Hell, I don’t know if it is half of us that has to do what I did this morning. If it was, the drive would not have been nearly so smooth. I joined an elite this morning, and feel astonishingly liberated.

Wait, I am (as usual) getting ahead of myself. I had labored mightily down at the farm- well, in a desultory fashion- on a look at the moral values of the Ancients. I thought the topic was fascinating, given the astonishing change in civic morality here in these United States, and the and the collision between the values of what the great ones left, and what the excavators thought about some of the salacious relics.

As I typed in the Great Room of the farm (all things being relative, it is a small room) I recalled walking the streets of Herculaneum in the light rain, realizing that the exposure to the elements was destroying the ruins, and that they had only been pristine for that moment when they were unsealed.

(The modern city of Ercolano towers above the classical ruins of Herculaneum. Nearly three-quarters of the ancient buried city remains sealed in the hardened mud-flow from Vesuvius in 79 AD.)

I looked at the modern city of Ercolano that towers above on the mound of pumice, and how much is still to be discovered; nearly 75% of the ancient city is still entombed.That would be a great follow-on job: erotic art commissioner for the Museo Nazionale.

The Suburban Baths that were uncovered at Pompeii in 1982 featured the graphically naughty illustrations over the containers for clothing in the locker room. It presumably was a co-ed facility, with the contention offered that the sexes bathed at different times rather than together in a common facility.

I don’t know about that. You can make up anything you want about the past, just as we kid ourselves about the future.

It was getting on toward noon, slow for a story morning, and then there was nothing for it but to start the Great Unloading of books. I was out of boxes up in Arlington, so the stacks of assorted volumes were piled throughout the rear three-quarters of the Panzer.

Family binders my Mom created went in the house, as did personal papers I do not (yet) want to give to the mice. Sorting and carrying required some minor furniture movement, and filling up the new fixtures that were moved down a week ago- and the piles to the garage- made me feel suffused with a sense of accomplishment.

It was four in the afternoon and my legs ached with the effort. I thought I could make it back up north before the pool closed, and began to steel myself for the drive in Sunday traffic when I heard thunder to the southwest, and the flash of lighting before the rain came down in sheets.

Screw it, I thought. The only reason to go back was to swim, and if lightning risk closed the pool, the aggravation of the drive would be for naught. I poured a drink and went over to the Russians to shoot the shit when the rain quit, and played with Biscuit the Wonder Spaniel.

Back home, I threw some stuff together for a light Croftburn Farms meal, and was more exhausted than I thought. I was in bed before 2100 attempting to read Secret Sentinel, a purported history of NSA and unconscious shortly thereafter.

And up, predictably early. I made coffee and was sitting down at the computer just after four, thinking about how far away dawn was, and considering what I had to get done back up north. I could wait until after the traffic died down and start out at nine or ten, but that would basically shoot the day.

I poured the coffee in a travel mug, grabbed a flashlight and the empty boxes and bags from the crap I had brought down, buttoned up the place and roared out of the driveway. This would be a new experience- I had not tried the drive at this hour before.

There was no one on the farm lane going out to the Zachery Taylor Highway, no one on Rt 3 on the brief jog to get on Rt 29, but brisk traffic going north. My heart sunk as I sipped the still piping hot coffee, looking out at the limits of my headlights. This was liable to be a mistake, I thought, and the famous Traffic Nightmare at Manassas would leave me a quivering mess by the time I got back to town.

As it turned out, there is an entirely different class of motorists on the roads before five AM. I remember how it was when I lived in Fairfax: to get a decent parking spot at the Pentagon’s North Lot, I had to be out the door at this hour. The people on the road then had the discipline to get up early, be showered and shaved (or made up) and be ready for action.

I won’t go so far as to identify a political orientation to that sort of behavior, but I was flowing north at speed with people who had made a conscious decision to live away from the urban sprawl, and were prepared to make sacrifices for the privilege of doing so.

OK, OK, it is late July, everyone is on vacation, Congress is in recess, but despite a fairly heavy volume of traffic, I was on the brakes only once in in 70-odd miles. I looked at the miles per gallon on the instrument panel- a record-setting 26.1, and I was unpacked and sitting at the other computer before seven.

Damn. This is a whole new way to approach the Farm Experience. If this is how the other half lives, it is not bad. Of course, that works only if Washington would just stay on vacation…

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com