| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
At the end of the trail we were just a couple miles from Waynesboro, Virginia, our goal for the night.
Well, we had two motels we had picked from the AAA book. The first one we found seemed to have as a side business something called The Heavenly Notions Gift Shop. Their main item seemed to be to take little dolls and attach wings to them, converting them into angel dolls. I wondered if they sold a converter kit or just did custom jobs for people. They have the doorway to the main shop with a glass door and inside is a five-foot tall angel mannequin. It is lit so it can be seen from the road all night. To look up and see that thing standing there was just a bit creepy.
I went into the office and not surprisingly it was decorated with angel dolls and praying hands. The room when we got it had another sample of her work, a framed foil picture of a hand, palm upward. The quote was from Isaiah and said 'See! I will not forget you... I have carved you on the palm of my hand.' The hand appeared to be uncarved, thank goodness. It was kind of a gruesome image. The bathroom was decorated with ants. It may have been only one ant but if so she was extremely energetic. That ant was seen just about everywhere in the bathroom. At the sink and shower there were liquid soap dispensers.
Overall the place was quite a somber little Bates Motel.
Look, it is time for an aside here. At one time-prehistoric times-people lived in tribes. Nations had not formed yet. Societies had barely formed. The person who took control was the strongest guy around. There was not a great emphasis on character or even maturity on the part of leaders. Having to know a little something about strategy was about the only thing that kept the worst troglodytes out of the office. It was the best policy to assume that your chief was capricious and vain. He (or she) was not particularly interested in the welfare of his (or her) constituents. So if you had to deal with such a person you had to constantly flatter him and feed his ego. Sometimes along with the flattery you threw in little requests for him to grant you wishes. Whatever the leader himself wished you darn well treated as commands for fear of putting him in a bad mood. Basically you treated your leaders the way you treat little children. You fawned on them. And you treated God that same way since God was also a ruler. Little by little democratic principles have come into politics and leaders have risen above needing this kind of obeisance. They have told their followers that this is a ridiculous way to act and they are better than to need this treatment. God has remained silent. As always. People are stuck in the mode of treating God as a little capricious child because He has not been able to tell them any different. So you have billions of people running around doing all kinds of crazy and often sadistic things they think are His will. And they are constantly and tiresomely flattering Him. All this is in the hopes that he will not lop off their heads. If God as an ultimate good exists He cannot possibly want all this constant praise. And he surely doesn't want humans killing other humans in His name. Give Him a little credit. You want to do something nice for Him? Work to make this a better world. Work to make people happier, whatever they believe.
For dinner we went back to town, about three blocks. We had seen a barbecue sign on our way into town. Barbecue sounded good. We drove to the place and there was no restaurant where the sign was. Now that is one of the things that I tend to assume, that when you see a big sign for a restaurant there actually will be a restaurant to go along with it. Well, there was a restaurant in the next lot over, but they had their own sign. I was not at all sure we had found the restaurant who had put up the sign we'd seen, but we went next door to the Broad Street Inn. We went in and were ushered to a dining room with a sort of a harvest decor. It was dark and had scythes and horse collars on the wall. Each table was lit by an electric candle. There were baskets hanging from the rafters. The rafters looked like they were nailed in place for decoration. There was an antique sled leaning against the wall. There were cases with rustic dishes and cookware decorated with straw and dried flowers. The only thing that broke the New England autumn feel was a big sign that said 'Please use the spittoon.' The whole thing looks like the place is expecting a big crowd at Thanksgiving.
I had barbecue; they did not have ribs, oddly. They had good fries, but their baked beans were more like a little dish of bean soup. Everything comes with hush puppies. The waiter brought a squeeze bottle of hot sauce and warned me not to burn [sic] my mouth because it was really hot. Promises, promises.
Well, back to the room and I turned on a movie and wrote in my log till midnight.
|
table width='555' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' align='center'>
|
08/17/97--Virginia: Blue Ridge Parkway and Booker T. Washington National Monument:
|
Well, I slept fairly well. The mattress is very firm. It also had fairly big towels. That is unusual in the places we stay. The place does not look so baroque in the light of day. It was clean, except for the ant. The expected high temperature today is 105 degrees. Yesterday was 95. Well, in an air-conditioned car it hardly matters. For me breakfast was the remaining half of Evelyn's wrap from lunch yesterday. It actually was fairly spicy. Then we went to a restaurant and I had a hot chocolate while Evelyn had a full meal including grits. These grits were a lot like farina.
We followed the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic drive similar to the Skyline the previous day. The scenery is quite nice and the turkey vultures soaring overhead spectacular. You would not think an old turkey buzzard would be so graceful in the air, but they fly a lot in their profession.
