On my list of must see places was the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum. She was an early collector of the form and I’d heard tell the place was filled to the brim with treasures.
What I didn’t know was the building’s original use.
Half museum, half insane asylum.
Color me intrigued.
Well, that doesn’t look at all comfortable.
But at least there’s a cushion.
*gulp*
This certainly gives new meaning to the term “time out”.
While revolting….
I have to say the peek into early treatment of mental illness was fascinating.
Yikes.
Seems like there was a whole lot of restraint … and not much actual treatment.
It was about this time the husband told me he read about men committing their misbehaving wives for little more than disagreeing with their authority.
Uh oh.
Early shock therapy looked rather primitive.
Am I the only one who’s reading “restored” as irreparably brain damaged?
One can only imagine the horrors those poor people suffered at the hands of their supposed healers.
Though they did have some pretty snazzy syringes.
On a lighter note, the husband was tickled to see one of these on display.
He bought a whole box of these slides at a yard sale years ago. They’re pretty valuable as a few of them show pre Civil War life with slaves… but he’s never found the actual lantern for sale.
If you ever see one? Let me know….
It would make a great birthday gift and rise above his usual level of rusty crap.
The day started with biscuits and gravy for me and two plates of chipped beef on toast for the husband. The waitress thought he was kidding when he asked for a second helping… but no, he was serious.
Technically no, that’s made with hamburger.
But I digress…
Since the weather was beautiful that day we headed back over to Colonial Williamsburg to finish exploring.
First up, Bassett Hall. Home to John D. Rockefeller Jr and his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. I was completely unaware that the Rockefellers were the ones responsible for the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg and the idea of opening it to the public.
For a wonderful history of how and why, watch this:
Seeing the interior of the house meant taking the tour…
And this distinguished gentleman was our guide. He was a font of knowledge as well as legally blind.
It was a lovely home.
Comfortable….
And not nearly as grand as their other residences.
They relaxed here.
Didn’t entertain socially.
And enjoyed time with family.
In their eyes it was a country home.
And hey….. there was a chicken over the mantle, so maybe it was.
I’m sure Abby didn’t spend much time in here….
But I liked the funky sinks….
And the high tech for the time fridge.
Next to the kitchen was the servants quarters…
Which didn’t look too bad either.
Done with the tour….
We began to roam the grounds….
But not before my husband managed to start a political discussion with our guide. I imagine they’re instructed not to engage…. and he remained as neutral as Switzerland. Very diplomatic.
The gardens were a bit bare since it was December.
But the shrubbery was impressive.
And who wouldn’t love a private tea house in their backyard?
How sweet is that!
We happily strolled around….
Enjoying the beautiful day…
And felt like Rockefellers.
Minus the large sums of cash and thinking hey…
That garage would make a pretty nice house in itself.
The eleventh day of our vacation started at our timeshare resort condo…
Where I found this:
A note from the grandchild of our hearts.
Sorry… but there’s no way better way to start the day than that.
Although biscuits and gravy with home fries comes close.
We had a full day of Christmas gift shopping ahead of us and needed hearty sustenance. And in the south?
That includes the options of scrapple, fried catfish, grits or bologna and eggs.
The husband’s utterly favorite breakfast is chipped beef on toast and he rarely finds it in Maine… so when we stumbled on the Southern Pancake and Waffle House in Williamsburg?
He wanted to go every morning…. which we pretty much did from then on.
But hey, there were chickens in every window so how could we lose?
Our first stop that day was a liquor store in anticipation of our upcoming Christmas Day in North Carolina.
For future reference…. the first way to tell you’re in a liquor store in the south?
There’s a still.
Still searching for that silly wine filter, I thought we could try Merchant’s Square…. which is the shopping section of Colonial Williamsburg I couldn’t get the husband to check out the previous week.
As with all areas there, it was lovely.
Filled with interesting high end shops… like this interior design place.
Giant double diamond ring light fixture anyone…?
We happily strolled aroiund, ducking in and out of the stores with all the other desperate Holy crap it’s Christmas Eve and I don’t have a gift! shoppers.
Naturally I had to buy a souvenir tee shirt –
Truer words were ne’er spoke.
And towards late afternoon when my stomach started grumbling?
This happened.
Someone saw the husband’s Marine Corps hat, said Semper Fi, and they were off….
On a 38 minute long conversation about who was stationed where, when and with whom.
Yes. I timed it….
While he talked?
I walked.
Agreed wholeheartedly with a sign.
And explored a little more…
Of the colonial town.
