OUR WEEKLY READER
Saturday Special, July 25, 2026: A Link Wray Mystery. Lost Decades. The Alcoholist. Tree of Heaven and Hell.
Why No Date for the Night Link Wray Invented the Power Chord? Nobody Knows.
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
From Tuesday, July 21
Cardinal News Founding Editor Dwayne Yancey has written a terrific story about Rock & Roll legend Link Wray that everybody with an interest in Fredericksburg history should read—and that I’ll link to at the end of this article.
The prosaic headline, which doesn’t do justice to Yancey’s prose, is “Virginia approves historical marker to the song that inspired a generation of rock stars.”
The subhead explains the local connection: “Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ used power chords and distortion. It came to life accidentally at a sock hop in Fredericksburg in 1957.”
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My Lost Decades
By Lynda Allen, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
From Sunday, July 19
It began with weight gain in my early 40s, though either my diet nor my exercise routine had changed. I went to my doctor, who ruled out “medical” causes, and told me with a laugh, “Welcome to your 40s.” I thought that was an unacceptable response to my situation, but it’s what a medical authority told me, so it must be true, right? There was apparently nothing I could do about the changes my body was experiencing. But people I knew were noticing—a few even spreading rumors that I might be pregnant. So, not only was I struggling with the changes, but I was also being judged for them. That’s how warped our view of body image is. A few extra pounds and the murmuring and judgement begin, including my own self-judgement, which I admit was quite loud.
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The Alcoholist
By Kirk Evans, ADVANCE FOOD COLUMNIST
From Tuesday, July 21
My father was an accomplished alcoholic, ticking all the boxes: Ruined family? Check. Ruined career? Check. Lost friends and the respect of everyone he loved? Check. He had a drinking career that went uninterrupted for about 50 years, until he finally kicked the habit for good when I was about 10.
I started drinking when I was about the same age as my dad was when he started drinking: 14. I remember my first beer: a cold can of Tuborg Gold, given to me by the father of a middle school friend at a party thrown by his daughter. I remember my first serious drunk, too—that same night when I began to make retching sounds while seated on the velvet couch in the living room of his Dupont Circle brownstone. He pointed his drink at me—it was a vodka gimlet; I know this because he’d made me one as well—and said, “Get that boy out of here.” A group of seniors picked me up and carried me like a rolled-up carpet out the front door and held me so my head was over the cast iron stair railing as I vomited into the street.
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Tree of Heaven and Hell: Alarm Bells for Ailanthus
By Rebecca Rubin, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
From Thursday, July 23
Early one July morning, I watched with fascination and concern as an intrepid arborist scaled the first 40 or so feet of an old, ivy-covered ailanthus (technically, Ailanthus altissima; and implausibly—for reasons which shall become apparent—called the tree-of-heaven.) From a series of precarious perches along brittle limbs—and with saw dangling from his belt—he and a co-worker on the ground de-limbed the tree in several places, while I waited to see if the branches he was standing on would hold. They did. Mission accomplished. Except not.
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