1779

Yesterday I was stirred out of Judy Branch by a call from a friend. He needed to get out of his house and get out of town. We drove down into Virginia, about an hour and half southeast, to Abingdon. I had been through Abingdon several times, but I had never really explored. We walked the streets of the old town in an intermittent drizzle, reveling at the well preserved brick structures, reading the historic markers and enjoying the experience of walking through a downtown where it seemed quite normal for people to do such a thing. I think we both had been feeling a bit of burnout for the town where we work (and he lives). The streets are lined with facades of empty and abandoned buildings. On weekends, there's no life in the town center at all. How nice it was to go just a little ways off and find a town that was alive!

Besides just walking, we also took advantage of opportunities Abingdon offered that our Kentucky hamlets could not. We had a sit down meal at a local pizza place where we were served a vegetarian pizza and two very tall draft beers. Not just any beer. Microbrew from North Carolina! Then we did something most folks who have lived where we do fantasize about doing every weekend. We went to see a movie in a movie theater. Not just any movie, but a somewhat independent film, "Little Miss Sunshine." We capped off our excursion by stopping into Abingdon's oldest bar, The Tavern. It was built in 1779, originally serving as a stagecoach inn and tavern and in its long life serving as a civil war hospital, a house and an assortment of taverns/inns. We once again experienced the novelty of being served a beer in public. And not just any beer. German beer on tap!