Spinning Tops It wasn’t a very exciting toy, but if you were a child in the 50’s, you probably had one or two. It was a spinning top, made of tin with elaborate and beautiful painted designs. None of us knew how they worked, but if you pushed the top handle down multiple times, the top began spinning faster and faster and when you released the handle, the top would dance and spin merrily around … [Read more...]
Stripers: Over and Out
The 2024 striper season has largely been disappointing. The big fish are just not coming into the bay as they once did, and who can blame them? The shelves are empty. The once plentiful menhaden have been turned into fish oil and shipped off to Canada. The food simply isn’t there anymore. Yet, some big stripers have been caught in their usual haunts off Cape Charles and live eels have been the … [Read more...]
Some Assembly Required
This Boomer looks back on Christmases Past like Ebenezer Scrooge encountering one of his ghosts. Three words come to mind. Some Assembly Required. You see, I was a young parent in the early 1970s and had a daughter, Angelin, who asked Santa for a complete kitchen set. Stove, refrigerator, sink and cabinets. Santa didn’t have the good sense to tell her this was impossible since Santa’s sleigh … [Read more...]
Bring On the Snow
I snowed this week, enough to cover the ground in a few protected places, then turned to rain I was really hoping for more snow, not to bring on the Christmas Spirit, but to fertilize my freshly tilled garden. Snow? Fertilizer? Good for gardens? Yep. Here’s why. Snow cover helps to preserve and add to soil moisture in the winter. Snow is also known as a poor man’s fertilizer. As … [Read more...]
Sunflower Chips: The Best
I saw a post this week on a Neighborhood site that said Black Oil Sunflower seed was the best buy because all birds can eat it. Not true, Sunflower for birdseed comes three ways: whole, hearts and chips. The whole, black-oil sunflower seeds are ideal for cardinals because cardinals have beaks equipped to break the hulls and then eat the hearts. Doves swallow the seeds whole and their craw … [Read more...]
Old Businesses of Charlottesville
Tiffany’s Seafood Once upon a time in a land not-so-far away, there was a fabulous seafood restaurant. The land not-so-far was Charlottesville, and the restaurant was Tiffany’s Seafood. Today, there really are no seafood restaurants in town. Some, like Rhett’s, have seafood specials from time to time, and some, like Bonefish off the usual salmon, shrimp, and frozen fish entrees. But there … [Read more...]
Toys of My Life: Mr. Potato Head
Lives there a single child of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, who did not get a Mr. Potato Head for Christmas? It was a fun toy, not a very sophisticated toy, but one that was easy to assemble and one that offered a chance for creativity. How often are you allowed to stick a nose where the ears should be? The toy was invented by George Lerner who initially came up with the idea of inserting small, … [Read more...]
A Pretty Nice Buck
They say there are no big bucks on public land. Too much pressure, they say. Hunters on public land kill all the young bucks and they don’t have a chance to grow bug. Mark Faulk, age 22, would disagree. A few weeks back, the young man dropped an 11-point, nontypical deer while hunting public land in Caroline County. Faulk had seen the big deer the year before. He captured three trail camera … [Read more...]
Fish On!
Large bluefin tuna are actively feeding off the Virginia coast, with numerous reports of surface activity in several locations. Most boats are concentrating near the windmills, where the action appears to be most consistent. The water temperature is in the low 50°F range, which is ideal for these highly adaptable fish that thrive in temperatures between 50°F and 60°F. Many of the bluefin being … [Read more...]
Old Man River
As you read this, we are on a Viking Riverboat afloat on the Mississippi. We have cruised the Bahamas and Hawaii and parts of Mexico, but never on a river in the heartland of the United States. But this spring, Nancy said she’d like to do a river cruise and visit New Orleans, so here we are. The Mississippi is a big piece of water. It makes the James River look like a brook trout … [Read more...]
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