Lemons Jewelers, a fixture on Locust Street in downtown Floyd, is closing. Store officials have notified the building owner that they expect to close by the end of June and the store closing sale includes inventory and fixtures. Other Lemons stores are not closing -- just the Floyd location. The word around town is that three businesses are in trouble and may close. Is Lemons the first of three?

Blues musician and teacher Scott Perry held a jam session for some of his students last weekend at his Picking Porch on Willis Avenue.

Citizens Telephone Cooperative, Floyd County's largest private employer and a company facing serious financial problems, went public this week, granting The Floyd Press an interview to discuss the company's "challenges."

What General Manager Greg Sapp told the newspaper appears to be a lot of corporate hyperbole and double speak.

Press editor Wanda Combs asked Sapp about the reports on this web site about recent meetings with employees where the company threatened layoffs and cutbacks in service if revenues did not increase by July.  Sapp refused to respond to those comments. Instead, he offered a company brochure overview that sounded a lot like the pabulum that is offered at the annual meeting each year.

Said Sapp:

For the past 20 years, the number of telephone customers rountinely grew from 5 to 7 percent.  Over the past two years, we started losing over 1 percent of telephone customers. This year, at this point in time, we've averaging a 2 percent (loss). That's a 7 to 9 percent swing in the negative. That really throws our traditional business model, stands it on its head. The difference between where we were then and now is a difference of $1.6 million dollars.

When asked about the threat of employee layoffs, Sapp again refused to discuss specifics but told the Press:

We have to continue to operate to look at the workforce, the size it is versus what we need to operate at that time. Historically the company goes out of their way to protect the interest of employees.  The Cooperative is changing to reflect the changing market and economy so we can continue to provide the level of services customers demand at competitive prices and so that we can do that for a long time in the future. On any road to the future there's always going to be a few bumps in the road.

"Bumps in the road" is usually corporate-speak for "hard times are here folks and some of you will lose your jobs."

Several Citizens employees have told us that at an earlier company meeting, the message from management was more direct.

"We were told that the person sitting next to us might not be with the company the next time we met," one employee said.

On Wednesday, the day before the Floyd Press article came out, the company held more meetings with employees and Sapp told pretty much the same story as the one he gave Press editor Wanda Combs. The topic of layoffs and cutbacks was not discussed.

"There was a definite change in tone," one employee said. "The threat is still hanging out there but it was more subtle this time around."

Sapp told the Press that former General Manager Gerald Gallimore laid out the "challenges" the company faced when he spoke at the last annual meeting at Floyd County High School. I attended that meeting. The picture that Gallimore painted was rosier than the one presented to employees. He talked of increasing competition and challenges but did not go into specifics and he also did not say anything about the possibility of layoffs or cutbacks in service.

Sapp blamed a drop in subscribers and long distance revenue for much of the company's problems but interviews with Citizens employees who, for reasons that are easily understandable, ask not to be identified show other factors which have brought on the company's current financial crisis, including:

• Construction of a "wireless broadband" data system in the New River Valley that promised to provide customers with laptop modems speeds up to 3 mbps. Suscribers have fallen far short of expectations and some reports say Citizens is trying to find a buyer for the system.
• IPTV, a cable-TV service delivered over the phone lines, has not met projections for county-wide deployment and does not yet offer high-definition TV reception at a time when more and more homes are getting HD TV receivers. Citizens lags a distant third in subscribers behind DirecTV and Dish Network -- which offer HD services.
• Too much rapid expansion into areas outside Floyd County and costly ventures into service beyond Citizens' core business. The company has purchased a number of ailing cable TV franchises in other counties and has expanded into some of the most economically devastated areas of Virginia.

Citizens is an aggressive, innovative telecommunications company that provides Floyd Countians with a level of telephone and Internet services that aren't offered in many rural areas. I have praised those services on this web site many times. These services come at a price and Floyd Countians pay for them at a rate that is higher than many other areas.

