Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508150076
SECTION: DISCOVER ROANOKE VALLEY PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ In the fall many people go more or less insane about the color of dying leaves. Dying leaves - suburban versions of which eventually fall and have to be raked up in heart-breaking, back-ruining labor - have inspired song writers and poets for centuries.
I like dying leaves all right. I just have a different idea of how to look at them. I'm not going to rush up to the Blue Ridge Parkway - although it is lovely in the fall and tradition says this is the place to go for leaf-viewing.
My suggestion for viewing is a small mountain, or mound, at Elliston, which is about 30 minutes from Roanoke on U.S. 460-11.
There is no hassle and the leaf colors on this small mound that thrusts up from bottom land are usually the loveliest you can find.
The Park Service has nothing to with Elliston, so there is no sign. There are also no concessions, and you won't pick up a lot of literature your grandchildren will find in your desk one of these days.
Since the Park Service isn't around to put up a quaint sign, I don't know the name of the small mountain. I have asked at least one Elliston native, and he didn't know either. He did say there was a hanging rock of some kind up there.
Hanging Rock Mountain? I don't think so.
Anyway, you don't need a name to enjoy this sudden, glorious display of autumn color. And, with no offense to the Parkway, how many autumn leaves do you need to see?
In addition, although it has never been a tourist attraction as far as I know, there is the nearby and historic "Elliston Straightaway."
This straight stretch of road - long before U.S. 460-ll was four-laned - was the place country boy daredevils opened up their Fords, Chevrolets, Hudson Terraplanes, and occasional Harley-Davidsons along that then-rare section of straight two-laned highway.
This hustling through lovely bottom land was not drag racing. It involved honest effort to see how fast whatever you were driving would go on a straight section of road.
And along the Straightaway, you also encounter legend in Fotheringay, an old residence that has the same name as the castle in which Mary, Queen of Scots, calm in a red wig, was beheaded.
It's not open to tourists, but you can't take leave of Fotheringay without mentioning the tradition that one of its early masters was buried seated so he could watch his slaves work the rich bottom land below.
Another favorite visiting place of mine is Lexington, about an hour away from Roanoke on Interstate 81.
You don't hear it much anymore, but Lexington was once called the Valhalla of the South. This description may not be universally popular today, in terms of being politically correct.
Anyway, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson is buried there in a cemetery named after him. And nothing can change that.
Robert Edward Lee, and most of his family, rest there in the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University. Warrior Lee became president of then Washington College after Appomattox.
There is the Virginia Military Institute Museum - newly renovated and open year round. There, Jackson's horse - the one he was riding when friendly fire struck him down at Chancellorsville - stands, made relatively immortal by stuffing. The horse's name was Little Sorrel. It was once treated by the Smithsonian's taxidermist.
Lee's horse, Traveller, actually a bit more beloved than Little Sorrel, was merely buried near the chapel and never stuffed. Little Sorrel, frankly, was a scruffy animal and taxidermy hasn't changed that. Traveller was a magnificent warhorse.
Virginia Military Institute also has the George C. Marshall Museum - a monument to the man who, it is generally thought, figured out American strategy in World War II. And there are George Patton's ivory-handled pistols in the museum.
There's a lot more there. The Lexington Visitor's Center will be glad to tell you about it.
Now, on Interstates 81 and 64 to Charlottesville, and from there to Monticello, the mansion Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, built on a mountain. He included some amenities most 18th century homes didn't have.
Monticello strikes people differently. To me, it has seemed to have a feeling of cold desolation about it. I am not comfortable, for example, in the main salon - although my familiarity with such salons is severely limited.
There is Jefferson's calendar clock, which comes right out of the floor as it tells the dates and months. I see this as a wonderful example of Jeffersonian gadgetry. The 18th century would have loved it
There is also the copier Jefferson invented, long before you had to worry about running out of toner. He rigged up two pens on wires and thus copied whatever he wrote.
