On our way to Baltimore for the American Literature Association conference, we stopped in Richmond early in the afternoon. With help from a woman at the Metro Richmond Convention and Visitors Bureau, we found an interesting local restaurant: an English pub called Penny Lane, where we had shepherd's pie and Cornish pasties. The charming and gregarious owner, Terry O'Neill, waited on us and even gave us a tour of the premises, describing in a thick British accent his billiards and darts rooms, his autographed photograph from Paul McCartney, and other features. Now 58, he explained that he had been a famous soccer player in England, where he was on his way down while the Beatles were on their way up.
Our next stop was the Virginia State Capitol a few blocks away. Strolling through the beautifully landscaped grounds around the Capitol, we thought it a shame that this gleaming structure, stately columns, polished marble porch, lush grounds that slope down from the building, and bronze statues had to be surrounded and nearly eclipsed by the tall, gray office buildings of downtown Richmond. I wish someone could lift the entire building and hill out of the city and transplant it in a meadow or an enormous courtyard, where its grandeur could overwhelm and inspire spectators. I can't help but think that Thomas Jefferson, who designed the Capitol in 1785, would have wanted it that way.
The interior, at least, is
allowed to dazzle visitors without intrusions from the more mundane surroundings.
The Old Senate Chamber, for example, contains orderly rows of polished wooden
chairs, a stately dais, and 
an enormous painting
from the 18th or 19th century. Even more impressive is the Hall of the House
of Delegates, which contains more polished chairs, a bronze statue of Robert
E. Lee, a huge silver and gold-washed mace from the 17th century, and two
facing balconies. Virginia's delegates, the oldest law-making body in America,
met here from 1788 to 1906. The hall is also the site where the government
tried former Vice-President Aaron Burr for treason in 1807, Lee accepted
command of the Virginia forces, and the Confederate Congress met from 1862
until it ended. The rotunda in the center of the Capitol contains Jean Antoine
Houdon's statue of George Washington, the only one for which he posed, as
well as a bust of the Marquis de Lafayette and busts of the eight U.S. presidents
from Virginia: Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William
Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. The grounds
also contain some impressive sculpture, including a statue of Edgar Allan
Poe, who grew up in Richmond and worked there for the Southern Literary
Messenger in the 1830s, and an enormous circular monument topped by
a statue of Washington.
Because we still had some driving to do to reach Falls
Church, Virginia, where we planned to spend the night with our friend Pete
Amstutz, we returned to the car late in the afternoon. Before we left Richmond,
though, we drove by the tiny Confederate White House and then up Monument
Avenue, a gorgeous street lined with elegant homes, trees, and statues of
Lee, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, and other figures. On the outskirts
of downtown, we were surprised and delighted to see some impressive, nicely
landscaped campuses of seminaries and other schools.
To celebrate our seventh anniversary, we drove a few hours up to eastern
Virginia and spent one day being adults and one day being kids.
On the first day, we visited Ashland, Virginia, a small railroad town a
few minutes north of Richmond. First called Adams Shanty after the shanty
of a railroad man, the town became known as Slash Cottage around 1845, when
the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac Railroad build a resort for
Richmond residents amid the slash pines in the area. The current name of
Ashland comes from the name of the Kentucky home of Senator Henry Clay,
who was born in this area.
Our first stop was the visitors' center, located in the
tiny train depot near the middle of town. There we picked up a map of the
historic district and heard a freight train roar by us. After a fine barbecue
lunch at the Smokey Pig, we set out on a walking tour of Ashland. Following
the pair of train tracks that run through the center of town, we saw several
charming old houses dating back to the nineteenth century. Later on the
tour, we visited the beautiful campus of Randolph-Macon College, a liberal-arts
school of about 1,100 students. Finally, we drove a few miles outside of
town and saw Scotchtown, where colonial patriot Patrick Henry lived when
he served as a Virginia delegate in the First Continental Congress in 1774
and when he gave his famous "give me liberty or give me death"
speech at St. John's Chuch in Richmond in 1775.
On the next day, we forgot about history and other adult matters and went
to Kings Dominion amusement park. After a brief shower in the morning, the
weather cooperated beautifully. Caressed by cool breezes, we went up into
the one-third-scale Eifel Tower, ate junk food, and took in the fasinating
array of people, including a middle-aged man covered in patches from two
dozen amusement parks and a little girl delicately dabbing the corner of
her lip while a sugary river of melted ice cream streamed down her other
arm. Our favorite sight, however, was that of a father and son--surrounded
by the temptations of six-foot furry animals, cotton candy, and a half-dozen
roller coasters, concentrating on a miniature chess game. Feeling a little
less cerebral, we spent the bulk of the afternoon bouncing, spinning, and
speeding up, around, and over hills of track and pockets of air. It was
a fabulous day of fun, relaxation, and one milestone: Lisa's first "no-hands"
ride on the Rebel Yell roller coaster.
