June 11, Wednesday – Back in Time

By some stroke of luck I glanced at the maintenance record stuck to the Jetta windshield and saw that I was 300 miles past an oil change. After much driving around, I found a tire shop that did oil changes and settled into the waiting room with two other folks. I wasn’t looking forward to the one and a half hour wait for the job to be done so to pass the time I strike a conversation with the older man and the middle age woman. The next thing I knew someone was calling my name saying my car was done. Man, was that waiting room jumping with talk. The highlight of the waiting time was when the man picked up a copy of Newsweek with Obama on the cover. One thing led to another when the well-dressed woman who worked for William and Mary College proclaimed that she could never vote for Hillary. I declared that I was going back to Washington in time to vote for Obama. Political feelings were expressed with her feeling that Clinton would be much of the same. We discussed who the vice president candidate should be (she didn’t want Hillary to be that person.) We both agreed that someone with deep experience in politics would be the best person.
After paying my bill, I walked back into the tire shop waiting room and warmly shook both of their hands and thanked them for wonderful time.
From oil changes to 1607 on the banks of the James River to learn about the Jamestown colony. I was surprised by how much bloodshed occurred. Not only between whites and natives but whites (Nathaniel Bacon) against whites to the point of Jamestown being sacked and burned. After seventy years of existence, the colony never recovered from the trashing. Everyone moved inland to Williamsburg.
I was impressed with the three archeological digs going on. Eleven years ago they discovered the fort palisade remains and using ancient records were able to layout the old fort walls. The three crews were digging within those boundaries. The 150,000 artifacts that they have found are housed in a new building and one of the most interesting finds was that of a burial next to the fort wall. The skeleton was on display with a musket ball embedded in the man’s knee. The mystery that surrounds his death provides fodder for speculation.
One item outside the building was a large bronze statue of Pocahontas. A major turn off. This beautiful Indian maiden was dressed in buckskin with a single feather stuck in her hair. Her shapely figure and Anglo-ized face where quite becoming but everything about her was a gross violation of what was historically correct. Hollywood’s long arm had reached across the continent and created a mess in Jamestown.
I was not a happy Englishman.