I grew up in an era where the principal at McGaheysville Elementary School in Rockingham County kept a paddle prominently displayed on the wall in his office.
I was never on the receiving end of this instrument, but the mere presence of the paddle was known to strike fear into many of us schoolchildren. I don’t remember anyone in my class suffering such punishment, but every now and then we’d hear a rumor of some unfortunate lad being summoned to the office. Assume the position. Those were different days.
I don’t have a paddle. Those are frowned upon nowadays. These days, I don’t even need a pen, but I do occasionally feel compelled to use the keyboard to take a proverbial paddle to those who dare to insult our part of Virginia.
When a Richmond journalist dismissively wrote about “whatever the hell is west of Roanoke,” I educated her.
When Hung Cao, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, called the Staunton newspaper “podunk” and said Abingdon was too far to drive for a campaign forum, I called him to task. I did so again when he called everything south of Loudoun and Fairfax counties “southern Virginia.”