I had the opportunity to catch up on my conversational skills on Saturday as I had to take a long ride in the car. By way of explaining, I had to take a trip to the airport in Washington, D.C. Washington is a strange place for a country boy like myself to wind up, but I wasn't going to the city.

I was heading for the Dulles Airport and, lucky for me, the airport isn't in the main city. It is somewhat south of the city on a busy stretch of Highway 66.

I managed to get one of my good friends to ride along who loves to talk and drive, both of which combined to help make the trip go by faster. Of course, a six-hour drive (including stops) still doesn't go by very quickly, no matter who is doing the driving and talking. Even so, discussing the points of interest, history and architecture were far better than listening to WDFJ (Weally Def Funky Jam) on the radio, which was in direct competition with WCYB (We Cry in Your Beer).

The road goes on to Arlington not far from the airport. I had always read about Robert E. Lee's love of his home there, which the Union usurped as the war began. The Lee home and estate is now the site of the National Cemetery, a decision of which I'm sure he would have approved. Along the way I also drove by the entrance to Bull Run, another famous Civil War battle site.

Being a lover of history, I'd like to go back sometime and walk across the battlefield, to see the sites that for many a young North Carolina boy (and New York boy alike), were the last ever laid eyes upon.

Lee was practically fighting in his own back yard. I'm sure his knowledge of the area's terrain played a part in the Confederates' success against Union forces in the second battle of Bull Run, or Manassas if you're a 'Yankee.'

What a waste of life, I thought. The Civil War caused more casualties than any war this nation ever took on against a foreign power. Many of the changes brought about by the war could have been made peacefully, without drenching fields like those found at Bull Run with the blood of Americans killed by their fellow countrymen.

Of course, these and other topics were broached with my friend, who hails from Kentucky and lacks my slanted view of the war, although we both agree on its tragedy and the illegitimacy of slavery.

There is a national move to preserve battlefields, but I feel sure many more are lost than are saved. It's easy to see why as cranes and bulldozers scrape away at the soil in what appears to be a building boom there.

The hills heading there were covered with fall foliage and looked a lot like the ones here, but the airport looked like something dropped out of a spaceship's cargo bay. The building itself didn't make much sense to me, with a roof that looks lower in the middle than on the back end. Several old sheds ended up like that after the big snow in 1993, but folks tore the roofs off and rebuilt. If the building was meant to be striking in appearance, I'd call it successful.

Inside the odd building, everything was chaos. People of every color and national origin one can imagine, all speaking different languages and getting in each other's way with ungainly suitcases, trunks, backpacks and duffel bags.

As for the chaos, I could have been at any international airport in the world. I usually feel lost, intimidated, herded and inhuman by the time I finally manage to get to a plane. Luckily, I wasn't the passenger this time. I witnessed the insanity firsthand while visiting Europe, where I feel sure that the airport in Paris is the most confusing place I've ever tried to circumnavigate.

Luckily, I did manage to find a McDonalds while I was there and enjoy a 'La Royale' with cheese. After trying to eat a big dollop of sour cream for breakfast, thinking surely it was yogurt, I was glad to see the greasy food I knew and loved from home. I never did figure out why anyone would want sour cream for breakfast.

Anyway, upon leaving the airport, the journey back seemed much faster. Why is it that going places always seems to take longer than returning? I can remember visiting the beach as a boy and the drive there would take 20 hours. Not really, but it seemed that way. The drive back? It was over in a flash.

Could it be that the wonder of the trip is gone when we know where we are going? Albert Einstein said that time slows down as objects increase in speed. Perhaps as our minds race toward our destination, our sense of time slows. I lack the necessary skills to become a top rate physicist like Einstein, but I do have a ready medium in which to publish my hare-brained idea. Who knows, maybe it will be the theory that finally garners me the Nobel prize.

I'll just have to find someone to do all that ciphering for me. I got a 'C' in ciphering, but only because I thought it was spelled with an 'S' and had something to do with stealing the gas out of old man Wilson's tractor. I 'ciphered' a few gallons, over a period of weeks, out of that old Allis-Chalmers as a youngster. Later, I started feeling bad about it and tried to pour some back in the tank. Since I had been justifying siphoning it out as 'borrowing,' I finally figured it was time to return it. I slipped by there late one evening with a five gallon can and a heart full of repentance. Wouldn't you know that would be the one time I got caught? Do you think he believed I was actually there to return gas to him? I think he finally believed me after I came clean about the whole story. "Why didn't you just ask? I would have given you some gas anytime," he said. When he saw that I had actually filled his tractor with gas, he took me in his house and offered me a glass of lemonade. It was fresh and good —his wife had made it in a big colored glass pitcher with bumps on the sides and it was thick with lemon pulp. He told me with a chuckle that trying to figure out what was wrong with his tractor that wouldn't start because some young fellow pilfered his gasoline took him more than an hour on a cold morning. "I knew I'd just put a gallon or two in the day before," he said. He also confided that he had once been with some boys who turned over the neighbor's outhouse and got caught. He ended up having to help fix it the next day while all the other boys who were involved went fishing. Evidently, these lessons stick with everyone.

Repaying him with more than I took never took away the memory. I just realized that I don't remember Mr. Wilson's first name, other than the 'old man' we tacked on to everyone when talking about them years ago. I always called him 'Mr. Wilson' to his face out of respect. I remember him sitting on his porch with wood shavings piling up on his feet as he whittled out creations late in the evening in his rocking chair.

I was talking to a local jailer the other day who said, "I used to talk about old-man so-and-so until one day I woke up and realized, ‘I am old man so-and-so.'" When I become old man LaRue, I hope I can be as kind and wise as the elders I've known.

Oh, and by the way, I hear tell of a young lady named Jessie Delp who reads this column every week and is turning 91 this coming week. So, happy birthday and may your neighbors never steal the gas from your tractor and forget your first name. But if they do, I hope they feel inclined to admit the whole thing 30-some years later in the newspaper.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

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