
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 20, 1990                   TAG: 9007200187
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SEPT. 31 IS A DATE TO REMEMBER

Standing in front of the urinal at the visitor's center on Mill Mountain, as countless thousands of male visitors to our lovely burg do each year, and having nothing else to do with my eyeballs, I stared at the cinder block wall in front of me. Men who do otherwise are suspect.

Let me assure you, I do not hunt such things. But I could not help but notice the graffiti: "Looking for a clean young man. Meet me here 9/30/89 or 9/31/89."

It made me sick for the same reasons I am sure it would make you sick. If it wouldn't make you sick, please contact authorities immediately and turn yourself in. You'll probably end up with a lighter sentence, trust me.

It made me furious. It rendered me indignant. Once I had finished the business at hand, I felt better, but not by much.

After all, this squat block building, though modest, forges our community's first impression on many visitors to the Roanoke Valley.

They exit the Blue Ridge Parkway, exhausted from miles of dodging snake poachers and tailgating Winnebagos, and they succumb to Mill Mountain's lure - give me your road-tired, your gas-poor, your huddled masses yearning to see the star.

And they end up in front of that urinal, staring at that graffiti.

What must they think of us? What must they think of the quality of education in the valley that sprawls below the mountain? What must they think of the families that live beneath those thousands of roofs? What must they think of the fabric of our society when an anonymous author feels it is within his rights to scribble with a ball point pen, inviting a clean young man to visit in a public restroom on 9/30/89 or 9/31/89?

Could you blame them if they returned to the parkway and roared off into the mountains, vowing never to again return? You can't answer, so I'll answer for you: No, I wouldn't blame them one bit, for that sort of public display is an affront to every fundamental strand of decency that keeps civilization from crumbling like some old and in-the-way antiques mall.

Blame the schools, the economy that forces both parents into the work place and rips like a chain saw at the family tree, blame the media for promoting violence, blame ball point pens that defy gravity and write on vertical surfaces.

We aren't talking the debauchery here. We Western Virginians accept that we are not immune to the greater ills of society, that there are men lurking out there who would publicly advertise for another man to meet them in a public restroom.

No, we can handle that.

What we cannot tolerate, what we must not grow accustomed, what we must - as a community - refuse to allow to slither into our daily lives, is the acceptance of poorly educated vandals. After all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link - Stonewall Jackson or some Greek thinker or a Cyclone fence dealer said it once.

So repeat after me: Thirty days hath September, April, June and November, all the rest have 31, except February, shortest of all, so I won't write 9/31 on the wall.

by CNB