Alexander Vandegrift on Virginia

“This being only thirty years after the Civil War, Charlottesville abounded in military experiences. From as long as I can remember Grandfather Carson told me stories about his campaigns. He was a very impressive man and I listened carefully to his tales. He was also very devout. A Baptist deacon, he said prayers before breakfast; if you missed these, you missed breakfast. He held few men in awe, but those few he treated mighty respectfully- he always prayed to "the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson."”

“The Virginia town of Charlottesville is a good place to remember. I was born there on March 13, 1887, and lived there until 1909 when I left for a new home, the Marine Corps. Forty years later I returned, then moved to Florida, my current home. Charlottesville is still a good place to remember. To me Charlottesville will always be a little town sitting quiet in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the home of some 8,000 people, dirt streets lighted by gas lamps, a yellow glow that on a winter evening peeped comfortably through the drawn drapery of the red-brick houses on East High Street- my route when I was hurrying to explain to my parents why I was late for supper.”

“In those years we lived rather close to the Civil War, an atmosphere that molded our likes and dislikes almost into one. We were so soundly Democratic that our parents always pointed out Charlottesville's only Republican to any visitor. The first time politics meant anything to me was during Grover Cleveland's second campaign. My mother took me to the balcony of Monticello Hotel to watch a torchlight political parade which to me meant my father handsomely dressed in a gray alpaca coat, a gray beaver hat and a rooster on his shoulder. Such state occasions rarely occurred. Most of the time we entertained ourselves. In spring, when Virginia smells sweeter than any place I have since visited in the world, we went blackberrying to bring back loaded pails which Henrietta, my mother's cook of long years, baked into fragrant and delicious pies. Summers we swam in the Rivanna River, a muddy little stream about two miles from town; sometimes we fished it from an old flat-bottomed boat and occasionally pulled out a perch or catfish. When the leaves turned brown we took schoolbags and hiked to the nearby Ragged Mountains to garner bushels of chestnuts and later to cook them over red coals and enjoy their odor as much as their meat. After Christmas the little ponds sometimes froze over, which meant digging out skates from the hall closet and trying our luck on ice never more than an inch and a half thick- and many were the duckings we took.”