Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990 TAG: 9006200046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Hayward is the 176th largest city in America, according to the 1980 census, but aspires now to surpass us.
Tom Goff, the columnist, gleefully accepted the purloined Roanoke negatives. He ribbed us about the hue of the American Chemical building (driver blinder orange) along I-581, about deer hunters pelting each other with gunfire (deer hunters I can hide from, California freeway nutsos with Uzis are another story), and about Franklin County's principal export - moonshine (which Goff wants).
No one ridicules Roanoke that way but me, so I toiled to unearth the slime who was spooning these unsavory factoids to the otherwise slothful Goff.
Valerie Epperley and her son have lived happily near Hayward since January, when they moved from Roanoke.
"We came out here on vacation a couple of years ago and fell madly in love with it. I hate cold weather. That's one of the reasons," said Epperley, skirting the real subject.
Why, Valerie? Why?
She is a native of Bedford County and a longtime Roanoke resident, but now - make no mistake about it - Valerie Epperley has turned on us.
"I saw that Tom Goff was writing about Roanoke, so I wrote him a letter. I was just trying to be funny," said Epperley.
She is the informant.
Goff, forever mining dirt on Roanoke ("The Mountain Oyster of the Blue Ridge," he calls us), called Epperley. She is a friendly woman, perhaps too much so for our own good, and she shared with him all of Roanoke's foibles. Goff flailed away at us in print.
All is not lost. At least we don't have to fear a wave of Hayward refugees clogging our shores. These are people accustomed to groping about in air so hazy they need large print on their wristwatches. Hoodwinked by tourism gurus, Haywardites call it fog. The rest of the world calls it smog or sulfur dioxide, though for some it is cataracts. Charming stuff. Creeps in on cat's feet and chokes you.
Mostly, Haywardonians set about in the zucchini patch, fretting about traffic, infatuated with gridlock. Haywardots know that some places have cars and some other places have roads, but alone are cursed with both.
From 1985 through 1989, 35 people perished in traffic accidents in Hayward; 33 in Roanoke. You don't hear us carrying on about it. We sweep up the glass and get on with it, buried with our boots on. And underwear. And shirts, blouses, trousers or skirts.
Shoppers paid $48.3 million for clothes in Roanoke in 1988. That same year in Hayward, a city nearly identical in size, where household income is double ours, shoppers spent $19.9 million on apparel.
Why get dressed in Hayward, if chances are good you're going to be shot at, sitting in a car all day or hidden by quaint banks of cancer-causing fog? Might as well harvest the zucchini in your skivvies.
Valerie, you mole, you've chosen a wonderful place to live. Stay low, hold your breath, wear burlap and leave Roanoke alone.
by CNB