Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 28, 1993 TAG: 9302280012
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Q: WHAT'S 288 DAYS BETWEEN FRIENDS? A: SNOWFALL
A number of people who get their jollies criticizing me have snidely mentioned my snow prediction a week ago. I wrote that real snow wouldn't fall in the Roanoke Valley until Dec. 11, the day that the Stagg Bowl football game is to be played in Salem.They have relished their chance to tell me how grossly wrong I was.
Au contraire, mon fiend. Follow my thinking for one moment.
I predicted snow for Dec. 11; it snowed on Feb. 26. It would appear that I missed by 288 days. But take that 288 days and divide it by 14.6 - since 14.6 inches of snow fell on Christmas Day, 1969. You get 19.7. Now, that Christmas snow was about 23 years ago. Take your 19.7 away from your 23 and you've got 3.3. Remember that it cost $2.7 million last year to improve lighting in the Big Walker Mountain tunnels on Interstate 77 in Bland County.
Add 3.3 and 2.7 and whaddya get? Six! How many inches of snow fell on Friday? Six!
So as you now see, I wasn't wrong at all. Do I have to explain everything to you people?
The state Senate, by an overwhelming 37-2 vote, has approved the brook trout as Virginia's official state fish. This follows the House of Delegates' 88-8 approval of the fish.
The fish now goes to Gov. Doug Wilder's desk. He has until April 15 to sign the scaly critter into law or he can do the right thing by telling legislators to get a life and let schoolkids decide what our state fish ought to be.
You want to take a stab at fame, glory and eternity; or you want to sit on your duff and disintegrate back into the soil, unnoticed?
Get off your shorts and enter the Design a Seal for Roanoke Contest today! Our theory is this: Roanoke's city seal, pictured here, is grossly outdated, what with its belching factory smokestacks and its polluted river and its emphasis on heavy, dirty industry which we've long since exported to Mexico and Sri Lanka.
We're asking you to design a new, circular seal that better reflects our modern city. Make it as poignant, as telling, as realistic or as frivolous as you like. You don't have to be 18 to enter and you don't have to live in Roanoke.
Just draw it up and send it by the end of this week to me at P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010. Anonymous entries will be burned.
Fabulous prizes will go to the winner. I promise.
Robert Hager of Roanoke ran into a stainless-steel digestive tract last year in the world hot-pepper eating championship in Laredo, Texas. Braulio Ramirez ate 141 peppers and won the title. Hager ate 76 and blew groceries, earning him a disqualification.
The contest was held, Hager-less, again last weekend in Laredo.
Ramirez ate "about 40" according to one witness, threw his hands into the air and quit.
The winner this year was Jeff Donahue of Arlington, Texas. He ate 76. Last year, Donahue acted on the true but unworkable advice that milk deadens the pain of spicy peppers. He gulped a quart of milk while he ate the hot peppers and eventually his stomach erupted from the hideous mixture.
Robert Hager could have been the champ. Maybe we ought to go again next year . . .