This may be updated from time to time.
I—The Founding
I spent the 4-year period from 1969 through 1973 trying to matriculate through and graduate from the School of Law at Washington & Lee University, a very old, small school in Lexington, Virginia. George Washington had endowed "Liberty Hall Academy" with a substantial gift of Patowmack Co. stock, and the school was renamed "Washington College." Robert E. Lee became the President after the Civil War and lured over the law school being then independently operated in Lexington by John Randolph Tucker, Some time after Lee's death in 1870, Washington College was re-named Washington & Lee University (W&L).
II—Special (law) Ed
It took me a year longer than most to get out of W&L because I was having such a good time my first year I mostly forgot to study. Thankfully, the Dean and my professors did not give up on me, though they had ample provocation to do so. It took a long time, but I was grateful to have finally figured out that I needed to worry less about THE "right answer" and focus more on the "right question." That was what was totally different about the study of law. There was no need, actually, to worry about the "right answer." I also learned that the judge will always tell you what the "right answer" is!
III—Phi Delta Phi
I had previously attended Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, graduating in 1968. For almost 3 years while at R-MC, I was desperately regretting never having joined a fraternity, but during my last year, it fell into perspective, and now I am truly grateful I did not subject myself nor submit to that nonsense. Nevertheless, during my 2d year at W&L, I wound up as the president of Phi Delta Phi, a legal "fraternity," and I was elected only because I knew how to organize a party! (Some things never change.) The Dean of the Law School was also a member, and he reproached me one day because we never sponsored any thoughtful or cultural or academic activities. I had to break it to him that my fellow student members would never stand for it! We were just a bunch of dissolute party animals!
IV—Lee Chapel
Lee Chapel sits in the lower front part of the campus opposite to and facing the Colonnade on top of the hill, and the Lee Family Crypt is in the basement wherein "Marse Robert" Lee and the rest of his family are entombed. On the main floor at the front of the chapel interior is the "famous" marble sculpture by Edward Valentine of Robert E. Lee seemingly on his deathbed, but instead only in recumbent pose sleeping on a campaign cot during some arduous military procedure. As a friend of mine has observed, when one enters Lee “Chapel,” it is not clear who or what one is supposed to worship!
For years, the skeleton of Robert E. Lee's horse, "Traveller," was on display in the basement of the Chapel, later to be interred (see below). Charlie McDowell, who grew up in Lexington and who recently died, was the long-time Washington correspondent for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, and he had been at W&L in the late 1940's with such luminaries as Pat Robertson and Roger Mudd, among others. I heard him speak one day at a gathering of lawyers, and he regaled us with some tales of his student days. He told us of the time when some fellow students were guides at Lee Chapel, and they would lead the tourists past the Valentine statue down the stairs to the Family Crypt and the display of Traveller's skeleton. One of the students was a Biology major, and he proceeded to fetch a skeleton of a small foal from the biology lab and set it up next to Traveller's skeleton. Then as the tourists were paraded past, they would be told that the larger skeleton was, of course, Traveller, and the small one was Traveller as a young foal! No one missed a beat!
V—The solemn burial of Traveller
During my last year at W&L, I was walking across campus one mild spring day in my typical attire of shorts, T-shirt, pathetic scraggly beard, long-ish hair and sandals, and I saw a cluster of folks fully dressed in dark, somber colors gathered by the side of Lee Chapel (see above).
I approached the edge of the crowd and, pacing back and forth, craned my neck to get a better view of what was going on. Some therein glared back at me for my insufficiently mournful attire (and attitude). What I saw was the priest from the Episcopal church on the campus corner in full vestments conducting the Episcopal Service for the Dead over the freshly interred bones of Traveller, which had been buried in a hole by the side of Lee Chapel and over which there had been placed an engraved granite slab reciting the pertinent data. Said mourners were gathered round respectfully. As I said, Traveller's skeleton had been on display in the basement of Lee Chapel for several years but it had finally gotten too moldy or brittle to remain so.
The thing that struck me most profoundly is that I had no idea Traveller was an Episcopalian!
VI—Zollman's Pavilion
In 2003, on the occasion of our class's 30th Reunion, we were trundled out to "Zollman's Pavilion" for a picnic lunch, the Pavilion being nothing more than a rough, corrugated tin shed with concrete floor sitting on the banks of Buffalo Creek, about 6 miles south of Lexington. It seems that W&L had engaged the Pavilion at which to host wistful alumni events.
