Tinkerbell's Travels

As we left Fredericksburg, VA to head north to our Ft. Belvoir campground, we were greeted with the ubiquitous Washington, DC traffic.

We finally arrived at the campground at Ft. Belvoir and quickly got settled.

Ft. Belvoir is where Jay and I first met. I was a civilian supporting the Department of Defense (DoD) and Jay was an active-duty soldier stationed at Ft. Belvoir. DoD still hasn’t erected a statue commemorating this important event in history.

However, there are other plaques around the Post that explain some less consequential historical events on these same lands: Ft. Belvoir, which hugs the west bank of the Potomac River, was developed on the site of the former Belvoir plantation and estate of the William Fairfax family.

Fairfax purchased the 8,658-acre property in 1738 from his cousin, the 6th Lord Fairfax, after Lord Fairfax got William a job as the tax collector for the Potomac River. The job must have paid well since William soon built a large, brick mansion overlooking the river. The family lived at Belvoir (meaning “beautiful view” in French) for more than 30 years. In 1783, a fire destroyed the home except for the brick walls. The walls remained standing until 1814 when they were demolished by canon fire from British ships during the Battle of the White House.

In 1910, the US Government purchased over 1,000 acres of Belvoir to build a prison. Butt, the Ladies of Mount Vernon (which sits adjacent to Belvoir), raised a fuss and the prison was built a few miles away in Lorton, VA.

During WWI, the Army expanded and built a camp at Belvoir where it moved the Army Gas School after mustard gas escaped from the school into a civilian residential area during a training exercise. Oops.

In WWII, the Army purchased more of Belvoir, which, after the War, became a de-mobilization center for troops and a research and development center for Army engineers (no mustard gas though). The local residents, a sect of pacifist Quakers, were not happy about having to leave their homes so the military base could expand. Life goes on….

Over the years, the Army engineers moved out and a number of other Army commands and Defense agencies (including the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency), moved in. Today, Ft. Bevoir has more employees than the Pentagon.

We got a good night’s rest and awoke the next day ready to greet our new traveling companion: my mother. Or, as we also refer to her: Jay’s Mother-in-Law-from-Hell. She truly was from Hell. Hell, Michigan, that is (a fun place to visit btw) Mom enjoyed telling people she was from Hell.

My mother is the person I have to thank for my active imagination. I can dream up mystical, whimsical, magical tales just as easily as I can conjure up deeply disturbing horror stories that might intrigue Stephen King.

When we were children, I terrorized my little sister by telling her imaginative, gruesome stories. I told her the Michigan lake we used to visit on family vacations had to be closed each Spring so authorities could drain the water. The lake needed to be emptied so they could scrape up the remains of bodies every year before turning on the town’s spigots to re-fill the lake.

She never really enjoyed lake swimming after that… butt, she did develop a morbid sense of humor that binds us to this day.

With my mother’s prodigious imagination, she was a successful artist. She always had immense artistic talent but kept it shelved away where it sat quietly with only a few utterances seeping out every now and then through her educational posters and dioramas as a public librarian.

After my father died, leaving her a 50-year-old widow, she embraced art with a raging enthusiasm fueled from years of bottled-up creativity. She created and sold colored pencil drawings and mixed media artwork, building up a following of art patrons who appreciated her talent.

After she had spent her creative energies, she took a breath and developed breast cancer that metastasized to her bones. Jay and I came back to Virginia from our cross-country travels and helped my mother through her final months. She died a peaceful death (thanks to hospice) surrounded by her loved ones.

All that background to explain this:

Earlier this year, my mother’s husband moved from the home they shared and couldn’t take the artwork with him. My sister Ilene and her husband Dave went to the house and carefully packed the artwork.

Visiting with Marie and Bill was so happy and uplifting! Thank you, Bill and Marie for making our task of loading packages so pleasant!

We decided to drive by a familiar place on our way back to Ft. Belvoir.

Then we visited the National Museum of the US Army, which is just outside of the gates to Ft. Belvoir.

We spent the afternoon touring the museum. The exhibits about the Cold War and about the founding of our nation were our favorite parts.

After our museum visit, we returned to Tinkerbell and started loading the artwork. Most of the art has to be in a climate-controlled environment. We patted ourselves on the back for creatively moving things from inside the bus to the basement bays and to the Jeep to make room for the large, bulky art pieces.

We put Mom safely on a shelf with a great view through the window so she could enjoy her final cross-country trip!