It's easy to wear a rut between work and home, especially if you are a creature of habit like me. When I moved from Charlottesville to Arlington, to-see lists filled my notebook but certain places like Mt. Vernon just weren’t visited. As an architectural historian, that had been an embarrassment for me so I finally broke out of my routine and went downriver.
How I lived two years without visiting, I really don’t know; but the timing felt right when I stepped through the bowling green gate. Like the University of Virginia’s Rotunda, George Washington’s Mt. Vernon had been undergoing restorations while I was there. Although other visitors grumbled about it’s west front being scaffolded, I was thrilled to see paint stripped away from the “stone” siding. It certainly wasn’t photographable by Instagram standards, but it was an unusually rare chance to see the physical structure as it really is: wooden. Had I visited any earlier or later, I would not have had that opportunity and I loved it.
The following weekend, a friend invited me out for lunch with another one of his friends. Both men had worked as historians, and while they have retired from preservation, the two have stayed actively interested in it. Much to my amusement, my new acquaintance had a small book in his satchel: Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington by G.W. Parke Custis. A first edition, the book had been written by George Washington's adopted son best known for building Arlington House right by my own home. As interesting as that was in and of itself, someone at some point in time had glued a letter from Custis inside the cover. It was nothing more than a receipt for "one hundred and eighteen pounds, four shillings, one penny," but I was completely tickled having just visited the man's boyhood home. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose..."
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