WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAM MCPHEETERS
This May I finally visited Mount Vernon, plantation home of America’s first president, George Washington. Joe Preston escorted me. By this point, the burly bearded bassist (Earth, High on Fire, Melvins, Thrones) had joined me on three and a half tours. We’d intersected in various far-flung states and had all sorts of low-wattage wacky adventures that can best be described as incidents: the Wrong Basement Incident (Salt Lake City), the Reindeer Sausage Incident (Anchorage), the Quitting Bassist Incident (Berkeley).
My feelings about Virginia reflect the Cops Incident. The last time we’d both been in this state together, almost a dozen years ago, two angry policemen drew their weapons and threw me against Joe’s van. It was a simple case of mistaken identity. I was at the tail end of a five-year sentence in Richmond Mind Prison and the incident neatly summed up my feelings about the place. But I’ve since taken pains to distinguish Virginia from its capital. It’s a beautiful state, the cradle of modern democracy. Sadly, during my entire miserable half decade of residency, I never took the time to visit Mount Vernon. Today’s drive down from Philadelphia—a road trip the first president himself made countless times—would correct this mistake.
We arrived at the Mount Vernon parking lot and found a space bordered by incongruous old cobblestones. Could this have been where George Washington once parked his mule?
“Camera on belt. Check,” Joe said, glancing about the lot and taking in our immediate neighbors.
“Christian bikers. Check.”
We paid and set out from the orientation center. Our lane curved around and led us on a small path toward the main house. We passed several groups in matching solid-color t-shirts. One young man wore a we are virginia tech shirt. Joe and I approached the Bowling Green, Washington’s glorious front lawn, and stood to face the distant house itself. The bright red tiling on the roof resembled cartoon fish scales and looked brand-new, hinting at superhuman maintenance. I felt a distinct magnetic aura of paternalism that is hard to fully describe. Before me was the home of America’s father, ground zero for American fatherhood itself.
“I feel like I’m at my dad’s house,” Joe said, unprompted.
“Does your dad live on a 1750s Neoclassical Georgian-style plantation?”
“No.”
“Your dad could easily be reading this article, so choose your words carefully.”
“Yeah,” Joe said, squinting into the mid-afternoon sun. “I’ll choose those words very carefully.”
We followed the curving path past the house and headed down toward the wharf. It was a gorgeous North Virginia afternoon, marred only by the rising thermometer. A selection of ash trees, red maples, and bur oaks shaded our passage. Farther off, hundred-foot tulip poplars swished overhead and a lone, bold chinquapin oak shushed from side to side in the warm breeze. These are some of the best-cared-for trees on the planet. Some were planted by Washington’s own hands and still adhered to his 1785 landscaping renovations, reward for having been away from the house for eight long years of war. The grounds appeared as an untouched idyll protected by an invisible force field, forever shielded from the depravity and rot of the outside world.
“We’re just tiptoeing around the obvious,” I said. “This is basically the set of Zardoz.”
Zardoz. How many man-hours had we spent lazily dissecting this 1974 sci-fi classic? After directing Deliverance, English filmmaker John Boorman was given free rein to make the most indulgent, postapocalyptic, druggie science-fiction film he wanted, and the studio was kind enough to provide him with Sean Connery. In 2009, the movie is remembered mostly for its star’s gigolo-Zapatista outfit and the flying stone Zeus head that, perhaps not so coincidentally, looks a lot like an angry Joe Preston.
“This is the model for Zardoz?” he asked.
“We are descending into Zardoz right now. And this looks like the spot you were talking about, not that long ago, where Sean Connery pulls ‘Friend’ up the hill in the cart…”
“…and he was very upset about having to do that a second time. Yeah. I think Sean Connery’s knee was blown out.”
“Yeah,” I said, a little freaked out by the overlap between film and reality. “But he’s a professional.”
A long flight of stairs led us down to the riverfront wharf. An anachronistic motorboat purred in the distance. As historians are quick to point out, the Potomac was indeed the I-95 of the original colonies. Which would make this dockside structure the Flying J truck stop of the 18th century. Or so, perhaps, was the original intention. One of Washington’s rare mistakes was his belief that the Potomac stretched out to the Pacific Ocean; he’d envisioned his property abutting a future transcontinental superhighway.
Another one of his mistakes was owning human beings as slaves. We stumbled into the slave memorial as two smiling women exited. Joe paused in the leafy enclosure, next to the modest memorial for a mass grave of anonymous human chattel. In Washington’s defense, his situation was more complicated than the average slave owner’s (half his slaves came from Martha’s deceased first husband and were legally unsellable). Ever conscious of his vaulting status as America’s greatest man, he took great pains to maintain a weird neutrality on the issue after the war, refusing to buy, sell, or free anyone. His will’s emancipation decree was both a bold stroke and a squashed opportunity. In life, Washington muted his own disgust for slavery to keep the young country from splitting over the issue. It could be obliquely argued that all he did was defer and worsen the inevitable carnage. As disastrous as civil war would have been in the 1780s, it probably wouldn’t have killed the 600,000 people of the 1860s version.
“‘Well, I used to be a size 2,’” Joe said.
“That’s a quote you heard?”
“That’s a quote I heard as I approached the memorial dedicated to the 350 slaves of the Washington estate.”
“Are we being less disrespectful by standing here and talking? We’re paying respect to them.”
“I think we’re being pretty disrespectful here all around.”
This was a surprising statement. I felt plenty respectful.
“We haven’t littered!” I protested.
I followed Joe up to George Washington’s tomb. The small enclosure—a brick vault flanked by two squat obelisks—was damp and cool and had the rich, loamy smell of old masonry. Ancient bars protected his marble casket. Sightseers stood around awkwardly, unsure what to do with themselves. The spot demanded reverence but offered no clues how reverence should be displayed.
