I hate the WalMart. Oh, maybe that is a little extreme for the emotions that the place provokes in my bosom. I have shopped in a couple of them, and once got a couple of money orders from one when I was in need last year with the local outlet of my bank closed on a Sunday.

So what if the Walton family pioneered the road to our doom by providing us with all that cheap crap manufactured in China, and establishing the American Freak Show (check www.peopleofwalmart.com just to get calibrated). We have to shop someplace, right?

Necessary evil maybe, rather than just evil?

But I will never be caught in one of those stores after dinner. Call me a snob, but there it is.

Or at least that is about the extent of what I thought about Pop Walton’s store until I got buzzed by my latent NIMBYism, in the Battle of the Wilderness a couple years ago.

You may be thinking of the Battle of the Wilderness that marked the opening of Grant’s Overland Campaign to take Richmond, May 5-7, 1864.

I know I do, anyway, since the occupying Federals had spent the winter here in Culpeper, and Grant himself walked Davis street up to Main to purchase his day’s supply of stogies from a tobacconist who had a shop on the first floor of General A.P. Hill’ boyhood home on the corner. By himself. They had a different way of being at war in those days.

(185,000 troops collide in scrub second-growth forest in 1864. Image fro Leslie’s Illustrated).

On the way down the Germana road under the shadow of Mt. Pony, Grant’s V Corps smashed into Ewell’s Corps, who were coming up the Orange Turnpike, now known as State Route 20. A.P. Hill’s corps encountered Getty’s Division (VI Corps) and Hancock’s II Corps on the Plank Road (the Germana Pike turns into the Plank Road east of the Orange Turnpike junction) with some fierce fighting.

There were dense woods at the junction then, and the conflict was dispersed and personal and confused. Darkness halted the fighting, and both sides rushed reinforcements to the woods. Hancock’s Yankees attacked at dawn along the Plank Road, driving Hill’s Corps back in confusion. Longstreet’s Corps arrived in time to prevent the collapse of the Confederate right flank.

At noon, a devastating Confederate flank attack in Hamilton’s Thicket sputtered out when Lt. Gen. James Longstreet was wounded by his own men in the tangle. The IX Corps (Burnside) moved against the Confederate center, but was repulsed with great loss.

Killed on the field were general officers on both sides: James S. Wadsworth and Alexander Hays on the Union side, and John M. Jones, Micah Jenkins, and Leroy A. Stafford in gray. The battle was a tactical draw, but Grant had unlimited resources behind him, and he did not pull back, as all the Union Commanders did before him.

This stuff is all around here, since the frontier between North and South was right here, on these farm lanes. Hell, Stonewall Jackson’s arm is buried just up the road. There was as much fighting along this stretch of Route 3 as anywhere in the war: Wilderness, Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, all within twenty-five miles. Just to the south was Spotsylvania Courthouse, the next stop on Grant’s Big Adventure.

Anyway, I was in Wilderness yesterday and had to think about that and discount shopping. I had an invite to go see some old friends over at their place in The Lake of the Woods- LOW- a singular development half-way to Fredericksburg. It is partly located on the Wilderness Battlefield, and there would be a huge fight if they tried to build the place today.

LOW was developed in 1967 by Virginia Wildlife Clubs, a subsidiary of U.S. Land, Inc., and it successors, which eventually sold out to the owner’s association, which runs the gated and secure community today. The 500 acre main lake was formed by damming the valley fed by natural springs and the Flat Run, which formed the flank of the Confederate lines. Posh lake-front homes completely surround the water, and my host Uncle Dave took us out for a tour of the community in his party barge.

Nice place- and the fireworks celebrating the 4th were going to be Saturday evening, a fact that had slipped my mind completely in my current state of chaos. There was a heavy Highway Patrol presence on the roads, and my legs and back were killing me, so I opted to stop by for a couple drinks rather than make an evening of it. I enjoyed the boat ride around the lake, and the sight of hundreds of residents frolicking in the brown waters of the lake. Looked like a fine place, nice guests and families doing some great summer things.

(Docks and lovely homes hug the shore of the 500-acre Lake of the Woods, the once the flank of two armies).

Departing the development at the light, to the right is the junction of modern RT 20 and RT 3. There is a McDonalds there, presently, near the site of Grant’s HQ.

It was a near thing, what the WalMart guys tried to pull off, and that was part of the fight that I was in. I belong to one of those crazy preservationist groups that cares desperately about land use policy. We would have fought tooth-and-nail, tough as Iron Brigade, against the development of LOW. People just were not that concerned back then, not realizing that once something is paved over it is gone for good.

Anyway, the news galvanized me shortly after I closed on Refuge Farm. Sam Walton’s people had purchased a large chunk of land at the junction, and got the Orange County Commission to approve construction of a mega center right where 185,000 Americans had fought and 30,000 were killed or wounded.

My organization is the Civil War Preservation Trust, and we are as whacko as the environmentalists. I wrote dozens of letters to Congress and to WalMart protesting their site selection, and sent several modest checks to keep up the fight.

I was glum about the prospect of another identical Big Box was going to squat atop something memorable- or what had been memorable before it became Aisle 24 Ladies Intimates- when WalMart staged a tactical withdrawal. Last year they announced they would no longer contest the historical site, but would relocate another four miles west. They got to work, and the store is completed and ready to open next month.

I passed it as I set the cruise control on the Panzer to ensure that I did not attract the attention of the modern gray-clad enforcement people. It is identical to every other one of those things. Nothing memorable, special or anything else about it. You could call the fight a tactical draw, but like Grant, WalMart has unlimited resources, and I am sure something else will advance on the junction sooner or later.

I avoided was happy to be home when I got there before sundown. The silence was welcome, but silence…well, as you know, is quiet. I think that is one of the things I like best here, WalMart or no WalMart. Call me a NIMBY if you want, but we have our standards.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com