Sparks.

Bill Moore’s welding shop sits just off a two-lane road passing through Lovettsville in western Loudoun County, Virginia. He keeps regular hours, but they’re not posted anywhere. Everyone just knows. If it’s a weekday, and not too early or too late, he’ll be there. One of the first things you notice when you walk in is that virtually every surface inside the crowded shop is the color of graphite. If you haven’t caught him in the middle of welding something, Bill will greet you simultaneously with an outstretched, graphite-colored hand, and a conversation.

Stories radiate from Bill like sparks. In fact, he seems made of stories. You might start chatting about the shop, the tool in his hand, or the project in the back of your truck that brought you here. But the conversation always goes somewhere else, somewhere interesting. It’s easy to get stuck chatting with Bill until you can’t for the life of you remember how you got on the subject you’re on, and by the time you leave you may find yourself late for dinner.

He seems to remember everything, including dates from long ago: When he started welding school (four days before Elvis Presley died), when the shop you’re standing in was moved a few hundred feet to its current location, or the day when Bill, a young man at the time, was with his grandfather when he suffered a massive stroke right there in the shop. Bill’s grandfather and father were both welders, so in addition to formal training and decades of practical experience, Bill has absorbed literally generations of know-how, not to mention local lore.

Bill is a local treasure. Not just because people have been bringing him chainsaw blades to be sharpened, tractor implements to be repaired, and ideas for parts or tools to be fabricated from scratch for as long as anyone can remember. But because he is, in part, the keeper of the history of the town. Not the visitor’s guide version, but the sort of meandering strings that, once you collect enough, make up the fabric of the backdrop of a place. Families who have been here since before there were cars. Businesses long gone. Tragedy, comedy, all of it.

Virginia’s Piedmont is dotted with towns big and small and rich in history. And those towns have people filled with stories that are not found in books or on social media, stories that deserve to be shared and passed along. So whether you live in a place or are just passing through, and you come across a business that looks like it’s been around longer than you have, stop in. Support that business. Shake the proprietor’s hand, and start a conversation. You may be pleasantly surprised by where it goes. What’s the worst that can happen? Dinner can always be reheated.