• #10528 (no title)
  • 15 September 2020
  • Gourmet, Down South
  • The Author
  • Walking
  • What Endures. What Passes.

Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Tag Archives: #Fredericksburg

Half-Day Tripper

05 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by David in Family, food, Gentrification, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

#Fredericksburg, #U.S. Rte 1

Tomorrow is my brother-in-law’s, birthday. J’s brother. We met R and D, his wife, in Fredericksburg this morning. Fredericksburg is a quaint, but gentrified, city about halfway between Richmond and Washington. They live in Leesburg, to the west of Washington. So Fredericksburg is a good mutual rendezvous point.

Did I say Fredericksburg was gentrified? That is understating it. The housing prices have been bid up astronomically. There are the ubiquitous converted loft apartments. The downtown has been given over to antique stores, restaurants, and boutique shops. We ate at a restaurant called “Foode”, located in a converted bank building. Truthfully, it had lots of charm.

Across the street from “Foode” is St George’s Episcopal Church. The building with its distinctive steeple can be seen in pictures of Fredericksburg from the Civil War era. The area was of critical importance to the Union’s strategy to capture Richmond, the Confederate Capital. Volumes can and have been written about Fredericksburg in the Civil War. I will stop here.

R has his 76th birthday tomorrow. We had a lovely gathering, fully enjoying the overpriced, but satisfying food. A plate of eggs scrambled with cheese and squash was about $9. Not bad, all in all. $3.50 for a cup of coffee epitomizes the mark-up.

I volunteered to take a group picture for a lovely Muslim family out for brunch. A lesbian couple was not at all reticent about holding hands as they strolled down Princess Anne Street. Just typical scenes of our time.

We checked out a kitchen shop that had a nice selection, including Lamsonsharp forged knives, an American brand in the quality knife market. There were cutesy hand towels with sayings like “I’ve lost my mind. I think my kids took it.”

After the kitchen boutique, we browsed through an antique shop. It was the usual collection of soft drink bottles, furniture, Mid-Century Modern paraphernalia and fussy china. The stereotypical African-American racist kitsch, think Aunt Jemima, from the early part of the Twentieth Century, stood out among the kiosks in the store.

We drove home on U.S. Route 1, a road running roughly parallel with I-95. It was a storied road running from Calais, Maine, at the U.S./Canadian border, to Key West, Florida. There were restaurants and “tourist courts” running the entire route. Today it is all-but deserted. The restaurants were iconic brands like Howard Johnson’s, Hot Shoppes or Stuckey’s. They are all gone now. The tourist courts were the precursor to the motel. They consisted of a grouping of two room cabins, a bedroom with a bathroom. You can still see them, always repurposed to something else like antique shops and always, always shabby and run down, lost time in frame or brick. To take Rte 1 is a relief from the madhouse of traffic that is I-95. One can’t help but wonder what it was once like, back in the day.

Given I have had very little sleep in the past couple of nights, I was an even less enthusiastic traveler than I usually am, which is to say, I wasn’t thrilled about going, but I went. I very much like R and D, I just don’t feel like traveling much any more. I drove a lot in much of my working career. Going somewhere other than to Church, AA, or the Y has little appeal.

When we got home, I took a nap. Now I am writing, watching an Army Signal Corps newsreel from World War Two, dealing with Operation Market-Garden, the failed airborne invasion of The Netherlands in September 1944. This was the subject of the book and film, A Bridge Too Far.

Now I’m watching a segment about DDT, which 75 years ago, was a wonder substance. Now we know as a damaging and dangerous compound, affecting the survival of birds. Then DDT eradicated disese-carrying mosquitos.

I had a phone call from my elder son. He left his gruelling and unsatisfying job and, at age 43, is discerning a new career. We are having lunch tomorrow.

That’s about it.

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014

Categories

  • #cricket
    • Cricket
  • #Grief
  • Addiction
  • Adult Children
  • Aesthetics
  • Age Play
  • alcoholism
  • American History
    • Politics
  • Amtrak
  • Animal Baby Cuteness
  • Anti-Marxist Activity
  • Art
  • Autism Spectrum Disorders
  • Automobiles,
  • Baby Names
  • Baltimore
  • Big Business
  • Birthday
  • Bloggers
  • British Empire
  • Capitalism
  • Cartoons
  • Catholic Life
  • Cats
  • Civilization
  • Class
  • Classical Music
  • cooking
  • Cricket
  • Cuba
  • Cycling
  • Delta Blues
  • Depression
  • Dogs
  • Erotic Writing
  • Exercise/ Fitness
  • Existential Despair
  • Fame
  • Family
  • Fantasy
  • Fashion & Grooming
  • Florida
  • Flowers
  • food
  • Foreign Films
  • Fruit
  • Futurism
  • Gay/Straight Dichotomy
  • Gender Identity
  • Gender Roles
  • Gentrification
  • Going Dark.
  • grafitti
  • Gratitude
  • Health Issues
  • Hedonism
  • Hidtory
  • History
  • Housework
  • kitsch
  • Literature
  • loneliness
  • Love and stuff
  • memoir
  • Mid Century Modern
  • Modernism
  • New York
  • Old Cameras
  • Otakon 2016
  • personal grooming
  • Pie Crust
  • Politics
  • Popular Song
  • Post Office
  • Railroads
  • recovery
  • Refugees
  • Relationships
  • Russian Orthodoxy
  • Sacrifice
  • sadomasochism
  • seduction
  • self-indulgence
  • Sexual Identity
  • Sexuality
  • sleep
  • Smartphones
  • Sobriety
  • Soup
  • Soviet History
  • Spirituality
  • Sport
  • Suburbia
  • Summer
  • Taste
  • Tasteless Gifts
  • Tattoo
  • Tea
  • The Villages
  • Tolerance
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Urban Brutalism
  • Vietnam
  • Wildlife
  • World War II
  • YMCA
  • YouTube-Videos

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Dispatches From Dystopia
    • Join 568 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Dispatches From Dystopia
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar