I must admit that it took me the better part of a week to get over the fact that my beloved St. Luke's Espiscopal Church in Richmond, Virginia is now a mosque, but I'm glad to say that I did. I still don't like it, but the fact is there's nothing I can do about it - that, plus it doesn't change any of the memories of the good times I had there while growing up.
Another thing that I always remember when I think of my childhood years when my family lived on Beck Drive was what I call the Weekend Field Trip. One of the things my parents did that impressed me when I was growing up was to take us on field trips to different historical locations around the state. Living in the Richmond area put us close to all of the historical locations - most of them, anyway - and I think our family hit them all. Actually, these field trips impressed me so much that when I was in the Air Force and was stationed in Hampton, I made it a point to take my kids to some of the same places my folks had taken me and my sisters. (Two of my three kids loved it, and one hated it. I'll leave it at that.)
Anyhow, about once a month or so - maybe longer in between, actually - we'd all pile into the family truckster and take off for a historical location. We hit all of the big ones, too - Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson; Mount Vernon, home of George Washington; Jamestown, the site of the first permanent English settlement in America; Colonial Williamsburg, the location of the colonial government in Virginia in pre-Revolutionary War days; the Yorktown Battlefield, site of the British surrender ending the Revolutionary War; and last but not least Hampton Roads, the site of the battle between the first two ironclad warships, the CSS VIRGINIA and the USS MONITOR. And throughout all of the field trips we took, I remember one or two very specific things about each of them. For example:
I remember the French doors in Jefferson's house at Monticello that were linked so that when you pulled one of them open, they both opened up. (Very advanced for the mid-18th Centurty, you know.)
I remember seeing the tomb where Washington is buried at Mount Vernon. I also remember taking the trip in the beige Volkswagen Beetle my father had at the time, and the bag full of sno-caps candy we took with us - and that my sister Cindy got sick off of.
I remember me and my two sisters sitting on the barrel and wheels of a cannon outside of the Visitor's Center at the Yorktown Battlefield while my father took our picture. 25 years later I took the same picture of my kids sitting on the same cannon. Way cool, huh?
I remember the Governor's Palace and the Maze at Colonial Williamsburg, and the firing of the 9 o'clock gun - which, sad to say, they don't do anymore.
I remember going on the tour boat to see the site of the Battle of the Ironclads in Hampton Roads, and the movement of the boat as we rode out the wake of a ship that passed by us.
And I will always for the rest of my life remember the trip to Jamestown. We took that one in the green 1965 Ford Falcon station wagon my father had, and just as we were about halfway through the driving tour of Jamestown Island, the water hose burst and we were stuck. My father has always been a man of great ingenuity and I wish I could tell you how he got the car fixed and got us out of there, but I can't. As good as my memory is, that point is just gone. But before the car crapped out on us I do remember walking through the recreated fort and seeing all of the character actors there, and watching in amazement as a glassblower did his thing.
But the grand-daddy of all field trips took a bit more than a weekend, and it took us a bit further away than Monticello or Mount Vernon. In either 1967 or 1968 we took a trip to the mother of all Civil War battlefields, that being Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We spent two or three days looking around the town, driving through the battlefield, and just playing tourist, and I enjoyed ever single minute of it! I remember The Electric Map, which was a big map layed out on the floor of a building with seats all around it, each row a bit higher than the one below it, and the troop movements of the three day's battle were played out in different colored lights on the map. Absolutely amazing to me! Somewhere in my father's house is a picture of me and my two sisters standing on the monument to Pickett's Charge, also called the Highwater Mark of the Confederacy, and I only wish I'd known as much about the war and that particular battle then as I do now. I'd have appreciated it more, that's for sure. (I always meant to go back to Gettysburg when I lived in New Jersey, but never made it. Damn.)
Like I said, when it was my turn to have kids and the Air Force put me back in Virginia, I took my kids to some of the same locations. We all went to Yorktown and Colonial Williamsburg, and my son and I rode our mountain bikes around Jamestown Island back to the very spot where our Falcon wagon died. And for me, I don't know which was the bigger kick - going back to a happy place from my childhood (I guess sometimes you can go home again after all) or taking my own kids there and sharing it with them.
Either way, it's all good!
IHC
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