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2001-02-27 - 07:23 p.m.

D.C. Journey: Beside the Potomac

MOUNT VERNON, VA.

On another warm, sunny day in D.C. I get an early start, leaving about 9:30 in order to visit George Washington�s home at Mount Vernon before I head home. With rush hour past, my only problem in getting there was getting out of Bethesda. Actually, finding the on ramp to the Beltway. It wasn�t where I thought it�d be. But I tracked it down and just over the bridge into Virginia, took the exit for the George Washington Parkway.

Merging onto the parkway, a National Park Service sign welcomes motorists to the road, and every exit sign is brown � the color signifying national park sites across the country. The GWP (I don�t know if it�s called that at all) is like the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut: narrow, winding four-lane over hills and through groves. It�s a true parkway, a road designed to look like a park drive. It�s perfect on this bright day. I drive past Arlington National Cemetery, National Airport, the Lyndon Johnson Memorial Grove. And I laugh at the sign signifying the exit for the George Bush Center for Intelligence. I know it�s named for the father � it has to be, right? � but it�s still amusing. Try it; say it out loud: �George Bush Center for Intelligence.� Now tell me you�re not smiling.

A slowdown you�d expect on a scenic four-lane brings the traffic flow to a crawl. Over the hills and turns ahead, I can�t see an end, and soon I see the delay is caused by a disabled vehicle in the left lane. I happen to pass it at the moment the driver climbs into the cab of the tow truck and pulls away. Great timing.

As the parkway nears Alexandria, the limited-access road becomes a local thoroughfare with intersections and traffic lights. It continues through downtown Alexandria, with its shops and restaurants, banks and gas stations and parking on the street. Through town it again turns into a peaceful, scenic river drive along the Potomac.

I arrive at Mount Vernon, park and purchase my ticket. Since it�s the offseason, renovation work is being done in and around the Inn at Mount Vernon. The gift shop and snack bar have been relocated to trailers just inside the gates. I sit at one of the tables outside the snack bar and look over the map of the grounds. All this takes five minutes longer than I should have let it. As I purchased my ticket, a group of school children waited outside the gates while the chaperones organized them. While I sat there, they entered and walked up the path past me, heading to the Mansion on the grounds. I follow them, meandering along the driveway, pausing to look across the bowling green toward the southeast at the Mansion.

When I get up to the Gardener�s House and the servants� hall � where the Mansion tour begins � a line has already formed. It begins at one of the front doors to the Mansion, continues down the covered walkway to the left, into the Servants� Hall and back out to the driveway at the Mansion Circle. I reluctantly join the end of the line, right behind a parent chaperoning two boys and three girls on a school trip. The five kids talk and scream, hide from classmates they don�t want to make eye contact with, badger the chaperone. It amuses and annoys me at the same time. Inside the Servants� Hall, a woman in a park blazer give us our first talk fo the day, asking the children if they know what Washington�s famous occupation was. He liked farmer best.

We continued out onto the walkway, gazing out across the lawn at the Potomac. A few minutes later, the door opens and we�re ushured into the largest room in the Mansion, the Large Dining Room. It�s painted a brilliant color of wintergreen � called vertigris green in the Mount Vernon handbook I bought as a souvenir. Carpets protect the floor from our traffic, but aside from the pathways, the original hardwood � planks, actually � of the floor is visible. Landscape paintings are mounted on the wall, and farming implements are among the ceiling designs.

The tour exits the dining room to the Piazza and its unobstructed view down the hill to the river. Inside again, we stand in the Passage, a hallway with doors opening both to the front and back of the house, and the stairway leading up to the guest bedrooms on the second floor. Four rooms are open: The Little Parlor, with a harpsichord and chairs; the West Parlor with card games and a tea set; the Small Dining Room, pretty self-explanatory; and the only downstairs bedroom in the house.

As I climb the creaky stairs to the second floor, I catch the end of the group in the hallway at the top, so then I�m able to position myself at the front of our group for the talk in the upper hallway. Five bedrooms surround us, two guest rooms to the left at the top of the stairs, one ahead on the river side of the house, one to the right, in front of which stands the park employee, and the last through which we�ll walk. As the children clamor and scream walking up the stairs, the employee issues a loud �Shhhhh!� and raises her voice a few times to get their attention: �Students! Students! Shhhhhh! You are in General Washington�s house, but you are also in a museum. Let�s keep our voices down.�

The room behind the crowd control lady was that of Mrs. Washington�s niece, and included a small crib for her baby. There was no explanation of what that was all about � the niece, but no mention of a husband. But no timetable, either, so he might have been off fighting with Washington, or a polititian or something. Maybe it�s mentioned in the guide book.

