The great getaway

It used to be an annual event, the Wehrles and the Egelnicks riding together to go to Richmond, Va., for the Capital of the Confederacy Civil War Show.

But life got in the way the past three years and we couldn't make it.

Until this year.

So last Saturday, we hopped in the Egelnick's vehicle for a much-needed getaway to a really neat city.

My, things have changed.

The show itself has gotten smaller. Held in an agricultural building at the Richmond Fairgrounds, near the speedway, there clearly were fewer vendors. That's OK though. We had a bit more elbow room walking up and down the aisles looking at the artifacts. It's kind of like going to a museum.

Even our wives seem to enjoy it — I think. They check out the estate jewelry and mentally calculate whether or not they can afford the rubies and pearls and diamonds and amethysts from 150 years ago.

Occasionally, Jay and I might buy a memento or two for our own personal collections, but not so much anymore. Even though the economy still suffers, prices on Civil War artifacts seem to be going through the ceiling.

We didn't stay at the show very long and we'd hoped to find rooms at our favorite bed and breakfast in the historic Church Hill district, located near the Shockoe Bottom area. But the B&B has since gone out of business.

We ended up staying at a hotel that was playing host to about 100 pre-teen soccer girls, who took great delight in running up and down the hallways deep into the night. Sigh.

Anyway, a few things haven't changed. We went to the River City Diner and ordered our usual — the Rochester Garbage Plate.

The Rochester Garbage Plate. This one was actually from about four years ago.

I know. It sounds horrible. Garbage Plate. But it tastes great. It's a conglom-eration of baked beans, cole slaw, hash browns, potato salad and two grilled specialty hot dogs sliced in half down the middle, all of it slathered in cheddar cheese.

Yes. It is a heart attack on a plate. But, hey. This happens just one day out of the year. My rationale was that maybe a plate of this stuff would actually slap my A-fib back into rhythm.

In truth, the plate is so large that I split it with my wife. I once could eat large helpings of food, but as I've grown older, I just can't seem to handle it anymore.

The next day is usually reserved for our trip to Fredericksburg, about an hour north of Richmond and another center of Civil War interest. We usually spend a little time on the battlefield, a little time in the bookstore, and then walk through the historic downtown area, which is very pedestrian friendly, and do a little shopping.

Kim patiently waits for her ice cream at Carl's.

Inevitably, we stop at Carl's. (See here)

I discovered Carl's after watching a PBS segment on ice cream several years ago. Kim and I tried it on our own and declared it to be a little piece of heaven. We told the Egelnick's about it, and I've also had an opportunity to take my Civil War Round Table there for a treat.

It's soft-serve ice cream, and sometimes people call it frozen custard, although technically (and maybe legally) it's either one or the other because of the number of egg yolks that are used. In any case, it's an exceptional delight that's been around since 1947.

After our foray into Fredericksburg, we head back to Richmond and do a little more shopping in an old commercial neighborhood called Carytown, which is, interestingly enough, located on Cary Street, near the Fan District.

By this time, we are usually hungry again, and this time, we make our way to Fan District staple Strawberry Street Cafe, which, interestingly enough, is located on Strawberry Street. Even though the place has a varied menu, it has a world class chicken pot pie that I can't refuse. I always order it, without fail.

Our stay in Richmond usually lasts something like 50 hours. But it's 50 hours well spent.

Mosey

She took my breath away 11 years ago. That's when I first laid eyes on her.

She was a Norwegian Forest Cat, something of a rarity in this country and full of the mystery that her Scandinavian breeding implied, and I had wanted one for a while. I just liked the idea of having a Wegie — long-haired, long-tailed, long-named. Perfect.

Mosey takes a moment for herself after a busy day of being a faithful friend.

And from that point on, what a journey it was. She knew her name, Mosey, within the first two weeks, and she would appear, almost without fail, when summoned. Smart. A conniver. She would set ambushes on Do-Little, her gullible Ragdoll housemate, and they'd play together. And eat together. And sleep together.

She didn't meow. She chirped, like a tribble. Tribbles don't really exist, of course; a figment from Star Trek. But Mosey was real, and she chirped. Constantly. She found her voice and used it to melt — what, hearts? Bad karma? Bad vibes?

In the curious translucent integration of species, we became fast friends. She was self-sufficient and yet totally dependent on her humans. But steadfastly loyal. And get this: I somehow became dependent on her and I don't know how that happened.

