A lot of people don’t know that the city of Washington, DC isn’t in any state. It’s also not a state by itself. It’s a district, a 2 square-mile federally controlled area. There are only two ways out of Washington, through Maryland or into Virginia.
I say through Maryland because no sane person would want to stay there. All its roads lead to Baltimore, a dirty, coal-dusted rusty bucket with a high cadmium content in the drinking water which renders its citizens mildly retarded.
Virginia, on the other hand, is one of the nicest states in the Union, aesthetically pleasing with its rolling hills reminiscent of northern California and gentle wide beaches.Rich in history as well as fertile in soil, it can be argued that Virginia is the cradle of American civilization- our Washingtons, Jeffersons and Adamses all lived and worked here.
Not without its faults, Virginia was also the capital of the confederacy, and there’s still a deep institutional vein of racism that becomes more apparent the closer one gets to Richmond. There’s a long highway into the southwestern part of the state that seems to take the traveler back in time, past hotels with neon from the 40’s, falling down barns the color of river stones and mountains that show the scars of a crumbled coal empire.
George Washington surveyed the old Ashby Gap trading route, now Rt 50, from Alexandria to Winchester, Virginia. Halfway to Winchester, there was a tiny, as yet unnamed settlement he which became known as Middleburg by its position between two important places.
It’s called horse country, and is populated by two kinds of people: the exceedingly rich, who make every attempt to not seem so, and the slightly wealthy, trying with all their might to seem exceedingly rich. Almost not worth mention are the incidental humans who serve and/or work for them, which is where I come in.
My name’s Tommy, and I’m a bartender. I hand drinks to everybody that walks through the front door of the shithole I work in. I hear all the stories, the rumors, the scandals and affairs, from where to hire the illegal immigrant maids to who’s banging the new German nanny. I’ve made up my own name for this place: I call it Mentalburg.
People think it’s one thing or another- every one “ooohs” when you say you live in Middleburg, the official population is only 640 people. Basically, it's like an open mental hospital. You won't believe the things I tell you, but trust me, it's all true.
Nothing I could make up is as funny or as strange as the truth.
.
