Linda Kay Simmons and her grandgirl, Bella, at Linda's father's grave.

A Young Girl's First Visit with Great Grandad

My best girl, Linda Kay Simmons, took her grandgirl, two-year-old Bella, on an introduction visit to her late father, Joe Simmons, a decorated corporal in the Marine Corps during World War II. Joe fought at the battle of Guadalcanal, among others, and later was the GM of the Vinton Weaving Mill for many years.

Keeping up with Bella's enthusiasm for something she can't understand yet was a major job, but she loved carrying the small flags and wearing her great-grandfather's hat. Linda was proud of it all. Here are some photos to give you an idea of what it looked like.

 

Lee Anthony stands before his father's grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Roanoke.

Honoring a Veteran From the Distant Past

Linda took her grandgirl, Bella, to visit her late father's grave today, Veteran's Day, and during our stay, I ran into 89-year-old Lee Anthony.

Mr. Anthony, too, was celebrating Veteran's Day and his father's part in it. The senior Lee Anthony was wounded at the Battle of the Argonne Forest in Oct., 1918, just weeks before the war's end. The junior Anthony today was wearing a replica of his father's uniform, down to the chevrons and medals, including a Purple Heart.

Mr. Anthony, a 30-year Naval Reserve veteran, had been a speaker earlier in the day in downtown Roanoke at the ceremony honoring veterans. His has been quite the military family, beginning with his grandfather serving in the Civil War. His dad was named for Robert E. Lee and A.P. Hill, both Southern generals.

 

Mill Mountain Theatre's Ginger Poole

Electronic Playbills, Programs: An Explanation

Yesterday, I noted the confusion many of us are undergoing with the electronic Playbills and game-day program for sports events. Ginger Poole of Mill Mountain Theatre had a lovely response, so I thought I'd share it here.

Here you go:

Happy to speak to this to offer some help and clarification.

MMT chose to go with a digital playbill this season to help eliminate touchpoints with our front-of-house due to COVID. This was a choice of safety and not a choice of saving expenses.

We have gone to scanning tickets versus tearing stubs and this was one more step to help curb the passing of paper between front-of-house volunteers and patrons. When our patrons purchase any ticket they are sent an email confirmation and reminders as their show date gets closer. In this email, we remind patrons of showtimes, parking suggestions, reminders that they may change their tickets at any time without any fees, and also a link to look at the playbills early if they choose. 

The QR codes go live the day of the first preview performance. Once you are at the theatre there are three ways to access the playbill: 

1) Try the QR Code provided. This is new for many of us and it may take a couple of tries. MMT even puts this on the QR code sheet. You may need to turn on the QR code feature on your phone and try again if you have not used this before. 

2) We give the guest a WiFi code in case your phone asks for this info. It is on the poster. 

3) The third way is to go to the MMT website, www.millmountain.org, and from your phone click on the logo from the show that you are seeing and simply click VIEW MARQUIS. This is found under the title of the show and the dates of the run of the show. This is a direct link that takes you to the digital Playbill. 

You can also access it from your home computer at any time after you have seen a show by going to the show ticket logo and clicking VIEW MARQUIS from your desktop, laptop, or tablet. 

We keep all of these on our website for archives. If a show has already closed and you want to access the playbill simply look up the show in the PAST PRODUCTIONS section. 

If someone does not have access to a phone we have simple one-pager versions with the basic info on it at the theatre if the patron needs it. 

There is also an awesome feature with the software of the digital playbills. It uses reverse black and white text and dims your phone if you need to read during the performance without disturbing those around you. It uses white text on a black background versus black text on the glowing white background. 

It is also very easy to detect if someone is taking photos or recording the show versus reading the digital playbill. We have folks that monitor from the back of the house to see if anyone is doing this without permission. We also have actors that tell the Assistant Stage Manager when they come off stage. They can see and tell when someone is recording. 

We do ask for folks to share that they are at MMT and to use our hashtag, #MeetMeAtMillMountain while they are at the theatre. This is a fantastic connector for us and we have been doing this for several years before trying the digital playbill for our 2021 season to help with COVID. 

We ask patrons to silence their phones during the performance, not turn them off. 

I hope this helps to understand more of the why we chose to do this for this season. We thought about this seriously before making the change, knowing that it would be new to many. We try to offer all of the ways to help our patrons and to provide the information that they are looking for on a production. 

 

The W&L senior football players and their parents being introduced behind us.

A Fall Weekend to Remember (Football, Opera and Thailand)

The Princess and I had quite the weekend, one of firsts and bests.

The first was the opera "Bluebeard's Castle" at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke, my initial venture into an opera that wasn't spelled "Opry," as in Grand Ole Opry.

Opera Roanoke staged it and I promised Linda I'd go if she'd swap me a football game for it. She agreed, but she's seen football before (twice, reluctantly both times). Fair deal, I thought.

As it turned out, each of us enjoyed ourselves immensely. The opera was dark, bloody, suspenseful and surprising to me because it only had two singers involved. My impression of opera was that of Banana Republic palace guards ganging up on a fat lady. This one was contemporary, thoughtful, damn well written and a heck of a lot more entertaining than I expected.

