Hang on St. Chrisopher: Adrian McKinty's New Irish Crime Drama

 

 

Hang on Saint Christopher: A Sean Duffy Novel (2025)

By Adrian McKinty

Blackstone publishing, 296 pages.

★★★★

 

Hang on Saint Christopher, with the hammer to the floor

Put a highball on the case, nail across the door...

There's a 750 Norton busting down the door.

 

The new novel from Irish writer Adrain McKinty takes its seemingly odd title from the above lyric from a Tom Waits song. And, yes, 750 Norton motorcycles factor into the mystery. This is another installment in McKinty’s Sean Duffy series, but here's all you need to know to get up to speed. For many people in Northern Ireland the fictional Duffy is a traitor. Not only is he a cop, he’s also a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Sean is a Catholic boy who in the minds of enemies might as well be a Protestant. When in Northern Ireland Duffy maintains a home in Carrickfergus, which is far enough away from the outbursts of violence in Belfast and close to the ferry dock to Cairnryan, Scotland.

 

Duffy is an RUC part timer required to spend just six days a month in Northern Ireland. This will be his life for the next two years for Sean to accumulate enough time to retire and bid adieu to The Troubles. He has built a new life in Scotland with his wife Beth and their daughter Emma. He has no time for the murderous Irish Republican Army (IRA) and is almost as contemptuous of the RUC. To his mind the RUC is filled with screw-ups and careerists, the latter of whom pass the buck when they make a hash of things but grab the glory when something goes right. As if he couldn't be more conspicuous, Duffy drives a flash BMW. His Carrickfergus neighborhood appears to be upscale in the minds of many, though it’s more safe than posh.

 

He and Frank “Crabbie” McCraven are on the same part-time reserve retirement scheme. They generally manage to keep a low profile by doing paperwork; after all, why hand big cases to guys who are six days on and three weeks off? Sean has even groomed his successor, Lawson. As fate would have it, Lawson is on holiday in Spain and Sean and Frank are sucked into investigating the murder of two IRA gunmen. If Duffy had his way, of course, he'd be happy to spit on their graves. But the fragile truce in Northern Ireland doesn't work that way. The two deaths are high-profile cases and the very truce that has reduced violence has made some areas around Belfast even more tense. That’s because not everyone wants peace and even more radical faction of the IRA has arisen. It falls to Sean and Frank to defuse the situation. Or, should I say to Sean? He's a lot like Robert Parker's Spencer with a brogue, a live-wire loner with attitude and filled with wisecracks and disrespect for official/legal procedures. Why play it straight if you can take matters into your own hands?

 

Like Spencer, Duffy tempers violence with big dollops of humor. There is a set up scene in Hang on St. Christopher that will make you chuckle at how Sean deals with troublemakers in his neighborhood. Moral: Don't mess with the Beamer and don't be a bloody fool!

 

If only the two murderers lent themselves to such out-of-the-box solutions. The humor is there, but add bigger dollops of grit, danger, hairy escapes, and bloodshed. This investigation has a bit of everything: carjacking, bugged phones, motorcycles circling like Indians attacking the cavalry, an art forger, and deep looks at the IRA ‘s influence in the United states and beyond. (Cue the CIA!) Even Iceland gets into this drama. Duffy faces the moral dilemma of whether to cut a deal with a known IRA gunman that he despises in order to stop a potentially worse one. Being that it's Ireland, the two creeps are brothers.

 

Duffy is a pain in the arse, but the thing about rule-breakers is that they seldom get hung up on moral qualms if there's a way to keep devils at bay. One of my favorite Duffy traits is that the man is a musical genius. From classical to classic rock by way of punk, folk music, rap, reggae, and beyond you can't stump Duffy in a game of Name that Tune. And maybe you can't stuff stump him at Know Your Art either. Or can you?

 

Rob Weir

 

Kehinde Wiley and the Last of the Lost Cause?

 

 

Rumors of War, 30' tall

 

The Last of the Lost Cause?*

*This essay/review is part of a larger in-progress project on Civil War mythology.

