(Transferred to the Library of Congress in 1998, Mount Pony had been a Cold War structure with 140,000 square feet of radiation-hardened bunker space to handle the computers that handle all US inter-bank transfers. The Richmond branch of the Federal Reserve also had several billion dollars in cash stashed there against a nuclear winter day, including pallets of $2 bills. Now, it is the local movie theater. Don the Awning Guy did work for some of the other bunkers scattered around Northern Virginia. There are more of them than you would think).

This life thing is harder than one was led to think growing up, isn’t it? It is good, that goes without saying, but it is really contextual.

I think about that when I motor in under the looming presence of the Federal property on the top of the hill. Mount Pony is something else these days, home of the David Packer Center for preservation of recordings and film. I don’t go off the property much after dark, and I saw it with the lights on for the first time a few weeks ago. It was a marvel.

Context is everything. For example, I woke in the small hours of the night this morning down at the farm. The silence was broken only by that dog three or four properties up the road and the occasional whistle of the train crossing the grade at Winston. I fought consciousness for a while but eventually surrendered to the power of the night. I went out to see how the dwarf looked in the darkness with his map illuminated. He looked fine- but a fine rain had come in the frozen darkness and the front porch had a fine glaze of ice underfoot.

I was not going to risk the stairs and the possibility of a tumble.

Returning to the comfort and privacy of my new bed, I read that Michael Cronan had passed. He was a San Francisco-based graphic designer and marketing executive who coined the marketing terms for “TiVo” and “Kindle.”

He was 61.

(Michael Cronan named two ubiquitous devices that I don’t fully understand how to operate. Photo New York Times.)

It is not the first time I have been startled by abrupt departures, and now I understand why my pal Mac took delight in culling the obituaries and providing ones of interest to me for the stupid Quarterly.  I suppose that each morning you can read about someone else is a small victory against the rising aches and pains.

Steve Jobs checked out at 56. Not me, but for no reason I can discern except dumb luck. And not Don-the-Awning Guy. He is a bluff man with a square jaw and round eyeglasses and all his hair. He is a quintessential small businessman, working out of Warrenton, where his old man had established the awning business. Like me, Don was a government guy during his time at the public trough. I was a Fed, of course, and Don was State and Local. Mostly Loudoun County, from what he said, and he had been a public health inspector until his Dad passed and left him the business.

You have to take this all in perspective, and that gets easier the further you get outside the Beltway, over which I passed around 10:28 AM yesterday. I felt the oppression of the continuing crisis begin to ease, and traffic was light. I let the miles slide under the Panzer with growing tranquility.

The Russians had showed up before Don did. There was a birthday we needed to observe. I won’t tell you which one, or the number of it. Not relevant. He was unpacking his bulky books of samples out on the deck at Refuge Farm as I outlined the problem: the door frames were getting soaked and I wanted permanent covers to cease the problem, which could recur just when- assuming I survive- I will not be able to do a goddamn thing about it.

We worked through some options, he named a number that seemed about right for a motorized canopy that would cover most of the seating area of the porch, and fixed covers above the two damaged doors. I wrote him a deposit as he continued a running commentary on life in the country.

He has been out here since before Loudoun County was a bedroom community, and was more like Culpeper is today. His favorite example, it turned out, was the tale of one of the businesses he regulated as a health inspector. The owner had purchased a worthless piece of land. It was more than a hundred acres, and not one square inch of it would “perk,” which meant that no structure requiring a septic system could be built on it.

The enterprising fellow had vision. He paid $200 grand for the property and ran a corporate picnic facility on it for years to cater to the burgeoning commercial trade in western Fairfax and Loudoun. When the building tide swept over that part of the county, the infrastructure came with it.

When city sewer service made the “perkable” nature of the property irrelevant, it was “location, location, location. The entrepreneur sold it for $50 million.

“Crap,” I said in wonder. “That is a profit of 49 million, eight hundred thousand bucks.”

“No kidding,” said Don, jotting some numbers on the contract. “I regulated that guy for years. I seem to be good at making other people money.” He looked out over the lower pasture where the Russians were setting up a target for some marksmanship training later. “Not much of it stuck.”

“That sounds like what the President meant when he said ‘You didn’t build that’ during the campaign,” I said. “Only in this case he was right.”

Don laughed, and regaled us with local stories. He knows everyone in these parts. He did the awning on the front of Croftburn Farms Market, and seemed gratified that Andrew had made it successfully through the first year of business- the toughest. Then we talked about the continuing crisis, and what it meant for his line of work if the bottom falls out of Northern Virginia.

Don has some illustrious clients scattered around the region, most of them who had acquired bolt-holes upwind of the Capital for the same reason that the Federal Reserve tunneled out the middle of Mount Pony above the farm to safeguard the post-attack supply of small bills.

The Russians meanwhile had the target set up and had enough information about the awning concept. They said they were going to light a bonfire of scrap wood and debris from the field, and they were going to sit out in the pasture behind the outbuildings and drink wine later. I waved goodbye as their silver SUV crunched out of the gravel driveway and Don and I got to the crunch of the cost of the awnings.

The check I wrote was bigger than I had anticipated, but I thought about sitting under cover during the Spring rain showers that will nourish the grass in the pastures and cause the dark of the winter woods go brilliant green.

The Russians are coming with high explosives later this morning. Life is good. Spring will come. Later, maybe we will take in a movie up the hill.

(The Mount Pony Theater. Note the organ which is used to accompany silent films from the archive. Private funds covered the construction of the facility, which is a half-mile from my gravel driveway. Photo Library of Congress).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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