But Citizens is, first and formost, a cooperative that should be more open and honest with the subscribers/members who -- in effect -- own the cooperative.

Says Sapp:

In no way does Citizens or its management conceal or hide anything. Citizens has challenges it must face in today's environment. We must continue to look to enhance efficiency and productivity...to retain the right size workforce to match the size and scope of our business.

Take a second look at what Sapp said above. Read between the lines. Then ask yourself: Is this a company that is open and honest with its customer/owners?

The note stuffed in the door of our studio at Village Green was short and to the point.

"Back off," it said. "We have dirt on you."

When you ask questions that make other people nervous you get threats. I got my first threat as an 11-year-old in Prince Edward County when I wrote an essay about racism in the school system.  If I go a week without a good threat I wonder if I'm doing my job.

But I hate vague threats. "Back off" from what? I raise a lot of hell. Which of the current causes am I supposed to back off from?

And dirt? Of course there's dirt out there on me. You don't need a shovel to dig up dirt on me. A spoon will do. I'm a recoverng alcoholic. In the three decades before I stopped drinking I did a lot of stupid things. Drunks hurt people. Drunks lie. Drunks cheat. It's part of life with the beast called alcoholism. Even in sobriety, I must fight the beast that causes a condition called being a "dry drunk." It's a battle that never ends.

I've also got a tremendous ego, one that has gotten me into trouble more times than I can count. I hope that age and continued sobriety has brought more humility but others can judge that better than I.

The note in my door comes on the heels of several attempts by a poster using a fake name and a changing GMail account to threaten me with "going public" about controversies on Capitol Hill Blue, a political news web site that I have owned and operated since 1994, making it the oldest political news site on the Internet. The posts were not published because we don't allow posters who use fake names. The IP address on the posts backtraced to a Citizens Telephone Cooperative account but I believe the actions are those of an individual and not something sanctioned by the company.

But I can, and will, discuss the controversies that the poster used as a threat to "out" me. Over the past 13 years, we've been burned on Capitol Hill Blue twice by sources who turned out to not be who they claimed to be. The first was someone I met while working on Capitol Hill. He claimed to be a consultant with the CIA. He wasn't and I had to eat a lot of crow and remove any information he provided from CHB.  The second claimed to be a retired political science professor and a member of both the Nixon and Regan administration. He sent us comments by email and we used his quotes. A member of our staff said she had checked him out. I didn't double check it and it caused another round or embarrassments. But when we discovered the source was not who he claimed to be we went back over every story that quoted him and amended the story, removing his quotes and adding a note to those stories saying each had been amended.

I also wrote an apology to our readers which read, in part:

I started Capitol Hill Blue four months after taking the first of the 12 steps. In many ways the web site provided additional therapy for a drunk trying to crawl out of the gutter. For a while we both thrived, so much that I considered myself well enough to go it on my own without the support group of AA.

As Capitol Hill Blue's readership grew I started taking more chances with stories, jumping on ones with sketchy sources, always trying to outdo the last "big" story. I had people willing to help me and they would send me info that I used often on their word alone. I would allow people to use pseudonyms because, they said, using their real name would hurt them in their day jobs. Some of the people who wrote for me worked for the mainstream media but enjoyed using Blue to write stories they couldn't do otherwise. They, too, wrote under false names. It was something we should have told readers. We didn't. That was dishonest.

I wrote stories based on emails from sources I never met. I would meet self-proclaimed "important people" in out-of-the way bars, taking what they told me at face value. Washington is a breeding ground for phonies and wannabes. Too often I printed what they told me because I was so full of myself that I was sure it was true and did not require further verification. It doesn't matter if the information later turned out to be true or not. How I presented it was dishonest.

Sometimes I let sources pick their own pseudonyms. They wanted to protect their identity. I wanted a name to bolster the story. That too was dishonest.

