virginia!

Drew and I are back from Virginia. I had a pleasant and relaxing week. We visited friends, finally finished his tattoo (well we didn't, but the tattoo artist did), and ate at the Waffle House 3 times! Does it get any better than that?

We took a little tour of Floyd with Drew's parents, taking a drive along the parkway. His parents live in Floyd County, and Floyd is in rural southwestern Virginia. Fall was in the air; the leaves were starting to change colors and there are pumpkins in the store! We stopped at the Mabry Mill and had a nice walk around.

Then we headed to the Floyd Country Store for the Friday Night Jamboree. The Floyd Country Store is pretty much what it sounds like: a country store. It sells kitchen gadgets, outdoor gear, children's toys, music, books and cookbooks, and foods like jams, molasses, apple butters, and hushpuppy mixes. There is a small section where you can get prepared food, baked goods, and ice cream.

The Friday Night Jamboree features three bands that each play for an hour to an hour and a half. It draws a good crowd, but one with an average age of about 65 years old. For the first hour, I think that Drew and I were the youngest ones there. After about an hour, more people arrived, including a few tourists and a handful of others who were in our age range.

The crowd wasn't that diverse, but there were people who embodied many Southern and rural stereotypes. I saw a kid wearing a camo hat with a fish hook and a Ford symbol. Three stereotypes rolled into one! I saw a couple guys wearing shirts with confederate flags. I saw a couple other guys wearing t-shirts, with the sleeves cut off. And, this might be the best one, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a confederate flag, sleeves cut off, a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a huge gap between his two front teeth. I overheard him talking, and I couldn't decipher his words. The only way for me to describe his thick accent is to say that he spoke some form of "banjo." There is no other way to describe it.

Although I found the crowd and the people-watching amusing, the bluegrass music and the dancing was equally entertaining. The dance floor was packed with people clogging, which kind of looks like a lot of stomping around combined with tap dancing. Oh and clogging isn't gendered either; women and men alike clog. Tap shoes seemed to be the preferred clogging footwear, even among the men. (but you can do it without the tap shoes too)

I had a great time, and I would definitely go to the Friday Night Jamboree again. It was quite the place to be, or as Drew said, the ONLY place to be. And now I will leave you with this funny joke, told by one of the musicians:

My friend was visiting me in Asheville, from Boston. (by the way, any time a joke starts off with "my friend from [insert Northern city/state here] was visiting me," you know that humor will come at the expense of the Yankee) It was around Christmas time, and everywhere we went in Asheville, we saw nativity scenes with 3 firemen instead of 3 wise men. She asked me why the firemen replaced the wise men, and I said I didn't know, having lived in Asheville for only a short period of time. Finally, she asked a local, who said "Don't you Yankees read the bible? It says that 3 wise men came from afar!"

Get it? Get it? "Came from afar!" Say it aloud. Hahahahaha!