Now, the true history of Zollman's Pavilion is that it had been the site of some of the wildest, most Bacchanalian parties ever held under the auspices of students at W&L or the adjacent military college, Virginia Military Institute, complete with live music and plastic garbage cans full of "Purple Jesus" (a homemade concoction of grape Hi-C, other fruit juices, oranges, lemons, limes, cherries AND grain alcohol) with a substantially intoxicated group of attendees present. My dim recollections are that it almost ALWAYS rained whenever there was an event at Zollman's, and there were always several cars stuck either in the mud at Zollman's or in the ditches along the road leading down to Zollman's. So, the prevailing ethic was to help remove said vehicles from said ditches before the gendarmes arrived to create more problems for the inebriated students who had driven into said ditches. (My, how times have changed!)
Well, at our 30th Reunion at Zollman's, held on a most inapt sunny afternoon, a period of time passed to allow our box-lunches to digest and our alcohol-dimmed memories to revive and squeeze us in their nostalgic bear-hug. Some "suit" working for W&L rather clumsily attempted to put the "touch" on us alums for donations of money, figuring that we would be unable to resist such a warm, fuzzy, nostalgia-addled pitch. I was rather annoyed by this blatant attempt to work me over, so I got up and promptly left. I should have known things were somehow not right when I had failed to see any cars in ditches while driving down to Zollman's that day!
VII—Cheap eats and hibachis
One of the most memorable things about my days at W&L were how inexpensive things were back then. Gasoline sold for less than 35c per gallon! One could purchase ground beef for 59c a pound or less! One could purchase a WHOLE CASE of (rotgut) beer for under $5, not just a six-pack! And, we consumed Gallo "Hearty Burgundy" by the half-gallon which also was pretty cheap back then, under $5 as I recall.
We could buy and grill huge slabs of beef on hibachis and wind up feeding four of us for less than $5 a meal. I never see hibachis anymore. A hibachi was a small cast-iron charcoal brazier with two (usually) wood-handled grills about 10" x 10" each, clamped onto the back of the hibachi and cantilevered over the coals. Most of us had them because they were small enough to move into our small apartments after the fire had gone out. Our student-apartment rent was $55 per month, INCLUSIVE of all utilities! We had it made. Law-school tuition was less than $1200 a semester. Recent graduates who got really good starting salaries would brag about getting $10,000 a year! As a sole practitioner (I was self-employed my entire professional career), I earned $5200 my first year--$100 a week!
We never had it so good.
VIII—"The Peoples' Food Restaurant"
In the early 1970's there was a social mood extant that was quite different from the usual rigid coat-&-tie demeanor of times then past at W&L (now desperately in revival). Admittedly, W&L was not a hotbed of radical activity as were some other campuses at the time, but there was plenty of dope to smoke and lots of apparent hippies about. Clean-shaven faces and preppy attire had given substantial way to leather, sandals, tie-dye, long hair and beards. The founding chapter of the venerable "Old South" fraternity, Kappa Alpha, had reputedly lost its charter for awhile allegedly because some rather annoyed alumni had stopped by after a football game, expecting to sing some frat songs around the piano and had discovered instead large posters of Jimi Hendrix, "Che" Guevara and Janis Joplin illuminated by ultraviolet blacklights glowing through a pervasive fog of cannabis.
I had lost (or found?) my own way during those days. I became fond of John Waters's nasty movies like the then-recently-screened Pink Flamingos," and I had developed a liking for the warped humor of the "Firesign Theatre" available only on vinyl records, best enjoyed with a lot of dope. CD's and iPods were a long ways off. We did not even have cassette tapes yet, but I had a LearJet 8-track in my car!
"Head" shops were openly trading their wares back then, including cigarette rolling papers and machines, fancy bongs and pipes, posters and provocative bumper stickers, peace-sign jewelry, leather bags and other goods frequently associated with the smoking of marijuana. I never saw anything associated with the use of cocaine or any other drug at the time.
A group of "hippies" had taken over the run-down "White Column Inn" on Main Street in Lexington and opened "The Peoples' Food Restaurant," offering whole-grain homemade breads, sprouts and so forth. Their signature sandwich was the "Peoples' Special," a fried-egg-and-melted-cheese concoction with sliced raw onion and alfalfa sprouts on homemade-mayo-slathered homemade gritty whole-wheat bread. It was absolutely wonderful! I consumed several of them and have also made my own since, washed down liberally with good beer (not the rotgut we used to buy for less than $5 a case!)
IX—"Rockbridge Red"
It might be considered disingenuous if I did not mention one of the most pervasive influences in my life during my time in Lexington, and that was the massive “lids” of marijuana (“dope”) that had been apparently grown locally and was sold only to students by one of my fellow law students during my time there.
