"Taking Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren

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Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with 8 of the Brethren and 
Friends of the Virginian Railway. We prepared a card for Harry Bundy, 
expressing our sympathy on the death of his Mother, Adrienne Davis Bundy, 
98. She was a member of the Jamestown Society, National Society of the DAR 
and had the honor on June 26, 1944 of christening the submarine-chaser, 
QS-69. She lived in Elizabeth City, NC. Harry started his rail career as an 
operator on the original Norfolk Southern at Tidewater Junction, VA and 
worked with VGN operations, and retired from the new Norfolk Southern as a 
Systems Engineer.

The DVD shown was "Norfolk Southern over Christiansburg Mountain" that has 
about an hour of Whitethorn District (Old Virginian) footage. I was amazed 
at some of the shots of locations on the old VGN that I haven't recorded 
yet for our Station Project. The narrator of this video was obviously 
British, from his accent, and the Brethren especially enjoyed his 
pronunciation of Whitethorn, Ironto, Fagg and Kumis.

 From last week's report, Delbert Whitow reminded me that Kellysville has 
only two "e"s and not three as I posted. He said that Kellysville was first 
called East River and was named after the Kelly Axe Handle Factory located 
in the area.

With all of the talk of Chrysler and GM problems in the news, I brought a 
photo that I found recently of a red four door sedan built in 1949, for the 
Brethren to identify. After no correct answers were had, a clue given was 
that it was named after a famous rail line. Rufus had guessed a Chevrolet 
Coupe; Raymond guessed a Hudson Hornet, but Landon Gregory nailed it, a 
1949 Kaiser "Virginian". Wonder if they ever built a New York Central or a 
Union Pacific or a..... This reminded Ken McLain of a car that was sold by 
Sears & Roebuck. It was called an "Allstate" but looked exactly like a 
Kaiser "Henry J".

I passed on to the Brethren one of Gordon Hamilton's great news releases of 
1909 about plans to build a tunnel under the Elizabeth River for access 
into Norfolk. Of course N&W and VGN were not in the plans, they had 
bridges. This prompted Raymond and Glen McLain to recall that on occasion, 
a lost Pennsy box car would show up in the VGN yard and would have to be 
barged over the Bay to the Eastern Shore back home to the PRR.

One of the Brethren brought up the recent incident in the news of an 
elderly woman being "Tazered" by a Texas police officer after a traffic 
stop. All agreed, after discussion that the police officer was within his 
authority, Ruf Wingfield said that on many occasions on the Roanoke City 
Market area, he observed a "beat cop" using his night stick on an 
intoxicated individual and "beating him bloody". Glen McLain added that the 
cops with the "lead filled billy clubs had to use less force". This is when 
I was reminded of an old saying "God gave us two ears but only one 
mouth"...should we listen twice as much as we speak?

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon





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