 

If you don’t follow the art world carefully, you might not know the statue above. It is a work that subverts one of the biggest lies of the past 160 years. The sculptor is Kehinde Wiley. If you can’t quite place the name, I’ll bet you know his presidential portrait of Barack Obama, but first things first. 

 

Wiley portrait of Barack Obama

 

 

Wiley’s equestrian statue is titled “Rumors of War” and is meant to shock. Instead of a wig-topped noble or a dashing solider, Wiley’s defiant figure is a black man with his dreadlocks tied back suggestive of a crown or an Indian sachem’s topknot. The figure is also wearing high-top sneakers, blue jeans, and a warm-up jacket. You can find this statue outside the main entrance to Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA).

 

Wiley based “Rumors of War” on a statue of J.E.B. Stuart that once sat atop a similar pedestal on the city’s Monument Avenue where it shared company with other “heroes” of the Confederacy. You might recall that those came down during Black Lives Matter protests in 2017. There is but one statue remaining, that of tennis great Arthur Ashe. CSA president Jeferson Davis was among those that pulled down and defiled. Wiley’s statue suggests that the real “war” was/is that of black freedom. That’s not the way the story is usually told.

 

Jefferson Davis vandalized; Stuart statue in storage

   
 

 

The Confederacy was defeated, but you’d hardly know that from the way the Civil War was retold before all the bodies were put to rest. The so-called “Lost Cause” was the ideological precursor to legal and customary segregation that sought to strip newly emancipated enslaved peoples of their political, economic, and human rights. The so-called “Jim Crow” era was the order of things until most of its vestiges were outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Even then, the “war” Wiley wants you to ponder still rages: the one for black equality and dignity.

 

The Lost Cause did as much, perhaps more, to ingrain racism deeply into American culture. It claimed that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery and invented a host of specious and nonsensical alt.realities. You name it and it was tried: tariffs, the interference of Northern radicals, states rights, attempts to subvert the Southern agricultural system, a Northern political power grab, Southern honor…. Some of these have validity, but it’s simply impossible to fashion an explanation for the Civil War that doesn’t have black slavery at its core. (Tariffs are rising today, but I don’t detect a serious call to arms!) The Lost Cause created myths: the genteel South vs. the money-grubbing and unkempt North, a war of Northern aggression foisted upon the South, Scarlett O’Hara-like plantations marked by easy-going relations between white and blacks, kindly Southern “massas,” illiterate” slaves better off in bondage, evil abolitionists, etc. Some of that has a kernel of truth as well, but it all rests upon a worldview in which all whites were viewed as better than any black person. 

 

Currently in garden by Valentine Museum. Soon to be reinstalled at the Ironworks. 

 

When this statue was placed in front of the Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond, howls of protest erupted and white people committed acts of vandalism against it. Ditto the Arthur Ashe monument. Do we presume they did so genteelly?

 

Looking down Scarlet's stair case

 

For the record, Southern charm is not my thing, but parts of the South retain an air of grace. I might have been just as happy to have some barbecue and listen to the blues, but we had lunch one day at the Jefferson Hotel in down Richmond and it’s quite a place. Scarlett O’Hara even sashayed down its staircase in Gone with the Wind. There are tons of plantation homes below the Mason-Dixon Line that ooze with elegance as long as you don’t think about who and what sustained them.

 

As Bob Dylan put it, though, “the times they are a changing...” (Okay, he dropped the final “g.”) A Richmond friend and I visited the “Southern White House,” where Jefferson Davis quartered during the war. In many ways it’s more democratic that the one in Washington DC. It belonged to a bourgeois doctor who made it a home. Davis did all of his serious presidential duties at the state capital building a block away. The dining room picture is about the biggest thing in the house. Make no mistake, though; Davis was a Confederate and a racist. The good news is that guides no longer try to whitewash that. Nor do they fail to tell you that the house “staff” was comprised of wage-earning whites and white indentured servants, but the vast majority of workers were enslaved black folks. 

