My original plan was to visit Charles County, Maryland, with a stop at my sister Robin's, one county north, in mid-January. That didn't happen because of an unscheduled Morgantown City Council meeting, the same day as an awful snowstorm. By the weekend, I was sick, possibly with the flu, so a January trip didn't happen.
I've been bombarded by invitations to meetings, demonstrations, dinners and temple events, and I was exhausted, just getting over being sick. I figured it would be less stressful to take a Friday to Monday, visit my sister, Charles County, Maryland, and Charlotte County, Virginia, my February county to visit, southwest of Richmond and east of Lynchburg. By combining trips to the two counties, I could save 300 miles of driving over separate trips and two days' time. I thought it would be warmer than in Morgantown, which has often been bitterly cold this winter.
My sister lives in Greenbelt, Maryland, in Prince George's County. This is an area that white people fled in the 1970s because of school busing. Greenbelt is a planned community, started by Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s, and located near the University of Maryland, Goddard Space Center and the US Agricultural Center in Beltsville. As Washington has become prohibitively expensive, Greenbelt, relatively affordable, has become a magnet for government and university workers. While it was almost all-white when my sister moved there more than forty years ago, it is, I think, a happily integrated community, and I suspect the election of 2016 has brought the people there even closer together.
I was late getting to Greenbelt because of blowing snow on I-68 and an accident in Garrett County in 6 F. weather, which closed the highway for twenty minutes. I met up with Robin at the community-owned movie theater in Greenbelt, showing "The Shape of Water" prior to the Academy Awards. I had seen the movie on my computer courtesy of the SAG Awards, but I enjoyed seeing it again on a big screen. Robin knew lots of people in the theater. She is an icon in Greenbelt. On the way out, we ran into my 26-year-old nephew's baseball coach from when he was eight. We stopped at Robin's house to drop off my bag, then adjourned to Silver Diner, once a burger-and-fries old time diner, now serving that, still, but also gourmet and diet items as well. The staff there are young, African-American and Central American-American ( I just invented that phrase), polite, friendly and helpful.
Even though it was Friday night, when I am generally offline for the Jewish sabbath, I updated my online presence while we watched "Jeopardy." I was asleep by 10:30.
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| At Silver Diner with Robin (photo by our server on my phone). | That's turkey bacon on my plate. |
Saturday was my day to go to Charles County. My rules are to hit as many National Register Historic Places as possible, go to a mall, find a synagogue, visit a park and a college or university. There are thirty-nine historic places on the National Register. I picked ten to visit, and mapped out directions to three. The problem was that since Charles County used to be mostly rural, the historic places tend to be country houses from the colonial era, way back off the roads and posted with "No Trespassing" signs. Also, although it was sunny out, the temperature never got above freezing all day, way below average for Southern Maryland in February. I found Mt. Carmel Monastery, dating from the 18th century, and the College of Southern Maryland, both north of La Plata. The one place I wanted to see was Thomas Stone's estate. Stone was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and his home is a National Historic Landmark. There was a gate down at the entrance and a sign saying "Closed for the season, opening mid-March." I visited the county seat, since 1895, La Plata (pronounced la-plate-a), where I ate the $6.99 lunch special at a family-run Chinese restaurant. I had chicken chow mein, east-coast style, some chicken and lots of veggies in a salty sauce, with a bag of greasy noodles to add to it, and a chicken egg roll, also greasy, with little plastic packets of orange duck sauce and spicy mustard. They didn't have hot tea, so I had a can of Diet Coke. I didn't find La Plata interesting, and I wondered where the pre-Civil War county seat was? That was Port Tobacco, on an inlet of the Potomac River, current population, thirteen. There are three houses, and a 1970 reconstruction of the old courthouse. Two of the houses are on the National Register, one used as a dwelling, the other, part of the museum that includes the courthouse. Port Tobacco was a Native American settlement, then a trading point with a port, a place with both Catholic and Anglican churches that maintained a native population, and a large population of slaves during the Civil War. There was Confederate sentiment, and John Wilkes Booth fled there with his co-conspirators before being killed in Virginia. The town declined because the port silted up and became unnavigible, and because when railroads came, they bypassed the town. By 3 P.M., I was at Smallwood State Park, where a creek flows into the estuary of the Potomac River. The estate of William Smallwood, who was Governor of Maryland at the time the Constitution was adopted, is in the park, and was reconstructed in the 1950s.