So is going with a story when the sources have not been fully vetted. I get email tips and daily email newsletters from people 24/7. So do others who supply me with "information." If the information fit into my pre-conceived notion of what I thought was wrong with the current administration I used it without checking further. I was too sure I was right.  I let other people do work for me and write portions of my stories. As with the other practices that became part of my standard operating procedure, it was dishonest.

Despite those who believe otherwise, and they have every reason to do so, I have never made up a quote.  I have, however, accepted information from others without checking it out and have too quickly accepted that information if it fit into my grand scheme of things. I ignored warning signs that should have kept me from using material I knew was marginal. I was wrong.

Lesson learned. It will not happen again.

Blogs and web sites that supported some of the victims of our stories had a field-day with our screwup. I deserved every hit I took. I would not have blamed readers of the web site if they had left. I offered to leave and left the decision up to our editors, writers and readers. They said no and the readers stuck with us. Capitol Hill Blue continues to grow and attrack new readers. We put safeguards into place to make sure we didn't get burned again and all my copy is reviewed by two editors before publication.  We've published more than 100,000 stories over the past 13 years.  We've had to revise or correct 83 stories in that same period.

As a recovering alcoholic I live each each day with the knowledge that I must continue, for the rest of my life, to make amends for past wrongs. I try to do so openly and honestly. When someone threatens to dish out dirt on me I can only say "go ahead."

I do find it interesting that these threats that question my honesty and integrity come from people who leave anonymous notes in my door or use fake names to try and post on my web sites.

So take your best shot. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I'm rightfully ashamed of them but I have nothing to hide.

Shots from last Friday's Jamboree.

Ran into an old friend Monday evening at Food Lion. She backed away as soon as she saw me.

"I can't be seen talking to you," she said.

She works for Citizens Telephone Cooperative and the heat is on to find out who is talking to me about the company's financial problems and threats of layoffs and service cutbacks.

Several Citizens employees have told me that they have been ordered by their supervisors not to talk to me about the recent company meeting where employees were told of the company's mounting problems. They fear losing their jobs if they are identified as the source of information published here.

I find this disturbing. Citizens is a publicly-owned telephone cooperative. We, the customer-members of the cooperative, are also the owners and we deserve to know what is happening with the company that provides telephone, wireless, Internet and television service to Floyd County.  Employees should not be intimidated and forced to work in fear.

While management has failed to return my phone calls seeking their side of the story, they agreed Monday to talk to the editor of The Floyd Press. I guess we will find out on Thursday what their spin is on the situation..

And while Citizens goes to great lengths to keep their problems secret from the customer/owners they serve, their precarious financial situation is no secret within the telecommunications industry. Weekend guests of musician Bernie Coveney included an executive of AT&T who told Coveney that Citizens' problems are well known and the topic of much discussion.

I called a telecommunications lobbyist I know in Washington Monday and he told me that the word within the industry is that Citizens is strapped for cash and hemorrhaging because of over-expansion and bad management decisions.

Here's what iLocus, which monitors IP-related issues for the industry says about Citizens and its IPTV deployment:

The biggest challenge has been the expense of deploying IPTV. Being a small company and not having the deep pockets to afford leading edge technology has been the biggest challenge, as well as the buying power of ordering large quantities of set top boxes. At the same time, working through the uncharted territories, experimenting with unproven technology and trying to figure out what works with the company’s network has also been a major challenge related to IPTV.

Citizens was once considered the darling of the telecommunications industry.  Now it is the subject of speculation about an uncertain future.

But at the moment, the primary concern of Citizens' management appears to be finding ways to keep the lid on the situation instead of being honest and forthright with their customer/owners.  They want to know who is talking to me and some have tried to blame the employees who work in the Citizens retail office next door to Blue Ridge Muse at the Village Green.

They're wrong. The ladies who work there have not discussed the situation with me. They don't have to. Many other Citizens' employees have come forward. They tell a sad story of a dysfunctional company that has lost focus and the trust of its employees. It is a story that must, and will, be told.

Some shots from a recent Floyd County High School junior varsity softball game.