 

Not exactly the State Dining Room

 

To circle back to art, Kehinde Wiley is far from the first artist of color seeking to put African Americans back in the historical narrative. He is, though, one of the most successful and clever. He’s a lot of things the hardshell right hates: black, gay, has an Ivy Legree degree (Yale), and possess an impressive grasp of art history. If you wonder what’s up with the flowered backdrops of his portraits, know that his role models are precisely those Old Masters (and Mistresses) venerated by white cultural elites. The VMFA has a Wiley painting titled “Willem van Heythusen Posing with a Sword.” Why the Dutch name? It’s based on Frans Hals painting done in 1625. He has done the same with religious paintings and most of his portraits. Things look a bit different when we replace white bodies with black ones and update the drapery, doesn’t it? 

 

Frans Hals

Wiley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joker II Should be Subtitled Folly for Two

 

 

 

Joker: Folie á Deux

Directed by Todd Phillips

Warner Brothers, 138 minutes, R (violence, nudity)

★★

 

Joker (2019) made a billion dollars, garnered 11 Academy Award nominations, and won two: Best Original Score and Best Acting (Joaquin Phoenix). Joker: Folie á Deux (2024) is why many moviegoers hate sequels. It had the same director, Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix returned as Arthur Fleck, many of the secondary actors reupped, and megastar Lady Gaga joined the cast. It cost four times as much to make as the first movie but earned 1/4 of what the first film raked in at the box office. Counting promos for overseas markets, it lost about $150 million. There were no Academy Award nominations, but 7 Golden Raspberries including Worst Remake and Worst Screen Combo (Phoenix and Gaga).

 

Was it bad? Yes, it was. It's again a thriller, but also a musical–if one has an expansive definition of that term that doesn't include staying on key or paying attention to melody. Whose bright idea was it to sign Lady Gaga, a seriously talented vocalist, and direct her to sing badly?

 

The thin plot picks up where the first movie left off. Party clown Arthur Fleck (Phoenix ) is in jail/mental hospital for five murders and that's not counting killing his own mother, which no one knows about. The scenes inside Arkham are depressing, bleak, and chilling. (Arkham is a now-empty isolation hospital in Bellevue, New Jersey.) Each day is like the previous. Prisoners are roused from their sleep and line up to dump their slop buckets, before being sent to a day room where  Arthur, the would-be clown, is badgered into  telling a joke. Dozens of seriously demented prisoners watch TV as guards look on, both to keep the peace and to seize opportunities to practice sadistic discipline. Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) is the worst of the lot, though he feigns sympathy for Arthur. Outside the walls, street anarchists and attention-starved young people chant Joker’s praises.

 

Some of this might have been powerful had not Phillips and co-script writer Scott Silver turn the film into demented musical theatre devoid of logic. For some reason, there are also women in the institution, including self-committed Harley “Lee” Quinzel (Gaga). Well-behaved men can sit in group therapy sessions with the women. Hmm… what could go wrong? Lee sees Arthur as a hero to her outward rebel, poor girl persona. Before you know it, Lee is sneaking into Arthur’s cell where they pledge their love and bodies to each other.

 

How? Beats me. They also sing tuneless songs to each other. Is real or a fantasy?  Show tunes without the show? The central theme is “That's Entertainment.” If only it were. But nothing is quite as strange as the attempt of Arthur's attorney Marianne Stewart (Catherine Keener) to win a new trial for Arthur based on the grounds that he can’t be guilty of murder because he was insane at the time but is now recovering. Huh? Contrary to what most believe, the standard isn’t sanity perse; it’s whether a defendant knows the difference between right and wrong. Oh, Arthur knows! His in-house interview with a TV journalist doesn't go well and neither does his trial.

 

To put it indelicately, this movie stinks. Stop here if you’ve never seen it but still want to. Read on if you're convinced I'm saving you from the pain of doing so. Here come the spoilers!

