My, what a busy month March was for us Town Council members!We began our budget work in earnest during our daylong March 12 budget work session. We have advertised a tax rate of 20 cents per $100 of assessed value for the upcoming fiscal year 2020, which runs from July 1 to June 30, 2020. This tax rate is an increase from our current fiscal year’s rate of 19 cents. However, we agreed to advertise the higher rate in order to give us flexibility to see what we can afford in the upcoming year’s spending plan. It is worth noting that, legally, we cannot adopt a tax rate over what is advertised, but we can adopt a rate under what is advertised, so keeping the tax rate level is indeed a possibility.

With any adopted rate and budget as a whole, we need to consider our needs for future planning and rising costs, particularly in construction, without a considerable growth in the tax base.

There are several noteworthy items that we are considering for funding in fiscal year 2020: renovation of the playground in Rose Hill Park; creation of a deputy town manager position to assist our town manager and be the point of contact for the Public Works and Utilities departments; replacement of a police department cruiser.Also, as of this writing, we have set aside funding for the three budget goals adopted by the council in the last quarter of 2018: funding for police department accreditation; matching funding, along with the Clarke County Board of Supervisors, for a study on the extension of Jack Enders Boulevard; and funding for a branding and marketing study of the town, which would enable us to know our target markets to grow our tax base and foster economic growth.We will adopt the budget and tax rate at our June meeting.

We welcome all public input at our upcoming budget public hearing, set for May 14.

Another matter before us in March was the findings of a study regarding our utility system. This study recommends increases in both our water and sewer rates to pay for the costs of the system over the next five years. Many of these increases stem from high anticipated capital costs, with a very good possibility that we will be eyeing a significant renovation, if not altogether replacement, of our water treatment plant. That cost, alone, hovers north of $11 million. The consultant who prepared the report is also recommending an increase to our fee for new water connections, but a decrease to sewer connection fees.As  much as all of us would like to avoid utility rate increases, the high capital costs, quality mandates we must adhere to, as well as our low user base, means that we must find a way to fund our system to make sure it provides adequate service for years to come.A point of emphasis — our water and sewer funds are enterprise funds, meaning that they must be self-supporting. These funds have zero impact on our general fund, which is funded by our real estate and personal property taxes. So, an increase to water and sewer rates has no bearing on tax bills, and vice versa.The report, which is available on our website (www.berryvilleva.gov) provides useful information including growth rates of neighboring jurisdictions compared to ours, monthly usage analyses, and historic data on our utility rates.We always welcome and encourage public input. If you are not able to make it to a public hearing or the Citizens’ Forum at one of our meetings, please feel free to email us your thoughts.This monthly column is authored by the members of the Berryville Town Council. For information on town government, including meetings, agendas, and contact information for the Town Council and town staff, visit www.berryvilleva.gov.

By Jesse Russell

When I was a child growing up in Clarke County during the 1950s and 1960s, apple orchards were practically every child’s backyard. We played there, ate apples straight from the tree, worked summer jobs there, and when in high school, we developed the art of kissing between the rows of hundreds of thousands of apple trees, if we were lucky! But, as they say, “Nothing lasts forever.”

By the mid 1990s, orchards began to noticeably decline as a result of cut-throat competition from within our country and beyond, along with weather events that hampered maximum production. Today, half of the apples we consume in one fashion or the other are grown in China. But my purpose is not to provide a history and statistics, just a memory of a time that has since passed us by.

Apple orchards were so plentiful in Clarke County that they were a virtual extension of our play. The two largest orchard owners were the H.F. Byrd Orchard and the Moore and Dorsey Orchard. For those of us who lived in the Berryville area, there wasn’t a single child that didn’t find hours of play time in these orchards. So, you might ask, “What in the world could an orchard have that could ever possibly be such an attraction to children?” I cannot speak for all, but I can say what it was that attracted my two neighbors, Bill and Larry Tavenner, and myself. We lived one mile south of Berryville along Route 340, and across the road from us was the Harry F. Byrd orchard. Come spring, workers would begin stacking long wooden poles. These poles were anything from cut sapling trees to long narrow branches from larger trees, and were then stacked in a tepee style arrangement. The orchards would later use them to prop up the limbs of apple trees that were laden with fruit and threatening to break the tree branch from the sheer weight of these quickly growing apples. But, we saw the “tepee” as, well, a tepee. But they had no door in which we could enter, and so to work we would go, removing the poles in one area and then placing them on either side of our future entrance. Eventually, we would make it to the center where there was enough space for us to gather. Our tepee club house was then complete, but being active boys, standing around in our wooden tepee quickly became boring. It was time now to explore the miles of orchard land and any structures that might be found in the middle of it all.