A photo in the bookcase of our home shows my mother and father astride a Harley. I'd post the photo here but I've been threatened with disinheritance and great bodily harm if I ever make that photo public.

Floyd Countians who know my mother can't imagine her dressed head to toe in motorcycle leathers and riding that Harley with my father but they spent a lot of time on the bike in the '40s.

They met in Norfolk during the war. A sailor and a civilian employee for the Navy. The wartime romanced blossomed into marriage and they rode that Harley from Norfolk to Floyd so my father could meet my grandparents.  Then on to Florida to meet his parents and to live. I came along two years later.

My father died in an industrial accident not long after I was born. I never knew him, have no memory of him and know him only through those photographs and my mother's stories. We moved to Floyd County in 1952, riding the train from Tampa to Roanoke.

The stepfather of flesh and blood tried hard to replace the biological father of memory three years later and we relocated to Farmville but returned to Floyd County in 1961.  My stepfather passed on some 20 plus years later.

Those who know my mother use words like "elegant" and "refined" and "strong." She is that and more: stubborn, feisty and independent. They see a woman who dresses well and conducts herself as a lady. I see a young woman dressed in leathers astride a Harley.

Happy Mother's Day to the only parent I ever really knew. My motorcycle mama.

Several employees have come forward since our first story about the problems facing Citizens Telephone Cooperative -- Floyd County's largest private employer. They tell horror stories of abusive supervisors and a company out of control. They also raise serious questions about management of the publicly-owned utility that has kept its subscriber-owners in the dark.

The broad range of concerns raised by employees shows this is more than a few gripes by a handful of disgruntled workers. Something may be seriously wrong with the company that controls phone and Internet service in the county and also seeks to become a dominant force in television and wireless phones as well.

The top echelons of Citizens remain disturbingly quiet about the recent meeting with employees where company management said revenue must be significantly increased by July or layoffs and cutbacks in service will begin.  Department heads and others say they have been told not to talk to me, the press or the subscribers who supposedly own the company.

The question is: why? Why is Citizens stonewalling the subscriber/owners of the company? What has brought the company to this point? Was it mismanagement? Was it over-expansion? Or do we have more serious and sinister reasons behind the problems?

A long-time Citizens employee asked me Friday if I had a grudge against someone at the company. When I told that employee that, no, I have a lot of friends who work for Citizens and have come to know a number of others who came forward in recent days, the response was: "Good. I needed to know that. Now, please keep digging."

I will. We -- the customers and owners of Citizens -- pay some of the highest rates around for telephone, Internet and wireless service. We deserve to know what's going on inside our increasingly troubled and secretive telephone company.

By the time the multiple jurisdictions in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina sort out the various charges against Floyd Countian Steven Dale Branscome (right), the 32-year-old man will probably spent what's left of his life behind bars.

At a hearing Friday in Princeton, West Virginia, a judge certified Branscome case to a grand jury on charges of malicious wounding, wanton endangerment and burglary. Other charges are pending in Virginia and North Carolina.

It will be a sad but fitting ending for the grandson of a popular former sheriff of Floyd County and the object of a manhunt that turned the county into an armed camp for a week while hundreds of cops from multiple jurisdictions manned road blocks, cruised the roads in an armored vehicle and searched the countryside for a fugitive who was long gone by midweek and headed for Mexico.

Branscome is charged with shooting a Virginia State Trooper after a chase ended in West Virginia. When you shoot a cop, the gloves come off and the normal rules don't apply. Law enforcement from around the state swarmed into Floyd County after a Sheriff's investigator spotted Branscome in Indian Valley. The weeklong chase ended in a motel near Texarkana when Texas Rangers and Federal Marshals cornered the fugitive.

West Virginia officials originally charged Branscome with malicious wounding of a police officers but his lawyers found loophole that said such a charge must involve a "West Virginia" cop so the judge reduced the charge to just malicious wounding. But a grand jury could still decide to reinstate the original charge.