Do pets know how to love? Perhaps they don't and we only want them to, because only then it seems as if they can love us without qualification, and subsequently we are somehow better for it. We somehow feel a safer warmth ourselves.

This morning, Mosey took my breath away once more. She'd been in decline as a result of renal failure. We discovered two years ago that one of her kidneys had atrophied and the other was under stress. So we managed her health through diet and hopefully we bought her some quality time. I think we did.

Still, inevitability lurked. There was the heart murmur; the constant congestion; the bad kidney that may have been the root cause of her slide; the unstoppable weight loss in the last month.

So when I saw her sitting still this morning, not chirping, not interested in food, not interested in me for the first time in 11 years, my breath rushed out of my lungs, with a groan, to where I couldn't catch my breath, and I knew it was time. Sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you want to hang on a little longer. But I couldn't do that to my friend. I asked my wife, Kim, how she felt, and she tearfully concurred.

So we went to the vet one last time, stroked her fur and said our farewell. And then she was gone.

I'm still trying to catch my breath, of course. I thought with another cat in the house that the grief wouldn't be so difficult to bear, and yet, I'm surprised to find an emptiness that lingers, like an unanswerable question, in those familiar places.

Places where Mosey took my breath away.

Lexington Historic District, Part III

On Thursday, Tammy Absher, Lexington's Director of Community and Business Development, asked the Lexington Historic Preservation Commission to present the proposed local historic district and its final draft of design regulations to City Council for approval.

The commission subsequently unanimously approved the recommendation.

This happened in front of maybe 10 approving and like-minded people sitting in the gallery. I was one of them, along with my wife, Kim. "Finally," I thought to myself. This could actually happen. I could hardly suppress my smile and pleasure. I wanted to high-five somebody.

The next step is that the proposal for Lexington's pilot local historic district (inclusive of West Center Street to West 3rd Avenue east to west, and South State Street to South Payne Street north to south) will be reviewed by the Planning Board, and from there, with their recommendations, be presented to City Council for its consideration to be added as an amendment to the zoning ordinance.

I'm excited about this. I even went up to the podium and spoke into the microphone to tell the commission how excited I was. (I'd never publicly spoke into a mic before; it was a little unnerving and somewhat distracting to hear my voice amplified). I think it's now in the public record that I used the incredibly articulate phrase "smack dab" as I gave my street address and described how close to the middle of the proposed district I lived, as in Smack Dab in the middle (well, I am, more or less).

All of this has been a while in coming. There have been a series of public meetings, sometimes contentious, as input from the community was digested and then drafted and redrafted in to the final guidelines designed to specifically fit Lexington. From what I can tell, the end result is a set of regulations far more relaxed and flexible than the original draft. To me, it's perfect.

Kim and I both think it's a win-win situation. Why? No tax monies are involved in this, yet we have a chance to preserve the architecture, heritage and character of a neighborhood that is more than 100 years old. We have a chance to stabilize neighborhood property values in an unstable economy; we have an opportunity to protect our neighborhood from any encroaching commercialization. Perhaps just as importantly, we might be able to create a legacy of preservation and stewardship to pass on to future generations. This town has already lost significant structures, I'd hate to see it lose any more.

This is not a done deal yet.

But at least we're moving forward. We've given ourselves a chance.

Halloweenies

What is it that's so appealing about Halloween?

The candy? The kids? The fun? All of the above?

My wife, Kim, and I look forward to October 31 almost every year with a fair amount of anticipation. We almost always seem to enjoy seeing the Trick or Treaters come to the house wearing their costumes along with their excitement.

Some of the children are unbearably cute and others are incredibly creative. One year, we had a kid come to the house dressed as a cardboard commode. You put his candy in the toilet bowl after he lifted the commode lid for you. It was hilarious.

A steady stream of kids came to our house this year. It never changes.

I was never that creative. The best homemade costume I had was when my mom dressed me in an oversized flannel shirt and blue jeans and stuffed straw in the cuffs and ankles, which were then tied off with twine. I went trick or treating as a scarecrow, itching and scratching the whole night.

I remember in my early years, when I was about 5 or 6, we collected our candy in a paper lunch bag. But when we moved to Connecticut, the kids had graduated to pillow cases.  We pulled in a ton of candy with that ploy. Mom was not amused, but dad was forever grateful as he took his percentage of treats as payment for being our guardian.