I had booked a motel in Waldorf in the northern end of Charles County. This is a "boom berg" a far away suburb of both Baltimore and Washington, a jumble of stores, town houses and single-family homes strung along U.S. 301, once the road between Baltimore and Richmond that avoided Washington. It's not far from Annapolis, Ft. Meade, and Andrews Air Force Base. Wikipedia is surprised that the county went from Republican to Democratic in elections in a few years. What I know of the area is that it became built up in the 1970s when people fled school busing in Prince George's County (where my sister lives), but were followed by military and other government employees, many of whom are African-American or descendants of Latin Americans. Waldorf is 25 miles from Washington, 41 miles from Annapolis and 62 miles from Baltimore. It is 94 miles north of Richmond, Virginia.
St. Charles is a planned community, part of unincorporated Waldorf, and that is where I found a Reform synagogue in an industrial park and a mall, crowded Saturday night mostly with "minority" teens, well-dressed and well-behaved, out for a night of seeing their friends and shopping. It's easy for me to see how middle-class minority youth would be angry at the current President for suggesting that their lives are terrible and that he was going to solve all their problems. It's insulting to talk that way to middle-class people living in modern suburbs. I had dinner at the food court in the mall, and returned to my motel, The Usual Chain, by 8:30 P.M. I no longer plan for adventurous Saturday nights.
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| College of Southern Maryland, near La Plata |
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| Mt. Carmel Monastery, near La Plata, 1790 |
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| Charles County Courthouse, La Plata |
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| Reconstructed Old Charles County Courthouse, Port Tobacco Village |
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| Ellerslie (left) originally mid-18th century, and Stagg Hall, 1732 Port Tobacco Village |
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| Smallwood Sate Park near the Potomac River and icy |
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| Smallwood's Retreat, 18th century, reconstructed in the 1950s, Smallwood State Park |
Sunday was to be my day in Charlotte County, Virginia, 175 miles southwest of Waldorf. I booked a motel one county north, in Farmville, a small college town. I stayed there before when I visited Buckingham County, northwest of there, three years ago. The weather forecast was for freezing rain. The temperature stayed above freezing, just barely. It wasn't pretty. I left early, drove across the bridge on US 301 over the Potomac, bypassed Bowling Green in Caroline County, which I visited last year in April, bypassed Richmond and drove through Chesterfield County (scheduled for this June) and Amelia County (June 2013) to Charlotte County, a rural county of twelve to thirteen thousand people, one third of them African-American, and although the county voted for the current President, it wasn't by much. There was a sign at the gas station just over the county line near Keysville, the big "city" (850 people) in the county, saying something about how good the food was. I don't remember what I ate there, but they did have hot tea. Three Euro-American women worked there, two older, one younger, most of the customers in this gas station-convenience store-restaurant were African-American. The people of different races seemed to know each other and greeted each other warmly. It's a small place.
Keysville didn't look like much. I found an historic farmhouse on the way into town and the rail depot, just about falling down. The town of Charlotte Court House is another fifteen miles down the road, and there is the old court house, now a museum, a newer one under construction, and a district of older buildings. I read the sign in front of the library, an early 19th century house, explaining that the library was paid for by Ambassador David Bruce and his wife in 1937, on the condition that African-Americans be permitted to use it. The sign goes on to say that even though they had to use the back door, and could only access some sections of the library, this was a step up for African-Americans in the county. I was in a hurry to move on, because at the edge of the county is Red Hill, Patrick Henry's home, also a National Historic Landmark. It is in Charlotte County, but not far from Lynchburg and Campbell County, which I visited in January, 2017. I was there before four on a Sunday, but in pouring rain and with a temperature of 34 F. and dropping. It was closed, but one could access the parking lot and walk up to the house. The weather was not conducive to exploring the extensive grounds. It's surprising to me that people like Thomas Stone and Patrick Henry could live so far out in the country at a time before paved roads. It's hard to imagine the kind of isolation they lived in.