The product was a beautiful home-grown material that was reddish-gold in color, thus its name, “Rockbridge Red.” One could buy a massive handful in a plastic baggie for $15! That is an amazingly low price, and today’s costs are mind-boggling because my market sense was set in those times and under those circumstances. I have not purchased any marijuana in about 30 years, and I don’t really smoke it much anymore. Neither do most of the scores of people who once did. (So much for its allegedly addictive qualities, per the DEA.) But my memories are fond ones.
AND, “Rockbridge Red” would get one really stoned. It wasn’t lethal, but it was a “magic carpet ride”! The purveyor must have grown a huge amount of it, because it was available for a very long time. He would come to school and always seemed to have plenty of “lids” in his bookbag. He was also a very good student and later became a prosecutor after graduation. I shall avoid any further identifying information so that he shall remain protected, wherever he may be. I have not seen him in years.
As I indicated, I knew a lot of people who were smoking “Rockbridge Red” back then, folks who became prominent doctors, teachers, preachers, lawyers and judges and who probably don’t smoke dope today and haven’t in years. But it was the thing to do back then for a lot of us, and it made life very interesting. For me, I know for a fact it made me smarter, because it opened up channels in my mind that I did not know were there before. I came to look at things much differently thereafter, much more expansively and ecumenically, and I am grateful for that enlightenment. The skeptics can kiss my ass.
I am sure there were some who overdid and “overdosed,” but they must have been few and far between. I have never witnessed a drug any more innocuous than marijuana, whereas cocaine and legal alcohol are extremely dangerous. The only thing that criminalization of marijuana does is ruin lives—it cannot and does not discourage any of us who want to smoke dope. All it does is send some peaceful offenders to confinement, after-the-fact, for engaging in something (possession of dope) that harms ABSOLUTELY no one else. Those who don’t want to smoke it are obviously not deterred by the law but by their own preferences. If there were a MEDICAL issue regarding the consumption of dope, then why is it treated as a criminal act instead of as a medical problem? And, why are all the competent studies and examinations contrary to those politically-driven conclusions?
Marijuana was outlawed in the 1930’s for two main reasons: alcohol had been legalized again, so otherwise-unemployed still-busters had a job in the Depression. Secondly, marijuana was often used by black musicians back then, so there was a suggestion that it would make white kids act and think like “Nigras.” Fast-forward to the 1970’s, and hippies and other “inappropriate” people are enjoying marijuana and mocking Richard Nixon, thus fueling the hostilities of most law-enforcement officers, prosecutors, etc., most of whom still viscerally hate hippies, love politicians who are “tough on crime,” and who lobby hard for intensifying the criminal consequences of associating with dope. Thus, the absurd “War On Drugs” was born and lives to this day, now enforced by President Barack Obama, like his predecessor Bill Clinton, a former dope smoker. A lot of vile energy and bad karma have been expended on enforcement of the laws criminalizing marijuana.
But, a lot of us (now in our sixties) have smoked it anyway, and fortunately we were never caught. Too many hapless folks were caught, however, and their lives were ruined. TO THIS DAY, easily 40 years later, one can still get more time in prison for selling dope than for killing one’s wife or boss.
No, my law grades were not the highest by a long shot. Many exemplary law students did not smoke dope. Many of them were and are raving dorks. But most of my friends and I did smoke dope, and we are not dummies, either.
XI—Freddie Goodhart (added in 2024)
What can I possibly say about Freddie Goodhart?
He died just about six years ago. Hard to believe it’s been so long. He was such an important part of my life, yet my brain is obviously fading. That’s what “old age” will do. Fade everything.
Freddie was 88 when he died—he looked 58. He always looked much younger than his years, and he would do just about anything not deadly, so it was easy to treat him as a contemporary.
Frederick Phillips McCormick-Goodhart. That was his real name. But he was anything but a patrician. Freddie had dual British/American citizenships. His father was a British diplomat who introduced him to Winston Churchill during the Second World War on the HMS Dreadnought out in the Chesapeake Bay, when Freddie was only 15 or so. It was the only time that Churchill, then the Prime Minister of Great Britain, visited the US during World War II. I think Freddie’s mother was a native of Baltimore. Freddie’s father was descended in a collateral line from Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper and hailed from Raphine, Virginia, just a few miles north of Lexington.