 

Arthur does exactly what his character would do; he sabotages his trial. He would rightly be locked up for life, except a firebomb blows up the courthouse, and kills numerous people. Arthur stumbles out of the rubble to search for Lee. When he finds Lee and says she's the only one who has ever seen him as he really is, she’s no longer interested. She wants Joker, not pathetic Arthur Fleck. He is recaptured, sent back to Arkham, and is ostracized by guards and prisoners alike. Another psychotic stabs Arthur, who bleeds out.

 

Near the end Lady Gaga sings with power and authority. What a waste! The best that can be said of this misguided project is that the Looney Tunes-like “Me and My Shadow” at the movie’s beginning is beguiling. What was the point of the rest? A lampoon of woke lefty culture? How the young can be led by their nose rings? I hope not. Otherwise this film can add backdoor Trumpism to its list of sins.

 

If Joker Two really hemorrhaged $150 million, it deserved to lose every penny.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody's Fool a Harlan Coben Thriller

 

 

 

Nobody’s Fool (2025)

By Harlan Coben

Grand Central Publishing, 340 pages.

★★★★

 

A reminder: Book (and movie) titles can legally be reused. I suspect this is because most titles use ordinary words that don’t lend themselves to copyrights. Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool (1993) is one of his best-known books and there are at least two films of that name. It’s also the title of a new thriller from Harlan Coben. I wish he had chosen a different title. His protagonist Sami Kierce is a fool when we first meet him and 22 years later he still makes mistakes. Nonetheless, it's a very good novel, even if there’s a fairly major logic flaw.

 

Sami is of Pakistani descent who, in the present, is 40-something, is recently married to the lovely and supportive Molly, and they have a one-year-old son Henry. Some 20 years earlier Sami was a recent college graduate who partied way too much. In a trip to Spain he meets Anna at a disco and stayed with her for nearly a week. He awoke one morning covered in blood, a knife in his hand, and Anna lifeless beside him. He doesn’t think he killed her, but doesn’t know what to do. In a panic he called his father, who tells him to talk to no one and board the next plane to the United States: “You’re a brown kid in a foreign country.” He violated his father’s command in one respect. Before he scampered he tells the police that a woman had been murdered.

 

Five years later he was a police detective engaged to Nicole, who is murdered. The gunman, one Tad Grayson, was sentenced to life, but Sami had unresolved anger issues that led to mistakes and dismissal. Now he’s an unlicensed gumshoe-for-hire by sleazy divorce lawyers for tasks like taking photographs of unfaithful spouses. He also had a side gig of teaching criminal justice courses to night school adults. On evening Sami is startled to see Anna walk into the classroom, meet his eye, and race out of the room, though not before one of his students dropped a tracking device into her coat.  

 

Was it really Anna? Sami follows a fading signal to a Connecticut estate and gets beaten up by security for his trouble. Sami begins to act like a real detective and enlists his students in real-life lessons in research and surveillance. Sami’s life takes a series of dramatic turns. First, he comes to suspect that Anna is a bigger catch than he imagined: Victoria Belmond, an heiress who has been missing for 22 years. This is confirmed by her parents, wealthy philanthropists Archie and Talia, and eldest son Thomas. In fact, they’d like to pay Sami a $100,000 retainer if he will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and investigate what happened to Victoria in Spain; there are 11 years for which she has no memory. They offer another half million plus expenses for three months of investigative work. He’s not crazy about signing the NDA, but he and Molly are swimming in debt.

 

His lawyer friend Arthur advises him to sign and lays another shock on him. Because of past irregularities several criminals he investigated have been released; one is Tad Grayson for whom Sami has a hatred bordering on sanguinary. There’s no doubt in his mind, or that of his former partner, that Grayson murdered Nicole. The only solace is that Grayson’s were vacated–meaning he could be retried–not dismissed. Moreover, someone is stalking Molly.

