of my dreams. The last
time I saw them I read their lines like a palm.

Here in the crook of these radioactive mountains,
the lakebed holds nothing but rocks and the rocks
hold nothing but the secrets of their inertia.