Cotton and Peanuts Friday, 5 Nov 2004 I started the day by walking through Lawrenceville. It is the seat of Brunswick County with a historic old courthouse and jail and what appears to be a brand new municipal building. Saint Paul College is here although I must admit I never heard of it until planning this trek. The downtown is one of those where the numbered highway (US58) zigzags through town. There are prosperous looking business places interspersed among many boarded up buildings. The day has been sunny and cool with the bluest of skies. Only down near the horizon was there a hint of muddiness to the blue. Light breezes. I was in and out of the sweatshirt. Lots of trucks loaded with skinny pine logs headed east...presumably to the paper plant in Franklin. A few trucks with saw logs in both directions. What I haven't figured out is the occasional truck of skinny pine logs headed west...lost their way? Horrors. I lost my cell phone! My first inclination was to call Donna and ask her to come help me find it. But...how would I call without the phone?!! Almost instantly I knew where I had lost it and back down the road a half-mile or more I trudged. There it was where I had walked into the woods for a personal problem. A branch or brier had caught it and pulled it off its clip. Today brought the first cotton (unharvested) field and the first peanut field (harvested). I guess it's obvious from all the log trucks that tree farming is big down here. At one of my rest stops, I could see tree stumps among the young trees. I passed a sign late today that informed me that Norfolk was only 86 miles away. I should be close to the last 100 miles to the ocean at Virginia Beach. Tonight Donna and I are in Emporia. Tomorrow, I try for Capron. Saturday, 6 Nov 2004 Brrr! Frozen dew on cars while roofs and grass painted white as I started the morning walk out of Emporia. Watched the sunrise at 7:44 in a clear, blue sky with a mushroom cloud of steam in the distance. Stars and moon were bright earlier. Except for motels and fast food establishments, I wonder if Emporia's utility has passed. Except for a nicely renovated train station, the downtown area and part of the old US58 route through town has been virtually deserted. On the eastern outskirts of town is a huge log yard and a Georgia-Pacific wood products plant...the source of the steam cloud. Thousands of logs stacked here. Now I know where most of the saw logs were being taken. Skinny pine logs were still being hauled eastward this Saturday morning except for one truckload heading west. I still don't understand that. A few Virginia Tech cars with pennants whipping in the wind were headed west...presumably to I85 south to Chapel Hill and the big football game. Cotton. Cotton everywhere. A person could glean a bale from the roadside between Emporia and Capron. I guess it falls or blows from the farmers' wagons and trucks as they haul it to the gin. In a couple of places the shoulder of the road looked like it was covered with dirty snow. A few years ago this portion of US58 east of Emporia was known as the "suicide strip." It was a narrow, two-lane, concrete highway with poor shoulders. Long straightaway stretches combined with heavy truck traffic invited both speed and risky passing. Some nasty fatal accidents occurred. Donna brought lunch on her way to see a cousin in Franklin. She picked me up about 4:30 on the way back. Around midafternoon I nearly stepped into a mass of wriggly, half-inch long, gray worms crawling up from the edge of the pavement and headed toward the white line and the travel lane. I didn't spend long inspecting the site, but I saw nothing that could have been the source like some roadkill or something like that. Another puzzle. Today shortly east of Emporia, I saw the first newspaper delivery tube carrying Norfolk's "Virginian-Pilot/Ledger Star" name. Must be getting close! It's been interesting watching the newspaper tube names change. Out in the southwest it was the Bristol and Knoxville papers. Later the Roanoke, Martinsville and Danville papers along with that of Greensboro. Then the Richmond and now the Norfolk papers. Recent names for US58 have included Pleasant Shade Road, Southampton Parkway, Courtland Highway, and in Emporia, Atlantic Street.