 

First things first. It’s off to Spain with his family. Matters get super twisty. Was Anna/Victoria kidnapped? Used as a sex slave? A scammer? Who was the guy who appeared in the bedroom when Sami screamed 22 years earlier? Back in New York, who is “Scraggly Dude,” the lowlife making Molly’s life uncomfortable? Who was the last person to see Victoria before she disappeared at midnight on Y2K? Why do two more murders take place and why was Sami shot? Was Anna really Victoria? Are the Belmonds as they seem? Was Grayson a wronged man?

 

Coben is a wonderful thriller writer. His plots are dense and well-constructed. He also makes judicious use of humor. Get back to me when you figure out the massive logic hole.

 

Rob Weir

 

Note: I loved this quote from Sherlock Holmes via his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle: It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to fit facts. It’s used by Sami and is also a good way to read Coben’s novel.

 

Swede Caroline: Brilliant or ...?

 

 

Swede Caroline (2024)

Directed by Finn Bruce and Brook Driver

Belstone Pictures, 97 minutes, R (pixelated nudity, minor violence)

★★★★

 

Swede Caroline (note spelling) is the strangest film I’ve seen since Hundreds of Beavers and matches its production values as a homemade film made on a shoestring budget. It was made in Britain and made just $68,000 worldwide, so I doubt you’ve ever heard of it. If you can stream it or find on DVD, though, it’s worth trying. You will have one of two opinions about it; you’ll either find it so wacky you’ll hoot despite yourself, or you’ll think it’s amateurish and dumb.

 

We will get into this, but first consider that few people on the planet as obsessed by gardening and rural nostalgia as the English. If you’ve ever watched Masterpiece Theatre it’s practically a given that there were mentions of gardening. How many times have we seen some upper-class twit with a name like Lady Handspring Buffington Chicken-Plucker trimming her prize-winning roses, or a country fair with Farmer Bursten Pantstear showing off his sheep? (E’yup lads, look at yonder ryet nice yows by the sitch.)

 

Swede Caroline is a mockumentary on gardening. Caroline (Jo Hartley) grows big marrows (a courgette or zucchini) that can weigh hundreds of pounds. Alas, not everything is on the up and up at the agricultural fair in Shepton Mallet (Somerset). Somehow Caroline’s marrows never win because the veggie judge (Mark Silcox) disqualifies her for things no one else sees-like a hairline crack- and awards the cup to someone from the better classes. Caroline is not such a person; she’s divorced, a bit on the rough side, lives in a council flat, and has a bear-like goofball boyfriend Willy (Celyn Jones) who is more brawn than brain.

 

Rigged judging is scandalous enough, but a line is crossed when someone sneaks into Caroline’s back garden, smashes into her small greenhouse, and steals her plants and seeds. It’s the crime of the century in Shepton Mallet. Willy tries to calm Caroline, but another neighbor, Paul (Richard Lumsen) launches a full-scale investigation. He fancies himself an expert because he’s watched a lot of TV programs about detectives and has their techniques down. (Not!) Caroline knows that Paul is basically an ageing slobbish geek who has no life, wiles away time playing video games, and watches computer porn. Speaking of which, Caroline approaches Louise (Aisling Bea) who allegedly does know something about detection, though every time we see her she’s wearing a slinky robe, as is her husband Lawrence (Ray Ferron).

 

As the investigations proceed, one silly thing after another occurs. I shan’t reveal them other than to say: bad cellphone video, jealousy, an MP (Member of Parliament), a close encounter with a garden fork, demolition, plant napping, social class satire, mallows posing as mammaries, and a group of swingers. Through it all, Kirsty (Rebekah Murrell) gives us a meta backseat point of view. She is allegedly making a documentary about the investigation. (Get it? A documentary within a mockumentary.) I won’t pretend that the script will knock Shakespeare from his literary pedestal. Directors Bruce and Driver made the film for just $64k, cut every corner that could be cut, and turned them into roundabouts. I’ll leave it you to determine if what’s on the screen really is amateurish or whether it’s tongue-in-cheek deliberate. I suspect it was an absolute hoot to make what is akin to an extended Monty Python sketch. Perhaps the cast made a few quid on the video release and buggered off to the pub to laugh and hoist a few pints.

 

About the title. There is a passing mention to a Swede, but that part of the plot is too convoluted to connect the dots clearly. My theory is that it’s another of the film’s many in-jokes. It could be an oblique nod to the film’s (tame) sex subplot. Sweden is generally credited with being the first nation to legalize what was then called “pornography.”* Then again, it might just be a bad pun. Swedes are rutabagas in Britain, though rutabagas are not marrows.

 

Like Hundreds of Beavers, the best way to digest Swede Caroline is just to go with it. Let its absurdity wash over you like V8 Juice.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Many film histories consider Sweden’s I am Curious Yellow (1967) to be a forerunner in mainstreaming movie with overt sexual content. It was followed by Blue in 1968. The Swedish flag is yellow and blue, though the films are black and white.

 

If in Richmond, Catch this Exhibit

 

 

Frida as Toddler

 

Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth

Virginia Museum of Fine Art (Richmond)

Through September 28, 2025

 

Should you find yourself anywhere near Richmond between now and the end of September, by all means make a stop at the city’s Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) to see Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth.

 

A splash of cubism

 

 

Kahlo (1907-54) is, of course, one of the world’s most famed artists–so much so that perhaps you are, such as I was, suspicious that there’s anything new to reveal about her. Wrong! First of all, though Kahlo died at 47, she was prolific in numerous genres, including surrealism, cubism, symbolism, magical realism, and modernism. Second, she had an adventurous love life that remains shocking to some. Her great love was Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to whom she was married twice (1929-39 and 1940-54), but they had an open marriage. Kahlo was openly bisexual and among her lovers was Josephine Baker, Leon Trotsky, photographer Nikolas Muray, Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi (who might also been a Rivera conquest), singer Chavela Vargas, and possibly actress Dolores del Rio and painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Though she was a petite mite (about 5’3” tall and not more than 100 pounds), she didn’t apologize for her admiration for communism or her love affairs. 

 

Hit by bus 1926

 

 

These things have long been known about Kahlo, but what’s new in VMFA exhibit are images of her seldom seen outside of Mexico, including hurried drawings, self-portraits, and photos and paintings of her made by others. Kahlo was just 15 when she met 41-year-old Rivera. When they married the first time, Frida was already in the poor health that haunted her for most of her life. At 18, she was hit by a bus. In all, she endured 32 operations, including the amputation of her gangrenous left leg in 1953. (In all likelihood gangrene is what killed her in 1954.)

 

Suicide of Dorothy Hale 1939

 

 

 

Kahlo, Sun and Life 1947

 

 

Granted that two world wars and her love of surrealism and modernism predisposed her to favor gloomy subjects, but so too did her Mexican identity with its fixation on death, skeletons, and the supernatural. The VMFA exhibit is dotted with such material.

 

That said, most visitors are most likely to react most strongly to subjects that are about her. Kahlo was one of those people with plastic (as in malleable) features. Kahlo was something of a fashion plate, a bright quetzal-like presence who wore beautiful clothes based upon traditional Mexican dress. Yet, she retained her unibrow and, depending upon how she posed could look either alluring, coquettish, or masculine. The latter tendency was enhanced later in life when she seldom bothered to pluck her moustache-like upper lip. Her attractiveness also varied according to who was painting or photographing her. Or, how she felt. Naturally, she painted the body cast in which she was encased after one of her many surgeries. 

 

Age 19, first self-portrait

 

 

Photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1931

 

 

Seated nude self-portrait 1930

 

By Nikolas Muray 1939

Frida with Figurine 1939 by Muray

 

By Dora Marr 1939

 

 

 

 

 

Self-portrait with loose hair 19477

 

Today Frida Kahlo would have reaped NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) royalties. And you could bet she’d dictate the terms!