And hey, if you’re going to dress up in period costume and stand on the sidewalk?
Don’t give me the stink eye when I take your picture.
Turning back around hoping the other half had finished talking…
I saw snow.
Granted it wasn’t very much, but it surprised me to see any at all.
The ice skating rink surprised me as well.
In Maine we wait for ponds to freeze over.
In Virginia they just build one… and how they keep it frozen in 60 degree temperatures is a mystery to me.
Winter is the worst possible time in Maine for your roof to spring a leak … so of course, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Remember when I said I’d cringe every time it rains?
That’s the sound of me cringing.
It poured the other day… and so did our ceiling.
So much so I had to add another pan.
Which drove the husband nuts when he came home…. and because he’s a man and had to do something?
Yeah. He decided to climb up into the attic to see where it was leaking.
Naturally this isn’t as easy as climbing a set of stairs… because no.
Here at Casa River, we like a challenge.
The den closet, home to an overflow of the husband’s useless crap treasure.
(Yes, he collects old wooden hangers. Don’t you?)
Half of one side had to be emptied and strewn all over the room….
Because the only way to access the crawl space we call an attic is to remove all the shelving and climb up a hole at the top of the closet.
A design paradigm we curse the builders for quite often.
It’s a bit of a nightmare getting up there.
And no, the husband didn’t appreciate me making a Kodak moment out of the experience.
He wasn’t thrilled that I stuck my head up through the hole to offer advice either.
Men. There’s no pleasing you.
But look… I found an antenna from the 1970’s!
Did I mention there’s no actual floor up there? Just a few scattered pieces of particle board that break when you kneel on them.
So after scuttling around like a crab and lying on his back…
And pointing his flashlight near the section of the roof of the addition you can’t access from the crawl space, he did find where the water was coming in. Halfway up the peak, and running down the beams…. which we can find absolutely no reason for.
Doesn’t this look like fun?
Especially since there’s not a damned thing you can do about it until spring when you can rip off the shingles to find the bad spot.
Meanwhile I’ll have this lovely and ever expanding wart to look at.
The driving tour of the Yorktown, Virginia battlefield was a strange one and meandered all over the place.
Through the woods.
And past open fields with miles of split rail fencing.
Seriously, it went on forever.
There were creeks and swamps.
And every now and then, a sign.
We saw plenty of fluffy white butts.
And they roamed at will.
We even made friends with a few.
This little beauty had no fear and sidled right up next to my window.
Up our way that would be dangerous.
But this was protected land and they knew it.
Near the end of the tour we saw something a bit odd.
A buck with a funky horn.
And while I can’t say I’ve ever had to tote a rack around (on my head anyway) this did look a little strange.
So this was December 23rd and the husband had spent the last 48 hours trying to talk me into driving down to North Carolina for Christmas Day. When we’re on a trip for the holidays? We usually let it pass without much fanfare. No exchange of gifts, maybe just a special meal. But since our daughter of the heart came to visit with us those few days… he was bound and determined we would celebrate with her this time.
While I normally would have agreed, she had a slew of family members staying the night in a one bathroom house and I didn’t want to stress her anymore than necessary. We checked a few hotels in the area but all of them were full. Husband wanted to go for the day…. but it was a 4+ hour ride down and a 4+ hour ride back. Almost 9 hours on the road is not my idea of a fun Christmas… but he wore me down. Which meant we had to spend the rest of that day (and night) shopping for gifts because I wouldn’t go empty handed.
And leave it to me to decide on the one gift that was utterly unfindable on the 23rd of December. And believe me we tried.
Because she loves wine…. but can no longer drink it because it gives her headaches.
I was going to give her the gift of wine back! Or die trying.
Which we nearly did.
We tried every single freakin’ store for 150 miles. Large malls and small gift shops. Specialty stores and wine outlets. Big chains and obscure holes in the hall. We walked, we searched, we cursed. (Okay, maybe that was just me.) We shopped until we almost dropped. Everyone had heard of it… very few carried it. And if they did carry it? They were sold out by the time we got there.
Do you know how aggravating it is to look for something for 7 hours straight and then be told by a laughing salesclerk, “Oh, we just sold the last one 10 minutes ago. You should have been quicker.” That woman is lucky she still has her tongue…. because if I could have reached the butcher knife on the other side of the counter? She’d be laughing with a bloody stump right now.
And if that isn’t bad enough?
I didn’t find the perfect gift, but I did find this:
No.
No…
Noooo!
