Going Home

The Statler Brothers sang a song “Let Me Spend One More Summer in Virginia Before I Die”.  That’s how I felt as I drove through Augusta and Rockbridge Counties this past week.  The azaleas and dogwoods were in full splendor.  I have never seen the grass so green nor the sky so blue.  This is my home.  My roots run deep in this fertile beautiful soil.  Generations of my family have lived and died here.  One of my most vivid memories of this area is about spring water.  There is a pipe coming out of the hillside on Middlebrook Road going into Brownsburg from Staunton that pure spring water runs from year round.  My Daddy told me that in the old days people would stop there to get water for their horses and later to get water for the radiator’s in their cars.  For us, it was always a stop to get a drink of cool spring water.  We never went past without stopping.  When my Daddy died in 1969 the funeral was in Staunton and the burial at New Providence Presbyterian church in Brownsburg.  I was 16 and pretty idealistic.  I asked my grown brother who was in charge of arrangements to make sure the funeral procession stopped because Daddy never drove by without stopping.  The funeral director said the road was too narrow and it would be a hazard.  So on my Daddy’s very last trip home to Brownsburg for the first time ever he went on by and didn’t stop for water.  I cried for miles and thought it cruel that we couldn’t accommodate this little request from a 16 year girl who just lost her Daddy.  Here’s what I know now.  That stop was for me, not my Daddy.  He was already in the presence of his Daddy where there is no thirst.