I don't like Virginia. There's no good reason to dislike a state, but from the very first time Mark insisted on driving to Virginia, I was unhappy with the prospect. And I pouted. And I do not pout! Was it because it's a long drive to nowhere and we always get home really late, hungry, and tired because there is no restaurant, restroom, or interesting store or parks or historic places? All of the above!
Our North Carolina home lies in the northwest corner of the state, called the tri-state area, sharing a corner with Tennessee and Virginia. If we cross the NC border to the south, we go to Elizabethton, TN, with Big John's Closeout, a huge clearance store for home building supplies where we go to gaze at storm doors and fancy kitchen faucets, and there's a great pizza buffet and they have Big Lots, where I optimistically buy apple saplings that never survive. To the west is Johnson City, TN with shopping malls and lots of good restaurants. We pass through both of these cities when we go to the tiny airport that services our area. Tennessee has the Tennessee Valley Authority, where they dammed up and flooded valleys to "electrify the whole state". We go look at the amazing sight and quote lines from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou". There are wonderful wild plants to gather and transplant. I have Tiger Lillies and a prolific Wild Iris garden, all culled from inviting TN roadsides. Tennessee has purpose.
Mark gets a thrill from crossing state borders. I don't get it. I want purpose! Instead, we cruise lovely rolling hills and piedmonts, meandering down lonely country roads. The people we see as we drive along are walking from nowhere to nowhere, nothing but clay and grass. Not a flower in sight! We see stick-thin men wearing overalls and straw hats, and looking more scarecrow than human. The woman wear frumpy snapped-up-the-front house dresses that should be only worn by feeble old ladies. Probably in their early 30's, these women look like they're 59 years old, tired, toothless. There are usually a few barefoot "young'ins" scrambling to keep up as Ma meanders along the roadside, not a house or store in sight for miles and miles.
On our last Virginia drive, we saw a woman in the typical garb, bedecked by the typical kids, and she was carrying two huge watermelons in front of her ample, drooping breasts. Her boobs were the exact size of the melons that she carried on her trek to nowhere. I turned to Mark and made the statement we see so often on bumper stickers: "VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS. They say this because there is absolutely nothing else to do in Virginia!!"
Wouldn't you pout too?
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| 'Saw this online. At first glance I thought this man's shirt said, VIRGINIA IS FOR LOSERS! |
