missing: her garden is gone

joy's house is about two miles away from mine and i think if i were to count up the times i've driven by it, twice a day, to and from work, it'd be in the hundreds now.

i loved her garden. in may it was bursting and overflowing with green and color and i saw her out there a few times. bent at the waist, digging, pulling and tending...her long blond hair in a ponytail.

she went missing on september 7 and for a few days, she was all over the news. here one day, shopping with her husband at a local garage sale...gone that night without a trace. keys left behind. purse on the counter.

our newspaper covered the story a few days into it, but really, our hometown is out of the coverage area so after the initial reports and a few updates, there hasn't been much to say.

i saw a few "missing" posters around town hung up in shop windows. eventually, they turned into advisories for fisherman, kayakers and hikers to be on the lookout when they used the shenandoah river. the sheriff never came out and said it, but it's slowly gone from search to recovery.

but nobody mentions joyce much in the news now because a college student in charlottesville went missing around the same time and they caught then man and now they're linking him to another murder of a college student a few years back. it's bigger news, i suppose, than the mysterious end to the quiet life of a 51-year old mother and garden lover.

and now, her garden is gone.

i drove by this weekend and it's been taken down and raked. nothing is left in her tiny plot of plants.

gone, too, are the missing posters and the river advisories.

must be that the smaller, sad news is harder for us to take.  harder for us to hang on to. nothing for us to grasp when the news cycle comes back 'round with the latest catastrophes and car crashes and workplace shootings.

i still drive by joyce's house every day, to and from work, and i think about her.

i catch glimpses of the river behind her house and i can't help but think of where the authorities assume she ended up.

i wish her story wasn't so easy to forget.

more than anything, though, i wish joyce was still around to tend to her cold-weather vegetables.

Mr. Roper Rides A Bull

I covered the older adults day at the fair yesterday and was getting frustrated after wandering around the grounds looking for someone (anyone!) who appeared to be old and enjoying themselves. 

I was shooed away by a couple of older ladies in big straw hats as they took in the crop museum in one of the barns. They were too busy, they said.

I was a little dejected, honestly. I was on my way to the FFA food booth the console myself with a friend twinkie when I heard a pretty loud commotion from one of the midway tents. I wandered up and saw this older gent seated on the mechanical bull getting tossed this way and that, whooping it up. 

There it was. I had my story.

Richard looks so much like Mr. Roper from Three's Company that he used to get into clubs and bars free in Branson, Missouri in the 80s when he and his wife would take the bus tours. He won a hula hoop contest in his 60s, beating out all manner of child and adult alike. 

He even told me he'd just taken his wife on the Ferris Wheel.

"We get to the top of the thing and you know what I say to her?" He asks me, accentuating the punchline with a squeeze of my arm. "I tell her 'put out or get out!' Looks like she didn't get out , right?"

I took a portion of the story that ran in today's paper and a couple of the photos I took that didn't run and shared them here. I figure everyone should meet Mr. Robinson.

HARRISONBURG — Richard Robinson Sr. of Lacey Spring had a crowd of onlookers gathered before the mechanical bull began moving.

Robinson, 76, gripped the rope by his knees and gave his wife of 60 years, Charlotte, a wink.

“He’s nothing but a recycled teenager,” Charlotte, 75, said, shaking her head. “You should have seen him during his Elvis impersonator days.”

With a whir, the bull began its spinning and bucking and Robinson held tight, lasting a total of 20 seconds before sailing off. He landed safely on the inflated mats, and gave his wife a thumbs-up.

The Robinsons attended the Rockingham County Fair on Thursday as part of Older Adults Day, where folks 60 and older paid just $2 at the gate.

“Older Adults Day is a long-standing tradition at the fair,” said Jeff Ishee, the fair’s general manager. “It’s always well-attended and makes for a fun day.”

For Robinson, it’s all about the adventure. Having seen a mechanical bull on television before, he always thought he’d like to try it someday.

“I have four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren,” he said. “I’m running out of good stories to tell them, so I have to stay interesting. I never back down from an adventure. I’m always on the lookout for a good time.”

“It’s never dull with Richard,” Charlotte said. “He’s the church clown, believe it or not.”

As Robinson sat tying his shoes on, the ride operator wrote his name on the record board. As of noon Thursday, he held the record for the 50 and older group.

“I’m going to keep swinging by here to check on this,” he said motioning to the board. “I get a free T-shirt to prove I won. How many people my age will have one of those?”

story 50: the obituary

it's all about quality, not quantity when it comes to your writing. when it comes to stories in your personal archive.

i get it.

but i still peek at the numbers and yesterday, i'd hit story 49. that's 49 stories in the six weeks i've been at the paper and that meant that today, i would write story 50.

i walked into work knowing what story 50 would be, but i was wrong.

story 50 turned out to be an obituary.

i've never written an obituary before.

i've written about quilting bees, eagle scouts, domesticated reindeer, pool tournaments where the age requirement was 80 years or older, and wheelchair rugby.

but never an obit.

i suddenly felt like i held someone's memory in my trembling, unlearned hands.

 sure, loved ones had their own memories, but the average reader who thumbed through each page of the newspaper over coffee? what memories would i leave with the reader who had never met the deceased but was suddenly sharing breakfast with a memory in newsprint?

suddenly it seemed the task was a tiger in the corner, coiled and ready to strike if i wrote a wrong word or bungled a detail. it would be a broken heart if i failed to capture this man's essence.

i was scared to make phone calls and talk to the people who loved him. the people who'd known him most of his 94 years.

but i made a few calls.

and it turns out, the people i called really wanted to talk about him.

they wanted to talk about his love of the mennonite church. his love of amateur radio and of reporting the weather. his love of his wife and children. of his community. of the three generations of people he'd inspired.

and suddenly, sitting at my computer with pages of notes and dates and milestones, the story just sort of wrote itself. the journey he took. his years as a conscientious objector during the second world war. his years as an early weatherman before the national weather service had its act together.

his years pastoring his many flocks.

suddenly this man's life was vivid and full of color in front of me and i couldn't type fast enough. suddenly i wished i had an infinite number of newspaper pages to fill with his fulfilled dreams and passions.

suddenly story 50 became my favorite story and suddenly, when the fear and the anxiety had gone, it was hard to say goodbye to the man behind story 50.

Road to Singers Glen

a few weeks back, i met someone who told me that when i'm looking to settle into one spot and buy a house, i needed to move to singers glen. he's a longtime virginian and knows his stuff, but i'd never heard of, been near, or knew a thing about any ol' singers glen, virginia.

fast forward a few weeks.

a wonderful woman comes in to talk to me about her small town's post office being up on the chopping block. they don't want it closed. it's an integral part of their gorgeous small town. a historic gem of a place called...wait for it...singers glen.

i drove out there today to get a shot of the post office for a story i'm doing.

turns out my friend was right. singers glen IS where we need to move. has to be the most beautiful surprise i've had in a while.

(of course, the post office in question. they meet with the town next week to decide its fate. it's been around since 1860 when the son of the town's founder became the first post master.)