Vic Socotra

08 November 2009

Battle of the Raccoons

(We’re here to help!)

The day was quite remarkable in its clarity and the texture of the season, and it was possible to shed the red sweater and roll the window down on the Police Cruiser. It was a day that called out for examination, the light golden and lightweight.

What surprised me, coming down Rt-29, was just how close it all is, once you get clear of the madness of the northern suburbs to DC.

I stopped at Alanthus Road, which is the stoplight on Rt-29 at the little burg of Brandy Station. I turned right, and then hard right again to parallel the big road and survey the heights, which had been the home of the Fleetwood House, and was now known by that name.

It is a small mount, something I have been passing for years without stopping. This was a good day for it.

Fleetwood Hill is deceptively small, since of course I was not assaulting it. I took a gravel access cut in the side of the road and parked the Bluesmobile crosswise to the two interpretive markers, placed on a fourteen-acre field purchased a few years ago by the Civil War Preservation trust.

It is a nice view up to the crest. There is quite a modern saga to all this- one so tangled and marked with minor triumph and sadness- that it will have to spin out over a couple episodes. The hill that rose above the cruiser was not only Gen. JEB Stuart's Headquarters during the Battle of Brandy Station - the largest cavalry fight of the war - but Fleetwood is also the most fought upon, marched upon and camped upon piece of ground in American history.

That is a pretty bold statement, but throughout four years of war this "famous plateau" (as the Prussian Giant Heros von Borcke termed it) fronting the Rappahannock crossings proved to be the most significant topographical feature in all Virginia's Piedmont.

As orientation, this grassy, gentle hill marks the southern end of a two and a half mile ridge. Geologically, the rise is the remains of a beach of a primeval sea. It overlooks the broad, flat, Triassic plateau that sweeps all the way to the river.

Federal commanders intent on moving Culpeper Court House from Fauquier County must first ford the Rappahannock and then advance on the flat land adjacent to the Alexandria & Orange railroad. That is precisely why the Confederates had artillery on the hill, which commands a view of all the level country back toward the Rappahannock, which here flows north to south.

The ones who win the war get to name the battles. The Union calls the massive cavalry battle here “Brandy Station,” after the village a half-mile to the west. In fact, there were 21 separate military actions on Fleetwood Hill during the Civil War, far more than any other battle venue in this country.

The village was once the crossroads of the Piedmont. Five road junctions collide in the hamlet. The famous Carolina Road (Rt. 685), the major north-south thoroughfare of the Colonial and Civil War eras, bisects the southern terminus of the ridge. That is the road I was on, in fact, and there was pure water for drinking there Herring’s Spring, which flowed clear then and now from the base of the hill on the north side.

Flat Run marks the bottom of the southern slope.

During the winter encampment of the Army of the Potomac in 1863-1864, the entirety of the length of Fleetwood was covered with Yankee troops. General Meade had his headquarters up there, and Ulysees Grant helped him plan the Overland Campaign there.

I drove up the crest after surveying the ground. I turned up Stuart’s lane, which serves a little house and turns into gravel. I had to turn around in the driveway as an older couple emerged. I waved in embarrassment at the involuntary trespass, and reversed course to plow the Bluesmobile into the ditch under a set of concrete steps leading up to an old marker.

Sure enough, there is an old stone cairn at the top of the hill with a great brass plaque on the top that describes the long-ago heroics. Once upon a time, I think it marked the summit of the hill, and the great sweep of green grass where the wild melee happened.

There once was a railing on the stone staircase, climbing up, but it is gone. The vista now looks into the garage of a McMansion, which some guy insisted in putting right in the middle of the field.

It is very strange. A lot of the field has been preserved, but smack in the middle of it is a gigantic monolithic structure purported to be a family home. If you look it up, you can find it described by some of the locals as “a startling monument to gross, historical insensitivity, and in-your-face, “architectural” extravagance, writ blasphemously obscene.”

I had to shake my head over what has happened up on top of the hill, since it is a great story, but the sun was lowering and I had places to go and things to do. I’ll confess, I was a little restless, too, seeing the outrage, since there was something so lovely about the afternoon that I was reluctant to give it up and get to work.

Oh well. It had to be done, and I stopped at the new nig box store to buy catfood and paintbrushes before the sun went down. As I hauled stuff from the trunk of the cruiser into the garage, one of the cats showed up. I was happy to see him, but he was thin and seemed disoriented. I decided it must be the missing Jeckel, and he looked as though he had a stroke, or barely survived an attack.

Heckle appeared not long after, and I put out a lavish feast for the prodigal cats.

Later, after I got the DVD player to work, got current on the football of the afternoon and grilled a steak, I saw the light come on in the garage. There is a light sensor at the bottom of the door, which illuminates the interior.

I went to the corner of the deck to see if it was the cats, or other visitors, and that is how I caught the raccoons feeding from the cat dish.

They were impressive, when I chased them off; black masks like bandits and sleek fur and round well-fed bellies.

I don't know what the answer is to this one. In order to support the animals I like, it appears that I have to support an equal number of free-loaders. I thought about that when I got the alert about the big health-care bill passing the House on the computer, which is connected to Washington by satellite.

As you know, I like metaphors as blunt as ball-bats, and I could feel one coming.

Of course, you could argue that it is the cats who are freeloading, dependent on me. On welfare, as it were. I think you can make the case that the raccoons are making their own way in this world.

Taking what they can get, one way or the other.

Free and independent.

I’ll tell you a little more about Fleetwood Hill tomorrow. Like I said, it is an interesting story. All of it.

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