Abigail Inn --- Lexington, Va.

Lexington was as close to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington that Wilma and I were able to get this year. A great small town in the mountains just a short 3 hour drive from DC. The home of Washington and Lee University (WL), the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), H.Q. for Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK), Southern Virginia University (SVU), a short distance away, and the place where Stonewall Jackson is buried (Civil War), and the home of the ABIGAIL INN.

Good friends Landey and Becky Patton (L&B) are the proprietors of the Abigail with the able assistance of Megan Stephens of SVU. Megan is a graduate student in English and creative writing, also an expert in the digital world of Facebook, Twitter and websites etc.

Landey and Becky's dream is to turn the Abigail into a great B&B but also into a type of "community center' - they have the largest table in town;  a place for parents of graduating seniors from the various schools; a place for VMI cadets to relax on Sunday afternoon & evening - snacks, soft drinks, TV, overstuffed chairs and couch etc. all under the leadership Chaplain Jim Park of VMI,


The week, while L&B were at the PB in DC and then off to Chicago for a wedding, became a great time with different friends who came for a day or so.  Drazen Glavas from Croatia, Todd and Paula Endo from Amisville, Va., Milt Richards from California, and  others from Lexington. Megan ran the B&B and also became my mentor.  When we met I had told her that I was writing a "novel" the first sentence of which had these 7 words, "Fleas and flies and a thousand eyes...". She said that she liked those word but also wondered what was in the rest of the sentence, to which I replied, "That is all that has been written, I only started it in 1957!"  So my journey has only begun,  I also found out that I had started a memoir and not a novel.

With the able assistance of Megan and Wilma I might even find a way to write that memoir from my year in Pakistan ----  Marian and Kathy my classmates, whom I was taking across north India to Nepal, to be with Marian's dad the head medical advisor to the government of Nepal.  Only a memoir - long dormant in my brain, t all these years, this will probably take even longer -- a very long journey is still ahead!

Bill