Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 16, 1990 TAG: 9007160054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
It's closed now, but all it needs is a few washers in the sinks, some new electrical outlets, a stitch or two on a dangling drapery hem and enough $100 bills to cover Australia 6 feet deep.
Don't bother. Use the hotel as a paperweight. Virginia Tech is doing just fine without a world-class conference center.
Just last week, on Friday, Clayton Yeutter was in town to celebrate Animal Industry Day - a jubilation of note in the greater Blacksburg metropolitan area.
Yeutter is a very important guy - the U.S. secretary of agriculture - and when he loses his car keys or has an otherwise lousy day, his bad vibes unleash decade-long droughts in Africa.
Now, if Yeutter were to visit the University of Virginia, or Washington and Lee University, he would depart from his modern twin-engine jet vehicle onto a carpet of freshly hatched sturgeon roe, and he would eat salty cheese and cuke sandwiches, stand in front of funereal maroon curtains in the air conditioning and make a speech about T-bill rates.
But he was at Virginia Tech on Friday to commemorate Animal Industry Day, so he and his pin-striped suit were guided to the podium - inside the machine shed at Tech's animal science farm. Yeutter, who has access to the Oval Office and who, as secretary of agriculture, is supposed to tend the Rose Garden, faced a packed machine shed of bobbing feed caps.
His shoes got dusty. The floor was post-modern gravel, the podium built of that trendy nouveau plywood. The air conditioning kicked in when a storm kicked up, and some of the late comers on the edge of the crowd got wet.
There were no walls. The roof was of rusty exposed girders and galvanized steel. Forty feet from Clayton Yeutter, one of the most powerful men in the free world, a sow nursed her noisy, hungry, sucking, lip-smacking, snorting dozen piglets.
Thirty yards behind Clayton Yeutter, who could bring the Soviet Union to its knees next weekend by withholding wheat shipments, half a dozen Tech Angus switched their tails.
Yeutter spoke of international trade and biotechnology and pesticide use, but he had to raise his voice sometimes, because the Angus were bellowing or the piglets were squealing or the rain was pelting the galvanized steel roof.
And the feed caps and the tractor caps and the livestock cooperative caps kept up with him, and they heard every word, and they laughed when they were supposed to, and they asked intelligent questions.
For a hour, Clayton Yeutter, who could keep you from buying milk next week, was riveted in Blacksburg.
He belongs there. He doesn't belong in a fancy Hotel Roanoke, where goats can't set hoof in the ballroom. The secretary of agriculture belongs where the flies are buzzing and the straw is piled.
Forget the Hotel Roanoke. Virginia Tech just needs a bigger machine shed and some more gravel, and another sow. We ate barbecue for lunch, but Clayton Yeutter couldn't stick around. He had to fly back to Washington to unleash locusts and make the world's corn grow faster.
by CNB