Waverly

Yesterday was quite the tornado day for many in the South and East, including our region of Virginia. We don’t get many tornados in the Richmond region, and we seldom get tornados in February – let’s hope that yesterday will remain an exception as opposed to being the start of a trend.

Tornados took the lives of four Virginians yesterday, one was in Appomattox and the other three in Waverly. Waverly has about two thousand people, and it lies on Route 460 and is known as “one of those towns you pass through if you’re traveling to Virginia Beach or the Outer Banks”. Travelers don’t generally stop in Waverly, if they need a break from driving to the beach their sights are generally set on Wakefield, the next town east of Waverly, or Windsor, the town beyond Wakefield. Wakefield is home to the popular Virginia Dinner, and Windsor has a Dairy Queen if you need a Blizzard fix. Smart folks drive the speed limit through Waverly, just as they do through all the towns on Route 460 – when the speed limit drops you need to pay attention because if you ain’t watching the speed limit you can be sure that a fella in a car with a bubble on top is watching you.

If you are headed home from the beach and you haven’t stopped by the time you get to Waverly you might as well wait until you get through Disputanta and then stop around I-295 or I-95.

There is something to be said for slowing down in these little towns; little towns are meant to be driven through slowly. People coming from the north of the James River and who are in a hurry think that by taking I-64 they will get to the beach faster than taking Route 460 – sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t When they don’t it’s because there was an accident on I-64 (a common occurrence) or an accident on a bridge or in a tunnel around Hampton Roads – then you don’t slow down like you do when driving through a small town…then you just stop like you do when you are parking your car.

I don’t mind slowing down in Disputanta or Waverly or Wakefield or Windsor, you get to notice things you may have missed before, and it’s a good reminder that there are still folks who have the good sense to live somewhere where road rage is a dog chasing a car and not a fool trying to kill you.