Joe tells the story about traveling U. S. Route 58, the longest road in the State of Virginia. Title: Beach To Bluegrass: Places to Brake on Virginia's Longest Road.
Source: Roanoke Times
On a map, U.S. 58 looks like a long string stretched across Virginia's widest girth, from Virginia Beach straight through to Tennessee.
But when threaded through the juicy legends and historical landmarks that fall along its path, it becomes a collection of stories told by Bristol writer Joe Tennis in his latest book, "Beach to Bluegrass: Places to Brake on Virginia's Longest Road."
Tennis, a Radford University graduate, published his first book, "Southwest Virginia Crossroads," in 2004. It showcases major attractions in the region.
"Just a few months after 'Crossroads' came out, I was ready to start something else again," said Tennis. "As I went along, I noticed that I had this big interest in things on the coast where I'd grown up and things back in Southwest Virginia that I had just written about, like the New River and the Roanoke River."
At first, Tennis, 38, thought he might pen a series of vignettes about the state in general. But when he was visiting his parents in Virginia Beach in 2005, he got the idea to connect the stories to a road. He decided to drive U.S. 58 the whole way back to Bristol to gain inspiration for his book.
"I started driving down the road, and it didn't seem very interesting to me at first because I didn't know anything about it," Tennis recalled. "The Piedmont wasn't that interesting just yet until I got around Martinsville and Patrick County and started seeing the mountains and the beauty of the road at Lovers' Leap and up in that area where the foothills begin. Then, I started saying, 'No, no, no, there is something about this road.' "
Tennis researched historical events that happened within 10 to 20 miles of the route. He learned that Adolph Coors, the namesake of Coors beer, fell to his death from a window of The Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach and is thought to haunt the place. He learned about the bloody trial of Floyd Allen at the Carroll County Courthouse and the 1929 tornado in Rye Cove.
Readers can travel east to west through the 58 chapters of the book, passing through four geographical categories: Hampton Roads, Piedmont, Blue Ridge and Southwest.
By Lindsay Key | The Roanoke Times
