Exile on Main Street, Floyd, Virginia

Exile on Main Street

What better way to check out George’s new bed/desk, but take it on the road? I meandered out of Charlottesville early Monday morning, letting ‘da shaggin’ wagin’ decide where to go. 340 South for a while, ending up outside of Troutville, Virginia…tooled around the Hollins College  campus where I had college road tripped in the late 70’s and my sister and sister in law graduated in the early 90’s. I was kind of concerned as security drove by, that I would be considered slightly creepy, a middle aged guy in a 1992 van, with a 3 foot by 7 foot bed/desk in the back, cruising around a tony woman’s college campus on a lazy Monday afternoon.

Da wagin then decided to head down 221 south to Floyd, Virginia, home of Floyd Fest, http://lineup.floydfest.com/  a music festival I will attend with friends and family in late July, located on the Blue Ridge Parkway, mile post 171. As I approached one stoplight Floyd, on my way to Stone Fairy State Park, I noticed that in contrast to the well manicured Pentecostal churches and Christmas tree farms that surrounded every other no main street town along 221, Floyd advertised healing centers, yoga, art centers and even a tapas bar. I parked on Main Street and chanced upon Susan, at the cash register of a shop specializing in yoga style clothes that she said the owner procured in Ecuador. I explained that I was wandering about, a la Chuck Berry,  with no particular place to go, to practice fulltime rv-ing, and wondered, in spite of the obvious once a year music festival, why Floyd was so different, from the other towns just five miles down the road?

Susan, a doctor of cultural diversity & service learning programs at nearby Ferrum University, was a wealth of information about all things Floyd. She said that in the 60’s, hippies moved in around Floyd for the back to the land movement, living with no electricity or running water. As the Old Time Mountain and Bluegrass music forms were already firmly established here, and the hippies were….well, into music as well, so  the rest is kind of history. So it appeared to me that the two groups, one of “born heres”, embracing gospel and spiritual bluegrass, and the “come heres”, embracing the danceable, progressive bluegrass of Jerry Garcia and Allison Krauss, have  peacefully coexisted happily ever after. Or so it seemed after an hour in Floyd.

As I sat in my campsite at Stone Fairy Sate Park, an hour from Floyd, still smarting from the $33 camping fee, I pondered the fact that at the price of $33 a night, (that was a fucking mortgage!) I was not going to last long in the permanent rv world. I guess that is why they call them the affluent homeless. At this campsite, which in all fairness, had electrical hook ups, large lake and beach and what looked like weekend parking for a 1000, none of which I used, I was one of the few campers. Where ever you go, there you are. Although I would be just as alone, bored and facing the nothingness of senescence back home in Charlottesville, is this the friggin payoff for living in a van in Woolwine, Virginia? How pitiful is it that I cannot even afford this boring shit?

The next day I moved to Rocky Knob National Park campground, just six miles from Floyd and two miles from the Floyd Fest site….kinda wished I had better checked my campground map the previous afternoon. There were three campsites occupied, separated by about 75 yards: me in da shaggin wagin, a dude on a motorcycle with a tent the size of a sleeping bag, eating a can of tuna and a huge Class A motorhome with satellite dish and solar panels and an Escapee’s emblem on the side  http://www.escapees.com/Default.aspx. I have recently joined the Escapees’ club as they offer mailing services and all kinds of advice on all things RV; they are headquartered in Livingston, Texas, so I had an "in". Did these campers seek solitude and might they be taken back if a slightly creepy middle aged guy in a shaggin wagin for Christ’s sake, approached them seeking companionship? Jeez, is this what I want?

No, not yet, it is not what I want. I get in da wagin and head to Floyd. There are at least two bars there, touting hand crafted beers and lots of live music…..Thursday through Saturday…. tonight is Tuesday. So I order some taquitos mexicanos in an almost empty Mexican restaurant, have a couple of decidedly non hand crafted Coronas and go sit on Main Street Floyd, maybe a square acre in total…the sole stoplight changing loudly from red to green. Susan, possibly misunderstanding my goal of wandering desultorily around in my nothingness, had given me names of movers and shakers in Floyd, communes and restaurants possibly looking for help in exchange for boondocking in a field that faces some absolutely spectacular scenery. What would that be like? The tapas bar had a sign advertising for a “night cook”; maybe working at the tapas bar, living in a field outside of Floyd for a few months….who knows who or what I could meet? As I pondered my Exile on Main Street, I started to recognize people; not a lot, but in an hour, I had sensed a pattern…this place would be Life slowing down to its elements. Gosh, could I handle the simplicity?