One of Lisa's coworkers at the Department of Nutrition invited us to
come up to Lexington and see a play for which he was the technical director.
We jumped at the chance not only to travel, but to return to the Virginia
mountains and the historical area we had tasted about a month earlier on
our way to Indiana.
We arrived in Lexington in the early afternoon and hit
the pavement right away. In a matter of minutes, we walked across the small
downtown area to the campus of Washington and Lee University. Because the
semester had yet to begin, we weren't able to take in any of the student
life, but we did enjoy the beautiful green and rolling hills of the campus,
as well as the impressive red-brick buildings. The highlight was Lee Chapel,
where Robert E. Lee attended services and had his office while he was president
of the college. Although the chapel looks relatively small from the outside,
its two tiers of white pews seat 600 people. Lee is buried inside the building,
and the site is marked by a marble statue sculpted by Edward Valentine.
In the chapel's basement, we saw Lee's office, featuring his desk and an
enormous credenza, as well as a fine collection of artifacts, such as portraits
of the Lee family, items from Lee's uniform, more sculptures, and Lee's
books. Before leaving, we bought a compact disk of Confederate songs. Outside
the chapel, we visited the grave of Lee's horse, Traveller, and smiled at
the gift someone had left on the headstone: an apple.
After wandering past and through a few other campus buildings, such as
a recently renovated science hall and an impressively furnished alumni house,
we walked to Virginia Military Institute, which is right next-door to Washington
and Lee. At least as striking as its neighbor, VMI several imposing, castle-like
structures and an enormous parade field, where cadets were training and
playing. Exploring with no map or destination, we stumbled upon the VMI
Museum, which turned out to be a delightful surprise. In the 20 minutes
before it closed, we saw old uniforms, a life-size model of a typical cadet's
room, a roomful of medals won by VMI graduates, and several fascinating
exhibits on the school's history. The school has its origins in the early
19th century, when soldiers working at an armory in western Virginia had
a lot of time on their hands. To give these men something to do with their
time other than be rowdy, someone came up with the idea of providing them
with educational opportunities; after their three-year stint, these men
then could return to their towns with more to offer their fellow citizens.
In 1839, this program became the Virginia Military Institute. Stonewall
Jackson taught at the school, and its graduates include General George Marshall
and General George S. Patton.
On our way out of the museum, we came upon a drill and
paused to watch it before walking back to downtown Lexington. We enjoyed
an excellent dinner on the porch of the Willson-Walker House, an 1820 home
that has been restored. Having just finished reading an Edgar Allan Poe
story called "William Wilson" on the way up to Lexington, we were
a little spooked that the house had originally belonged to one William Wilson.
Nonetheless, Lisa liked her tuna steak, and we both agreed that my grilled
chicken and peach chutney was outstanding.
The highlight of our visit was the play that evening at the Theater at Lime
Kiln, an amphiteater where spectators can take in a play under the stars.
The setting is perfect: a former lime quarry, where stone walls provide
the backdrop. We sawGlory Bound, a musical by a Washington and Lee
drama professor and a member of a North Carolina band called the Red Clay
Ramblers. A tour-de-force of outstanding music, talented actors, and a witty
and touching story of racial interactions in a small Virginia town in the
1960s, Glory Bound kept us laughing and thinking even after we left
the theater. We felt fortunate to have seen it, especially in the unique
setting.
Before driving home the next day, we took a stroll around
the residential area of Lexington and saw several striking 19th-century
houses. After driving up to Charlottesville to see Monticello--and stopping
in our tracks upon learning of the two-hour wait--we set off towards Chapel
Hill. Thinking a lot nowadays about my imminent job search, we stopped at
Sweet Brier College, a women's school nestled in the rolling hills east
of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We loved its isolated position, its tidy red-brick
buildings, and its fine bookstore, and we picked up some brochures to add
to my files.
On our way to Indiana to visit our families, we drove through Virginia to see a few interesting spots. Our first stop was a brief one in Lynchburg, a collection of roads and buildings sprinkled over steep, rolling hills. We stopped near the bustling city market and ate a small meal of biscuits and fresh peaches beside a fountain in the market.
Our main stop on this leg of the trip was Staunton,
Virginia, where we indulged our fascination with the American frontier at
the Museum of American Frontier Culture. To allow Americans to study the
elements that went into shaping the homes and lifestyles of American pioneers,
the curators of this museum have reconstructed a homestead from each of
three places and time periods where these pioneers originated: 17th-century
Ireland, 17th-century Germany, and 17th-century England.