But Freddie was a car freak and a “killer” banjo player. He’d owned a junkyard and knew cars backwards and forwards. I still have a 1941 Buick convertible Freddie bought from the original owner, who lived out near Warm Springs and commuted in that Buick to and from the Pentagon every week during World War II, up and down US Route 220.
Half of damned-near everything I own I bought from Freddie who, when I met him in the Fall of 1969 in my first year of law school, was running a “second-hand shop” on Jefferson Street in Lexington. I was immediately attracted to him, like a moth to flame. In the spring of 1970, I bought that 1941 Buick for $250 from a professor to whom the car had been sold. It was broke down in Freddie’s front yard. The top had rotted off and a plywood board was balanced on the top frame, held in place by a spare tire. Thanks to a great mechanic at the local Chevrolet dealer, I finally got that car running and drove it, sans top, all that following winter while my wife-to-be drove my “good” car. At least it had a roof and windows and a heater.
What we WILL do for love! My pith helmet came in handy! I stayed pretty dry that winter and was not sick for a single day!
Freddie was a “Buick” man. He knew Buick “Straight-Eight” engines better than anyone. He convinced me I should buy that broke-down 1941 convertible, even though he had a running 1937 Buick sedan he would have sold me. He liked to put an old-timey metal soda-acid fire extinguisher canister on the Buick exhaust pipe in place of the muffler. It made a really nice, throaty rumble. Freddie had a beautiful 1937 black Buick convertible with stick shift, running boards, a rumble seat and fender skirts. He had a “Remember Pearl Harbor” emblem bolted to the top of the license plate. He also had a late 1920’s air-cooled “Franklin” sedan that was prominently featured at his wedding.
EVERYBODY has stories about Freddie. Stories about Freddie are what exhaust fumes are to Diesel trucks! Ubiquitous. Freddie and I would travel around and play music together on occasion. I was originally a saxophone player, but I later took up the blues harmonica. Freddie could play ANYTHING on the banjo and did. But bluegrass music was his primary interest, and he was well-known for his craft in music circles. He could play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” as good as Earl Scruggs.
I have a small collection of “Lucky Strike” tobacco memorabilia. Freddie had an UNOPENED pack of “Lucky Strike Green” cigarettes in his store, and I wanted it. Freddie agreed to swap me his pack of Luckies for an unopened pack of “Piedmont” cigarettes that I had. Even. So we swapped, and I still have the Luckies. A few months later, I asked him if he still had the Piedmonts because I wanted to buy them back. He did not have them, so I asked what he got for them. He sheepishly admitted he got nothing for them because he was having a nicotine fit one day at the shop, tore open the pack and smoked ALL of the Piedmonts! I was stunned. HOW could he do such a thing? But, that was just Freddie being Freddie. There was NOTHING that Freddie had that was not for sale, so long as his price was met. His long-suffering wife was resigned to all that. Freddie sometimes even sold HER stuff, if he could do a “deal”!
I stay in touch with Freddie’s widow and his oldest daughter, married for years to a Lexington architect. He had seven children with his late first wife (whom I did not know) and two more with his second wife. They are all very nice people. I attended Freddie’s second wedding in the summer of 1970 while working near my wife-to-be up in NY State, near Rochester. I came down to Lexington for the wedding and am proud to have been there. All of them are among my closest friends, though we don’t see much of each other anymore.
In my last year of law school, “Jim Beam” distillery released a commemorative ceramic flask for their bourbon whiskey, a handsome big red cardinal sitting on a dogwood branch. Freddie was convinced that flask was going to be a “collector’s item.” I was in Freddie’s shop one day, and he handed me a wad of cash and told me to go up to the ABC store about a half-block away and buy him a dozen of the “Jim Beam” flasks. I bought two of them for myself, and delivered the bottles and the change to Freddie. Well, we failed to predict that “Jim Beam” would release THOUSANDS of those flasks, so there was never any “collectible” value to them, whatsoever! I think Freddie eventually sold most of those whiskey bottles. We drank all the whiskey.
Freddie Goodhart was, indeed, a very important part of most of my life. I met many fine people who were friends of Freddie. He seemed to have friends all over the world. I spent many hours in his shop, a wonderful place to waste valuable time. I spent many days and nights in his home or on Martha’s Vineyard, enjoying the company of Freddie, his wife and his kids. Many of my law-school mates rented rooms at his farm. I met my first wife-to-be in his living room at one of the many parties there. I took some great road trips with Freddie, up and down the East Coast, playing music, scanning shop inventories along the way, “swapping lies,” discussing “cars,” dropping in on friends, and doing a lot of laughing.
I shall dearly miss him the rest of my days.
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