May 18, 2024
Saturday’s highlight is the Farmer’s Market, which is conveniently at the end of our street. Starting at 8:00 gave us time to have coffee and sweet rolls as well as cleaning up our trailers. As a good will gesture, people can go into our trailers and check them out like an open house. We also find it interesting to go and see what other Airstreamers have with their trailers. Martha had new bedspreads made, which we were quite proud of.
It’s a great Farmer’s Market – not too big, not too small, but with great variety. Martha made two trips. My college roommate, Doug Schnabel, came up from Nashville for a visit, so we stood in front of the trailer talking while people came to take a look. It had been raining, so they were very polite about not wanting to walk all the way through. Two couples stayed to talk a while. They were friends who had come to watch the play. One lady was in the Marines for 27 years, so we called our neighbor across the street who had also been a Marine. They talked in terms we didn’t understand and told stories about 46’s, which we finally learned were helicopters that had a habit of crashing. Our neighbor, Richard, had flown helicopters, told about a 46 going into a combat area to pick up a squad, but they refused to get on, saying, “We’d rather fight the enemy than get on that thing!” Then they asked where they were stationed and what their duties were. David said he was SecNav while she was there. We later learned that was Secretary of the Navy.
Then Doug took us for a tour around town. He had raised his family in Abingdon, and they still have a house here. He had a sawmill for about 8 years until he sold it. He showed us where it used to be and the machine shop which was so valuable for his business. A few weeks ago he had walked into the building and was attacked by two German Shepards that tore him up pretty good before the owners came out. We drove through his neighborhood, then through a rather high end development on a golf course. He took us through a lot of places we hadn’t seen. Then he took us to his ice cream store, “The Ice Cream Stop,” which he owned for four years before selling it. We went in to see it and give it a try, and it was very good. We told the young lady with a Virginia shirt on that Doug was the original owner who had built the building. That brought a big smile to her face. Turns out she had just finished her freshman year at UVA.
We had dinner at the Greek restaurant on the corner, having a nice dinner and solving all the world’s problems. Walking back, we toured a large, new business that Doug called a yuppie grocery store. He wondered if there were enough to support such a business. We would continue our conversations in the morning.
