Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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Seldom has this region been depicted, even humorously, as quite the place that Dave Mance III described in the June 26 edition of the Bennington (Vt.) Banner.

Mance, a freelance nature columnist, wrote that Roanoke has no historic downtown but a lot of prefab housing and Krispy Kreme outlets.

He said the Mill Mountain Star glows red whenever there is a traffic fatality in the area.

And he said that in "rare but noteworthy cases," farmers plowing meadows "will literally fall through the earth into caverns below."

Best of all, Mance told his readers that we locals catch giant catfish "denned like beavers in riverbank holes" by wading into the water, rummaging around their lairs and annoying the fish so they'll bite our gloved fists.

(That practice is called "noodling," and it is illegal in Virginia.)

No response

Monday, I sent Mance an e-mail inquiring about his observations, and Tuesday I left a voice mail message at his home in Shaftsbury, Vt.

By late Tuesday afternoon, he had not replied.

He was one of nearly 500 members of the Outdoor Writers Association of America who came to Roanoke in June for the group's annual conference and to savor a taste of Southwest Virginia's outdoor offerings.

Harry Leidich of Roanoke sent me the clip of the Mance column.

We can only wonder whether Mance meant humor or harm.

He wrote that Roanoke is a mere five minutes from the Blue Ridge Mountains, "but those who head to the hills hoping to find dulcimer-playing mountain folk sipping Mason jars full of clear on a cabin porch will be sorely disappointed."

In fact, summer bluegrass concerts occur weekly at the Roanoke Mountain Campground off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The much-publicized Crooked Road links old-time music venues throughout Southwest Virginia.

High point

Mance described the Hotel Roanoke, the conference headquarters, as "a big, fancy hotel in 1690's German style ... all lederhosen and schnitzel."

The truth is, the hotel's exterior consists in part of English Tudor facades, which has nothing to do with Germany.

Mance's fervor peaked "while riding back to the Schnitzel Hotel on a tour bus" loaded with writers -- "most of us pissed as farts, as they say down here, on complimentary libations."

He wrote that the "tipsy tour guide" suggestively used the term Big Lick, "rolling the phrase off her tongue in a corn-pone southern drawl to a chorus of catcalls and whistles."

That part may have been true. I asked Catherine Fox, tourism director for the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, who the tour guide might have been.

"It wasn't me," she said. "I have an idea who it was."

How concerned should we be by Mance's report?

Not very.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that as of March 31, the Burlington Banner, which publishes six days per week, had a circulation of less than 8,000.

Tellingly, the imaginative Mr. Mance did not quote any people from this area at all. That's the best possible way to keep one's stereotypes intact.