Opinionated reminiscences

I’ve been noodling with a funky tune entitled “Inside the Great Rappahannock Divide while Outside the Inn Crowd and Sadly Still Missing The Appetite Repair Shop and Randolph Clater at the Corner Store Blues.” But I fear the song could never be as evocative as the title, and this sort of material always works better as prose, unless you are Johnny Mercer or Willie Nelson.

But if there is anyone reading this who remembers the Repair Shop or who can picture Randolph behind the Corner Store counter like an inscrutable country Buddha, you get it. Those were precious days, and I wish to speak for those who preferred those times to the yuppie-fied, artsy-fartsy, real estate rabid, and ever so precious Sperryville of the present.

(Gee, I hope my dear readers can delineate between slightly over-the-top satire, and actual, genuine real-life insults.)

In the 1990’s, Rappahannock County was the closest thing to Paradise this side of Paradise, Kentucky, the one John Prine sang about. The folks who had lived here for all of their lives remembered a time when it was even closer to Paradise, when there were kids bicycling to school in the Town of Washington, and the Town Council was entirely female (a story that made national news), and there was a pool hall over the garage in the building where there is now some sort of fancy restaurant. Everybody did know just about everybody else, and was likely related to most of them. One time I asked Joe Atkins if he was kin to Homer Atkins, and Joe said, “Not too much…”

Twenty years ago there was almost universal opposition to the new-fangled idea of cell towers and Doc Krebser ran a tight ship on the Planning Commission. Pete Estes chaired the Board of Supervisors back when Ron Frazier was just a rookie. (When Pete had been Sheriff, he’d carry a baseball bat into tough places, where he immediately became the baddest man in the room, with or without the Louisville Slugger.)

There was still moonshine available if you knew where to look and could keep your mouth shut. I am told that is still the case, but I quit that stuff in 1977.

The influx of “hippies” in the 1960s and 70s had brought an old-fashioned bohemian streak to these hills, with some first class artists and musicians thrown in. Those vibes are still here, more mellow now, but still hip to your jive.

A lot of folks are still here now that were here then, and they can sure tell you a whole lot more about this place than I ever could. It was and is their home, and I was a “come here” who fit in pretty good. We met just about every citizen here at our first store on 211, and I was a lot more active then, doing many concerts and shows at the Theatre, playing Santa Claus every Christmas, writing a column for the Rapp News, and even running for Congress against Eric Cantor. (I’m told I was the last Democrat to win Rappahannock in a Congressional race. For the record, I’m an independent now.)

The closest thing to a genuine political schism was the delightful repartee between two good friends, the conservative giant Jack Kilpatrick and his neighbor Eugene McCarthy, the poet/Senator/gadfly who spent his last years here. I would run into the good Senator holding forth at Jim and Joan Gannon’s bookstore or sitting out front at the Mountainside Market.

This past week our newspaper ran a full page opinion piece entitled “Rural Republicans who despise Biden more than Putin.” Surely I’m not the only reader who thought it could just as easily have read: “Rural Democrats who despise Trump more than Putin”?

I can’t really get a handle on where Rappahannock is headed in this angry, post-rural era. Frankly, it is obvious that many here are uncomfortable with the new “Foothills Forum Survey” version of our Brave New World. But the realtors are delighted, and if that makes you feel good, you are probably a realtor.

“Follow the money” would be a good predictor of our future, but with this much money pouring in, we can only be certain that much more will follow. The laid back family feel of our County is disappearing now, along with Doc Krebser, Pete Estes, Randolph Clater, and the wonderful ambience of the Thornton River Grill. Even though that ambience lasted for most of the last few centuries, it was surely “too good to last.” Perhaps when something is that attractive, it attracts a lot of folks who did not really understand why it was so attractive to begin with. Nor, I fear, do they much care.

Just sayin’, is all….

I can’t really get a handle on where Rappahannock is headed in this angry, post-rural era.

The writer lives in Harris Hollow