The football game (Washington and Lee vs. Ferrum, played in Lexington) had some of those aspects since W&L was playing for its conference championship and a berth in the NCAA Division III playoffs. It won, narrowly. In fact the Generals have won four games by four points or fewer and lost its opener by four. Edge-of-the-seat team, kinda like an opera.

Linda and I celebrated our weekend with a lunch break at a delightful restaurant on Main Street, Dhan Napa Thai. We both ate pad Thai (our favorite Thai dish) and I said bluntly that it was the best I've ever eaten. It was prepared slightly differently than I am accustomed to (with veggies chopped into the noodles), though that was just fine.

The Princess and I came away smiling. We do have a good time. Her

This is Napa Thai, our new favorite Thai restaurant. 

The Princess was drop-dead gorgeous at the Opera.

I got gussied-up, too.

The football attire was more functional and comfy.

This bridge leads to the W&L football stadium, of which I am so fond.

Not a big crowd, but huge fun and very competitive.

Pampa and the Princess chowing down.

This was a week or so ago at Mill Mountain Theatre for "The Crooners."

My best girl, looking pretty. 

Here's what good pad Thai looks like.

No, I didn't eat two lunches.

Linda liked the artwork ...

... especially my buddy, Buddah.

The Ferrum football team exits the stadium after a disappointing loss.

Today's haul.

The Perfect Biscuit? Kroger Had It, but Not Scratch

I'm a biscuit guy. Have been since Mom put whole trays of them into the oven about 6 a.m. daily and woke her brood of kids with their smell and that of frying bacon or sausage. Mom's biscuits were high, light and fluffy. She put together a batch in minutes cautioning against over-kneading ("Six times is enough," she often said).

I searched for Mom's fluffies for years, but finally gave up, and then Hardee's came along with a pretty good approximation. Its biscuits always tasted like they were deep-fried in butter and lightly salted (Bojangles has a similar one). I doubt if that's true, but the taste was/is good, even if that's not what your heart wants. The Hardee's and Bojangles' biscuits also introduced me to the crispy crust, which I adore. Mom's weren't crisp.

Then came the Kroger biscuit: big, crusty, fluffy inside, enormously tasty, the perfect complement to my homemade sausage gravy or to bacon, or egg, or sausage, or anything else you wanted on them. 

They were so good that I decided Thanksgiving breakfast would be preferable to Thanksgiving lunch or dinner, especially if these biscuits were at the center. So, annually, I'd invite my son's family for breakfast on Turkey Day and I'd order a dozen biscuits from the Kroger bakery guys. My son, Evan, and I would eat about six biscuits each, soaked in gravy. It was heaven.

But Kroger stopped making the biscuits a couple of years ago, breaking my heart, and my search began again.

For some time now, I've heard people recommend Scratch Biscuit on Memorial Avenue in Roanoke, an independent little restaurant with some interesting biscuit sandwich concoctions. Me? All I want is a good biscuit, so I thought I'd try it out this morning, right after my dental appointment. Clean teeth are necessary for biscuit eating in my world.

I ordered two with butter and paid $4.47 for them, quite a stiff price, I'd say. The Kroger biscuits were about 33 cents each. When I opened the Scratch bag, I noted that the biscuits were not buttered and there was no butter in the bag.

The biscuits were acceptable, if not exemplary. The exterior was just about perfectly crisp, but the inside was mushy and damp, not my idea of a championship biscuit. So, I'll keep searching. 

 

The Princess found this old sofa irresistible, much as I found her. 

A Photo Stop at an Abandoned House in the Woods

Linda Kay and I stumbled into an aging and crumbling--and very large--home on one of the mountains we crossed yesterday while exploring some old moonshine roads in Franklin and Floyd Counties.

The impetus was to travel some of the roads Linda outlined in her marvelous novel, "Cahas Mountain," and we did. But this was a special stop, one full of ghosts, memories and tall tales. Here are the photos. 

Linda poses in her glittering jacket outside the abandoned home.

Fabric blows in the wind outside. 

Princess likes me hiding in the kudzu. 

Linda Kay shot this. I like it. 

 

Vistas like this were the rule yesterday in Floyd and Franklin Counties.

A Fall Day To Remember in the Blue Ridge Mountains

The Princess and I took Sunday for ourselves and went exploring, this time following the paths of the moonshiners in her most popular novel, "Cahas Mountain." She warned that my headlights and taillights might meet on some of the roads and she didn't exaggerate. When the road wasn't going straight up, it was often bending my VW frame.

But beautiful? Memorably beautiful. The light was perfect nearly all day and the leaves at the mountain base were at peak and they moved toward winter as we climbed the mountains.

We stopped at an abandoned home on the way up to take some atmospheric photos and they worked out very well (see next blog post).

Let me also mention American Pie, the little restaurant/bar just outside Floyd where we stopped briefly. Linda Kay had a piece of scrumptious homemade apple pie and I ate one of the best hamburgers/French fries I've had in memory. The burger was locally sourced, cooked to perfection (well done, but still juicy) and had fresh lettuce, tomatoes and red onions to dress it). I was happy with this.

We were both thrilled at this day and shared our joy at living in one of the very real garden spots on earth. Here is some more of what it looked like. 

This mill wheel was on a homestead near the top of the mountain. 

Roads like this faced us and provided the day's entertainment. 

This is the watercolor (PhotoShop) version of one of my photos.

I just love this place: an art gallery in an old filling station.