I'm in Rocky Mount, Virginia in a spacious historic suite in an antebellum mansion built in 1850 by a man named John Hale. The Greek Revival building was once the manor house of the wealthiest plantation in Franklin County. Hale’s vast estate included 250 slaves and compromised most of the town on Rocky Mount. Hale’s son, Major Samuel Hale, left home to join the Confederate army a mere three weeks after his marriage. His life was cut short when he was killed on May 12, 1864 while engaged in a counter-attack to restore the Confederate front. The estate today is known as The Early Inn at the Grove, voted Virginia’s best Bed and Breakfast five years in a row. With six sumptuous guest suites and situated on ten acres of land, the Inn is the crown jewel of the Blue Ridge Mountain area. My first morning at the Inn includes a home cooked breakfast by twenty year old Autumn, the Inn’s housekeeper who also cooks breakfast for guests. The extremely conversational and friendly Autumn is a prime example of southern hospitality. Later, she introduces me to Nate, the tall black groundskeeper, while showing me around the grounds. During the tour I spot a small white wooden house and ask if this was one of the old slave houses. Both Nate and Autumn say that it was then Nate asks if I want to see the old smokehouse. The look inside the old smokehouse is like an old barn. A short winding staircase ascends several feet above my head and as I look up, I see a cobweb or two. Nate tells me how slaughtered animals used to hang here by the rafters, salted and smoked, long before the days of refrigeration. I’m familiar with the mystique of old barns, having grown up in rural Chester County. Autumn points to an old oak tree, well over a century old, that came down during a bad storm. Instead of removing the majestic bark from the property the Inn decided to carve out the center of the bark to create a kind of planter. In the spring the mighty remains sport dozens of colored wildflowers. “It’s beautiful. It’s just something you have to see,” Autumn says. Unfortunately, it is winter but I can still see remnants of flowers and it’s not a bad look at all. Since 1850, the mansion has had only had three owners, a testament to the love and devotion each family has felt for the house. I was assigned the Magnolia Suite with its massive bathroom and couples’ shower (though I traveled alone). Each suite has its own unique design and furnishings. Rocky Mount is a compact and walkable town. The place has virtually no crime, no homeless problem. Police siren sounds do not exist, or if they do, they are as rare as a blue moon. In the evenings, I had the mansion to myself because there didn’t happen to be any other guests. I checked out the ample library, the dining room (the go-to spot for catered events) with a working fireplace, and a living room where I encountered the southern aristocratic gaze of Elizabeth Taylor Greer, framed high on a wall in the style of a fresco or mosaic. Being the only occupant in such a large place causes one to have unusual reflections. I kept thinking of Elizabeth Taylor Greer and her husband Thomas Keister Greer hosting parties together in the mansion. I also thought of one event in the mansion at the conclusion of the Civil War when a slave girl ran out to the Union Army advancing on the property and presented the soldiers them with a plate of hot biscuits. A newspaper account of the incident, framed for Early Inn guests to read, has the slave girl cowering in fear under the folds of her mistress’ dress after she presents her gift. There are, of course, stories of how the mansion is sometimes haunted, but isn’t every old house that survives the centuries? The haunted house thing has indeed become a tired old cliché. In this case, I was told of a wandering (lost) but happy Confederate soldier who is said to walk back and forth in the front yard by the fallen oak tree with its attendant wildflowers. To be sure, I experienced no creaky sounds or the opening and closing of shutters but had two very tranquil nights, one of them in the library reading up on Thomas Keister Greer, who had male relatives in the Revolutionary and Civil War, the War of 1812 and WWI. Keister himself fought in the landing at Okinawa in WWII and wrote about his experiences which were later quoted by his wife in her biography of her husband. “His precious Virginia was on the losing side in the Civil War but he was on the winning side in WWII,” she wrote. Elizabeth goes on to say that her husband’s “love and loyalty for heritage, history, knowledge, family, Virginia and his country served this Virginia gentleman well.” Keister’s love for heritage and tradition caused him to leave one branch of the Episcopal Church, which he thought was becoming too liberal, for a more conservative parish. Exploring Rocky Mount is best done on foot. There are innumerable antiques and old record shops, such as Antiques and Collectibles of The Crooked Road, Renick Antiques and Collectibles and the Rocky Mount Farmers Market. The Harvester Performance Center attracts major musical talent and it’s just a few blocks from The Early Inn. There’s also a marijuana head shop (I don’t smoke), a large Artisan shop with new and old items as well as a space for photographer Dwight A. Hayes, who sells framed works from his international travels. Artfully framed color and B&W photographs from Hayes’ trips to Greece, the Holy Land, Ireland and the Middle Eastern desert sell for shockingly reasonable prices (they’d cost six times as much in Philadelphia). I chatted with Hayes about his work and wound up hearing some of his life’s story: how he started out as a Jehovah’s Witness but later became a Baptist preacher. I purchased a framed