Back in 2000 when Ellen and I
found out she was pregnant, we had a conversation about what we were going to
do. At the time, we were living
approximately 105 miles apart, with Ellen in Charlottesville and me in Roanoke. It was a very short discussion:
“Do you want to give up your
job?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
The only option, then, was to
choose a spot halfway between the two locations and begin a double
commute. The only question was,
where?
Again the conversation was
short:
“Do you want to live in the country?”
“No. Do you?”
That option gone, the only
reasonable location was Lexington, Virginia, an historic town more-or-less
equidistance from Charlottesville and Roanoke. Once or twice when we were living apart, we’d make a date on
a week night and meet in Lexington for dinner, trying out different
restaurants, getting a feel for the town.
We weren’t impressed. The
place was small. Very small. Like, drive through end to end in six
minutes small. Like, notice a car
from out of town because it stands out small. And the restaurants weren’t that good: there was the fancy place in town,
where the waiters stood in their white shirts, hands behind their backs over
white linen table clothes. Only
the food was just . . . okay. Then
there was the diner on the edge of town.
Even the salad was bad. And
I don’t mean kind of bad; I mean, we can’t eat this, we need to leave and go to
Hardee’s bad.
But it was either Lexington or
someplace where your rental home came with a John Deere tractor and a gun rack
in the dining room, at least one of which I refuse to live with (hint: JD tractors are made in Iowa, home of
my undergraduate alma mater and one of my favorite states ever). So Lexington it was.
It didn’t help that Ellen is a
big city person. Prior to living
in Charlottesville, which was a necessity given her job, she’d spent several
years in New York City, on the busy west side, taking the subway to work, doing
carry out Chinese every third night, clubbing with Boy George and the former
members of Oasis, waking up at noon in the dingy alley way behind a meat
cutter, head full of cotton and a tattoo reading “Jesus was my meth dealer”
bleeding on her forearm.
Okay, not really, but you get
the point: whereas I’d grown up in
a small town in Wisconsin visiting my grandparents in an even smaller town
(think, drive from end to end in sixty seconds) that I absolutely loved, Ellen
moved from one large metropolitan area to another, including Portland Oregon,
L.A., Oxford, England, Minneapolis, and New York City. Lexington for me was a step up. Lexington for Ellen was a . . . well,
nightmare is a strong word, so let’s just say that it wasn’t her idea of
paradise.
But such was life. She was pregnant, neither of us was
quitting our jobs, and both of us were afraid of cows. So Lexington it was.
We weren’t willing to commit
completely, of course, so we kept our house in Roanoke, renting it to a good
friend with a cleanliness fetish, at the same time that we shopped for a nice
apartment in Lexington. We
eventually found one on the edge of town and moved in the August before Will
was born. As is usually the case
in situations where none of the persons moving actually wants to move and one
of the persons moving is five months pregnant, the move was stressful and tiring. Finally, though, we got the house more
or less in order, took the dog out to go to the bathroom, locked all the doors,
and crawled into bed.
In order to make sense of this
next bit, it helps to know that we have a king size bed. And when I say “a bed” what I actually
mean is “a yacht that two people sleep on”—it’s just that big. These days, all five of us can crawl
into that thing and drift into la-la land without touching each other. Back then, when it was just Ellen and I,
we could go for days in that bed without even knowing there was someone else on
the other side.
This is important for you to
know, because not long after we turned out the lights that night, exhausted and
a little depressed from the day’s move, I felt the bed begin to shake. Not mightily mind you—no earthquake or
anything like that—but a shaking nonetheless, just the light flutter of a body
trembling on the other side of our runway-sized mattress.
“Hey,” I said into the
darkness. I considered sending up
a flare, but decided against it—no point in losing our deposit on the first
night.
The quavering continued.
“Hey,” I said again. I reached a hand into the darkness,
groping until I found Ellen’s shoulder.
It was shaking. Fiercely. Poor thing I thought, and scooted
across the sheets. Must be the
hormones, I thought, the move, all this change, everything.
“Hey,” I said, again, holding Ellen
close in my arms. Her shoulders
rattled against me. “Shh . . .” I
said. “It’ll be okay. Seriously.”
The shaking deepened and then
she burst out laughing. “I swear—“
she gasped, “I swear—.” She had to
take a deep breath. I pulled back
a little, trying to figure out what was going on.
