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

DATE: MONDAY, March 21, 1994                   TAG: 9403220023
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOW I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO HAVE BEEN A PIONEER

I would like to explain why you won't be seeing us at all of the fashionable nightspots around town for a long time.

Also, we won't be going to Bermuda this year - which is no big deal because we have never gone there.

I know that life won't be the same without our witty repartee, and I know that we're known as the local versions of Zelda and Scotty Fitzgerald. You'll just have to bear up.

The reason we're deserting you is that we're so tired from trying to dig our side yard out from under fallen timber that we simply can't be night people anymore.

Once we had a wooded side yard. Now we have a glade that looks very English, if I do say so myself.

You'll have to trust me when I say that the agony and despair of cleaning up that much outdoor space beggars the imaginations, all of you party people out there, and you ought to be ashamed.

It makes table-hopping seem, well, rather shabby. Besides, table-hopping is expensive, and we now have major chain saw repair bills.

Besides, you can't do a lot of table-hopping when every sinew in your body hurts from sawing wood, then splitting it and hauling away the brush.

At an advanced age, you notice arthritis rather quickly when you work in the great outdoors.

You want to know how bad it hurts? Well, I couldn't give one of my famous toasts because I can't bear to hold a champagne glass by its stem. I can still get a shot of bourbon by holding the glass between my palms.

Now that we have almost cleared the land, we have to think about things like getting up the stump of the oldest dogwood tree, which probably went back to the New Deal. I am told the use of dynamite is out.

We also have to buy new trees and replant vast areas with grass seed, now that we will have sun on that side of the house. Already, there is a magnolia tree in our future, and only Better Homes and Gardens knows what other species we'll have.

But, by George, if we really get this lush lawn - like the ones mulching mowers are supposed to make - it will have been worth it.

I should think we'll have rather a nice place for croquet - which is a lot better for you than table-hopping.

Until then, cheer-oh. And don't be surprised when you get an invitation to a formal garden party on our lawn.

Say, about 1997?

by CNB