We did see a turtle crossing the road. Some more deer also. We stopped and I tried to take their picture. An Olympus camera is not exactly the world's fastest camera. You click it and it starts thinking, 'Now can I figure out the range or not? What is that thing anyway? Oh, well, here goes.' I just keep it aimed and two seconds later I get a great picture of the back end of a departing deer. I think they know I have an Olympus camera and time it just right so I get a rotten picture. This passes as deer humor. Go then and become venison.
We head west on I-220 to the Booker T. Washington National Monument. This is a reconstruction of the Burroughs farm where Booker T. Washington lived the first nine years of his life. As we pulled in there were two cars in the lot, one from Virginia, one from New Jersey. We keep seeing cars from New Jersey. It isn't like it is a short drive. This is like the fourth group of people we ran into from New Jersey.
Young Booker had to accompany his master's daughter to school, carrying her books, but could not enter because it was illegal for black slave to get an education. Booker was desperate to learn to read, figuring that getting into a schoolhouse to study was like getting into paradise. He had an inventive mind. On Sunday when the Burroughses who owned Booker were feeling particularly Christian they would give the slaves some molasses. Booker would spread it all over his plate assuming it would make it more somehow. Some days he got the molasses; some days he got the black strap.
As an adult Booker doubted he ever had time to play as a child. His waking hours were entirely work.
Booker was five at the time the Civil War started, nine when it ended Booker's family was free. Booker's moved to Malden, West Virginia. There he worked in a salt mine. Some days he would get up at 4am to have his work done earlier in the day to study reading.
Seven years later he had heard of a school for Blacks, the Hampton Institute and went there to learn. He stayed to teach. He was greatly inspired by General Samuel C. Armstrong, a teacher who mentored Booker and got him a teaching position. In 1881 when funding became available for a new school for blacks, Armstrong was asked to recommend someone to found the school and he recommended the man who now called himself Booker T. Washington. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute. Washington moved on to national prominence advising Presidents. Washington had a long-standing disagreement with W. E. B. DuBois. Washington favored what we would now call a vocational education, DuBois what we would call a liberal arts education. As DuBois put it, 'The object of education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.'
We saw a fifteen-minute film on the life of Washington. Then a woman dressed in the clothing of a woman of the ante-bellum South talked to us about the Old South. Young women were not allowed to talk to men so they worked out a whole code of communication using their fans. Snapping a fan shut indicated a sort of put-down of the man. Tapping their lips meant they wanted to be kissed. Hiding their face meant they had to keep their relationship a secret. People had to be very careful of scandal since the nearest neighbor was typically something like ten miles away and you didn't want to be ostracized.
I asked about food and it would be mostly things like potatoes, beans, corn, whatever they could grow, plus pork.
A woman would have typically two dresses, one for summer, one for winter. She might decorate them for a party but it would be the same dress. Other times life was just sitting on a porch.
I asked what the Burroughs women were doing during the war. Essentially they were living in occupied territory. The Union soldiers would tell them what they would have to plant, but they would be able to keep their farm. That makes sense since the army needed their labor and had little to gain by leaving them homeless.
Out around the back we saw the reconstruction of the farm. In one sense it was a bit dishonest. The reconstructed slave quarters was only half the size of the original. But the farm is again operative. A walk around gives a good feel for the scale of the small farm. It is small even though Washington called it a 'plantation.'
Incidentally we later found out it was 101 degrees out.
We talked to one of the rangers, Tim Sinclair, a very intelligent man whose father apparently never went to high school until his 40s and went on to get a bachelors degree. We told him we worked for Bell Labs and he asked if they still were part of Lucent. He know his stuff. We talked about working for the Labs.
We wanted to get lunch before hitting the road. Evelyn wanted to try Bojangles Chicken. I had a BBQ chicken sandwich. They had a fill-it-yourself drink bar and I had a lemonade. I took the lemonade as I was standing there and drank half of it. I didn't think about it. It just went down. I guess I was dehydrated. But I find it interesting that a physical condition controls behavior. I am a little surprised that it is elderly women who are cleaning tables. Usually you expect to see young kids.
The first weekend is coming to an end. When we have these long vacation Evelyn prefers the weekdays, I prefer the weekends. The reason must say something about each of our personalities. Evelyn likes the weekdays because she is off having a good time while her peers are working. She enjoys that feeling, I guess. I prefer the weekends because I tell myself I am getting them free. Weekdays use up vacation time. Weekends do not affect my total of vacation time. They are almost like opposite reasons. At least one of us is always having a good time.
Well, there is not much else to tell for the day. It is about a five and a half hour drive to Knoxville, Tennessee. To pass the time we listened to the audio book of Wilbur Smith's River God. I had some low-fat potato chips. We didn't get to Knoxville until 9 PM. |
|
| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
|
