You can always tell when you are in the country when you get into your hire car and turn on the radio. Someone is usually singing about his wife leaving him in a country and western style (for instance “She Ran Away With the Rodeo Clown”). The more “in the country” you are, the longer it takes to find a station that plays actual music (definition: actual music = rock and or roll).
So after landing at Roanoke’s airport and getting my hire car it took seven changes of station before I heard “Let my Love Open the Door” by Pete Townshend and could stop searching and watch the road. Sadly, reception of this station lasted less than the length of the song and I was forced to search again. And so it went:
“...flushed from the bathroom of your heart...”
“...It’s alright to be a redneck...”
“...a bible and a bus ticket home...”
And then thankfully there was Metallica doing their cover of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”. Not only that but 40 miles later (in Lexington) it was still sounding good (note to NT - no “Eye of the Tiger” though). So this was 96.3 WROV - The Rock of Virginia (emphasis on “Rock” of course), my radio station of choice for the week.
Roanoke was originally named “Big Lick” because of the large deposits of salt found there. It was renamed Roanoke (same name as the first English colony in the Americas) 30 or so years later. One of its most famous sights is the Mill Mountain Star, the world’s largest free standing illuminated man-made star (the largest man-made star is in El Paso). The Mill Mountain Star was built to help celebrate the Christmas season back in 1949 and is normally shown (as above) in red, white and blue (In remembrance of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 it was shown all white). Famous Roanoke residents have included Debbie Reynolds, John Nash (the mathematician from the movie “A Beautiful Mind”) and Mark Chapman (who killed John Lennon).
Just up the road is Lexington (not to be confused with Lexington Kentucky), home of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), the oldest state-run academy in the USA. Its most notable person (to us here in Houston at least) is Sam Houston (he was born just north in Timber Ridge), one time President of Texas and founder of the city that bears his name. Famous civil war leaders Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are both buried here, in Lee Chapel and Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery respectively.
This area is full of references to major battles. In between Roanoke and Lexington is the US National D-Day memorial, which will have been busy yesterday, the 65th anniversary of the event. Here’s how it looked last year:
Although this area of the country seems a lot smaller and quieter than Houston (the main road between Roanoke and Virginia is like a small country lane in Houston) it does have one thing that Houston doesn’t have in abundance: Decent Indian Curry. Roanoke’s Taaza restaurant serves Indian food just like its from its native land (I mean Great Britain, not India). I know, because I went three times in one week...