At the Irish homestead, we visited a small home and outbuildings surrounded
by a sturdy stone wall. Because the Irish had many more stones than trees,
they used stones to build their homes, stacking two rows of large rocks
and filling the gap with rubble; they used mortar to hold the materials
together and then painted the entire wall with a whitewash. The roof consisted
of strips of sod covered with thatch.
The German house featured a different construction technique. In this method,
called wattle-and-daub, workers covered a wooden framework with thin strips
of wood and a plaster made of mud and straw. This house seemed rather large
to us until we learned that two families, each with perhaps five or six
members, lived here. In Germany in the 18th century, these families lived
in a community and farmed land outside of town. One of their chief crops
was flax, which they used to make their own linen and perhaps linen to sell.
An interpreter demonstrated the tedious process of removing the pods from
the stalks and thrashing these pods to remove the chaff. The seeds that
they removed from this chaff could be taken to a mill, where they could
be pressed to create linseed oil, a foodstuff.
The English home, also made of wattle and daub, was relatively
large and belonged to a yeoman family. These people were not as wealthy
as nobles, but they owned and cultivated their own land. An interpreter
showed us some of the foods this family might have prepared and eaten: an
enormous loaf of bread, a pudding of bacon and sage wrapped in a pastry
and then boiled, and a meat pie. Because the crust sealed and preserved
the meat inside, the pie would last a week without spoiling. Lisa noted
that this crust was an early form of Tupperware, but historians are not
certain whether meat-pie parties were common among the English homemakers.
After visiting all of these precursors, we finally arrived
at the last stop on the tour, an American homestead from 1858. An interpreter
in the barn explained an improvement the American pioneers introduced to
flax processing: 19th-century American farmers thrashed the stalks on a
wooden floor in the middle of a breezeway in the barn. The solid floor made
the pods easy to thrash and retrieve, and the strong airflow facilitated
the separation of seeds and chaff. Raised sills on both sides of the breezeway--the
"thresholds"--kept seeds from being lost. Inside the house, we
saw many examples of foods these pioneers preserved by drying: tomatoes,
applies, green beans, herbs, even pumpkins. Rehydrated later, these items
from their harvests constituted a major part of their meals in the winter.
After we left the Museum of American Frontier Culture, we drove into downtown
Staunton, where we enjoyed a walk among several 19th-century buildings,
Woodrow Wilson's birthplace, a train station, a beautiful courthouse, and
Mary Baldwin College, a women's college and former seminary nestled among
rolling hills. On the recommendation of some people from the Visitors' Center,
we had a wonderful dinner of ribs and pork at the Millhouse Grill, located
in an old flour mill.
Mark and I have found Colonial Williamsburg to be an ideal destination for vacation and education because it appeals to our occasionally diverse interests. Mark, as you probably have figured out by now, loves history; and Colonial Williamsburg is packed with that. I, on the other hand, love living history -- learning by witnessing how sheep are sheared, eggs are gathered, and colonial gardens are cultivated. And we both enjoy the dress, architecture, food and music of that time.
We arrived in Williamsburg much like Mark's hero, Captain
John Smith: across the James river on a boat. We ferried across the James
on a whim and found the experience completely rewarding. While in Williamsburg,
we lodged at an inexpensive but very comfortable motor hotel within an easy
bike ride of the colony. With a carbohydrate laden breakfast of fruit and
bagels, we started each day with lots of energy. We'd need it. On Friday
we toured the colonial governor's gardens with Thomas Jefferson, who was
an expert botanist, paid close attention to the crops and irrigation used
for growing food versus flowers, watched carpenters crafting a harpsichord
using colonial technology and tools, and peered into current excavations
underway on the grounds of the colony.
Saturday was another busy day and started off with a
sixteen-mile round trip bike ride to Carter's Grove, the colonial plantation
home just outside Williamsburg. The ride on the Country Road (a one-lane,
one-way, ancient highway connecting the two historic areas) was rigorous,
but filled with wildlife including those crazy lookin', side-way walkin'
crabs, baby bunnies and lots of extraordinary birds. Later that day we attended
an educational and entertaining talk on colonial poultry where we met a
couple of the local chickens. And then later, while I shopped -- another
of my favorite things to do -- Mark toured the capitol building there in
the colony.
And in between our jaunts around Colonial Williamsburg and its environs,
we relaxed by the pool, ate out at the popular Colonial Williamsburg taverns
and inns, and shopped in both the colony and in the town of Williamsburg.
Regardless of where we are in Williamsburg, we always find the experience
enriching. Historians and restorationists at Colonial Williamsburg take
their work very seriously and have created a museum that is as close to
time travel as we have found anywhere.