Tuesday, January 26, 2010

What I Miss Most About Charlottesville

10. Alderman Library, and especially: being able to lay hands on a copy of Wool, Cloth and Gold, or any of B. Traven's novels, or a copy of Alexander Kinglake's History of the Crimean War (Down to the Death of Lord Raglan), or all the back issues of Paideuma -- whenever I want to read them again.  And being able to get a library card there just because I was a citizen of the Commonwealth -- my thanks to Thomas J. 

9. The Riverside.

8. All my friends, but especially Amy and Susan and David.

7. The South.

6. Seven Day.

6. The C & O.

4. The Blue Ridge, and the way you glimpse the Ragged Mountains for a moment going south on the bypass, and riding miles of hunt trails in the Southwestern Mountains around Cismont, where I was a country mailman.

3. Teaching myself to ride down at Round Top, using an old cavalry manual I found buried in the stacks at Alderman.

2. Looking for my basset hounds: Isabel, Sam, Oliver, Alexander, Lem and Yummie. Winding my big horn made from an old Victrola while I looked for them at night on627 between Carter's Bridge and Keelona, though sometimes they would get as far as Roy and Alice Howard's place at Red Brook.

1. My daughter Jessie Jane.

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