print of his as a Christmas gift for a grandniece—a full rainbow over the Sea of Galilee—after which the two of us talked religion for almost an hour. Hayes signed the photograph and told me that one of his son’s was a preacher too. “You don’t call yourself a minister or a Reverend?” I asked. “Oh no, I’m a preacher. When I go to the Holy Land I love hanging out with the Catholics. I love Catholics,” he said. Hayes also said that he was fascinated with the Orthodox. I said my good-byes to Hayes and headed over to an antique record store where I found a miniature buffalo, not a taxidermy specimen obviously, but a knick knack covered in what looked like real animal hair with tiny enamel horns. The little buffalo was made in a “charge” position. The price was $25.00 but I asked if I could take it for $20.00. The proprietor, a lean man in his fifties covered in tattoos, readily agreed and took the buffalo to the counter so I wouldn’t have to carry it around with me. In the meantime, his mother appeared on the scene, perhaps the real proprietor of the store, and wanted to know where the buffalo came from. I was called over to the counter. “You have good taste,” his mother said. “If there’s another buffalo maybe you can get two for 25.00.” It so happens there was another buffalo there but that buffalo looked beaten up with missing patches of hair and what seemed to be a twisted leg. “I’ll take just the one,” I said. By now her son was at the other end of the store and out of hearing range. “My son was in the Navy,” his mother told me. “He started to come home with tattoos (raises eyes), and now he’s covered. Oh, well, what can you do?” I headed over to Rocky Mount Burger Company, touted as the burger place in all of the Blue Ridge Mountains, skipping an opportunity to go to Buddy’s BBQ or the Homestead Creamery, which would have meant using the rental car, a Toyota with racing stripes and a great engine. I don’t do burgers often but I delighted in this specialty while sipping a Kendall Jackson chardonnay (all their red wine was from a box). The music was Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who. I would return to the burger place in the evening because I didn’t want to use the rental car at night. When I did, I had a long ‘life conversation’ with my server, a young mother with two children at home (and a husband, no less) about how rapidly society was falling apart. That evening in the Early Inn, I wandered around the mansion after the staff had departed, paid my respects to the portrait of Elizabeth Taylor Greer, and went into the B&B’s kitchen to help myself to yogurt, coffee and various snacks made available for guests. The winter sun was beginning to set so I walked to the central Greek Revival door, unchanged since the mistress of the house and the little slave girl opened it to greet the victorious Union Army. I rubbed my hand into the wood thinking of all the people who’d left their fingerprints there, then opened it and stepped outside. I did not see the ghost of the Confederate solider, although I did spot a still standing Confederate monument to the Civil War dead on my first day in Virginia. It was a tall, graceful looking statue surrounded by a wrought iron fence. Soon I would see another statue just like it in Floyd, Virginia, known as the state’s liberal hippie-populated community where the famous Floyd Country store (and its Friday night bluegrass concerts) is located. I was looking forward to going to Floyd in a day or two, the second lag of my trip. Autumn said that Floyd to her was like a piece of Heaven. What to do before dinner? I thought about heading over to the Twin Creels Distillery, not far from the Inn, to sign up for a Moonshine tasting. Thomas Keister Greer wrote a masterful book on the area’s Moonshine wars during the Prohibition era. (The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935). That’s when politicians and police were paid off so that the great southern tradition could continue unabated: free flowing Moonshine as an alternative to (legal) soft drinks and weak tea. The South certainly didn’t take Prohibition sitting down. I visited my first distillery, the Franklin County Distilleries, on my way into Rocky Mount from Salem. I was shown around the place by Taylor Spellman, Director of Public Relations for Virginia’s Blue Ridge, and Kathryn Lucas, Spellman’s assistant. As we drove into the distillery parking lot, we noticed a man in a Santa Claus suit directing traffic into the place. The distillery had the look of a rustic barn with lots of wood framing and high ceilings. Scattered around the place were barrels of this and that. We sat at a small bar and were greeted by the bartender, a tall gentleman who looked like the very heart and soul of the non-urban South. Friendly and open like so many Virginians I would meet, he recommended a spicy Bloody Mary, which put me in the mood to talk to that Santa Claus out on the road. No sooner did I think Santa Claus, then there he was. Turns out he was the brother of the owner and he wanted a picture of the three of us. This was after a gentleman sitting in the back of the distillery with a friend came up to me and asked if anybody ever said that I looked like Andy Warhol. “Yes,” I answered, “From time to time, the last time was when somebody called out to me from a truck: ‘Andy Warhol!”” The men were former Northerners (Long Island), retirees, and said they loved life in Rocky Mount, just as Autumn said she loved life in Floyd. I returned to the Rocky Mount Burger Company later that night until closing (9 pm), then headed back to the mansion, walking through the vast front yard where the Union cavalry marched and where Johnny Red still paces nervously among the trees.