The magazine debuts a new column this issue—one that goes deep inside the places where we live, the places we come to love.
It’s a pretty good version of the “You know you’re getting old when . . .” joke lead-in line. In this case. . . “when you’ve been alive for more than half of the existence of a Virginia mountain town.”
Actually, in the case of Radford, where my mother was born and I spent childhood summers, a Virginia mountain city, as Radford, with a population of about 17,000, was, as my late grandfather loved to point out decades back, the second-largest Virginia city by square miles.
The era of annexation has since pushed Radford down that list a few notches. And whatever its official identity, Radford is a mountain town. As in one main street, albeit with two separate business districts. As in a pretty riverside park, one high school, one movie theater and a tendency to rely on one major employer.
The first of those—around the time of the 1892 founding—was the Norfolk & Western Railway. And in the 1950s-’60s era of my childhood visits, the Lynchburg Foundry Company, where my grandfather was employed.
Neither of those, nor their descendants or vestiges, shows up on the list of Radford’s current top-50 employers, the last three of which are Papa John’s Pizza, Domino’s Pizza and Moe’s Southwest Grill. At the top is Radford University.
All of which is to make the point that the “town” I know best is not so different from so many in our seven-state coverage area—built along a river, and around an industry that has likely long-since left it behind.
Which is where our new column comes in: Our Blue Ridge Towns, first edition of which appears in this issue, will explore one such place each issue. Its writer, Joan Vannorsdall, is not only a decades-long contributor to this magazine, but also the author of two novels, and op-eds in the Washington Post and New York Times, as well as a member of the Alleghany County, Virginia Board of Supervisors.
And oh yeah, a person with as keen a sense of place as anyone. With that passion manifesting itself perhaps most acutely in her former and chosen-again-later hometown of Clifton Forge, Virginia.
Joan will be wandering the mountain regions of all seven of our coverage-area states, learning the soul of towns so that we may too. The next few are lined up, but if you have a reason to champion this town or that to fall under Joan’s keen eye, I hope you’ll let us know: krheinheimer@leisuremedia360.com. Thanks.
