Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993 TAG: 9302030005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: NARROWS LENGTH: Medium
OLD COLUMN SHADOWS G-HOG DAY
A couple hundred Canada geese and miscellaneous waterfowl glided peacefully on the pond as the sun eased over the mountains. Unaware of the hoopla about to erupt on shore, the birds plied their daily ritual of paddling, clambering to dry land and fouling the park.And so began Groundhog Day in Narrows. I was there.
Mayor Don Richardson and I chatted the day before. It's been better than a year since I last visited Narrows. That trek resulted in an insightful essay about the town's sewage-treatment plant open house and it convinced many people in Narrows that I ought to be bludgeoned for publicly poking fun at them and their new sewage system.
The Muslim world has Salman Rushdie; Narrows has me.
Mayor Richardson was wary when I trawled for an invite to the Groundhog Day gala.
"It's not that big of a deal," he warned.
I went anyway. Save for Narrows, nobody around here much observes this most peculiar day. Who - even given the wretched track record of our local meteorological corps - cares what some overweight rat thinks of the weather?
Undeterred, Salman Rushdie rolled into Narrows at daybreak wary of rooftop snipers.
I found Mayor Richardson sitting in his car, wisely shielded from the winter's coldest morning. Counting the mayor, there were six of us - a record crowd for the G-hog blast, which has grown mightily each year since its 1991 maiden voyage.
We stood outside and my kidneys froze.
"They were saying on the radio it was 11 degrees outside this morning" I noted in a feeble attempt to jump-start a stone-cold conversation.
"Eight," returned the mayor. Friendly as Narrows is charming, Mayor Richardson struck me as, this day at least, a man of few words.
My pancreas seized up when I heard we were standing outdoors in single-digit temperatures in a town that didn't much want me there anyway.
Geese paddled on the millpond.
A goofy, 3-foot-tall, cartoon-character thing was propped near the water's edge.
"So," says I, trying hard to resuscitate a conversation already declared dead, "this must be Wolf Creek Sam, the local groundhog."
Narrows does not use a real groundhog.
"Looks to me like a fine groundhog of half-inch plywood," says Salman Rushdie.
"Three-quarter-inch," says the mayor.
The mayor works at a lumberyard. He built the groundhog.
The mayor and three of the men sidled over to the 3/4-inch plywood groundhog.
The plywood clearly saw its shadow, which traditionally means six more weeks of high lumber prices.
They handed me a press release in which fair weather was predicted and the multitude of goose droppings in the park were called "Shamyrocks."
I pressed Mayor Richardson for more weather predictions.
"Seasonal," he said.
A quick snapshot for the weekly newspaper. No speech. No music. No fireworks.
Everybody left.
Salman Rushdie disappeared into the morning rush hour.