The day before, I’d spent several hours on the upper steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Friends had warned me about the Rocky Balboa phenomenon, and yet I simply hadn’t prepared myself for the cascade of buffoons charging up the steps to pump their fists victoriously. It was endless. The first president’s tomb seemed in need of a similar rite, some pop-culture ritual we could all perform to pay our respects. Maybe tossing quarters through the bars? Dollar bills?
“This would be the best place to die,” I whispered to Joe. “Because then, look who your soul would be hanging out with.”
“They’d probably bury you here,” Joe said quietly.
“I think they’d have to.”
We walked. A sign pointed us toward the “necessary,” that outdoor restroom of the old-old-timey world.
I found a trio of young historical reenactors—two East Indian, one Asian—who seemed happy to answer my questions. Did they receive college credit? No, they did this for fun. Did they portray actual historical characters? Yes, said the young man playing Robert Townsend, a spy operating for Washington’s shadowy Culper Ring.
Mindful of that pulsing aura of benevolent fatherhood I’d felt earlier, I asked about the Jerusalem syndrome. This is the chronic affliction of first-time visitors to the Holy Land. Tourists arrive in Bethlehem, buy some souvenirs, take some pictures, and suddenly—blammo!—they’ve convinced themselves they’re the second comings of Jesus and John the Baptist. Any similar psychological meltdowns here?
The young reenactors seemed bemused by my question. No, the worst they ever got was the rare rude historian. Last year, one lady exploded on volunteers portraying historical figures who’d never actually set foot on Washington’s estate. But nothing worse.
I thanked the young men and watched them depart in their snappy embroidered jackets and creased knickers and tricornered hats. I felt a sharp twinge of jealousy. In 1998, Joe and I toured for two weeks up and down the West Coast, and I’d spent each set reciting Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty…” speech in full Revolutionary garb. There’s no precise way to describe how amazing and powerful you can feel in a good 18th-century getup. Imagine the greatest cocaine high of your life. Then multiply that times 83. That’s a little tiny bit what dressing up in Revolutionary War-era costume is like. But you need context, and these young men had it. I, in all probability, would never have it again.
We arrived at the master’s house.
“I’m going to skip the house,” Joe said. “I need to find the necessary.”
We agreed to meet out front, so I could gather my belongings from his van before he departed for a Richmond concert. Friends would meet me later and drive me to Federal City (or “DC,” as it is now known).
I took my place in the 40-minute line to enter Washington’s house. Fellow tourists confirmed an earlier suspicion; reenactors aside, Mount Vernon is a highly Caucasian pursuit. Behind me, a young mother chided her child.
“Come here, Dustin… Come here, Dustin… OK, I guess we’re not going swimming later…”
American fashions, dumbed down by TSA airport regulations, took a sizable hit this decade. Other men wore baggy shorts, sports jerseys, backward baseball caps. With my button-down and long pants, I felt a tad overdressed. But if you can’t dress nice for Washington’s house, then where? And for all the airportish vibe of this long line—a line snaking into and out of sweltering gaps between shade—there were no x-rays or security pat-downs. A mighty mushroom cloud of a pecan tree, allegedly a gift from Jefferson, dwarfed the house from the southwest side. I felt sadly nostalgic for a time I never knew, a time when men dressed formally, and gave each other trees as gifts, and founded nations, and were awesome.
The house was curiously cool. We passed through several drawing rooms and doubled back across the front porch to take in the screen-saver view of lawn and river. Reentering properly through the front door, I thought again of the Jerusalem syndrome. It was unnerving. In these same rooms, Jefferson and Franklin and Adams stood around and shot the breeze. If Washington wasn’t a major intellectual contributor to American democracy, he certainly made himself indispensable to those who were; surely some unhinged visitors must’ve lost their marbles here over the ages.
We were led upstairs in a slow procession. As we approached the master bedroom, I realized why the line moved so slowly. Every citizen who can scrape up 15 bucks gets their solitary moment alone at the threshold of the chamber George Washington died in. I suddenly found myself face-to-face with the single most haunted room in America. It really was unnerving. I offered a quick apology for any and all future actions that might embarrass the great man and scrambled aside for Dustin’s mom.
We returned to the first floor. Another image superimposed itself. Joe Preston gives great weight to professionalism and punctuality. As the house tour meandered through hallways and sitting rooms, the ghost of Angry Joe emerged, late for his sound check and out for vengeance. Today could be remembered as the Mount Vernon Incident. As soon as we exited, I sprinted to the front entrance and was greatly relieved that Joe did not yet resemble the angry flying head from Zardoz.
“OK. Here’s what I don’t get,” I said once I’d caught my breath. “When Sean Connery is getting sucked into the pyramid thing? That’s obviously a drug moment. Like, for the cast and crew, not the audience.”
“I don’t know,” said Joe.
“Doesn’t it seem that’s where Boorman kind of gave up?”
“No, I think he gave up when Connery and Charlotte Rampling ran off to the cave and suddenly aged about a hundred years.”
“Yeah, but the end of a movie is where one traditionally gives up. So that’s OK.”
We walked in silence back toward the parking lot. I could feel the strange fatherly aura dissipating.
“I don’t mind the heat,” I said somberly. “I mind that my pants feel like maternity pants.”
“Yeah, that’s tour every day.”
We arrived at the van. A large stream of fluid had collected on the cobblestones beneath Joe’s engine. Today could wind up becoming an incident after all. Hasty farewells made, Joe worked to get his vehicle in motion while it was still possible to do so. I retreated to a bench to call my friends for a rendezvous. When I’d finished and looked up, his van was gone. All that remained was a brownish puddle.
When Men Were Awesome
