Catlett: I.

A Serial

It was the time of year to drive the dusty backroads near Catlett Station again, a little south of here. It was an homage of sorts and a useful holiday of free time that occurred annually in late May,

I once had temporary housing just outside of Catlett eight years back while interning at Horton Winery, Gordonsville, in August. It was haunting to stay in a tiny community that had a history hidden by the insignificance of the place.

Good fortune helped find temporary housing locally, and the land lady, a reporter for the local court, was an attractive divorce’ with teenage children. However, given the place was needed only two weeks before my billet very close to the winery opened up, it was a comfortable and convenient place to bunk on weekdays and much closer than the 96 miles to make the trip back home weekends.

Besides, Suzie, the landlady, had a friend who flew Stearman biplanes out of the nearby field and there was at least the prospect of meeting him through her to address another personal interest.

It is one thing to read historical accounts that attempt to portray the landscape but quite another to be immersed in the geography over which battles had taken place, some too obscure to find a place in professionally complied histories written by academics.

Many places in rural Virginia had not changed much since 1860.

The Shenandoah Valley, falling between the Blue Ridge to the east and Appalachians to the west, had been the theater of operations between 1861 and 1864.

It was curious and fateful that my vineyard training often carried me to rural Virginia often within walking distance of battles described in family letters home to Upstate New York in the 1860s.

Of course, I had been raised from a small boy, hearing the family war stories in miniature from the point of view of participants, and family legends often contain impossibilities and exaggerations over four generations of re-telling.

While it would be impossible to confirm and verify the accuracy of the myths, being a traveling winemaker made it possible to investigate in the field and research in DC area archives, the facts of the events. There was no intent: my gigs just happened to coincide with family letters and historical accounts.

Both battles and vineyards seem to favor the same ground. I don’t know why but that had been my experience over fifteen years of winemaking. This included Purcellville and Lovettsville; Middleburg; Cross Keys; Gordonsville; Upperville and Paris and Catlett. Toward the northern part, Union Cavalry turf; toward the southern, prime Mosby theater of operations.

A relative had won the Bruce Catton Medal about 1961 for his historical research into cavalry and community involvement of Essex County, New York, during the Virginia campaigns of 1861-1864.

I would catch up and read that manuscript copy found fifty or sixty years later in the Library of Congress.

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