You see them almost every day, sitting in local resturants, hovered over the tables with real estate brochures in one hand and maps in the other, on a constant qwest for the dream of country living.
After eating, they fan out like locusts, devouring farmlands, hilltops and viewsheds. Yuppies on the prowl, ready to pillage and plunder the countryside.
Local and out-of-town developers, blinded by visions of quick bucks, feed this frenzy, carving up the land into tidy little plots, threatening to turn the countryside into just another vast vista of rooftops.
Yes, growth is coming to Floyd County and the pain that accompanies such growth is just starting. Approval of new subdivision plats have doubled in the last year, ranging from one acre lots for cookie-cutter log homes to a massive, gated monstrosity of 39 25-acre divisions that will fill the hillsides near Twin Falls with overpriced, sprawling architectual nightmares.
Some come here and try to do it right. We have friends from Charlottesville who are building a modest home on some wooded acreage just off Franklin Pike. They’re preserving the trees and natural beauty of the landscape. But too many others clear cut ridgelines so they can plop a large house right on top or end up in a development that threatens to turn the county into just the type of subdivision-riddled nightmare they fled the city to escape.
It can happen here. It will happen here unless the residents demand accountability from local elected officials who have, to date, been only passive observers of the invasion of the property snatchers.
At some point, one has to face the harsh realities of age, when the body just can’t muster the strength to meet the challenges of the day.
You fight it as long as you can but, sooner or later, the ravages of time set in. Your doctor ends every sentence with “for your age.” The waitress at the restaurant doesn’t even ask if you want the senior discount. She just gives it to you. The teenage hardbody who would have sent your harmones raging 40 or so years ago looks at you and says “gee, I didn’t know men’s chest hair turned grey too.”
Age, Satchell Paige once said, is simply a case of mind over matter: “If I dont’ mind, it don’t matter.”
Well it does matter. It matters when a walk up a hill or a short flight of stairs leaves your knees in agony and your lungs gasping for air. It matters when covering a high school football game leaves you sitting on the running board of your Jeep, trying to breathe and wincing in agony. It matters when even mowing your yard in a riding lawn tractor leaves you in pain.
And I do mind. I’ve been active all my life. I’ve climbed mountains, jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, raced stock and sports cars, and thrown myself into a hundred or so situations where my body could always pump out enough adrenaline to save my butt.
But nowadays the body fails more often than not, the sore muscles no longer respond to pain medication or hydrotherapy. They just ache — constantly. Knees buckle and legs cramp. I strap on braces and supports and will the body to make it through the day without failing. I come home and collapse on the couch. Exercise might build muscle strength back up but exercise is impossible when mundane tasks wear you out.
Mickey Mantle borrowed an old quote when he said: “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”
Amen Mick. Amen.
Gas stations in town started the week at $239.9 a gallon for regular unleaded — down 10 cents from the week before. By Wednesday, the prices had jumped to $285.9 in reaction to the flooding from Hurricane Katrina and damage to oil refineries and pipelines along the Gulf Coast.
Thursday morning brought another shock: $305.9. By afternoon, the signs showed $319.9 and the town’s two independent retailers said they would most likely run out of gas during the long Labor Day weekend because supplies are running short and the big oil company stations get the first allotments.
This news comes just when I have to drive to Rural Retreat tonight to shoot a high school football game. I filled up the Wrangler Wednesday night and it will take a half-tank or so for the drive.
In some parts of the South, gas is already over $5 a gallon and still climbing. My yard needs mowing this weekend and that exercise alone will take $15 in gas.
While we can afford to pay such inflated prices, many people on fixed or reduced incomes cannot. Many who live in our area drive 60-100 miles roundtrip a day for work. How long can they survive with prices so high?
Some say this day was coming and we should have done more to prepare for it. That kind of hindsight will not ease the burden on people who may not be able to afford to drive to work, to the grocery store or who may be unable to buy the propane or fuel oil they need to heat their homes this winter.
The body ages over time. We accept that. Abuse during younger years takes its toll. We accept that as well.
But at what point does pain control our lives? It seems the amount of time it takes to work out the kinks and stiffness increases each passing day and the line between functionality and letting pain take over becomes harder and harder to determine.
I abused my body mercilessly as a younger man. That’s why I hobble around today on two bad knees, a bum hip and an ankle stiffened with a steel pin inside. The calcium buildup on that bad ankle is so bad from a half-dozen or so previous breaks that when I broke it two years ago the doctor couldn’t tell from the x-ray if it was broken again. I can’t raise my left arm above my head because of calcium from two previous breaks and three dislocations.
Helping family move a couch Saturday aggravated an old back injury (compressed vertebrae) and I spent the rest of the day alternating between a hot tub and bed.
Soaked in the hot tub for more than hour this morning before trying my morning walk. Made it about a mile down the road before the pain set in but I pushed on. Pain, a sadistic Master Chief once told me, is only the beginning.
Two miles later, I hobbled back towards the house and started up the long, steep driveway. About halfway up, one knee buckled and I fell. As I lay on the damp gravel, waiting for the pain to subside enough to get up and try again I wondered if it was time to let the doctor operate, again, on the various bones and joints that have declared mutiny. Not really an option. Can’t afford to take the time off.
I managed to get back up the hill and headed straight for the porch and hot tub, letting the soothing, agitated heat of the water ease the pain. With some mobility restored, I stumbled into the shower to complete the start of a new day, ready for an uneasy truce with the pain that becomes part of everyday life.
As noted below, Floyd is currently awash in “gourmet” coffee shops along with a number of early am spots for strong, black java. When we lived in Arlington (up in the no-man’s land called “Northern Virginia”) my favorate java spot was Common Grounds, an eclectic hangout where the coffee was srong (and not bitter), the conversation interesting and the wireless Internet free.
Now comes word from Arlington that Common Grounds closed. In its place is something called “Murky Coffee,” a coffee shop that originated in DC and has now spread to the People’s Republic of Arlington.
Not good. Common Grounds had a style all its own and, as anyone who lived in DC for any length of time knows, a coffee shop that called Capitol Hill home is probably too hipper-than-thou. The demise of Common Grounds is yet another reason to be glad we abandoned the urban jungle for the hills of Southwestern Virginia.