Priscilla Richardson

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Daleville's Charlotte Yeatts has one answer to the problem of too many plastic grocery bags: she turns them into handbags.

She cuts off the handles, and then cuts the bag itself into crosswise strips about one inch wide. The result is a pile of loops. She then attaches one loop to another, by pulling the ends through, making a long string of material to roll into a ball. Then she crochets the strips as if they were yarn.

So far she's made several little bags for ladies at The Glebe, where she lives, to use to carry their key and dining card when they go to meals. For herself, she created a beach bag 16 inches tall, about 20 inches wide, and 7 inches across the bottom, not counting the big handle she created.

Yeatts says the finished bags "look sort of like straw. Ones made of Kroger bags are tan with flecks of blue and black. [Bags made with] Dollar General's bags are yellow with black and red. Food Lion's white with blue, Wal-Mart's white with black."

Some folks who also live at The Glebe are learning how to make these bags in a handicraft class Yeatts teaches there. She learned how to crochet from her mother, then taught herself how to knit from a book. Full of ideas, she also designed a card sold in The Glebe gift shop.

She and her husband, Donald, came to The Glebe in 2006 after having signed up in 2001. They wanted to spare their children worry for them. Living on the fifth floor, they enjoy their mountain view greatly.

When they read in the paper that Glebe residents are wealthy, they were astonished. "We just worked and saved for years, and lived within our means," Yeatts said. And they notice that the same thing goes for many other residents.

Yeatts started her life on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. "Make sure you say 'of Virginia' or people assume it's Maryland," she cautioned me.

I know to do that, having spent many weeks on the Shore, as it's called. Yeatts was the daughter of a Chesapeake Bay waterman and homemaker. She had to take the ferry to Newport News to study nursing after high school. "It took me eight hours to get home. One ferry went across Hampton Roads, then one across the bay to the Shore. I got my RN [registered nurse certificate] and worked for a family practice; quit work in 2006 to move here."

Her husband worked at and retired from the shipyard in Newport News. "He graduated from the apprentice school there as a pipe fitter, then went on to quality control on nuclear submarines. We met one year, got engaged the next and married the next. I was 19 when we married, Don was 22. We couldn't get married sooner because nurses in training and apprentices weren't allowed to marry." They will celebrate their 52nd anniversary in April.

Or course they didn't work all the time. They used their vacations to travel all around the United States, visiting every state. And they've enjoyed square dancing since 1972. Having come from the flat land of Newport News, they never got a chance to go snow sledding. So this year, when we had snow, they tried it out, using a toboggan-like sled they bought last year and stored in hopes of snow.

Donald Yeatts, a self-described "genealogy nut," said he likes to spend time doing research through obituaries online. Most of his people lived in Pittsylvania County. "We've been there since 1750. I have a Blankenship line, a Major line, a Yeatts, Mustain, Love and Marricks line. My mother was a Fitzgerald."

Charlotte Yeatts keeps her professional hand in by working as a nurse every Tuesday night at the Christian Free Clinic at Fincastle Baptist Church. But it's not work for her. "I wish some of my friends back home who think I'm in a nursing home could see me now. I'm having a ball. We decided to come here and enjoy life."