Unexpectedly, the weekend turned into a grand tour of Virginia Civil War battlefields. Started out as a quick visit to my parents with an idea of stopping at Fredericksburg to get a copy of Virginians Desolate, Virginians Free at the visitor center. That’s all.
But then I stopped at Fort Gregg just south of Petersburg. We did a living history there a few months back, but I wanted to see it again--and Fort Whitworth just around the corner. Fort Gregg is an earthen mound redoubt—semi-circular facing south. A half-mile off, Fort Whitworth is a full circle. It’s interesting because it’s on the site of a Virginia state hospital and training center and they’ve preserved it by simply filling it in and putting picnic tables and grills over it. Pretty ingenious, I’d say—the thing ain’t going anywhere now.
Anyhow, with time on my hands, the Museum of the Confederacy beckoned. Listen, folks, before you think less of me for it, the MoC has been run for years by very good museum professionals and the staff has a history doing challenging exhibits on slavery and women in the Confederacy, as well as taking an honest look a divisive issues like the Confederate flag. I always drive by when it’s closed so haven’t been inside for years.
So, while I’ll credit them for being intellectually honest, the poor label writing (i.e. huge blocks of text) along with uninspired design distracted me. The exhibits are wordy and dull. They’ve got one up right now about Virginia, the Confederacy, and the legacy of the War. Heavy on the text but, whew, don’t you think the MoC has been doing the whole Virginia Thing for long enough now. What the MoC does have going for it is the enormous collection of artifacts and I saw lots of them. That made me happy.
You might have heard that the Museum is considering moving from its present location. I won’t get into it but the museum admin thinks it necessary and the die-hard Confederates are up in arms against it. Here’s my opinion, based on what I know about museums: it is currently in the absolutely worst place you can imagine for the easy parking and orientation of a happy visitor. Like having to muscle your way through a chaotic hospital waiting room and construction zone to get into the museum….because that is exactly what you have to do! (Not to mention that the interior of the museum is very dated and not very museum-like and it could use a complete reinvention.) Move it, now.
I saw an amazing thing at the MoC. They’ve got the home and office of Confederate President Jeff Davis next door and it’s a big part of their attraction. The house interiors actually are reconstructed very well. It’s pretty swank for 1864 and I’ll just say that Varina Davis was no Martha Washington. But that’s another story. Here are the good things about our tour guide. He was entertaining, excellent in engaging the children, he kept us moving along and didn’t get bogged down in unnecessary details. He gave a tour with a good mix of house and furnishing information and stories about Davis and the Confederacy. Here is the bad thing about our tour guide. He told an extremely old-fashioned story about the Confederacy. Davis was wonderful, of course, but he could not stop carrying on about the greatest general ever: Robert E. Lee. Did he mention that Lee is his favorite? Yes. Over and over. He told us a rather touching story of being a child in 1961 during the Centennial and his mother…an old Virginia mother…brought him to this place and he befriended General Lee’s granddaughter, the regent of the Museum, and she was a source of guidance and friendship for the remainder of her days. And, let me tell you, on his tour, he sure made those old UDC ladies proud. Old Vuhginyuh is in good hands.
Here is the oddity. He is a black man.
Now, don’t get me wrong…I love busting stereotypes, don’t begrudge a person their chosen path, think he was genuine in everything he said and don’t have a problem with him doing so. But this happened right in the middle of reading K-Lev’s two posts on African-American voices in Richmond during the Centennial. And my head was spinning in six different directions at once the whole tour.
Best to leave Richmond right away. Thursday morning I had found an email announcing a Friday evening tour of the Spotsylvania Battlefield with my new hero, John Hennessy. I had to hear how he interprets a battlefield and so went straight to the Bloody Angle in the Mule Shoe (that’s Civil War lingo, right there.) A million other people showed up so I lost hopes of a long, intimate, walk with John as the sun set, probably holding hands and talking about the best ways to interpret the Civil War during the upcoming sesquicentennial. While waiting, I saw some of the best-written and best-designed flat exhibit panels I’ve seen in a very long time at the wayside station. Excellent!
Then it rained. And thundered. And when the lightning began to crash, they had to officially postpone the thing until the storm passed. Hennessy had been about ten minutes into the talk so I got the gist of where it was going. A history of the land, from who owned it before the war, to what happened on it in years before the battle, what happened after the battle and as it became part of the National Park Service. A fairly fresh perspective and a good way to introduce how battles affect things other than on tactical military level.