“I swear,” she said, laughing so
hard she could hardly breathe. “I
swear I just heard a cow moo.”
That was in 2000. Now, twelve years later, we still live
in Lexington. A couple times while
we were in Hong Kong this or that administrator would probe gently, trying to
see if we were interested in making our stay there more of a long-term thing
(this isn’t that surprising: the
universities there are growing rapidly and desperate for faculty), but we never
took the bait. And since we’ve
been back, we’ve talked a lot:
what sort of job offer or location or opportunity would lead us to pack up
and move away forever? What
would cause us to leave Lexington?
The answer: very little. Excepting an offer from the Sorbonne (not bleedin’ likely),
or someplace renowned for its food—say, Tuscany or Toledo—chances are we’ll die
in Lexington and get buried in our backyard, which sounds kind of creepy until
you know that our land abuts a cemetery—and likely sounds creepy even then.
So what is this magical place
that snares would be transients?
What is this Shangri-la that turns us all into lotus eaters—and worse,
that causes us literary types to mix their metaphors?
Sit back, and I’ll tell you:
Lexington, Virginia, population
7,000, more or less, is the county seat of Rockbridge County, population
36,000, more or less. The county
goes back approximately 200 years, and though wikipedia will tell you it was
founded to shorten travel distances to the nearest courthouse, the truth is the
county was created after a group of pissed off white settlers killed an Indian
chief they believed was stealing their cattle and then selling it back to
them. Afraid that the people in
distant Richmond would look upon this sort of wholesale slaughter of the
natives as a criminal act of murder—probably because it was—the Rockbridge area
residents very quickly established their own county, built their own courthouse,
held their own trial and—surprise!—found themselves innocent of all
charges.
Which is a metaphor for
something, I’m sure, likely involving genital herpes.
Lexington itself was first
settled in 1778 and named after Lexington, Mass. following the revolutionary war battle. The town finally became incorporated in
1841 and grew steadily, feeding off of the timber industry, the advent of the
railroad, and its proximity to the Great Wagon Road, which ran the length of the
Shenandoah Valley, in which Lexington is located.
Several things make Lexington
distinctive: first and foremost,
it’s home to two nationally recognized colleges, Washington and Lee University
and the Virginia Military Institute.
For better or for worse, these two schools shape the city: go downtown on any weekend night and
you’re bound to run into VMI cadets in their dress whites; forget to make a
reservation for your favorite restaurant in early November and you’re liable to
discover that every seating has been taken up by students being wined and dined
on parents weekend. Student
rentals dot most neighborhoods, and real estate prices are inflated by the
influx of faculty and artificially low mortgage rates sponsored by colleges
desperate to keep Harvard-educated professors in a town the size of a
moderately cramped parking garage.
Not that I’m bitter or
anything.
The other thing that’s
distinctive about LexVegas is that it’s purrty. I’m not saying it this to make fun of southern accents—some of
my best friends are southerners, and so are my kids—but because it’s just the
appropriate way to say it:
Lexington isn’t pretty, it’s purrty, warm and soft and shockingly green,
just like, um . . . your, uh . . . green cat.
Anyway.
But damn, it is: pretty that is, or purrty, or
whatever. Unlike Salem, fifty
miles down the road and named after another Massachusetts town albeit one known
less for a courageous battle than for burning human beings alive, Lexington has
managed to keep much of its olde towne charme. Most of the downtown sidewalks are glazed brick and a lot of
the buildings have been standing since the late nineteenth century. Away from downtown you’ll find
tree-lined streets full of antiquated wood-framed houses, hardly a brick ranch
or McMansion in sight. It’s the
kind of town where kids walk to school with their friends, where on the 4th
of July they have a bicycle parade down Main St. full of boys and girls on
streamer-covered bikes, the sort of place where Sons of the Confederacy march
proudly any damn day they want, waving that symbol of lost history, the stars
and bars of the confederate battle flag . . .
Uh . . .
Forget I mentioned that . . .
Actually, that’s not true: as of last October, the SoC—just one
letter away from . . . again, forget I mentioned it—the SoC is no longer
allowed to fly their flags from the town’s poles to commemorate the South’s
efforts in “War of Northern Aggression,” a phrase that is not used ironically
(by some—indeed, by many) down here.