When I got older, into my teens, I went Trick or Treating for UNICEF as a church project. It was a way to raise money for kids in underdeveloped countries. We'd go out in teams of two and ring doorbells and sometimes people were nice enough to give us nickels, dimes and quarters. This was back in the mid-1960s.

Evey once in a while we'd be tested by the homeowner. "Can you tell me what UNICEF stands for?" they'd ask.

"United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund," I'd reply and hold out my official UN money container. Occasionally I'd see either joy or disappointment by those adults because I knew what it stood for, and they'd plop in their coins. Some reluctantly.

Afterwards, we'd go back to the church for cider and doughnuts, a treat which I now always associate with Halloween.

Kim and I saw our thrill for Halloween multiply by the Nth degree after we moved to Second Avenue nearly 10 years ago. We had moved into an older neighborhood that had sidewalks, and that made a difference. Suddenly, Halloween became a safe, walkable community event. The streets and sidewalks looked like a shopping mall — kids were criss-crossing the street everywhere. It was amazing — and still is.

A few years ago, out of curiosity, I head-counted all the kids who came to the door (this no doubt being a precursor to me estimating Barbecue Festival crowds) and came up with something like 105 kids before we ran out of candy and shut down for the night.

It's been that way ever since. We had well over 100 kids this year, even though we weren't counting, and the weather was cold and blustery, and it was a school night. But it was nearly nonstop from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

So another Halloween has come and gone, and it was a royal treat in itself.

I can't wait until next year.

Festival time

After my previous blog, in which I wrote my Master's thesis explaining how 200,000 people can squeeze into nine blocks of Uptown Lexington for the annual Barbecue Festival, I feel compelled to give a crowd estimate on this year's event.

So how many people were here? Don't ask me. I dunno.

Ask Joe Sink.

Sink, the former publisher of The Dispatch and a founder of the event 29 years go, now serves as the Festival's honorary chairman and people counter. He is on the record as saying this year's crowd was as large as last year's, which he estimated to be 200,000 in both 2011 and 2010.

He may be right, although I think there are some indicators to suggest the crowd was a bit smaller this time. The weather (the most critical factor) was dicey as wind-blown and wide-ranging millibars from a potential offshore hurricane brought overcast skies and threatened rain most of the day.

The noontime crowd on the Square seemed smaller than in past years.

 Conse-quently, I think fewer people showed up. It felt like there was less jostling and shoulder bumping on Main Street during the early hours of the Festival. Also, the number of cars that use the parking lot in the business behind my house did not seem as full later in the day as in previous years.

So I'm guessing somewhere between 180,000 to 190,000 people showed up. Inevitably, not all Barbecue Festivals are going to be jam-packed — relatively speaking, of course.

Having said that, my wife, Kim, and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves this year. Usually, we arrive around 7:30 a.m. to beat the crowd and stay until about 10 a.m. or so. Then we skedaddle before the hungry throng becomes ravenous and simply devours you.

That was our original plan for this year, too. So after our traditional 10:30 barbecue brunch, we headed back for home — until we heard Lexington's Ken Davis and his trio-plus-one performing on the local stage and froze us in our footsteps. That kept us for another hour.

It was here that Kim ran into two high school classmates, Kelly Sink and Becky Frazier. Together, the three of them sat on the asphalt of First Avenue in front of Ken's performance and planned a spontaneous 34th annual class reunion for that evening.

Underhill Rose performs at the Barbecue Festival.

Afterwards, Kim and I took a 45-minute break to recoup. We nixed the idea of going home, because we wanted to see Underhill Rose perform at Stage 4, which would happen in less than an hour. So we made one more quick loop through Main Street, using sidewalks and alleys as rapid transit shortcuts.

Underhill Rose is a collection of three talented women from Asheville — they like to call their contemporary bluegrass as "smoky" and "rootsy," but I like to call it the Asheville Sound — and thanks to High Rock Outfitters as a cozy venue, they've developed a nice fan base here in Lexington.

Anyway, we listened to them for nearly 90 minutes as they bravely soldiered on under a swaying stage canopy that was a little bit unnerving to watch. When they were done, we got to speak with them for a few moments as we bought a CD and a T-shirt that they were selling out of Tupperware containers. (I just love struggling artists. Everything about them is so raw and genuine. You hope they eventually hit the big time but do it without ever changing who they are.)

In all, Kim and I stayed at the Festival for more than eight hours and spent about $100. What, are we nuts? We've never done either before.

But the day was not finished. We still had two after parties to attend: a floating Halloween gathering at 6 p.m., and then Kim's impromptu class reunion at a local restaurant at about 7:30.

Even after numerous phone calls to others in their class, the reunion turned out to be Becky, Kelly, Kim and me. And I'm not even in their class.

So we started the day with hundreds of thousands of acquaintances, and ended up in comfortable conversation as four good friends.

It was perfect. It was something you could really count on.

Joe Sink is right

The 29th annual Barbecue Festival is almost upon us, which means, if the recent wonderful weather holds out, that we'll probably have another awesome turnout Saturday.

Former Dispatch publisher Joe Sink — a founder of the Festival and so perhaps not coincidentally its official crowd counter for newspaper publication — has given us his eyeball estimate of 200,000 attendees for the past two consecutive years.

That number seems a little incredible, but as Joe often tells doubters, "Go ahead and prove that it's wrong."

That's not an easy thing to do. The Festival is a free event, after all. There are no gates, so there are multiple access routes to the Festival's nine blocks of Main Street in Uptown Lexington. Nobody wears GPS badges or bar codes to be counted.

A few years ago, one doubter on The Dispatch forum wrote that the Festival probably drew no more than 75,000 people, a count that seems way too small to me.

Curiously enough, the official Barbecue Festival brochure said last year's crowd was estimated at 160,000. The difference between Joe Sink and the brochure represents the entire population of Goldsboro. But that's neither here nor there. Besides, Goldsboro is eastern barbecue anyway.

I do think the actual number of last year's crowd and the potential for this year is somewhere between 160,000 and 200,000 people.

So instead of suggesting that Joe Sink is laughably wrong (which many people wish they could do and sometimes attempt to try at their own risk), I'm here to show you why I think he's close to correct. At least he's in the ballpark.

Soooo, the other night, my wife, Kim, and I stepped off one block of Main Street, from First Avenue to Second Avenue. It took 110 paces, times my stride of 2.5 feet. That comes out to a block that's 275 feet long. (That will be my average for all nine blocks, which includes the Square, which is not really a block, but it is the confluence of North and South Main Streets and contains a huge crowd most of the day. Also, not all blocks are of uniform length. We stepped off the block between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, and it was 170 paces long, or 330 feet. So the difference between 275 feet and 330 feet will serve as my margin of error).

Then we stepped off the curb, over the parking lane and to the white dashes on Main Street, up to but not including the lane where the vendor tents are set up. That was seven paces from curb to tent row, or about 17 feet.

With those dimensions, I figure reasonably you can have 275 people in each of seven rows abreast in one walking lane of one block. That comes out to 1,925 people. But then you have to multiply that by two, since festival goers fill the walking lanes on both sides of the vendor tents. That's an average of 3,850 folks per block— and I'm not including the sidewalks or the side streets. I think we can comfortably round that off to 4,000 people per block for convenience sake.

I think that's a logical estimate that each block can hold. Whether it is the physical limit is debatable. I guess you can argue each block could hold up to 5,000 people at once. Maybe more. There are times during the Festival day when people are packed into each block like pork shoulders in a smokehouse.

Anyway, multiply 4,000 people by the nine Festival blocks and you get 36,000 people at the Festival at any given moment.

But the Festival crowd is fluid. It's not a static stadium crowd that barely changes. People are coming and going — mostly coming, I suspect — for 9.5 hours, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Since the 36,000 number represents only a snapshot in time and not an accumulation of Festival goers for the day, how do you turn that number over?

Here's where things admittedly get a little arbitrary and open for argument, but I don't think my reasoning escapes common sense. I figure there are probably five palpable fluctuations in the crowd during the course of the day — one at 8:30 a.m. when the Festival begins and the crowd is already forming, another at 10 a.m. when most people arrive, another at noon for lunch, another at 2 p.m. for the Guitar Pull and another at 4 p.m. for last-minute shopping.

I consider these fluctuations to be like blips on the screen of a radar sweep. The scope never changes, but the blips come and go. So what I call my "turnover" rate over the course of the day is similar to five radar sweeps, (times 36,000) giving us 180,000 people. Now we're close. If I can justify a rate of 5.5 sweeps, then the crowd count reaches 198,000.

Maybe the 5.5 rate comes in if we throw in the longer blocks, the side streets and the large crowd that gathers in the parking lot for the stage at Sam's Car Wash.

