Stranger in my Own Strange Land
During the past week, a very close loved one was hospitalized with a nasty illness. The crisis seems past now, and for that I am supremely grateful. These scary moments do serve the purpose of placing things in the proper perspective. We realize all that we take for granted, and how quickly it might disappear.
There were two main ways to get to the hospital, which was located a good distance away, and was a place I’d fortunately never visited before. Both involved main roadways that were at the center of my childhood. I varied the commute, in order to soak in the memories. I hadn’t been in those areas for quite a while. As I drove, I marveled at the changes. Well, marveled isn’t the right word. Cringed? Gasped? Almost wept? Of course, every business that was there when I was a fat kid in America 1.0 was long gone. But the signs above the entrances, in unrecognizable languages, advertised not the natural passage of time, but some kind of foreign conquest. These were the spoils of a war that wasn’t fought. It was as if Annandale, and Falls Church, had been bombed by one of our imaginary enemies. There were few if any vestiges left to pine over. All that was missing were the white flags of surrender.
The 3 Chefs is long gone. So is the Fuddruckers that replaced it. I didn’t even pay attention to what’s there now. Probably something with a sign I couldn’t understand. I spent many a night on the weekends there, rolling in with my friends at three in the morning, after long and arduous partying. It was one of the few all night restaurants in northern Virginia. They featured kindly, little old lady waitresses who called you honey, and kept bringing you more homemade biscuits. My brother started out his undistinguished working career there, and was fired for dropping some plates. It was a foretelling of what was to come. There was the Annandale bakery, where we would usually go on Sundays after mass at St. Michael’s. I loved their jelly doughnuts, and their cocoanut cakes.
Where was Clark’s Music Store? Old man Clark was a legend in Annandale. He seemed ancient to me at the time. You had to speak very loudly for him to hear you. The
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
