But, Officer...

Just before we left on the next trip, Bob and I listened to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree by Arlo Guthrie, a seminal protest song about the Vietnam War. As a fan of Arlo and his father, the great Woody Guthrie, I am going to steal one of the characters from the song for this next report.

Our first stop was in Radford Virginia to spend a few days with our granddaughter Morgan and her guy, Jake. Two of our favorite people. They are both in their senior year at Radford, assuming the school can weather the corona virus, which has been quite a challenge there. Like many colleges, they saw an immediate uptick in cases once school began, although they seem to be coming down now. Morgan and Jake have both had episodes of friends testing positive and they have so far tested negative and been very diligent about masking and distancing.

We arrived in Radford on a Saturday night, always a fun evening in a college town. The streets were packed with young people in various stages of social distancing, mostly none. Penny is always the center of attention, and it was no different as we crawled up the street to Morgan’s house. Shouts of ‘awesome car, dude’ and ‘rev it’ split the evening. One young man walked up to us and pronounced Penny a ‘cool whip’, which we had to be told later meant a car, and not the frozen non-dairy product.

As we approached Morgan’s house, we were astonished to see that a police car had pulled up behind us and put on his lights. What had we done? We had not been speeding, didn’t run over anyone, stopped at all the stop signs. I won’t deny that we were an attractive nuisance and had stirred up all the kids we passed, but surely that was not a crime.

We stopped and waited and sure enough Officer Obie (naming cred to Arlo) approached the car and asked for Bob’s license and owner’s card. I never know where my owner’s card is, but Bob was able to quickly produce his. “What is the problem, Officer?” Officer Obie, a man of few words, simply said we were blocking traffic, took the paperwork and returned to the cruiser. Morgan and Jake, who by now had come off their porch to see what all this was about, were equally clueless as to our offense. Of course, at this point, both Penny and Officer Obie’s cruiser were indeed blocking traffic. Not that it mattered to the seemingly dozens of kids who now started to arrive to see both Penny and what was going on. Radford is a small town, and lots of phone cameras were out.

Finally, after Officer Obie had confirmed that we were not psycho killers nor wanted for bank robbery, he returned to give us a ticket, tell us that we could return to lodge any protest on October 29, and thanked us for being so respectful, which of course we were. The kids thought it was a parking ticket, and the fine would be about $25. However, when we checked the code cited, we learned we had failed to obey a traffic sign and that the offense would carry a $95 fine and three points! I suspect Officer Obie had determined that anyone driving that car could afford this. And Bob is mostly upset about the points. I do consider this a case of police overreach, but we will decide whether to return and have our day in court. We took lots of pictures at the scene of the crime, and noted that the only traffic sign was a no parking sign about 35 feet from where we were stopped. We were not parked in any case.

Morgan and Jake later told us the whole episode had gone viral on the various social media sites in Radford. For the remainder of our visit, everyone in town seemed to know about the notorious Penny and the traffic stop (which would be a good name for rock band).

The next day, Morgan, Jake, Bob and I went to visit Floyd, Virginia. Floyd is located on the Blue Ridge Plateau and is a great place to spend a few hours. We were there on a Sunday, and many of the shops are closed so plan to go on a weekday or Saturday. But there were plenty of restaurants and shops open and we had a great breakfast at the Floyd Country Store. The store has a stage and, on many evenings, has bluegrass bands. There are beautiful handmade instruments, tee shirts and all sorts of Floyd arts and crafts. They also have the world’s largest collection of bluegrass music and will be happy to send you some. Listen to the Floyd Country Radio Hour podcast for more information. We also shopped in the Troika Contemporary Crafts and the Cocoa Mia chocolate shop. Floyd is billed as a hippie town and I suppose that is accurate as far as it goes, but it seemed to me to be a town of independent thinkers who love art and music and just want to take life down a few notches. In these very troubled times, that sounded like an excellent idea to me.

That night we added one of Morgan and Jake’s roommates, Carol, to our little band and went to a restaurant in Christiansburg called the Farmhouse. The steaks were great, perfectly cooked, our waiter was lots of fun, and we were introduced to 19 Crimes Wine from Australia. The corks are collectable and we got the cork for crime number 1, Grand Larceny theft above 1 shilling. Carol is now the keeper of the cork. We will collect the rest and hope to find the one for blocking traffic in a small college town.

Next we head to Robbinsville, NC and the Tail of the Dragon.