Happy fourth of July. Let me start by reiterating what I said last year, and reminding everyone that July 2 marked our anniversary with Sarah. We're in Winchester for the three-day weekend, and I'll post more later or tomorrow. In honor of tomorrow's anninversary of my big 1958 trip (see previous post), we went to a truly 50s tourist trap today, Dinosaur Land, which is as bad as you might gather from the website.
Call it overcompensation. My Dad never liked to stop at schlocky, tacky, tourist trap places. I always wanted to, of course, since all kids do. I remember one time coming back, I believe, from Jefferson City, MO; we kept seeing signs for a reptile farm that was adertising its Gila Monster. I'd never seen a Gila Monster except in books so I poured on the pressure. We stopped. The Gila Monster had died long ago; there was a snapping turtle and some uninspiring lizards and snakes in dirty, smelly cages and terrariums. My Dad felt he'd made his point: Big ripoff; no Gila Monster, tourist trap. So why do I still remember the place more than 40 years later?
So we went to Dinosaur Land. Sarah liked it when she was about three. Now she concedes that it's "tacky," but she still had me take her picture in the shark's mouth, in King Kong's hand (yes, "Dinosaur" is loosely interpreted here) and elsewhere. I'll post them to Flickr.
And in passing, heading to Dinosaur Land (which is at Double Tollgate in the Shenandoah Valley) I took her by White Post, where there is still, as there has been since the 18th century, a White Post to show the way to Greenway Court, Lord Fairfax's estate (now gone). I'd introduced her to Lord Fairfax through other means, telling her how he once owned half of Virginia, reading her a ghost story of his grave in Winchester, etc. I asked if she remembered who Lord Fairfax was. "Yes. He's the guy who never allowed women into his house."
Well, yes, that too. And you will often read that Lord Fairfax, when he learned of the surrender at Yorktown, took to his bed, turned to the wall, said "It is all over," and never got up again. Now his biographer says that's untrue because he'd already been bedridden and actually died at Winchester, not Greenway Court. It turns out, in fact, that the Yorktown story comes from that inimitable biographer, Parson Mason Weems, who gave us George Washington and the cherry tree, George throwing the dollar across the river, and other such gems. Parson Weems' stories are vividly remembered even though he relied on the old 19th century historical method known as making it up.
Parson Weems is himself memorialized in a little local museum in Dumfries, Virginia, known as the Weems-Botts museum. I forget who Botts was, but the Weems was Parson Weems.
Call it overcompensation. My Dad never liked to stop at schlocky, tacky, tourist trap places. I always wanted to, of course, since all kids do. I remember one time coming back, I believe, from Jefferson City, MO; we kept seeing signs for a reptile farm that was adertising its Gila Monster. I'd never seen a Gila Monster except in books so I poured on the pressure. We stopped. The Gila Monster had died long ago; there was a snapping turtle and some uninspiring lizards and snakes in dirty, smelly cages and terrariums. My Dad felt he'd made his point: Big ripoff; no Gila Monster, tourist trap. So why do I still remember the place more than 40 years later?
So we went to Dinosaur Land. Sarah liked it when she was about three. Now she concedes that it's "tacky," but she still had me take her picture in the shark's mouth, in King Kong's hand (yes, "Dinosaur" is loosely interpreted here) and elsewhere. I'll post them to Flickr.
And in passing, heading to Dinosaur Land (which is at Double Tollgate in the Shenandoah Valley) I took her by White Post, where there is still, as there has been since the 18th century, a White Post to show the way to Greenway Court, Lord Fairfax's estate (now gone). I'd introduced her to Lord Fairfax through other means, telling her how he once owned half of Virginia, reading her a ghost story of his grave in Winchester, etc. I asked if she remembered who Lord Fairfax was. "Yes. He's the guy who never allowed women into his house."
Well, yes, that too. And you will often read that Lord Fairfax, when he learned of the surrender at Yorktown, took to his bed, turned to the wall, said "It is all over," and never got up again. Now his biographer says that's untrue because he'd already been bedridden and actually died at Winchester, not Greenway Court. It turns out, in fact, that the Yorktown story comes from that inimitable biographer, Parson Mason Weems, who gave us George Washington and the cherry tree, George throwing the dollar across the river, and other such gems. Parson Weems' stories are vividly remembered even though he relied on the old 19th century historical method known as making it up.
Parson Weems is himself memorialized in a little local museum in Dumfries, Virginia, known as the Weems-Botts museum. I forget who Botts was, but the Weems was Parson Weems.
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