Small water towers and abandoned homes would rise up out of the orchard’s heart like phantoms of man’s past creations. Most structures we found were old wooden water towers with a long spout that swung out from these stilted wooden planked tanks where the spray trucks would refill their own tanks with water and the additive chemical DDT. So far, Larry, Bill and I are still alive, but I would not recommend playing in DDT to anyone! Back then, no one knew the dangers of DDT like we do today.

Once the trees began to bear apples, the spray trucks would slowly crawl within aisles left between each row of trees, sending up a white cloud of pesticide to protect their crops. Both trucks and drivers were covered with a thin white coating, making them seem like ghosts riding upon their great mechanical beasts spewing their poisonous load. Little did we know, the DDT killed not only the mice, but killed chipmunks (I never saw a chipmunk here in Clarke County until maybe 20 years ago), played havoc with the deer population who ate the apples on the trees, produced side effects to the eggs of hawks and eagles who ate the smaller DDT infected creatures, which in time eliminated nearly all in this area.

Although we had great fun playing in these orchards, I would be remiss not to mention a few of the downsides of apple production, but I will not dwell on this issue. I would also be remiss not to mention that the apple industry provided hundreds of permanent jobs both within the orchard and in Byrd’s apple production facility, along with close to a thousand part-time apple thinning and picking jobs. The orchards were, in fact, Clarke County’s largest industry and economic engine.By late April, the trees would seemingly bloom overnight into one of the most beautiful sights in all the country.Miles and miles of land were covered with apple blossoms that turned the countryside white like a freshly fallen snow. Everywhere you went, including the town of Berryville, was scented with this rare, sweet, one-of-a-kind, fragrance. If you have never walked among apple trees in bloom, do so before you die! Nothing, in my opinion, can compare.

By June, the trees were showing their small round fruit, and once they became the size of a walnut, the apple battles would begin! We would first break off a small branch about the width of a pencil (the branch had to be flexible) and having a length of approximately three feet. Once we had chosen the perfect branch, we would take out our penknives and sharpen one end of it. Next, we would take our positions some 40–50 feet away from one another and stick a small apple on the end of our handmade weapons. Like some miniature hand held catapult, we would then fling the apples at one another. Rest assured, even though the apple flew off the sticks at a great speed, it also was one of the most inaccurate weapons ever devised by 10-year-old boys. Of the thousands of apples we hurled at one another, I can not remember anyone ever hitting their target. Eventually realizing that our battle would end in a draw, we moved on to testing our sadly inaccurate “weapons” in a competition to see who could fling their apple the greatest distance. I would like to say that I always won this contest, but since Bill and Larry are still alive, I am forced to be honest and defer to their apple flinging superiority . . . for now! Last man standing wins.

Ha! By July, the apples became too big to fling with our altered sticks of war, but bicycles, ponies and mopeds became regular sights in the orchards. Ponies, especially the Shetland pony, seemed to delight in trying to dismount us by running under the limbs of the apple trees where learning to quickly duck was a much needed skill. If there was no deviously evil pony available, a bicycle (a far more gentle mode of transportation) certainly was — and, for the lucky few, a moped. Mounds of dirt were built to create jumps that at the time appeared daunting to us as we approached our jump for the first time, but looking back, one was actually lucky if you could obtain separation between both of your tires and the ground. Oh, sure. There were those few who did defy gravity and later bought a motorcycle with their hard earned after-school money. I am happy to say that those early Evel Knievils such as Robert Tomblin, Sleepy Smallwood, and Flea Ladd, to name a few, have lived a full and primarily injury-free life.

By August, the apple crates were being stacked neatly and strategically throughout the orchards. They became our forts with minor alterations. Climbing to the top of these apple-crated structures we would then begin removing the center crates and stacking them up along the sides where eventually we could stand in the middle of our “forts” with little more than our heads visible. And why would we build these forts? For an apple battle, of course!These strategically placed apple crate depots were perfectly distanced from one another, where one could easily lob an apple from one makeshift fortification to the other. Dodging each others’ apples was fairly easy from this distance and, once again, casualties were a rarity. They only occurred when someone was hunkered down in their apple crate fort and unexpectedly got bobbed on top of their head by a slowly lobbed apple. Our orchard adventures were not measured in minutes or in hours. They were measured in the seasons of the year, with winter as our only interruption. There were no video games, no internet, and only three channels of black and white TV. Only the Saturday morning cartoons were of any interest to us at all. We had to make our own fun, but we never really consciously thought about having to do so. It was as natural as breathing. Although our fun might seem slightly dangerous by today’s standards, I can assure you, we never lost a single kid, and the worst injuries were typically nothing more than scratches and a few bruises. And we wore those bumps and 
bruises proudly.

By September apples were beginning to ripen for eating. We all knew the different types of apples, and when each variety began to ripen. We also knew where the best eating apple groves were, and we took great advantage of this knowledge. Back then, the most popular apples to eat were the Red Delicious and the Golden Delicious. When we would get our fill of eating apples in the orchard, we would fill our tee shirts with these succulent treats, and graciously share them with our families like the little thieving Robin Hoods we were. 

Although my old orchard haunts have long been gone, I can to this day show you where those Red and Golden Delicious apple rows were once planted. So, I would like to take this time to thank the Byrd family for these wonderful memories. These memories are as sweet as the scent of thousands of apple blossoms. As for the apples we helped ourselves to . . .  the check is in the mail.

February 1 event featuring films, beer tasting, and inspiration returns to Weinberg Center for the Arts

The American Conservation Film Festival’s Best of Fest returns February 1 to the Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick, Md., the seventh year for an event featuring three award-winning films from the 2018 Festival based in Shepherdstown, W.Va. This year’s event will screen the 2018 Foreign Film Award winner Enough White Teacups; the 2018 Short Film Award winner Wildlife and the Wall, and the 2018 Green Fire Award winner The Serengeti Rules.  All of these films have received multiple awards at festivals around the world.

Lineup for February

6:00pm: Reception with live music and beer tasting with Flying Dog Brewery.

6:30–7:30: Enough White Teacups. This inspiring film follows six stories of innovation and invention that embrace the goals of social, economic, and ecological sustainability outlined by the United Nations.  See how design can be used to improve living conditions around the world, including initiatives to build affordable housing, prevent blindness, destroy landmines, deliver vaccines and blood in remote areas, clean up oceans, and help prevent infant and mother mortality. 
(59 minutes).

7:30–7:45: Intermission

7:45–7:50: Wildlife and the Wall. Filmmaker Ben Masters (of Unbranded fame) takes us on a brief but beautiful journey along the US-Mexico border, and shows us the landscapes, wildlife, and water sources that would be greatly disrupted by the construction of a border wall. (5 minutes)

7:50–9:15: The Serengeti Rules. Beginning in the 1960s, a small band of young scientists headed into the wilderness, driven by an insatiable curiosity of how nature works. Immersed in some of the most remote places on earth — the Serengeti in Africa, the Amazon jungle, the Arctic Ocean and Pacific tide pools — they discovered a single set of “rules” that govern all life. As well as winning ACFF’s top film award in 2018, it was also the Audience Choice winner. (84 minutes)This Best of Fest is sponsored by Flying Dog Brewery. Tickets are $8 for adults; $5 for seniors/students; and available on the Weinberg’s website, WeinbergCenter.org/performances, or at the door.

By Keith Patterson

“It takes a big head to fill these shoes.” I think I just quoted myself. Dang. Did it again. It’s hard to be me. But it’s supposed to be hard. And it’s supposed to hurt. Because when you’re in the most pain is when you’re the most alive. And when you’re the most alive is when you might wish to be dead. And this basic disconnect is one reason that we must dull our senses to enhance our perceptions. Or so says I.

I like to make a wildly bold declaration and then spend some time creating a backstory that somehow justifies it. I put these thoughts down on paper. “M will say it right to your face. M realizes that saying it directly to your face is probably not his most endearing quality, so he puts a lot of miles on his motorcycle to cut down on 
his opportunities.”