Through the yellow bedroom, we walked through the closet to see the Washingtons� chambers. The two sides of the second floor do not connect, but to get the tour through, the back wall of a closet in the yellow bedroom was cut away, allowing us to walk into the hallway outside the room � containing the bed � where Washington died. After his death, Martha moved upstairs and slept in a third-floor bedroom until her death.

Down the back stairs, we turn into the study where the only colonial-dressed guide inside the house speaks in a slight British accent � which I couldn�t determine was fake or authentic � and asks if we have invitations. �Oh, you don�t have invitations to be in the study? My brother will be very upset.� She continued to play the part, telling us her brother was in Alexandria for the day. As we walked out past the pantry, she asked if she�d see us at dinner, served at 3 o�clock. �We, be sure you�re on time. You can be no more than five minutes late. If you�re more than five minutes late, you�ll get no dinner.� Or maybe it was supper. Whatever.

Across the colonade we reach the kitchen. It wasn�t mentioned anywhere, and I didn�t hear anyone ask why the kitchen was separate from the house. But having visited Andrew Jackson�s Hermitage in Nashville, I know that kitchens were build separately from the homes in case of a fire � the conflagration would ideally be contained in the stone kitchen and not threaten the wooden home.

Back outside, I�m free again. Free from the throngs of school children, free from the scripted tour. It�s the only way a tour of the Mount Vernon Mansion can be conducted, since the house is so frequently visited. Same with Jefferson�s Monticello in Charlottesville. But I prefer the freedom allowed on tours of the Hermitage and Graceland, conducted with recordings allowing you to move at your own pace.

I look in on the buildings lining the North Lane � the Storehouse, the Wash House, the Coach House, the Stable. Past the Paddock, I walk over to the Old Tomb, where Washington was first buried before a new tomb replaced the deteriorating old one. The original crypt stood in a wooded area with a view of the Potomac through the trees. From the old tomb, I continued down to the Wharf, where ships would stop in Washington�s day as they do today. Only now there�s the Potomac River sightseeing cruises and a lot more powerboats that stop by. But on a warm February day, the Wharf is empty. I�ve finally escaped the cacophony of the students. Nothing but the calm lapping of the waves on the wall, the rustle of leaves, the song of birds. I understand the attraction, lure and convenience of bringing school groups to Mount Vernon. I appreciate the historical and educational value, and support exposing students to the life of our first president. But I�m a little surprised there�s not one day during the week set aside for adult tours. Well, there may be, I don�t know. But I just think that it couldn�t hurt them too much to say Wednesday is the one day student tours are not admitted. It might be impossible to visit Mount Vernon without the constant commotion from children or the summer crowds that flock to Virginia.

I leave the riverside and walk back up through the woods to the tomb. A man dressed in period clothes hands red carnations to the four students who are there with their chaperone. I stand behind them as a woman � also dressed to the day � explains how George and Martha came to be buried in this tomb. In the wall of the crypt behind their caskets is an iron door, leading to the chamber with the rest of the family. After the guide gives her speech, she asks if one of the children would lead the Pledge of Allegiance before they place their carnations by the doorway. I place my hand over my heart, but realize as the children fly through the pledge that I don�t remember it as well as I used to. I even stumbled over the part at the end: �one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.� I�m still not even sure if that�s right.

I backtrack a little to visit the slave memorial, built in a grove of trees around which lie the graves of a dozen or two slaves from the estate. All lie in unmarked graves, but have been honored with several monuments near the site. Washington was known as one of the more generous slave owners, freeing them in his will upon his death.

From there I walked up the Tomb Road past the forest and fields and stopped for a last look from the west across the bowling green. I walked through the Upper Garden by the Greenhouse and into the shop for a few purchases. Back outside, I look into a few exhibits � the slave quarters, the back of the greenhouse � before leaving the estate.

I get in my car, warmed by the sun, and open the windows and sunroof � the first time all three have been open in months. I find some sunny day music � I think I pick the soundtrack to �There�s Something About Mary� � and turn north on Route 235, which will lead me to Route 1 and I-95 over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and northward to New Jersey.

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