Monticello, and the Feral Cat

You should know that we haven't had much of a plan during any part of this trip. We try the night before to figure out go, both scenically and gastronomically. Sometime it's worked, but most of the time, I've just been busy blogging and playing with the cats and my brother's been watching American Idol and Dancing With the Stars. So then we get up in the morning, and just climb into the car. Between a $12 atlas bought in a Jersey rest stop and my 9 Southern food books, we figure it out.

So you can imagine that when both my dad and my brother's niece mentioned Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's estate, in separate conversations, we felt it was destiny. We'd previously planned to drive out to the Cape Hatteras, check out Kitty Hawk, do the nature/birthplace of flight thing, but the numbers didn't work out. We needed to go north and east at the same time, not north and then east. So it was off to Charlottesville, VA (no relation to Charlotte, NC - except in this blog). Halfway through the five-hour trip, we pulled off to grab some 'cue at a roadside general store. Turns out that the pulled pork was cooked by a local woman, who drops it off in the morning in a crock pot. We got the last delicious sandwich. I have to point out that I (inadvertently) made a 'Dukes of Hazzard'-style exit. This involved a gravel parking lot, a local gentleman in a soiled wife-beater and my hitting the gas way too hard to get back on the highway. Far as we could tell, the gentleman and the windows on the general store were still intact. The feral cat outside the store too.

Monticello (the latter half of the name sounds like the musical instrument - a topic of much discussion during the ride there) is the home of our third President. Our 35th, President Kennedy, famously said at a dinner for Nobel Prize winner in 1962, that '...probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.' Good stuff.

There's just way too much to talk about with regards to T.J., so I won't attempt to. Suffice as to say that Ivan and I chose the plantation tour over the garden tour because it's hard to reckon the fact that the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence was the same man who owned over two hundred slaves at one point in his life. Our guide provided us with a realistic depiction of slave life, as well as the economics of slavery. It was a stark contrast with the brilliant man who designed his own home and essentially worshiped intelligence and wisdom. We all need to talk more about this, despite its being such a difficult topic to discuss. Please make it a point to visit this national landmark (click here for Monticello's official site).


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