Last Sunday Paula and I crossed the Potomac River to check out the Smoketown Brewery in Brunswick, Maryland. In our retirement, sampling breweries is how we “remember the sabbath and keep it holy.”
As Moses said: Life happens. Beer helps.
We were pleasantly surprised.
Good beer. Scrumptious food. Funky ambience. Soft sofas. Cheerful staff. Easy parking.
Brunswick earned the nickname “Smoketown” in the early 1900s as a hub for smoke-spewing B&O locomotives. Locomotives passing through these days VAPE!
As we crossed back over the bridge into West Virginia, I said to myself:
Now THAT was worth a trip across the Potomac!
And just like that Thomas Jefferson popped into my head.
Why Thomas Jefferson? you ask.
Because my exclamation—That was worth a trip across the Potomac!—echoes his exclamation in the 18th century. According to his journal, upon seeing the confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac Rivers while perched on an outcropping high above Harpers Ferry, he said:
This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic!
The site does, indeed, offer a spectacular view. Couples get engaged there. Wedding vows are exchanged there.
In 1980 I officiated a wedding at that spot on the hottest day of a very hot summer. Women in gowns. Men in tuxes. Me in an alb. Everybody sweating buckets.
I could have said:
Dearly beloved, this wedding is worth a trek up 65 steep stone steps!
But I didn’t.
Instead I said to the beaming bride and groom:
Getting here was hard. Fortunately, marriage is a lot easier.
Every school child in Jefferson County visits Jefferson Rock and reads Jefferson’s famous words on a plaque. What they don’t learn is that Jefferson was not alone. It’s highly probable that at least one of his many manservants was with him.
I imagine that enslaved person saying:
That may be so for you, but it isn’t for me. Neither this view nor any other in this country is worth MY voyage across the Atlantic!
Those words didn’t make it to a plaque. But if they had, it would be removed in a heartbeat today.
“Improper ideology!”
We must now believe a lie:
Slaves were happy here.
