02 May 2003

Episcopals Under the Driveway

It was brilliant and as close to perfect as it gets in Northern Virginia. Mid Spring it was, still cool in the morning and just warming to shirtsleeves before lunch. The azaleas rioting in colors too vibrant to be real. Glorious. Alive in a way the city can never be, and before the hot humid blanket of the summer sinks in on us. We had been with Anita the Realtor in Middleburg that morning, looking for a dream.

The town got its name because it is halfway to Winchester, gateway to the Western mountains from Alexandria on the Potomac. Anita found several prospective dreams for us in the multiple listings service on her computer. The Reality office was in an old part-stone building oneast Washington Street. It was a Monday, so the number of tourists was low, and the traffi9cwhizzing by completely tolerable. . We gasped at the possibilities of the real Gold Coast properties- you know the ones. Big manor houses and endless vistas Way deep in western Loudan County where there was a house for sale. Keep going up the Snickersville Pike, toward Snicker's Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains and you will pass Jeb Stuart Road and on the left you will see the marker. It is a gray tombstone-like affair that sits right down by the asphalt. We couldn't see what the inscription said, but given the local I figured it was something about John Singleton Mosby and his fearless Confederate marauders.

We turned at the marker and drove up the long driveway. The property was separated from the Pike by a thick patch of second growth trees twined with vines and brambles. Dark. On the other side was a vast lawn of rich green. This driveway curled alongside another driveway that ran flat and straight as a die. I did not think to comment on it. Good fences make good neighbors, after all, and maybe that is true of driveways, too.

There was a medium old Lincoln on the gravel in front of the house and a man with a belly hooking up a bush-whacker to a tractor. The crack of his ass was showing above his belt in the back and he wore a volunteer fire department ballcap. The Realtor was just in front of us, and he stood with a grin, knowing that the house and grounds would show well.

The place was just about as perfect as the day. The current owners had cattle, for some reason, but that was certainly fixable. There was an outbuilding with stalls that would be perfect for a couple of horses and there was an area that could be fenced for a dressage ring in the front yard. We walked the grounds first and had the property lines explained to us. Ten acres the place is on the plat. There was something about selling off another ten to make the lot fit the house, but that didn’t matter to us. Ten acres seemed just about right. The house itself wasn’t anything special, though it had a nice deck across the back and a two-car garage. But what was marvelous was the inside. The wood was warm and welcoming. The floors looked like heart of pine and beams and glass and light. My tribal rugs would look wonderful on these floors. Upstairs there was an area for an office that sort of floated in space and there were bedrooms for all the kids of our two families and the kitchen was comfortable and airy and the little sunroom would be perfect as an artists studio. It was just about perfect and I wanted to buy it on the spot. It looked like a happy place, and I was saying as much to Stacy as we drove back down toward the highway. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a pony-tail and she was clearly enjoying the concept of this place. The drive had a funny hump in it as we crossed the edge of the mowed area and came through some thick second-growth scrub.

In the deep underbrush was a brick wall and some tombstones, smooth and worn with time. I stopped the car and we plunged in, moving the vines aside and the thorns to make a path. I took a picture. History is good. I walked down to the road to see what was on the granite marker down by the highway. There were just a couple enigmatic lines, something about an Episcopal meeting house that stood here in the late 18th century. I marveled that only the one little grave plot remained back in the woods, and if there was a foundation to trace from the church. I’m sure it burned at some point, as most of the old structures did. Of course it wasn’t on the property we were looking at, so it just added to the charm. When I walked back to the car there was a woman with a sensible hat and gardening glasses and an odd smile. She was a little long in the tooth, she was, a woman of a certain age. She could have benefited from orthodontic intervention, but I suppose it is too late. But I was fascinated by her mouth as it moved.

She was a neighbor and I asked her name but I was stuck on the dental work. For me she was going to be Snaggletooth. She got off on a brisk lecture about Loudon county zoning and access roads and how this hadn’t been done properly. She told us with wide eyes that the Admiral who built the place, the owner before the one we had met, had come in one early morning with a truck and pulled up other tombstones and slashed through the trees with a bulldozer, opening his own drive, dumping gravel on the graves to make an access road. They were still there she said, they never moved the bodies. She didn’t know where they all were, the dead, and the relatives were appalled. The driveway was part of a hostile take-over, and what was worse, there appeared to be ancient Episcopals under it. Stacy’s eyes grew round and I could tell she was thinking about the movie Poltergiest. She threatened legal action.

She was still going on about it when we got back in the car and crept down past the granite marker that I realized was exactly like a tombstone. Maybe it was a spite monument to remind the Admiral about who he was driving over when he came home in the evening. As it turned out, maybe good driveways don’t make good neighbors.

Later the Realtor told us that the woman sometimes saw things that weren't there, and she occasionally reported observation craft hovering over her house.

We don't need to move to the country to get closer to crazy people, so I think we will take a pass on that house. Too bad. It was a nice place.