Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Already, after only a month in business, Five-Boro Bagels needs a new oven.
No, not because the oven in use now isn't working. It's just too small to meet the demand, explained Hal Stern, who owns the bagel shop with his wife,\ Joanne.
"The oven cannot produce bagels as fast as people come in," he said.
After last month's newspaper story about the new bagel shop - the first of its kind in the Roanoke Valley - business has boomed. The Sterns are selling 3,000 and 4,000 bagels a day, double what they anticipated. Most days, they sell out by late afternoon. Their coffee cakes and other baked goods also are selling out. They're made for the shop by local baker Paul Romeo.
Stern said they hope to expand their shop at Southwest Plaza on Electric Road in Roanoke County, open a second location or both. Of course, there are worse problems to have.
"I'm not complaining," he said. "I'd just like to have some time to sleep."
Big wheel
If you ever thought parallel parking a car was a challenge, get a load of Roanoke bus driver Ralph N. Spangler.
Spangler won the 1994 International Driving Championship June 24 in Nashville, Tenn., for, among other things, parallel parking a 40-foot motor coach in a 50-foot space.
The driver for Abbott Bus Lines said he put the back wheel on the curb but got the front wheel within the required 4 inches of it.
The competition also required drivers to turn, back up and complete inspections for mechanical problems.
"This was the toughest year yet," said Spangler, who has won the competition twice before, in 1989 and 1990.
Spangler, 57, has been driving buses for 34 years.
Saving the 4th
\ Sky Preece was a bit worried when he arrived at\ Loch Haven Swim and Beach Club last Monday morning to get things ready for the private lake club's Fourth of July celebration. A downpour overnight had filled the Roanoke County lake to overflowing - and water was cascading over the dam's spillway. What's worse, the sandy beach was under water.
"I was amazed," Preece said a few days later. "To get a foot of water overnight is pretty remarkable."
Preece, who inherited the family business from his mother, opened a siphon built into the dam. Water roared through the 6-inch-wide pipe and plummeted into the gorge 25 feet below. By early evening, the beach was back.
The celebration drew an overflow of people, too - well more than 300 by Preece's count. They got quite a show of old-fashioned Independence Day entertainment: a greased watermelon chase, a sand castle-building contest, flaming baton twirling, even a brief acrobatics demonstration. Preece officiated over the extravaganza with an old-timey megaphone (a rolled metal cone with a handle).
As darkness came,\ Clay Ward, Loch Haven's singing lifeguard, gave a haunting a cappella, unamplified rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner."\ Patrick Black followed with another version of the national anthem - on his fiddle.
Then the finale: Preece and Leigh Shepherd, a friend who drove from Charleston, W.Va., for the celebration, climbed onto the the high and low dives and sent a dazzling array of fireworks whizzing into the star-less sky.
Because the lake was still a bit high, the wooden dock leading to the diving boards still was under a thin layer of water - making it appear as if the diving platform emerged out of the middle of the lake, unconnected to the shore. In the flash of the fireworks, the people who stood on the dock looked like they were walking on water.
Trashed in Bedford
Bedford County residents had a lot of trashy thoughts on their minds last week.
Many of the county's 27 garbage collection sites were overflowing last weekend after the county switched collection agencies July 1. The county administrator's office received more than 50 complaints last week about Waste Management of Virginia Blue Ridge, the new collection company.
Kathleen Guzi, assistant county administrator, said the company picked up 80,000 pounds of garbage July 1 and 2 - about half of the average pickup for a July weekend.
"There really was a problem," she said. "Trash was piled up high over the limit, and there was trash down in front of [the trash bins]."
Richard Burke, Waste Management's division president, said the problem was caused by making the transition on a holiday weekend, when the county landfill was closed July 4 and 5. He also said high volumes of trash were unanticipated in areas such as Smith Mountain Lake.
By the end of the week, cleanup had begun at the sites. Waste Management collected 670,000 pounds of garbage, which is 200,000 pounds above the weekly collection average.
by CNB