TOO MUCH SNOW, TOO MUCH FRIED CHICKEN FOR MOTEL CLERK

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993                   TAG: 9303160093
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
TOO MUCH SNOW, TOO MUCH FRIED CHICKEN FOR MOTEL CLERK
John Baumgardner figures it will be a long time before he eats fried chicken again.
For the last three days the front desk clerk at the Super 8 Motel in Christiansburg has survived on Col. Sanders cuisine at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
He's been stranded at work, unable to return to his Floyd County home, since the snow started Friday.
Along with about 50 snowbound travelers, Baumgardner's only food options have been the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Peppers Ferry Road just behind the motel and the motel's vending machine.
"I'm real tired of chicken and junk food," he said. "I can't wait to get home and have a full-blown meal."
Even so, Baumgardner was thankful that chicken chain stayed opened this weekend while every other restaurant was closed.
Debbie Keith, area manager for Kentucky Fried Chicken, said the restaurant was open on a limited basis both Saturday and Sunday. Each day there were about 25 customers - all from the Super 8, she said.
Sitting in the motel's lobby Monday, Joseph Brennan said he, too, was "chickened out."
En route from New York to Daytona Beach, Fla., Brennan and his wife stopped in the New River Valley to visit their granddaughter, a junior at Virginia Tech.
Unfortunately, the blizzard kept them cooped up in the Christiansburg motel while their granddaughter, Jeanette Wilson, was stuck at her Blacksburg apartment a few miles away.
They saw her only briefly before the snow started Friday night.
"It's been real disappointing because I don't get to see them very often," Wilson said. "But at least I know they are safe and warm."
Wilson said she hoped to see her grandparents again before they leave this morning.
Baumgardner, 62, hopes the snow has melted enough so he can drive the 25 miles to his home today and see his wife, Anne, who's "hunkered down " at the couple's 10-acre farm near the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Anne Baumgardner spent Sunday afternoon shoveling a 50-foot path from the couple's house to the woodshed.
Monday, she rested.
"I'm bordering on 60 years old, so that's not a small task," she said.
Baumgardner said she will be glad to see her husband, but hasn't really missed him too much. In fact she's sort of glad he hasn't been there because she knows he'd try to shovel their 500-foot driveway.
"He injured himself trying to do that when it snowed in 1983," she said. "When I shovel snow, I take a break if I get tired. Men don't do that because it's not macho."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB