Variety is the spice of…goldfish?

Virginia is for multitaskers.

This is why Virginia is so fascinating. Zoom in to read the signs.

At “The Store” between Sweet Briar College and Lynchburg, you can pay your overdue utility bills, buy hot sandwiches, fried chicken, or 🍤 seafood, buy minnows and crawdads (and goldfish?!) for fishing bait, lottery tickets, and, in the shed there’s feed for your animals and wood. And yes, CBD. Pick up a vape while you’re turning your water back on and snagging some chicken and fixins for supper.

And yes, that is a huge metal sculpture of a rooster out front. Why? Farmer feng shui for all I know. He probably has a name. I can ask around.

I love this place. Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m weird about food, as I have said. I can’t eat food fixed at a place that also sells open live bait. But I love the charm of an everything country store that has kinda gone rogue. You can’t stop in here for some milk and a newspaper. But dagnabbit, you can get a scratchoff and a vape to start your day, along with some chicken nuggets, like the good Lord intended. And then go fishing. There’s something oddly comforting about The Store.

And funny, as well. I took this photo in the parking lot of the Starbucks. ‘Murica!

Here’s a bonus I took a while ago: The Chicken Coop is a standard around here, in the other direction, towards Charlottesville. You go to church, then you pick up your chicken lunch order. Inside the gas station. It‘s like living in a Southern Gothic novel around here. It’s downright enchanting sometimes. I took the picture because of the logo. I have no idea if the owners did this as a play on chicken breasts, or if a chucklehead local did it, and the owners decided to leave it, but look at the eggs in “Coop”.

And yes, gas station fried chicken is quite good. Just don’t think about it.

One more. I took this a while ago, while working as an intensive in-home therapist, up near Smith Mountain Lake. This is deep in the country. I love stuff like this.

Keep letting your freak flag fly, Virginia.

Oh, all that fishing with crawdads and goldfish? Not at Smith Mountain Lake you don’t, at least not at the boardwalk and dock. The giant koi will have you for dinner. Koi, you sniff, why they are just decorative fish, I could pick them out of the water with my hands—

Here’s a duck for scale:

We grow ‘em different here.

So. Virginia is for lovers, indeed. More accurately, weirdos. Like me.