SOTW: “Bubby” In Virginia

Faye Kranz, Richmond, VA

Episode 4/8:

One Friday morning, on vacation in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, my daughter and I were shopping at the local Dollar Store with all of her kids in tow. I told them to choose what they want (I am very generous in a Dollar store…), and they were roaming the aisles. Every few minutes, one of them would ask, “Bubby, can I have this? Bubby, can we buy that?” After about fifteen minutes of shopping, a woman walks over to me and tells me, “Do you know how long it’s been since I heard the word Bubby?” She is Jewish, she told me, and she and her husband live not too far away. They have been here for years, and it’s a rare thing, she said, to meet a Jew here. I invited her to come to our house for Shabbos lunch. I took her phone number, and my daughter followed up with an invite. We weren’t sure if she and her husband would actually come, but sure enough, Shabbos afternoon there was a knock on the door. Over lunch at the table, someone asked her husband if he was retired. “No siree,” he said, “I’m still working, I’m a weaver.” And what does the man weave? “I weave Talleisim (prayer shawls),” he said. A Tallit weaver in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains! What are the chances?