While I wait for the Opening Ceremonies to start, I thought I'd let you in on a little of what I was up to last weekend while my husband indulged himself in a bit of a bacon feast.
First, I was in - well, near - Washington, DC. I was trying to be secretive before I left because it was my uncle's 50th birthday, and we thought it would be neat for me to surprise him with my arrival from Austin. I knew the gig was up when he called me not twenty minutes after my arrival at Washington National to ask me how my flight was. Oh well.
I stayed with my grandmother and my aunt, who was in town from Michigan. Our Monday was completely free, so we piled into my grandmother's Taurus and drove down the GW Parkway right to where it dead-ends in front of one of the area's premier sights - Mount Vernon.
Enter through the Texas Gate. Little bow to where I'm living.
Mount Vernon was George Washington's home for 45 years. I hadn't been there since... oh, probably the late 1980s, and remembered a musty frowsy building and being buried under the weight of the Father Of Our Country.
We figured we'd spend a couple of hours there. We ended up spending six.
The complex is walking a pretty fine line between glitz and substance, here. Though I do love the life-size Custis-Washingtons with their grandbabies.
Pamphlets in ten languages attest to the popularity of the site.
This stained-glass display struck me. I mean, this man was not famous for power-grubbing. He turned down the Congress's offer of kingship and voluntarily gave up the Presidency after two terms. Think he would have relished a stained-glass Apotheosis of Washington?
After taking in the sights in the vestibule, we were all ushered into a movie theater where Pat Sajak (yes, of Wheel of Fortune fame) put on a tri-corner hat and told us to eat peanut and chestnut soup. Then we watched a very expensive film with a Dutch director about Washington's life story. Though a lot of money was spent on battle scenes (really - we watched Braddock get mortally wounded and Washington have two horses shot out from under him at the Battle of the Monongahela!) nothing appeared to have been spent on aging the actors who played George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. Yes, the 23-year-old Mr. Washington did have a brown wig while the 59 year old had a white one, but this didn't keep the actor from looking a day under or over 45 during the entire movie. Jarring.
Well, like good Americans, when Pat Sajak tells us to do something, we do it. Plus we were hungry.
The table next to us described this as tasting like warm peanut butter. I think it was blander than that.
After this, stuffed chicken, salmon corncakes, and a duck and sausage cassoulet (and a Mount Vernon Harvest Ale) it was time for us to actually start seeing some Vernon.
First, the gardens. Not sure how that happened, but they're kind of on the way up to the main house. So. Riots of color, drunken stumbling bumblebees, picking our way around archaeologists trying to find the 18th century plant beds.
Then, onto the outbuildings behind the greenhouse, including some of the slave quarters. Depending on which sign in the complex you believe, there were either 216 or 316 slaves at Mount Vernon when Washington died in 1799. 316 seems to be the consensus. Either way, that's a lot of people, some of whose descendants still live in the area.
Many exhibits scattered around the grounds emphasized that Washington was never comfortable with slavery, that in his will he freed his slaves, that he was always searching for ways to make his farm turn a profit without slave labor (in fact, after Washington's death, Mount Vernon was never again profitable as a farm). But.
People slept two or three to each of these beds.
Around the back of the slave quarters, near-ish to the greenhouse, we found the "necessary". I may start calling our bathroom the necessary; it does have a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Washington doesn't get credit for having the inventiveness of a Jefferson or a Franklin, or the flash of Samuel Adams or Lighthorse Harry Lee, but he wasn't stupid. For instance, he had a seven year crop rotation on each of his fields before this was standard practice, and there were drawers under the outhouse to catch waste so it could be composted. Waste not, et cetera.
Then it was time to get in line for the mansion tour. This is of course the crown jewel of the estate, and man, the representatives of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association are efficient in getting you in, out, and through with a quickness.
We were shuttled through with speed that was scary at times, informative tidbits flying at us from every angle. For instance, did you know that in 1798 the mansion had 677 overnight visitors? No? Well, how about the fact that 45% of the artifacts in the home are original, having been recovered by the concerted efforts of the aforesaid Mount Vernon Ladies' Association?
These women are a little intimidating. They told me not to take pictures of the interior and its virulent greens and original stemware.
I think my favorite details are that George Washington died of quinsy (and, perhaps, blood loss from bloodletting), while his beloved wife was carried off by bilious fever. Now it's all heart attacks and infections and boring, non-poetic deaths. Hmph.
We were allowed to take pictures of the kitchens. I saw several people jump backwards at this room, and one kid actually yelped.
You have to hang game for a couple of days before it's ready to eat, y'know.
The view from Mount Vernon's back porch, which Washington called a piazza, is comfortable. Not strikingly beautiful, not astonishing, just soothing. Made me want a mint julep. I was disappointed later to find out that Washington's old distillery just down the road had just been granted special license to sell their whiskey at Mount Vernon - though I didn't see it.
There were all sorts of outbuildings clustered around the main house. I was, of course, particularly enamored of the smokehouse, where Washington cured and pickled all his plastic meats.
The clerk's abode was a definite contrast to the slave's quarters.
Next stop was the vault, but we did poke around the fruit trees and vegetable patches for a while. I swear the veggie patch was three quarters squash. Many of the plants were being left to go to seed, like this artichoke and its beautiful flower.
The vault, or tomb, holds not just the large coffins of Martha and George Washington, but also the bodies of 27 other people. The brick structure looks cool and airy.
Near this monument is a small clearing under which many slaves were buried. There are two monuments set in the shaded green under the trees. One, from 1929, is a little jarring in its terminology. How times change.
The newer monument is much grander and set up on a dais. I'm glad that these people's lives and work are being honored. It's so sad to look around the clearing, noting the lack of identifying markers.
From this sadness, we took a beautiful clear path down to the water and visited with some geese.
We learned a little about farming practice, though further explanation might have been nice with some of the tools...
You know, George Washington invented a threshing barn? It was obsolete almost as soon as he built it, because of early 18th century advances in threshing technology, but its dual layer design - horses walk through wheat on the top floor, seeds fall down through small gaps onto the bottom floor - was revolutionary (ha) for the times. It's been rebuilt to his exact specifications.
There's a small reproduction slave cabin just off of this barn. When we walked into it, about ten other people came in with us. A young girl asked the reenactor "Why do you put dirt on the floor like that?" and she wasn't entirely sure how to respond.
Whoosh. Then, a shuttle back to the museum and interpretive center, where we admired Martha Washington's glittering garnet jewelry and an original copy of the Declaration of Independence. There was also a presidential china exhibition, and may I just say that Rutherford B. Hayes (#19) had atrocious china? Seriously. Here's a picture. You'll love it.
Of course, the crown jewel of the collection is a set of Washington's dentures, which aren't even made of wood. The man was apparently fanatical about tooth care from an early age - had tooth powder sent in bulk to Mount Vernon all the time - but still lost all of his teeth over the course of his life.
And you can't photograph the famous dentures, silly selfish museum curators.
And now, I gotta see how this Olympic torch is going to get lit. These opening ceremonies have left me sitting here with my jaw on the floor. Way to go, China. And yay for Olympics and George Washington!