Which relates, I suppose, to two
rather more complicated components of life in the Lex: first, it is very much a place that is
steeped in confederate history. It
is, after all, Washington and Lee
University, and no matter how you slice it, that last bit isn’t named after someone
by the first name of Peggy.
Indeed, good old Bobby Lee is actually buried in Lexington, on the
W&L campus, in the Lee Chapel.
Which is a chapel. You
know. A sort of religious
building? Where you worship
God? Or gods, as it turns out. And if you think I’m kidding, then feel
free to glance in and see what they have where the alter should be.
Hint: it looks an awful lot like a confederate general carved in
marble . . .
In addition, Thomas Jonathan
Jackson—he of Stonewall fame—is also buried in Lexington, or at least most of
him is as I’m not sure what they did with the arm that his—ahem—own men shot off. Old Stonewall is actually buried in my
backyard—or in the cemetery next to my property at least. Indeed, I can almost see his
statue—which portrays him with both arms standing tall and facing to the (surprise!)
south—from my desk as I write these very words. Stroll by his monument on any given day and you’ll notice a
half-dozen lemons strewed about the grass: among TJ’s many quirks was his belief that sucking lemons
made a man stronger. Pity it
didn’t make him glow in the dark, because maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten
shot. By his own men, have I mentioned that?
Indeed, the southern history here
runs deep enough that when they were considering shutting down the confederate museum
in Richmond, Lexington was mentioned as a possible alternative site. That the museum wasn’t actually moved
here perhaps points to the second complicating factor that needs to be
mentioned when we discuss Lexington:
namely, that the town itself isn’t really representative of the deep
south—or even the moderately shallow south.
Allow me to explain by telling
yet another one of my short but stupid stories: a little over a year ago I was invited to a party where I
didn’t know a lot of people.
Generally in situations like this I drink too much and make a pass at my
hostess, leaving only when the police show up and chase me through the
woods. This particular evening,
though, I was well behaved (my hostess was a former karate instructor) and more
or less sober. At one point
I was introduced to a guy in his late forties with long, graying hair,
workman’s hands, a loud laugh that was infectious. When he asked me what I did, I told him I was a professor
but that I was currently on sabbatical writing a book. He gave that laugh of his and said,
“Rockbridge County: where half the
people have written a book and the other half have never read one.”
It was a harsh comment—funny as
hell, but harsh. And like most
funny as hell but harsh jokes, it had more than a bit of truth in it. In this case, I think, it made an
exaggerated claim that pointed to a real fact: half the county—mainly, the people who live in Lexington, are
over-educated geeks like yours truly; the other half (who
actually read plenty of books) are . . . well: not.
On some levels this is a
political thing: every other year,
our congressional district regularly elects a carpet-bagging mind/soul vacuum,
largely because the Republican county wipes out the Democratic city.
And as is the case generally in
the US these days, the political is social: not only do the town and county vote in very different ways,
they live very different lives—or at least generally. The county embraces rural life, is not afraid of guns, and
tends to engage in the life of the mind without getting obsessed about it. The city folk generally pride
themselves on being cosmopolitan (e.g., being able to distinguish good Thai
food from bad, good single malt scotch from cheap), tend to keep even water
guns away from their kids, and argue strongly that there’s nothing wrong with
being intellectual, that, indeed, the country would be a much better place if
people would start to pay attention to what they’re thinking and why they’re
thinking it and whether or not what they’re thinking is actually true.
But again, I need to say
this: generally. Because the
fact of the matter is that: a) the
minute I make generalizations like this, I start to think of exceptions; and b)
I generally like to be honest about the complexities of these things,
particularly when: a) it’s a small town and I’m easy to find; and b) the people
I might offend likely have guns.
But more, I think, I really
don’t have any interest in arguing that a town full of wealthy folks,
academics, and wealthy academics is necessarily better than folks who know how
to fix a tractor—or the other way around.
Rather, the point I’m trying to make, finally—FINALLY!—is that
Lexington, Virginia doesn’t fit the stereotypes—accurate and inaccurate—of
south central Virginia. It’s its
own place, its own weird place, full of anomalies.
And that’s why we like it.
And that’s why I’m going to
write about it from now on.
And that, at least, is the
truth.