 

Rob Weir

 

Small Towns West and North of Richmond VA

 

When most travelers think of Virginia, the places that first pop to mind are suburban Washington, DC, the Chesapeake Bay, and Virginia Beach. Devotees might pay visits to  Civil War battlefields,* presidential homes (Monticello and Mt. Vernon top the list),  and specialty whiskey tours in the Appalachians. But how many think of Goochland County? Where you ask? Exactly!

 

Tuckahoe Plantation Exterior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interior

Interior

 

 

Mahala Boyd, enslaved at Tuckahoe

Where the enslaved quarters were located

 

Recently we visited some friends living near Richmond. Virginia’s capital has the usual sprawl and ring roads, but it’s amazing how quickly the pace slows when you leave it. We stayed at a Vrbo in Tuckahoe on Richmond’s western edge booked by our friends. We were shocked when we drove down a one-mile dirt lane to encounter an elegant white mansion. Tuckahoe Plantation was the childhood home of Thomas Jefferson. It was owned by the Randolph family but when William Randolph III died in 1745- one year after his wife- an agreed upon codicil in Randolph’s will made Peter Jackson the caretaker of his three children. (Easily done, as Peter’s wife was a Randolph.) Young Thomas spent ages 2-9 at Tuckahoe and, according to legend, developed distaste for slavery there. (That might be apocryphal given that TJ did precious little to free enslaved people.) For the record, we didn’t stay in the plantation house; we bedded in a farm house a few hundred yards away, but we got a private tour of the house with the James River running within sight of the back door.

 

The town of Tuckahoe was six miles away, near the campus of the University of Richmond. The town is prim and neat and its population of 49,000 is twice as large as all of Goochland County. Our friends lived in Manakin-Sabot, which has 4,634 people–if you can find them. Some maps list them as separate villages and our GPS didn’t recognize either until we put in Richmond in the address for our friends’ road. The county seat is Goochland, but GPS has trouble with it as well unless you ask for Goochland Courthouse (pop. 1,301), which is distinct from Goochland or Goochland Maidens! 

 

 

You are in horse country in Goochland County and many of the others heading north toward Front Royal and Winchester. We’re talking miles and miles of white fences to contain horses. If you had a lumber monopoly, you’d be able to buy New England and lease it to Canada. As for the livestock, we’re not talking heavy Percherons, Clydesdales, or swaybacked nags. These well-groomed beasties are thoroughbreds, riding horses, and polo ponies.

 

Our original homeward plan was to keeping going west, perhaps stop in Charlottesville, and then decide whether to follow the Skyline Drive or proceed to I-81N. Rain changed our decision–the Skyline Drive’s views would be limited and 81 is a high-speed curtain of trucks–so we decided to meander on some backroads. As for the towns of Goochland County, there pretty much aren’t any! Just dots of the map with names like Crozier, Gum Spring, Oilville, Fork Union, and Kent’s Store. 

 

 

 

As we drove west and north of Richmond, we witnessed Virginia’s contrasts. Make no mistake, horse country is beautiful and you’ll see lots of Virginia’s signature architecture, large white homes with second-story front-facing verandahs upon which no foot ever trod. You’ll also see rural life many steps down from McMansions. Local businesses tend to be repair shops, farmstands, antique shops, fabricators, and visitor centers to tell you what you can do in the area. Hint: If you’re enjoying the scenery and tranquil pace of life, you’re already doing what you can do there!

 

Unless you wish to veer east again to Culpepper or forge northward toward Front Royal, there’s not much in the way of a full-services town. Front Royal is generally considered a supply center for the Skyline Drive, the Appalachian Trail, or the Shenandoah Valley, though it’s a fairly sleepy place and many people push northeast to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Since those two towns sort of defined the southwestern edge of our childhood explorations we headed north to Winchester, grabbed some food, connected with Route 81, and joined the trucks trekking northward. But I’ll say it again, Virginia horse country is mighty pretty–even in the rain. 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

* Virginia is littered with Civil War sites, so it scarcely matters which part you visit.