Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304050081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
& NOW THIS
60 and holdingWhat's with Dr. Jimmy Farley's birthday billboard on Melrose Avenue in Northwest Roanoke?
It says Farley, an ophthalmologist, will be 60 on April 7, which is Thursday. It's not true. He'll be 62.
The birthday billboard has been up for two years, a gift from a patient, Bill Inge, who owns Stanford & Inge Inc., a sign company.
"I guess he'll take it down when he sells the space," Farley said.
The doctor has a suggestion for a replacement, a self-advertisement for Stanford & Inge: "We tell everybody our business."
And other people's too, it seems.
Uhhh . . . Hello?
Bureaucrats at Virginia's new Environmental Control Department were having to learn a few things from scratch last week - like how to answer the phones.
On April 1 - an unusual day for the official switch-over, one employee noted - the departments of Waste Management, Air Pollution Control and Water Control merged to become the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Phone calls to some of those former departments' regional offices Thursday and Friday revealed that some officials had adjusted to their new department's name . . . sort of . . .
"This is Norm Aldridge with the Department of Environmental Quality in Roanoke, Waste Management," said the department's regional director Friday. "After getting that mouthful out . . ."
Others had not adjusted. "Department of Waste . . . uh . . . DEQ," said one official answered the phone. "I forgot, didn't I?"
One last spin
\ Don Piedmont - the voice of the railroad, the man whose license plate says "NO CMNT" - is retiring.
This was his send-off, faxed to reporters on his personal Norfolk Southern Corp. stationery and carrying the headline: "Personal Roanoke Media Advisory:"
"Will all of you please be kind enough to remove my name and telephone number from your Rolodexes (or Rolodices)? I am outta here Wednesday, and Bob Auman will be your sole source.
"Departing the premises in retirement, I want you to know that working with you media folks these many years was for the most part fun; and if perhaps we were now and then adversarial, well, that's the way it ought to be. I'm pleased that our relationship has been marked with courtesy and professionalism, always admirable standards to shoot for, and not easily attained.
"So I thank you and wish you singly and collectively much good luck, many exclusives and uncountable numbers of `sources-close-to' and `we-have-learned.' Good luck. (And don't forget to take my name off your lists.)"
Don't worry, Don, we won't . . . and good luck to you, too.
Talking trash
Several new acronyms have emerged on the environmental front, according to Garbage, a magazine billed as "the practical journal for the environment."
Among the acronyms: CAVEmen (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) are sure to fight LULUs (Locally Undesirable Land Uses). Their credo is BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything), according to the magazine.
Maybe next year . . .
Calendars are made from paper, and paper is made from trees, and trees are the specialty of the Virginia Department of Forestry. So the department's calendars ought to be somehow special.
The 1992 calendar was special. All 366 days were color-coded. Mid-October through mid-May, considered more dangerous months for forest fires, are numbered in red. The rest of the year, when forest fires are less of a threat, are numbered in green.
But the '92 calendar hopelessly bungled the colors. It included weeklong stretches of red in the middle of green months - spooky predictions of catastrophe - and green days in the midst of red seas.
The 1993 calendar fixed that problem - green is green, red is red and the twain don't meet.
With that solved, the department forged ahead on its 1993 calendar to mark Easter on Sunday, April 18. That's only for the Greek Orthodox Church. Easter 1993 for most Christians will be this Sunday.
The second day of the Jewish Passover celebration is Tuesday. That's on the calendar correctly.
Scriptural shootout
Henry County minister Elwood Gallimore has thrown down the gauntlet to those who say he has no foundation for preaching polygamy.
Gallimore, who says he bases his theology on a 1965 sermon by Indiana minister William Marrion Branham, has offered to pay the air fares for Branham's sons to come to Bassett Forks and hear him preach Branham's "Marriage and Divorce" sermon.
"Then, if you can take the message of the prophet and prove me wrong, I will apologize and make everything right," Gallimore wrote to Branham's surviving sons.
Branham's sons have denied their father intended to advocate polygamy in the sermon.