October 12, 2013. Part II - Blue Ridge Parkway, 40 Years in the Making.

October 12, 2013.  Part II - Blue Ridge Parkway, 40 Years in the Making.  Our oldest daughter was three months old in August of 1973.  I had rushed home after work to mow the grass before our departure the next morning for a meeting in Washington, DC.  We planned to drive from western Missouri.  I was looking forward to driving some, if not most, of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way. 

I had postponed mowing so I could mow just before we left.  As a result, the grass was tall in places and clogged the grass chute on my push mower.  I was wearing heavy boots, so I kicked the grass at the mouth of the chute several times to unclog it.  You know what happened, don't you?  I managed to get my foot under the mower.  The blade, moving at 3200 RPMs, tore through my boot and broke my great toe.  There went my plans to drive some or most of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We are now 900 miles from home in the second part of a well-planned trip.  The capstone of the trip was to fulfill a plan that began forty years ago.  Did you know that the first 100 miles of the Parkway is in the Shenandoah National Park?  Did you know that the National Parks are now closed because politicians are fighting over matters like the federal budget and the debt ceiling?  The effect of that is that we may not be able to drive the full length of the Parkway.  One-fourth of the Parkway is in the National Park.  Barring resolution of the dispute in Washington,  the Park will be closed as we begin our drive on Monday, two days from now.  Maybe that will happen.  If not, we'll just do the best we can.   

We plan to look around the area tomorrow for the Kennedy Farm House, Glen Ora.  In the early 1960s, President and Jackie Kennedy rented a farm in this area so Jackie and the children would have a place to withdraw from the pressures of Washington.  Mrs. Kennedy was an avid equestrian and she wanted the children to be exposed to the joys of horsemanship, too.  Mrs. Kennedy and the children were here in the early days of October, 1961, as the President and his advisers faced down Nikita Khrushchev and Russia during the Cuban missile crisis.  She and the children returned to Washington when she began to understand the seriousness of the confrontation.  

So, we will look for Glen Ora tomorrow.  When Annie begins to look for something, it is as good as found.  She has the tenacity of a bulldog.

Shown above is a 1963 Chevrolet Bel Air.  It passed us today south of Scranton, PA.  I photographed it because we had one just like it in the early 1960s.  In fact, I wrapped its rear axle around a driveway culvert on Christmas Eve, 1963.  The Old-Timer was cross with me about that.    

We left Promised Land State Park about 10:00 this morning, arriving here about 4:00 PM.  We stopped by Harper's Ferry on the way.  Harper's Ferry was the location of the federal arsenal before the Civil War.  It was the site of innumerable battles during the war.  It changed hands eight times between 1861 and 1865. 

However, it is most famous for being the place John Brown intended to capture, planning to start an slave insurrection in the South in 1859.  His plan failed, of course.  He was captured by U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee, tried, convicted of treason and hanged.  He became a martyr as his body "laid a-mouldering in the grave.''  Of course, Vernon County historians will know the Harper's Ferry attack followed Brown's raid near Stotesbury in 1858, during which he liberated several slaves, several head of cattle, horses, not to mention pigs and chickens.  He also left at least one Vernon Countian dead.  He fled to Canada before regrouping and mounting the attack on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

Tomorrow begins the second half of this trip.  I don't know where the first half went.  Time flies when you are busy.