Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11
URBANNA — It was one of those rare warm, sunny days in Urbanna one February many decades ago when we decided to go sailing. The temperature had hit 75 and we felt we had been given the gift of a summer day in winter. We dropped everything and headed for the “Vermilion,” a 28-foot sailboat that we docked in Urbanna’s harbor in the years before the floating docks were installed.
We soon were “wing on wing” in the Rappahannock, heading up river toward Tappahannock without a care in the world. I had even changed into a pair of shorts and was enjoying a tanning session with my two winter white legs exposed to the sunlight. It struck me that I might even get a sunburn.
Suddenly the weather changed. A cold wind picked up from the north and we were surrounded with storm clouds and mean looking white caps. The temperature had dropped 30 degrees and I quickly changed back into my winter clothes.
We came about and began a close reach for Urbanna. The weather worsened as we neared the mouth of Urbanna Creek, enough to see a worried look come over “Captain” Chip’s face as he manned the tiller.
Suddenly, a most sickly feeling came over us as we felt the boat slide into a sand bank. The “Vermilion” stopped dead in her tracks and we hopped up on the deck to bring down the sails as fast as possible. We discovered we were mired helplessly in mud right off Diana and Jack Pitt’s home on Kent Street in Urbanna.
The boat lurched in the wind on a wicked right angle and I wondered if we would be blown over on our side. Chip started her engine to try his best to move her off the sand bar but there was no budge, either forward or reverse. To make matters worse, we could see the tide moving out before our eyes. I thought of jumping overboard and swimming to shore but thought better of it when I considered the icy cold river.
Chip got on ship to shore and raised the Coast Guard. “The “Virginian” from Virginia Marine Resources is up river from you,” the voice said. “I’ll radio her to come to your rescue.”
We watched up river for long minutes before the shape of the white-hulled “Virginian” became visible just off Greenvale Creek. It leant a happy sight as she grew larger and larger. Soon our very own Captain Dale Taylor from Urbanna was circling our boat and throwing us a rope. The “Virginian” gunned her powerful motor and within minutes we were pulled off the sand bar and so happy to be heading back into port once again.
On another subject I was raised long ago in a small town in Ohio on a system that was once called the “honor system.” That is, simply stated, it was assumed that no one lied, stole another person’s property, cheated on tests or broke laws. Of course, we knew that some people did all of these things, but not in our town.
What I liked about the honor system is it expected the highest behavior of people that were committed to living such a life which in turn built everyone’s self-respect and self-esteem. The honor system produced responsible citizens and a world built on honesty and good behavior which offered everyone a pleasant place to live.
This system continued throughout college and in military life when I married in 1963 and by that time behaving honorably was a habit deeply ingrained in the majority of Americans in my generation.
Eventually, however, the system broke down and somehow lowered expectations of human behavior became a reality. We learned to be suspicious of others, to count change carefully at the stores, to question whether people spoke truth and to lock our doors to our home and cars.
Then we arrived in Urbanna in 1984. It was like returning to the old days of the honor system I had once known.
In the beginning I drove back and forth a lot from the city to Urbanna as we eventually established our home here. There was a telephone booth next to Liz’s Dress Shop on Cross Street, which is now a gift store. I stopped one day while visiting our new cottage on Kent Street and made a call on the pay phone.
When we later arrived back to Newport News, I discovered I had lost my wallet. I did not realize I had left it in the telephone booth in Urbanna until the next week when I returned and stopped at the same telephone booth to make a call. There was my wallet just as I had left it, everything intact.
I was so impressed I wrote about it in a column for the Daily Press labeling Urbanna “the most honest town east of the Mississippi.” Perhaps it was a hyperbole but I was impressed.
A few weeks later, after we had docked our sailboat at Montague’s dock at the foot of Virginia Street and were sailing in the creek one day, Chip jibed in the wind suddenly and the boom knocked him overboard. I helped fish him out of the creek and back into the boat. Later he discovered he had lost his wallet in the spill. Not only was it filled with cash but every credit card he owned, his driver’s license and other important cards. He spent the week canceling credit cards and replacing his license.
The next week when we pulled into our cottage driveway, we found a soggy brown wallet on our doorstep. There was the lost wallet, everything intact, including all the cash. An unsigned note claimed the wallet had been pulled up in a fishing net and since the man had heard we had bought the cottage on Kent Street he was happy to return it. (A belated thank you to whomever that good soul was!)
It’s a pleasure to live in such a town. I still claim Urbanna is “the most honest town east of the Mississippi River” and my stories back up my claim.
(Continued next week.)
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