But I was tired and the dog was wet so we headed on. The storm, of course, followed us to Fredericksburg and cut short our leisurely walk down the Sunken Road.
Dinner in Fredericksburg and a quick dash to the old home place in Woodbridge.
Dad is still doing well. He looks remarkably better and obviously has more energy. His appetite for cooking and eating is returned. The blood numbers are still, slowly, rising and that’s good. The enflamed lymph nodes are still a troubling mystery. And with all the transfusions, though, his iron levels are alarmingly high and all the efforts to dissipate the mineral are not working. Pretty soon they’re going to deploy him to Iraq for use as a ballistic bomb. He hasn’t needed new blood in two weeks, which is an improvement over the three-times a week it was two months ago, but he’ll probably go in tomorrow for a new round as he is clearly (temporarily) running out of steam.
Unexpectedly, the Civil War battlefield bug bit me, so Saturday it was off to Manassas Battlefield. Manassas (the city) has many new roads since I’ve last spent time there. But I got on one that I knew was straight and would take me there, and I still managed to get lost. Usually, I’m pretty good with roads and directions. Whatever. The visit started out at—where else—the visitor center where they talk lots and lots about the First Battle of Manassas and say nothing about the Second Battle of Manassas. (To use some more Civil War lingo…I don’t give one pinch of owl dung for First Manassas.) I’m certain there is some strategic reason for this minor oversight, but it wasn’t apparent to me. The exhibits in that place are rather attractive, btw.
No problem. We took the driving tour of Second Manassas. I’ve got to say I was quite nostalgic for that place…, as I had spent much time out there in the early-1990s. And the view-sheds did not disappoint with the swaying fields of yellow wheat and old roadbeds. Got out and walked the Unfinished Railroad Cut loop trail. I could try make a joke about the desperate bayonet assaults made there and the number of ticks desperately assaulting me and the dog, but that would be crass. I don’t know if it’s the older I get or the more I learn, but these battlefields are too tragic to have fun with. Having said that, as many years as I’ve reenacted or otherwise hung out in woodlands, I have never been infested with as many ticks as I was after a thirty minute walk. Seriously. I must have pulled thirty of them off my clothes and body in the parking lot and maybe twenty more on the way home. Lizzie was similarly covered and they were picked off, but she’s on tick medicine so I don’t worry about her too much.
At Manassas I noticed something: In both the Museum of the Confederacy and the Manassas book stores, the books about women in the Civil War are placed on the same shelf as the cheesy Civil War Cookbooks and other novelty publications. I suspect it’s a matter of shelf space for the Eastern National employees, but it is a reflection of the marginalized place the topic is in Civil War history for most people.
I took a partial tour of Woodbridge on the way home. Saw the house we lived in for a year, circa 1978. Overall, this town, and this county, is soulless and dismal. And crappy. I find it hard to construct a good tour of the town, or of my time here because all there ever has been are tract housing and strip malls. They had been some geography, but since I’ve been gone, they’ve replaced that with more tract housing and strip malls. And unfortunately, my childhood, if there is anything to point out in Woodbridge about it, is too closely associated with it all. Here is the shopping center where I won a prize for suggesting putting a newspaper in a time capsule. Here is the shopping center where the marching band played to open the new theaters and we got in free to see Top Gun. And I just drive around and there is nothing to point out except this crap and that crap and wow, look at the total crappiness of that new crap. Woodbridge has crap strip malls, crap car dealerships, and crap housing. That’s it. Oh, and stop lights. I hate this place and it makes me luurve Durham so much more.
When walking along a path at Spotsylvania I looked down and found a bullet embedded in the path. I pulled it out and it’s a genuine three-ring .58 caliber ball, dropped. Now, these things are a dime a dozen. But I’m surrounded by people who turn up treasures all the time, from eBay, flea markets, antique stores and I just have no luck at all in that regard. So this absolutely unremarkable find just has me all tickled and feeling good about myself.
Oh, and I stopped at Chatham, in Fredericksburg to find a copy of that documentary. It's $30. The state doesn't pay me enough to afford that kind of discretionary spending.
