Keeping Tabs: Herb's Bar-B-Q has a saucy goodbye with an Emmy winner

Emmy winner and author Beth Polson took a recent break from her writing/producing chores in California to bus tables and chat with old friends at Herb's Bar-B-Q in Suffolk.

Polson, who also wrote for The Virginian-Pilot in the 1960s and '70s, joined dozens of other people to reminisce about the 56 years Herb's served locally legendary "square dogs" and barbecue.

Polson, from Corapeake, N.C., was one of many young people from south Suffolk and North Carolina towns just across the state line from the Carolina Road restaurant who worked for Herb and Mildred Brinkley, the original owners.

The popular eatery and meeting place closed its doors Dec. 28.

Polson, well-known for producing "feel-good" TV movies with positive themes, celebrated the 2003 publication of her novel "Secret Santa" with a signing at Herb's.

Who knows, perhaps her next made-for-TV movie will be set in a small, rural barbecue joint?

A new take on Tom Sawyer's Becky Thatcher

Ever wonder what really happened to Tom Sawyer and his girlfriend, Becky Thatcher?

Mark Twain fans will enjoy learning the rest of the story from the Eastern Shore's Lenore Hart's newest novel "Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher."

Hart, a visiting writer at Old Dominion University, will discuss and sign the book at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Prince Books in Norfolk.

Her fictional take on the Tom Sawyer/Becky Thatcher relationship elevates Thatcher from a whiny girlfriend to a courageous woman who later marries Sawyer's cousin, and braves Civil War battlefields searching for her husband.

Thatcher survives Mississippi riverboats and Nevada silver mines in Hart's take, and ends up living the good life in San Francisco.

Hart, who won local readers with her previous novel, "Waterwoman," also wrote "Ordinary Springs" and "The Treasure of Savage Island," both published in 2005.

She dissed Norfolk and the Azalea Festival

Arabella Spencer-Churchill, the wild child of one of Britain's prestigious families who died Dec. 21 at age 58, once dissed Norfolk big-time.

The colorful Churchill - granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill - was a model, hippie and organizer of a rock festival that became known as the "Woodstock of Great Britain."

In 1971, the London debutante said "no" to an invitation to represent Great Britain as the Azalea Queen in the Norfolk International Azalea Festival, a salute to NATO. She was one of only two women ever to decline the honor.

In a letter to Rolling Stone magazine, she attributed her refusal to her objection to the war in Vietnam.

Churchill later married a professional juggler and founded Children's World Charity, an organization that brought performance arts into the schools.