God's Country

Lexington, Virginia

There were cows roaming around in a pasture behind the gas station/Subway where we stopped for lunch. The tourists, ourselves included in that wretched word, were amazed, and stopped, and stared, and some of us even pointed. The cows, however, seemed rather nonchalant about the whole thing. After all, this is all these cows know. We know what we know, Virginians know what Virginians know, and cows basically don't know shit.

At least, not as far as I know.

People in this part of Virginia wear cowboy hats, and they don't seem to think there's anything out of the ordinary about that. That's probably because, here, it isn't. Rather like cows wandering around behind the Hess Station off of 81 South.

These aren't just regular, run-of-the-mill cowboy hats either-- these are rather a bit outlandishly-proportioned, (at least by Pennsylvania yankee standards), and they are generally favored by men into or approaching their seventies. I spied one crustified gentleman wearing a Stetson that was the size of a basset hound, and he was tooling around in a gray Buick Century. Tale away the hat, and he would have looked like my maternal grandfather.

So far, I like it here. It's a bit absurd at times, but, mostly, it's quaint, and I've always been one who's a bit of a sucker for quaint. Sure, I may be blogging away on my Blackberry, but I'm doing so from our room in a bed and breakfast with no television, and the curtains are lacey and there's a lovely, honey-hued damask wing-back chair in the corner.

And I like that.

They sing about God a little too much on the public radio station for my taste, but, then again, I don't have to live here, so it really isn't my place to say, is it? This place is for the cows and the Stetsons and the folks who still love to talk about Stonewall Jackson, affectionately, and it's certainly nice to visit.

I can see the Appalachians from our bedroom window, and that's better than anything that would be on TV at 8:30 on a Saturday night anyway.

Except "Cops," of course.