The story of M

M downshifted his big Harley cruiser, checked his mirrors, and throttled up to switch lanes, jumping out from the shade between two eighteen-wheelers into the left-hand passing lane. There was sand dust on M’s shaded goggles from an open-bed dump truck he’d passed a few miles back. Interstate 81 was packed with big diesel rigs moving America, which made it less than ideal for a long trip on a motorcycle, but it’s the fastest way home up the valley. As M accelerated to pass the 18-wheeler to his right, the brilliant light rays of a newly naked sun reflected chaotically off the silicate dust coating his glasses, and a mirror ball of blinding lasers sent him into a slipstream of flash-back hallucinations . . . .

M was hiding in muck up to his neck in the monsoon rains of the Mekong Delta. He’d been out in the bush for nearly a month. His body weight at enlistment had been 195 pounds. He was down to probably 125. M had eaten very little for several days, and was completely out of rations. He was barely conscious, existing in shadow, invisible, quietly grinding his teeth to keep from drowning. His boots were mired in deep mud somewhere down below him. He heard the report of a rifle … CRACK!

Then, M was in a schoolyard fight, ducking, weaving, trying to keep his feet underneath him and throw a decent punch. There was one kid in front of him, but he was surrounded by fifteen others. The bull ring. No way out. Nobody coming to help. Worried about getting sucker punched, he let a straight jab sneak by while he was leaning-in. SMACK!

And, M is standing on the front porch of the beautiful log frame home that he and his wonderful wife had built together. Dinner was on the table. Clean bill of health. Feeling like he wanted to die. The storm door he’d thrown open slams shut. BAM!

M had a mission. Take the enemy’s radio and call in an air-strike. People had already died. More people were going to die. M could die. M was more sure of death than not. M was in the shadows behind the fronds of tropical plants with his Randall knife clenched in his left hand. Fifty meters away was his objective, a bamboo hut on stilts surrounded by a deck. M heard boots on the deck. STOMP!

One kid was in front of M, jabbing at him with his fists. Another kid crouched down behind M, and M tripped over him and fell to the ground on his back without being hit. The hit came after the fall in the form of a kick to the head. THUD!

M was in a small office talking to a staff psychologist at the Veterans Administration. It was a long drive from M’s home to the VA office. He had been waiting patiently for hours to see this psychologist. M was explaining about the debilitating nature of his flashbacks and hallucinations, and how, even then, some fifty years after the fact, the PTSD was getting only worse and was worthy of the disability claim that lay on the desk between them. The staff psychologist calmly explained that if M could ride his Harley all the way out to the VA facility and express himself so eloquently, then that alone effectively preemptively disproved his claim. “I don’t even need to look at your claim again.” M slammed his closed fist on the desk. BAM!

“Dinner is ready!” called out M’s wife from her summer kitchen. M was on the porch with the mangy cat. Tears were rolling off of M’s face and splattering down on the matted fur of the mangy cat as images flashed through his head of brothers-in-arms and civilians lost, crises created, deflected, diverted and perverted. The blood lust of allies and enemies and the senseless deaths and destruction that is war. The mangy cat had been dying when M and his wife had rescued it. It should have been dead weeks ago and hadn’t eaten in thirteen days and nights. It was a mean cat, and took exception to M‘s tears splashing down on its matted head. The mean, mangy cat that had no name because it was assumed that it would be dead already then attacked M’s leg and found 
flesh. YOW!

M was back on his feet. The two boys that’d flanked and felled him had receded. Next up was Lumpy Taylor. Lumpy had an extra lump on the back of his head. He was also known as Double Lump. M landed a punch and received two and then each kid landed haymakers simultaneously and chattered each other’s teeth. CHANG!

M peered into the enemy radio hut as best as he could from twenty meters out. He would have to break cover to get any closer. He prayed to a God that he did not recognize to give him the strength to mount a frontal assault on the guarded outpost armed only with his Randall knife and a cyanide pill. M’s soul was bound in darkness. There was no hope in life or death. The rain continued to fall. M used the darkness to summon his Chi. He was a wraith. Then M heard marching boots and shuffling feet. The enemy had a prisoner. The butt of a rifle crunched against bony flesh. UNGH!

 “Security! Room 202 Please!”

“Thanks for nothing!” M stood and grabbed his disability claim papers off of the desk. The VA staff psychologist tried to grab them, as well. “Oh, so now you’re interested in my claim?” M left quickly and slammed the door behind
him. BAM!

It was Christmas Eve. M’s aunt and uncle and cousins were coming over for dinner and a party. M had received an early present from the family cat, a box full of kittens! M could hardly wait to show the kittens to his cousins. They were so adorable. “M, you better not bring those kittens outside. It’s too cold. Leave the box in the basement near the furnace.” M didn’t listen. His cousins would want to see these kittens right away. 

It was 5 0’clock. The guests were due. M ran outside into a brisk twilight of falling snow with the box of kittens in his arms. M heard his mother call out, “Don’t leave the door open!” M set the box of kittens down at the edge of the driveway and ran back to shut the front door. M’s relatives pulled into the driveway and unwittingly parked the big left front tire of their Chrysler sedan squarely upon the box of 
kittens. CRUNCH!

Fran was M’s second wife. She had brought him back out into the light and he knew to his core that she loved what was best in him. They worked well together, believed in the same things and fought for the same causes. Fran was M’s partner. He knew that he’d sailed the seas of many creations to finally find this respite from the ravages of eternity. This was his Eden. His forgiving and loving Eve was by his side and calling him to dinner. M thought of grabbing the mean, mangy cat by the scruff and going on a one-handed hundred-mile-an-hour bike-ride to put them both out of their misery. The mangy cat looked M directly in the eye. “That cat knows what I’m thinking.” “Yeoh.”

The bull ring drew in close. Two boys dragged M back to his feet. Next up, Fox Wheeler. Fox was every bit M’s equal and had the advantage of not already being knocked half senseless. M tasted his own blood on his lips, wiped his lips with his hand, and beheld his own red life’s milk. A terrible rage ran up his spine and he made a furious rush at Fox Wheeler, who calmly looked for an opening and delivered an uppercut to M’s sternum. WUMP!

Alive or dead. It didn’t matter. Everything dies. Kittens, children, heroes, villains, the Son of God. The fathers, sons, mothers, brothers, sisters and children of the lovely and dignified people that live and work in the Mekong Delta. M was authorized to call in airstrikes on anything that moved in the entire province of Vinh Long. Half a million civilians. 6,000 Viet Cong. Kill ‘em all. M’s closest associate, a fellow colonel, had succumbed to the barbarism and was wantonly laying waste to all that piqued his fancy. 

He had done some damage to the enemy, but had inflicted a hell’s broth of horror on the civilians. M would’ve just as soon killed the Colonel as the radio operator in the bamboo hut. But M’s mission was to secure the enemy’s radio and call in an air strike that might very well kill them all. What had been M was already dead. All that was left was a killer on a mission. The sentries were changing. The second detail was late. The radio and operator were alone. Adrenaline shot through M’s depleted veins. He could hear the savage beating of his own heart. Thump! Thump! Thump!

Everybody was screaming and crying

Uncle jumped back into the big sedan and backed up. The box of kittens was stuck to the tire and rolled up into the Chrysler’s undercarriage. The kittens were all dead. M’s aunt was beating on her husband and cursing his name. Their marriage would never recover. Uncle turned off the Chrysler’s motor and it back-fired. BLAM!

M recovered his breath and stood tall in the middle of the bull ring. He was battered but not beaten, and rage still burned in his eyes. Next up was Big Timmy. Timmy was the biggest kid in school. M waded in, crazed and looking for 
a knock-out.

M’s heart was pounding in his chest as he prepared to rush the enemy’s radio-shack and attack and kill the radio operator. M heard American jets coming-in on a bombing run.

Big Timmy dropped M with one ham-fisted punch to 
the head.

M dove down into the muck as his own bombers laid waste to the radio shack and operator that he was stalking. SCRAK! White light.M upshifted and accelerated out of the slipstream beside the 18-wheeler on his right. The sun was behind some clouds and the road was clear, and M made it home for dinner, and I, for one, am grateful that he did. Because, even though it might not be his most popular attribute, when M has something to say he says it directly to my face. Then I wrote this down on paper.