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| Four Locust Farm, near Keysville, 1859 |
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| Charlotte County Courthouse, 1821-23, based on plans by Thomas Jefferson, now a museum |
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| David Bruce Library 1810 and 1836 |
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| Red Hill, near Brookneal, Patrick Henry's home from 1795-1799 |
I made it to Farmville, checked in and napped. There are lots of chain restaurants on Main Street in Farmville, but I ate at a café near the center of town. I had fish tacos and some kind of exotic tea. I took a chocolate muffin back to the room for later. In the room, the internet went off, and the desk clerk claimed to have called a manager. The television also said "No Signal." Not that I would have watched it, but the Super Bowl was on. I was able to get internet through my phone.
It's 300 miles from Charlotte Court House to Morgantown, the outside limit of my mileage. It is possible to do it in 270, but that beautiful route over the mountains takes longer, and the rain Sunday was snow in the mountains, meaning the route might be difficult or even impossible. I drove back 20 miles to Charlotte Court House. It was sunny and somewhat warmer. I took a pic of the statue of the Confederate soldier (from 1901) and the cannon, common to court houses everywhere. I slipped and fell on the invisible ice on the brick sidewalk by the court house. A man in a pickup truck stopped and asked if I was okay and did I need any help? I told him I was fine. Actually my left arm and leg and my ego were bruised. I drove home on the complicated route laid out for me by Google maps, stopping in Baker, in Hardy County, West Virginia, the county in our state most likely to have voted for the current President. I thought I would boycott the county, but I was hungry and I'm trying to be less judgemental about people who make poor political choices.At this place, another combination gas station-convenience store-restaurant, I declined the special ( a BLT) and had a grilled chicken sandwich with cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and onions. I asked them to hold the cheese, onions, and mayonnaise, which they did, and I had fries. The people who worked there were friendly. The roads home were not icy except in Garrett County, Maryland (MD's most likely county to vote for the President). I bought snacks at all the places where I used the bathroom that day.
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| Confederate Monument, 1901 and cannon, Charlotte Court house |
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| Village Presbyterian Church, Charlotte Court House Historic District, 1835 |
I was in Morgantown at 4:30, and headed immediately to a reception for David Fryson, who was retiring as Vice President of WVU, the Director of the Division of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. He is an eloquent speaker and a great friend to the LGBT community at WVU and in Morgantown. Joe was there.
Several speakers talked about what David Fryson had done for them. Here's my story:
A woman at temple volunteered me to be on the LGBT Equity Commission at WVU as a community member, in 2013. I went to the meetings, but because I wasn't affiliated with the University, I didn't have a lot to do. In the summer of 2015, the Commission wanted to do something for the University's "Diversity Week" in September. I suggested we do something around the idea of religious acceptance of LGBT people-a panel discussion. I immediately signed up my husband, Rabbi Joe Hample, and Dr. Fryson, an ordained minister, offered to speak. We found other Christian clergy to round out the panel. A week before the panel, I visited my cardiologist, who insisted I go in for a heart catheterization the day before the panel. "Outpatient," he said. They put in three new stents and kept me overnight. I got out late morning, and went to the panel that evening. We didn't know if anyone would show up. I bought file cards and had people write questions, which I read to the panel. We had more than sixty people come, mostly students, with a lot of tough questions about religion and LGBT people. I didn't know Dr. Fryson well, and he showed up at the last minute, which made me nervous. His answers however, were intelligent and compassionate and he spoke beautifully and directly to the points people raised. All of the panelists were good, but he was the superstar. I'm happy for him now that he is able to semi-retire and go back to Charleston, where his family is from, but I don't think he can be replaced at West Virginia University.
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| With David Fryson, Esq., at his reception , February 4 at West Virginia University |
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