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."