Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005090126
SECTION: DISCOVER THE NEW RIVER VALLEY PAGE: DIS/NRV4 EDITION: NEW RIVER
SOURCE: JUDITH SCHWAB SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Medium
He brought her to Virginia in 1960, ready to farm. But when he couldn't get the farm he wanted, they packed up and headed back to California. They got as far as Tennessee before turning back.
"I never regretted turning back," he said. And his wife? "I guess she likes it, too - I can't get rid of her," he said wryly.
Gusler grew up in the Eggleston area of Giles County, but wound up on Spruce Run where he farms just as he has since he was a kid.
Gusler said the New River Valley has a lot to offer - not the least of which is the Narrows Livestock Market, which he said is highly rated because of the volume of animals sold there.
He had just returned from the market where he had been neither buyin' nor sellin', "just speculatin' - some of those (expletive deleted) things went for $1.29 a pound," he said.
"You got to be dumb to farm. It's a 16-hour-a-day job. Wages? You'd be lucky to get a dollar an hour. You got to be a mechanic, a doctor, a bookkeeper, and I don't know what else. You do it because you love it," he said.
"It's just like driving a school bus - a person who doesn't love kids couldn't drive a school bus, you couldn't stand them."
Gusler has been driving a school bus for 16 years and has raised seven children. He likes kids.
Al Dorman, another Giles County resident, considers Gusler his best friend.
"I didn't know I had any," Gusler said.
Dorman owns The Cabinet Shop in downtown Pembroke and a farm in Eggleston where his wife Shirley raises flowers and vegetables organically. Her business is called Green Valley Farm.
The first time Gusler laid eyes on Dorman, "he was `nekked,'" Gusler said. It seems Gusler came driving over a hill to a private area of the Dorman property and found the new owner using a portable shower he'd rigged off the back of his truck. Despite the intrusion, they've become friends.
Dorman came to the New River Valley in 1987. He and his wife were traveling the back roads from North Carolina to Delaware, where they lived.
"I actually found the farm I live on today on that trip. I saw the farm and then saw the `For Sale' sign," Dorman said.
The Dormans settled into the valley just six months after they laid eyes on the place. Dorman, who has been in the carpentry business nearly 20 years, has traveled in "many, many states."
The people in the New River Valley are "the most congenial I've ever met - when we moved here, we didn't know a soul and it was like coming home."
by CNB