Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It doesn't bother me when people hammer me in print.
But when you go after Roanoke, the city, that's a whole different story. Roanoke is a sensitive city, full of sensitive people, and our collective ego lies beneath a hide thick as silk.
So when Bob Kahn writes in the Brownsville (Texas) Herald: "Well, Mr. Shamy, you seem to be an average Roanokian, except for the fact that you can read and write . . ." it infuriates me.
Nobody, but nobody, downgrades Roanoke like that. Not while I'm around.
Kahn's just choking. He lives in America's 174th largest city - Brownsville. I live in America's 175th largest city - Roanoke.
But there's a census under way right now, and Kahn knows his city's grip on the all-important 174th slot is loosening. Soon we will wrest that position from the Rio Grande Valley.
A mere handful of humanity separates us, the only difference being that we in Roanoke are here legally; if the Immigration and Naturalization Service could catch up to Brownsville's handful, they'd be deported.
Kahn's narrow mind focused on Virginia Military Institute, which is now caught up in some tomfoolery about admitting women.
"Nowhere else in the country," Kahn wrote, "not even in San Francisco, could you find 1,300 soldiers who, when faced with the prospect of having to sit in the same room with women, day after day, holler `No, no!' and have to be dragged into court over it.
"This bodes ill for Roanoke's population growth.
"Brownsville is bigger and better than Roanoke and it will remain so. After all, what Roanokians refuse to do even under court orders, Brownsville citizens can do in their sleep."
"To grow in population, people have to have a certain . . . knack. Roanoke's women, I am sure, are charming, intelligent, hard-working and delightful, but Roanoke men don't seem to have a clue."
Kahn is poking fun at our reproductive skills.
This from a guy in Brownsville, one of the best places in the country to retire, according to Rand McNally.
This from a guy in America's southernmost city, where the heat is so oppressive that the thought of a steamy night with a mate conjures thoughts not of reproduction, but of sitting on the front porch sharing a Lone Star beer.
I'll bet the maternity wards are just hopping down at ol' Valley Regional Medical Center, what with all those retired 75-year-old former Wisconsinites multiplying like rabbits in the stifling heat.
Brownsville, home of a deep-water port on the Gulf of Mexico, where millions of innocent shrimp are slaughtered daily for the pleasure of a decadent elite.
Alas, even the crustacean aphrodisiac will not be enough.
In Roanoke, we will complete our census forms promptly and we will seize the title of 174th largest city in America.
Brownsville? Let them eat shrimp.
Soon I will tell you what some yo-yo in Hayward, Calif., (No. 176 in the population standings) had to say about Roanoke. Clue: It wasn't pretty.
by CNB