Flawed assumptions? Maybe. But then, maybe not. This is not a scientific study and the numbers certainly feel right.

We tried another tack at the Black Chicken Coffee the other day.

One of my friends suggested we take the 36,000 and split it three ways (another arbitrary but reasonable assumption): a third of that crowd stays all day (because they travel great distances and won't leave early), and so the number will stay at 12,000 people; another third stays half the day, maybe from 10 to 4 and thus you take that 12,000 and multiply by two shifts to give you 24,000; and the final third stays about two hours (perhaps strolling the nine blocks as a circuit or two before leaving), so multiply 12,000 by four to give you 48,000. Add those sums for a total Festival crowd of 84,000, which seems low to me. Some will say, "Aha! See? There. The true number."

But divide the 12,000, the 24,000 and the 48,000 each by 84,000 to give you multiplying factors for each third of the crowd. The multiplier for the 12,000 figure is .1429; for 24,000 is .2857; and for 48,000 is .5714. Then work backwards. Multiply the 200,000 estimate by those factors and you get 28,580 all day people; 57,140 half-day people; and 114,280 for two-hour people.

Again, this sounds reasonable to me. If the official crowd estimate is 160,000, then you get 22,864 for all day folks; 45,712 for half-day people, and 91,424 for two-hour people.

What I am not factoring in is the 30 percent chance of rain in the forecast. All bets are off then.

But beyond that, maybe Joe Sink is correct after all. "If you really want to know what the crowd total is," Joe told me, "just look for it in The Dispatch."

Hall of Famers

There was a moment during the 11th annual Davidson County Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday night when it occurred to me just how important this event truly is for our community.

It might have happened during keynote speaker Rev. Dr. Lee Jessup's introductory remarks. He briefly told us of a story from his childhood, about when he would regularly have a pitch-and-catch with his father back in the day while growing up in Hickory.

I almost always expect to get a laugh from one of Jessup's parables, so my anticipation level usually runs high when he's speaking. He's probably one of the best story tellers in the county, so I usually can't wait to hear what he says next. But when he said his dad "was my Hall of Famer," I nearly started bawling into my plate of scalloped potatoes. It was Field of Dreams come to life, right here in the J. Smith Young YMCA.

The point being, of course, that nearly all of us are impacted, in some way, by someone who has done or said something remarkable, big or small, that adds meaning to our lives. Real Hall of Famers, then, can actually be you and me. And sometimes we are, to somebody.

So the tone was set.

Which is why most of us smiled a teary-eyed smile when Peggy Sink Black, a girls' basketball star for Pilot School back in the early 1950s, said she wishes she could still shoot baskets as she put up an imaginary right-handed jumper from the dais. Literally, it was an air ball — but you know this one swished.

Or why Bowman Gray Stadium NASCAR legend Ralph Brinkley, now in his 70s, became so emotional, bringing both hands up to cover his mouth while searching for words. He gave much credit to his pit crew and their families for the success he enjoyed while racing to 64 victories.

North Davidson softball coach Mike Lambros, usually emotional in an animated way, also had a little trouble getting the words to flow. He told the audience of more than 200 that being inducted into this Hall completed his bucket list wish. Imagine that. And he's still actively coaching the Knights.

Mandy McKinney, who helped West Davidson's girls capture a 2-A state basketball title in 1985-86, was nervous about speaking to the large crowd, but she did well, thanking her parents and her teammates for their support during her career.

Bruce Mills, an All-ACC defensive end for Duke after a stellar career for coach George Cushwa at Thomasville, also thanked his family. Given that football put him through 14 knee and leg operations in his lifetime, that in itself should be enough to put him in somebody's Hall of Fame.

Then there was Mattie Terry, the mother of Lexington basketball star Carlos Terry, who was killed in a car accident in 1989. Mrs. Terry noted, through her tears, that Carlos has been inducted into several halls of fame recently. "He has received many awards the last three years. However, with Lexington being his home, this is special. This is very, very special.”

Special, indeed.

I've been on the Hall's board of directors for about four years and covered several of the other banquets for The Dispatch before that. Each one has had its profoundly heart-tugging moments, but somehow, this year reached a pinnacle. The event is more streamlined now. From social mingling to dismissal took less than 2 1/2 hours.

But it was a meaningful 2 1/2 hours, perhaps in ways we can't yet comprehend.