Floyd County Supervisors have asked Sheriff Shannon Zeman for an accounting of what the massive manhunt cost local government. Zeman's preliminary report said the State Police will pay most of the cost and more information is expected when Supervisors meet next week.

Writes Shawna Morrison in The Roanoke Times:

Officials have said Branscome will likely be charged in Virginia with grand larceny and other crimes and in North Carolina with charges related to two stolen vehicles.

He is being tried first in West Virginia where he faces the more serious charges.

Before Hughes' shooting, Branscome was already wanted on several outstanding warrants in Virginia.

In Wythe County, he was wanted in connection with burglaries and thefts at a home and business.

He was wanted in Pulaski County on a charge of communicating threats to kill. And in Floyd County he was wanted on a probation violation.

The lady at Blue Ridge Restaurant this week wanted to know why I write what I do.

"Why must you be so critical?  There are so many nice things to write about here in Floyd," she said.

Yes, many parts of Floyd deserve mention and attention and I try to talk about those things as much as possible: the music, the culture, the people, the heritage and more.

But I'm a journalist who subscribes to legendary Chicago reporter Finley Peter Dunne's adage that "it is the role of a newspaperman to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

I can't help it. It's in my genes. Always has been. Always will be.

A shot from Monday's girls' soccer game at Floyd County High School.

Citizens Telephone Cooperative, Floyd County's largest private employer, is strapped for cash and talking layoffs, cutbacks and trouble for the future.

At a recent company meeting, Citizens executives told employees that the company must raise revenues or it will cut staff, salaries and services.  The situation is so bad that Citizens is considering taking sales personnel off salary and putting them on commission and sending a strong message to others that they might want to think about seeking employment elsewhere.

Over the last few months, Citizens has quietly outsourced many of its services that once were local. Many service calls now go to a call center in Montana, the company switched its web hosting domain registration to GoDaddy, a Scottsdale, Arizona, computer giant and its cell phone service, launched with fanfare a couple of years ago, is actually rebranded from Verizon.

Citizens's problems stem from too-rapid growth, expansion into counties outside its traditional service area and a general slowdown in the economy. The company spent far more than anticipated in deploying fiber optic lines throughout Floyd County and on a wireless broadband service in the New River Valley.

As a cooperative, Citizens is supposedly owned by its customers but the customer-owners have not been told of the company's recent problems and employees were advised to avoid discussing the situation with the very people they actually work for. Those same employees have endured cutbacks in benefits from a company they feel cares more about the bottom line. Some disgruntled employees have filed suit and their cases were settled, quietly, out of court.

Floyd Countians pay more for most telephone services than residents in more populous areas like Montgomery and Roanoke counties. Our DSL Internet service, while extraordinary for a rural area, is more expensive than faster service in urban areas.

As customer owners of Citizens, we deserve more information about the company's problems. Citizens needs to be open and honest about the uncertain future it faces. We own the company. We need to know.

In 1992, I opened my one-man free-lance photography business in Arlington County, Virginia. When you open a one-person shop in Arlington, home of 39 Fortune 500 companies, you don't expect to make much of a dent in the local economy.

Yet, in the first month of business, the county administrator, chairman of the board of supervisors, my local supervisor, the director of economic development, the fire chief and the police precinct captain, dropped by to say "hello" and to welcome me to the Arlington business community. Several gave me their home and cell phone numbers and urged me to call them anytime I had a question or problem.

Over the next 12 years, I had contact with many county officials and most always asked "how's business?" and "is there anything I can do to help?"

In 2004, Amy and I opened a studio in the Jacksonville Center and stayed there for three years. During that time, no county official set foot in the studio or dropped by to say howdy. Last year, we opened a new studio in The Village Green in downtown Floyd. On Sunday, a member of the town council dropped by -- not so much to visit but to discuss a recent story critical of town government. He was the first town council member to pass through the door.