This is wrong on so many levels … I can’t even. What twisted soul thought, “How can I take a perfectly good candy and ruin it beyond all measure? I know… I’ll add Kale!”
All over the world children are weeping. I hope you’re satisfied Archie.
At 9:30 that night the husband was screaming Uncle…. and grumbling about food. We were both too exhausted to care at that point and stopped at the first place on the way back to the resort. An Outback Steakhouse.
I’m not a lover of chain restaurants and hadn’t been to one of these in 20 years.
But $5 Boozy Cherry Limeades sounded pretty good….
And for that price? I had 3.
Their Blue Cheese Wedge salad left a lot to be desired…. and the husband’s French Onion soup was only fair.
But his filet was blood rare and he made short work of it.
My grilled filet and shrimp skewer combo was filling…. and I’ll leave it at that.
There’s a reason we’re not chain restaurant fans, and if we don’t go back for another 20 years?
We were beginning to discover a strange thing about the Historic Triangle area in Williamsburg ,Virginia…. everything is done in triplicate. National Parks, State Parks and tourist venues all cover the same history and it can be a bit confusing when choosing a place to visit. So after finishing the Revolutionary War Museum and the Yorktown re-creation, we headed to the actual Yorktown site and found a National Parks visitors center.
It had a small museum with most of the same information we had just seen… and a broken heating system which rendered the building slightly less cold than the Arctic tundra. Needless to say, we didn’t linger.
There was a ship.
A one fourth size replica of the one that sunk in the neighboring York River.
So we boarded her…
Explored… and then moved on.
To some tents.
But not just any old tents.
These were literally George Washington’s tents.
Delivered by Philadelphia upholsterer Plunket Fleeson in May 1776, Washington’s original set of campaign tents included a large dining tent — which also served as his headquarters and meeting room — and two additional tents that provided space for the general to sleep and store his baggage.
Though made of rugged worsted wool and linen, several of these tents succumbed to rough treatment during the war, requiring Washington to order replacements. Still more abuse took place after the deaths of the general and his wife, when their stepson — George Washington Parke Custis — began snipping off pieces of the historic fabric to give to guests at his celebrated outdoor parties.
Later, the tents accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette on his triumphant 1824 tour of the nation he helped create. Yet even at historic Fort McHenry, where they were reverently displayed under the original Star-Spangled Banner, the increasing fragile artifacts were handled with a recklessness that’s hard for curators to imagine today.
Greater still was the threat from Union Army pillagers who seized the Arlington estate of Custis’ heir — Mary Custis Lee — and her husband, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, during the Civil War. Only a word of warning from a Lee family slave named Selina Gray persuaded federal officials to seize them for safekeeping, thus saving the irreplaceable relics.
Returned in 1901, the outer elements of both the dining and sleeping tents were quickly sold; they ended up in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and what is now the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge, Sundberg said. The Park Service acquired the dining tent ceiling and sleeping tent chamber from the Lee family in 1955, putting both on display at what was then the new Yorktown Visitor Center.
And pardon my geekdom, but I think that’s pretty damned cool!
Heck, they even had Lord Cornwallis’s table he used during the war.
But by that time we were freezing and had to go outside to warm up. Wanting to see the actual Yorktown battlefield…. we started the driving tour with directions from the park rangers.
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting.
But what I got were a bunch of humps.
Humps here.
Humps there.
Humps everywhere.
Apparently they’re called redoubts.
Cornwallis had his men construct a main line of defense around Yorktown that consisted of ten small enclosed forts (called redoubts), batteries with artillery and connecting trenches. The Americans and French marched from Williamsburg to Yorktown on September 28 and began digging a trench 800 yards from the British defense line to begin a siege. By October 9, the allies’ trench was finished and their artillery had been moved up. Firing at the British continuously, they had virtually knocked the British guns out of action by October 11. Cornwallis had the additional misfortune to learn at that time that Clinton’s departure from New York had been delayed.
During the night of October 11, the allies began a second trench 400 yards from the British. The next days were spent bringing up artillery and strengthening the new line. The new line could not be completed, however, without capturing British redoubts 9 and 10. On the night of October 14, 400 French stormed redoubt 9 and 400 Americans stormed redoubt 10, capturing them in less than 30 minutes. Nine Americans and 15 French died in this brief and heroic action.
And not be outdone, we had humps as well.
I believe there were 10 of them on the tour, but come on. Once you’ve seen a few humps?
You’ve seen them all.
Though this one had cannons, which I photographed from the top of a hump……
Before realizing you weren’t supposed to climb to the top of the humps.
River's world..... 