Abingdon, Popov and Eternity

I don’t know how many more precision drives I have got in my system. Glad to be back, of course, but the Sunday passed in a sort of daze. My joints ached from being seated at the wheel for the better part of Saturday, and the repeats of all the shows on NPR that I had already listened to on the satellite radio gave me severe déjà vu.

If this is Car Talk, this must be Youngstown, Ohio, right?

Then there was the news- apparently there is another budget crisis, different from the one boiling in Europe, and involving some slight of hand on disaster funds, which someone wants to fund out of electric car development incentives from the last stimulus, or something. I tuned out- been through this, and I hope those idiots up there on the Hill do something to not shut down the government on Friday.

Or let them do it and get it over with. This is so beyond irresponsible- and I count the conduct of both flanks of the lunacy up there as being at fault- that it fills me with contempt. I drank strong Russian coffee and took an extremely hot shower in an attempt to wash off the malaise of the road and then surveyed the wreckage in the unit.

The crap from the trip was strewn around the apartment, on top of the usual tumult of the maid brigade who had swept through the place in my absence.

I did manage to wake up sufficiently to realize that a critical component of the trip had yet to be accomplished. The fancy Caddie SRX was still resting out front, and the Bluesmobile was still sleeping at the garage under the office. The trip would not be over until the Hertz people had their car back, and the outlet was at Reagan National. I put $60 bucks worth of low-test in the tank at the Quarters K Navy Exchange, and read the sign over the pump that explained that the NEX gas-station-cum-liquor-store would be closing on 30 October so the Secretary of the Navy can transfer title of the property to the Secretary of the Army in order for him to expand the footprint of Arlington National Cemetery.

I stand firmly on both sides of the argument.

As a retired officer, I am entitled to a burial with full military honors. That is the sort of entitlement program I support- but of course there is a problem. Arlington is filling up fast. There are more than 200,000 vets and their family members already in the ground there, and with a thousand WW II vets dying every year, something needs to be done or I will have to find another place to spend eternity.

But in the meantime, I am going to lose a convenient, Navy-subsidized liquor store. As I filled the tank, I wondered if I could write a letter to that Congressional buffoon who purports to represent Arlington County and suggest that they hold off on the expansion until I need it.

I suppose that is unrealistic, though. Quarters K was the place we used to watch the reconstruction of the Pentagon, after the attack.  Arlington House is just up the hill- between the Pentagon Military Reservation, the cemetery and Fort Myer, that is about what the Arlington Plantation covered.

It was originally planned as a living memorial to George Washington by his adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, and Arlington was passed down to his daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, who married Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. It was confiscated in 1864 by the federal government when she failed to pay property taxes levied against the Arlington estate in person- as if she could- and General Montgomery Meigs (the Army’s greatest builder) started putting Union dead in the vegetable garden so that Bobby Lee could never come home.

I did not buy any liquor at Quarters K on this trip, though, since I was going to be on foot once I got the car back to Hertz, and did not want to take the Metro burdened down with a couple 1.75ML bottles of top-quality Popov Brand discount vodka. I motored from Quarters K over to the airport and got the car back to the Hertz people and began the trudge from the rental garage back toward the main terminal and the Metro stop.

There is a curious thing in the middle of the garage complex: the ruins of a Colonial-era plantation house and some outbuildings. There is a sign pointing to the site of what had been Abingdon House from the walkway, and having no place to be and plenty of time to do it, I decided to go take a look.

The place is an island of tranquility in the midst of the TSA Gulag of Reagan National Airport. It is unsecured, for one thing, and I was the only person apparently not in a hurry. I snapped some pictures with my iPad, and wandered past the interpretive plaques and markers.

Abingdon’s land once swept down the hill to the Potomac, and comprise the whole parcel now occupied by the airport. The house burned in the 1930s after surviving the war- funny thing about historically relevant and inconvenient things around Northern Virginia- and the Airport Authority really wanted to bulldoze the site for more parking.

It took the State Assembly to get involved, and they managed to save what was left, and it is a respectful and solemn place now.

The pictures of all the interpretive plaques and foundations are on my Facebook page, if you care, and actually, they will be there even if you don’t.

The thing I take away from the visit is how small the houses were. George’s big house at Mount Vernon leaves you the idea that the plantation life was vast. It wasn’t. Life in colonial Virginia was hard and brutal. The slave cabins would be located under Garage Complex B, or something.
Here is the short version:

“Abingdon was the epicenter of society and the plantation families of Virginia and Maryland. Eleanor Calvert, wife of Martha Washington’s son and the owner of Abingdon after his death, was a daughter of Benedict Swingate Calvert, “natural son” of the 5th Lord Baltimore, proprietor of Maryland, a descendant of Charles II of England, distant cousin and close friend to Prince Frederick (son of George I and father of George III).

Benedict’s mother is not recognized, but has been speculated to be Petronilla Melusine von der Schulenburg, 1st Countess of Walsingham, the illegitimate daughter of George I of England, so half sister to Prince Frederick. Benedict was packed off to Annapolis, MD when he was about 13 (he must have been just a bit inconvenient to have around the palace). So Eleanor’s grandparents and extended family included the Lords Baltimore and the very king her father in law (George Washington) was fighting for independence. Eleanor’s family, at Mt. Airy in MD, not far from Abingdon, remained Royalist throughout the Revolutionary War, even while maintaining good relations with her and the Washingtons (Washington caused a lot of controversy by staying with Eleanor’s Royalist parents at Mt. Airy after resigning his commission in Annapolis). It’s ironic that while they were at Abingdon, Eleanor Calvert and John Parke Custis provided George and Martha Washington with their (her) only direct descendants who were also related to King George III (at least through Charles II and possibly also through his own great grandfather, George I).”

That is not all that is at the airport. There is an Indian burial mound on the Abindgdon property, too, in the middle of the Delta Airlines employee parking lot. They brought in the bulldozers on that one, too, but when bones an artifacts started to turn up, they did the right thing and work was quickly and respectfully halted.

The mound is in a restricted area, so it is even more inaccessible than Abingdon. But if you are passing through the Airport, and are not in a hurry, it is pretty cool to see.

But figure the odds of not being busy here? Still, I think it is interesting that the Airport and the cemetery and my liquor store are so intimately connected. And who knows, I might get buried between the old fuel tanks and the Vodka aisle of the Quick Mart.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com