There is the wine elevator he designed to bring the best French stuff in the house to the table. It was John Kennedy, at a 20th century gathering of eagles at the White House, who said there hadn't been such a collection of intellect in the presidential mansion since Jefferson dined there alone.
And there is the famous built-in bed he designed - a bed that causes some irreverent snickering centuries later.
He included a kind of loft above it, and it has often been said that Jefferson built it that way so that his black slave, Sally Hemings, could enter the bedroom secretly.
Thomas Jefferson and "Dusky Sally" aside , our next stop is in the city of Bedford, some 30 miles from Roanoke, on U.S. 460-221, and there we find Avenel, an antebellum mansion that once went with a plantation.
Avenel now is a public place, but when I knew it almost 50 years ago, it was the home of Harry and Peggy Maupin - parents of a school friend, and thus I spent some time there.
It is a lovely place. It was never foreboding, although it is said to have a ghost. She is called the White Lady of Avenel and is said to descend the main staircase gracefully and without the suggestion of menace. I am told she wears a white ball gown, is a blonde and carries a parasol - a southern lady's primary weapon against the sun.
Spending a night in that house, with its thick walls and the magnolias out front, you listened for the lady's gentle steps on the stair. You wanted to hear them and kept hoping you wouldn't.
It is said Robert Edward Lee once slept there, too.
Sponsors hope to have tours every third Sunday afternoon. Call Kathy Johnson at 586-4238 to see if you can catch one.
Now, take the Parkway south from Roanoke - watching some more leaves on the way if you want - to U.S. 52 and then north to Hillsville. When I do this, I see Floyd Allen, badly wounded by gunfire, trying to mount a horse in front of the Carroll County Courthouse but failing to escape into the mountains on a brooding March morning in 1912.
You'll also have to make up your own reenactments of the day the Allens, the Edwardses and officers of the law, shot up the courthouse - leaving five people, including the judge, dead.
The courthouse, much-remodeled inside, is still there as it was on March 14, when one of the most incredible incidents in American history occurred - fatal gunfire in a court of law.
Who shot first is still a matter of debate, but Judge Thornton Massie died on the bench, bullets flicking lint from the shoulders of his coat.
Sheriff Lewis Webb, Commonwealth's Attorney William F. Foster, jury member Augustus Fowler and young bystander Nancy Elizabeth Ayers also died.
Allen had been found guilty of interfering with law officers who had arrested two of his nephews for interrupting church services.
Allen had met the wagon carrying the boys to jail and saw they were hog-tied. He untied them, reportedly breaking one lawman's pistol on a wagon wheel, and brought his relatives in himself. Floyd had been a lawman on occasion himself.
Overall, the participants in this gun battle were men of some stature - not ignorant, moonshine-swilling mountaineers. Still, they had a mean streak or two.
The gunsmoke and the snapping of the revolvers came after Allen was sentenced to a year in jail and the judge had denied bail. Some said Floyd drew a gun and said, "Gentleman, I ain't a-goin'" but his brother, Sidna, who was there and would serve prison time, said he didn't hear his brother say anything.
Sidna would later write about the shootings in heroic prose: "The day had dawned dark and gloomy, with lowering clouds, as if presaging some dire calamity, and now these evil prophecies were being fulfilled. Men were falling as grain before reapers, with guns tightly clenched in their hands."
Eventually Floyd and his son, Claude, would be electrocuted. The other family members served time in prison.
There are no reenactments, and the bullet holes inside the courthouse have been covered by renovations. But there are two bullet holes in the wooden courthouse steps the Allens climbed on that cloudy, damp March morning.
There are no formal tours, but folks in the circuit court clerk's office regularly show visitors around - when they have time and when court is not in session. And visitors do come.
A visit to Hillsville may hook you on the Allens and their part in a unique event in Virginia and national history. You'll also like the taste and feel of the air in Carroll County in the fall.
by CNB