Newcomers and those interested in relocating to Floyd often ask me if the area is friendly to small business. I usually tell them of the contrast between the welcome I received in Arlington and the indifference in Floyd. Floyd is not unfriendly to new business. It's just indifferent at best. It might offer rent subsidies to a Volvo-owned company that wants to locate a recycling plant in the industrial park but it is, by and large, benign when it comes to the many small, more entrepreneurial operations that form the backbone of new business in the county.

During a break at a recent meeting of the county board of supervisors, which I attend each month to cover for The Floyd Press, I told the story about the treatment of small business owners in Arlington and noted that no supervisor has ever set foot in my either of my earlier businesses in the county or come to the front door of my home.

Virgel Allen, newly-elected supervisor of Little River District, overheard the conversation and said: "Doug, if I were your supervisor, you would have heard from me."

I laughed.

"Virgel," I responded. "You ARE my supervisor."

An all Floyd Saturday night at the Country Store. Bernie Coveney, Mike Mitchell and Abe Goorskey opened the evening with their eclectic mix of music, followed by Upland Express. My shoulder went dead halfway through the opening show and I wasn't able to get Upland but here are some photos of Bernie, Mike and Abe.

Prom Night Saturday night. Tuxes, evening wear and all that jazz. Abbey Bowen (right) dropped by the Foyd Country Store with her friends to show off their prom finery and pose for some pix.

Musicians try out the new sidewalk alcoves in Floyd on a Friday night.

The 16 Hands weekend studio tour kicked off with a reception Friday night in the Hotel Floyd Conference Room in the Village Green.

Floyd's "let somebody else take the risk" town council is at it again, demanding unbelievably high letters of credit from each town business participating in the grants that help fund the downtown rehabilitation and trying, as usual, to avoid taking any real risk itself.

From behind closed doors, which is the way the government likes to conduct its business, comes word that the Town Council has decided to demand the letters of credit which, in effect, says they want business to bear most of the cost and the risk for the strategy.

This places such onerous requirements into the deal that only a fool would want to participate.

We've seen this crap before from the Town Council. I remember an early meeting on Floyd's downtown revitalization project. Rob Shelor, council membe  and probable mayor to follow the resigning Skip Bishop, whined about the town having to invest $100,000 in a program that would bring $1 million to the community in grants and loan programs.

Todd Christianson, the state official charged with getting the grant through the system, told Shelor that if he didn't want the money he lots of other communities standing in line to invest in their town's future.

Shelor finally gave in but he continues to be a thorn in the side of any business that wants to bring tourists to Floyd.

Many business owners put their homes and future at risk to borrow the money to take a chance on Floyd's iffy business environment but the town government wants to avoid risk and claim the credit.

Hopefully, those who want to see a farmer's market in Floyd will proceed without the town's involvement, leaving the town council where it belongs -- out in the cold.

To say Town Government can be duplicitous is kind. It is exactly this kind of double dealing that has long plagued both the Town of Floyd and county government.

Details, of course, are sketchy because the Town Council uses one of the many loopholes in Virginia's antiquated Open Meetings Act to conduct its business in executive session -- in other words, secret.

In this election year, voters are calling for change on the national level. Last year, voters in Floyd County registered their anger at county government by sending two incumbent supervisors and the sitting Commonwealth's Attorney to the showers.

Maybe it's time to for the voters of the Town of Floyd to consider a similar house cleaning.

Times of crisis bring out the best of people. We've watched with pride as Floyd Countians rallied to help the Cantrells and the Harmons when their children faced their battles with brain cancer.

We see it now in the efforts to help Lydeanna Martin in her fight with another form of cancer.

Local musicians are teaming with country music star Rhonda Vincent next month in memory of Robert Pauley, who died in a motorcycle crash last year. Proceeds will benefit Medical Charities of Floyd.

On a smaller, less threatening level, I see it from friends who have offered help while I recover from rotator cuff surgery scheduled next month. Offers to mow our massive lawn, take care of the studio, run errands, assist in typing and help with photographic work have flowed in.

Thanks to all who have offered help. It's much appreciated and I hope I can return the favor some day.