Lee and Me by Kathie Fraser
Northern Virginia in the 1950's -- the northern Virginia that I grew up in -- was not very much like northern Virginia in the closing years of the 20th century. Nowadays we're so yankeefied that the rest of the Commonwealth doesn't even want to claim us. A gentleman who lives out in the Shenandoah Valley suggested to me not too long ago that we wouldn't be missed very much if we decided to take another run at secession (just leave them out of it, thank you very much). As much as it pained me to hear him say that, I had to acknowledge that there was more than a grain of truth to it. We've become home to think tanks, Beltway bandits, transient military families, and government officials who ebb and flow with the tide of each new administration. No one stays around long enough to put down roots in the red clay of the Commonwealth or to develop anything more than a passing interest in the rich historical and cultural traditions that have been our stock in trade since 1607.
When I was a child, we celebrated Lee-Jackson Day as a bona fide holiday, and no one
thought to
o
much about it if we sang "Dixie" as part of our grade school day. We were, after
all, Southerners -- and Southerners from Virginia at that. We could claim Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, and JEB Stuart as our own. Who else could come even close to matching
that Holy Confederate Trinity? Sixty percent of all the battles fought during the War
Between the States were fought right here in the Old Dominion, and you couldn't drive too
many miles down any State road without seeing a highway marker commemorating some event
from that tumultuous four-year period. Nowadays, the Department of Historic Resources
won't even let you put the word "Confederate" on one of those markers. In our
desire to avoid giving offense, the "Virginia" half of our geographical
designation has taken a decided back seat the "northern" half. When I think
about how much we've lost and how far we've strayed from the Virginia I knew when I was
growing up, my mind invariably turns to thoughts of a favorite childhood toy. I don't know
if my mother still has it in the attic of the house she's lived in for almost 40 years or
not, and I'm almost afraid to look. I'd rather believe it's still there than to know that
it's not. It wasn't a complicated toy like the ones today's children favor. It had no
batteries and no moving parts, and it boasted no movie tie-ins. It was a horse and rider
made from molded, painted plastic and standing maybe 10 inches high. The rider could be
removed from the horse and played with separately. His permanently bowed legs bothered me
a lot when the toy was new, but I soon learned to overlook that minor drawback. (Barbie
with her semi-flexible legs and her esteem-destroying figure was still a few years in the
future.) The horse and rider were part of a series that depicted famous Western heroes and
their mounts.
My sister was the proud possessor of Tonto and the Lone Ranger and their horses, Scout and Silver. I also had two -- George Washington and Robert E. Lee. (The only explanation I can offer for Washington and Lee being considered "Western heroes" is that it was the '50s, when the line between fact and fiction wasn't quite what it is today.) Although I was very fond of General Washington and Ajax (who was a magnificent-looking animal), it was General Lee and Traveler who were my favorites. Washington sat on the shelf in my bedroom most of the time while General Lee and the Lone Ranger teamed up to defeat Tonto and his Indian brothers in pitched battles fought in the upstairs hallway. George Washington might have been the hero of the Revolutionary War and the father of his country, but Robert E. Lee was the Virginia gentleman who had put the Confederacy on the map and made her a foe to be reckoned with. As far as I was concerned, what he had accomplished was every bit as remarkable as what his fellow Virginian had accomplished, and he was my choice for man of the hour. Clearly, Hartland, the company who made these marvelous toys and sold them for the princely sum of $2.98 apiece, thought so, too, since it saw fit to include him in its series of American heroes.
No toy company with an ounce of marketing savvy would make such a toy today, for all the obvious reasons. And no toy store would sell it if they did. Yesterday's heroes are today's goats, as those of us who are descended from the goats are constantly being reminded. The days when a man could be honored for taking a stand in defense of his country, his family, and his beliefs seem to be as gone as the innocence of my childhood in a vastly different Virginia.
Maybe that's the real reason why I'm so reluctant to venture up into my mother's attic. In my mind's eye, the General is still up there astride his horse, riding tall and riding proud, and still my hero. And that's the way I'd like to remember him.
