(The Great House at Stratford Hall. A place out of time, falling forward into a future we cannot know. Yet. Photo Stratford.)

I did not fall out of bed with much enthusiasm, looking owlishly at the clock. I had to be on the Northern Neck by ten or so for the funeral, and I dressed accordingly: dark navy suit, white shirt, dark sweater vest and a black tie.

Yep. Somber. Quite a contrast to the magnificent way early Spring day that beckoned out there, with just wisps of fog left over from the nighttime conflict of temperatures. The Hubrismobile was cutting through that like a hot aerodynamic knife in short order.

Traffic was light but still irritating on the way south- it always is in I-95, regardless of the density or time of day. But not bad, and soon enough I was rolling through Fredericksburg, and off to the US-17 two-and-three-lane down to Tappahannock.

I was a little uncomfortable with attending the funeral- I had known the Admiral when he was at DIA at the end of his career and the middle of mine. Still, he had been retired a long time. Mac commented on it at Willow on Friday night, mentioning that Bob had been one of six Naval Academy Ensigns who had reported glumly to the Intelligence School at Anacostia, six more months of school after all their classmates were off training on sleek jets or dark ominous submarines.

He remembered Bob well, and he asked me to convey his respect and condolences to Marianne, the widow. The community was well represented: Jake and Ceclia and Tom and Claire and the Tolles and the Wiles. I looked for tips in the Visitation and the Mass that I might be able to use for Mom and Dad’s internment this summer. Good ideas are welcome when you are dealing with eternity.

I did not stay after the funeral for long, eager to be on the historic RT-3, the historic History Land Highway.

I have told you about it before, and won’t belabor the point, but these parts are the oldest English-settled fields in America, and you can occasionally see a building or a plantation as you whizz along that wonderful road.

I put the top down and my jacket in the trunk and luxuriated in the purple fuzz that garnished the fields, and the blossoms on the trees. The pick-up trucks, things for sale along the roadside and finally the silence of the woods. That is what I found when I veered off the main road to head back to Stratford, the one-time estate of Light Horse Harry Lee, the dashing Continental Army cavalry Commander and boyhood home of Robert E. Lee.

I took the boys through the place years ago, wanting to point out the cherubs on the cast iron fireplace that was the last thing little Bobbie saw after Harry ran the whole enterprise on the rocks and the family had to leave for more modest digs in Alexandria.

I did not want to tour the house again, but I was interested in motoring around the vast grounds that abut the Potomac was it broadens to join the Chesapeake Bay.

I had not seen the rolling tobacco road, or the view from the bluffs where the Lees had directly shipped the sotweed to England on their own ships, from their own long wharf.

(Reconstructed gristmill. The Miller was a slave. Photo Stratford.)

That was all gone, swept away in a massive hurricane more than a century ago. They rebuilt the gristmill, and cleared the old millpond. There was no one there. I snapped some acceptable pictures, and checked out the visitor’s center, and was on the road again, headed for the strip malls and traffic of Fredericksburg.

That is where things started to go wrong. Oh, the weather was good enough, and once the ten miles of congestion was behind, the road into Culpeper County across the now-placid killing fields of Chancellorsville and The Wilderness was inviting.

The farm was intact. I collected a week or two worth of trash from the mailbox and started to take the bags into the car. I was wearing sunglasses, prescription ones of course, and with arms full, and I quite missed the ottoman in the dimness of the room in front of the easy chair.

My left foot did not, of course, and I had one of those suspended-time moments as I went ass-over-tea-kettle. There was an excruciating pain in my left thigh and it was not done yet, since I knew that there was the coffee table coming.

It arrived a milli-second later, as did a glass candlestick and a souvenir Coors ashtray that had managed to stay in one piece since college. Well, it managed to stay that way until that very moment.

Have you experienced sharp stabbing pain lately? I must have been lost in it for a time. I was chanting the F-bomb as I slowly focused on something red in front of my eyes. It was the stub of a candle that had come out of the candlestick when it hit me on the head. Shards of the Coors ashtray were around my head.

The pain was enough to cause my diaphragm to quiver. The cursing helped, and in time the more intense pain diminished to a steady searing ache.

I gathered myself slowly together, and managed to turn on my belly and then, cautiously to all fours. It was a bit of a trick to get on the couch, but it seemed nothing was broken. I had contemplate, briefly, the idea that I might have a broken femur and be there on the floor and significantly screwed.

Not so. The pain seemed to ebb, and I wondered if I could walk. I got to the vertical and took some trial steps. It hurt, but I could move. I sat down again, and looked at the wreckage on the floor.  Some of it I could reach while seated, and other bits I could move with my still operative right leg.
I was more than a little rattled, and more than a little alarmed. Ibupropin and vodka seemed like the appropriate prophylaxes, and maybe finding that cane I brought back from Michigan.

It was in the course of the quest for those things that I asked too much of the left leg and it collapsed on me. More pain, more blasphemy as mantra. I had to figure out a way to get up again, and back to the couch. This was going to require some thought, I thought, and so it did.

Using the loveseat, I discovered I could gradually rise on the good leg, letting the pain from the other determine the angle of attack.

I went down again while trying to put some dinner together, and then I resolved to stay on the couch until the light came up and see if anything got better.

Sleep was slight and intermittent. The light came, and some farm vehicles came down the road. It was time to see if I could find that cane, and see if I could get myself back in the car and get north again.

I will let you know how that goes. In the meantime, I do recommend touring Stratford Hall, if you happen to be on the Northern Neck of Virginia.

The history of the place- I visited the slave burial ground yesterday- reinforces the notion that life can be painfully short and lacking in dignity. It is useful to have to put things in context if you are flat on the floor, and have only the ceiling to contemplate.

(The bluff above Light Horse Harry’s grist mill on the broad Potomac. Photo Stratford.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com