Richmond: 0 – 1% chance of Survival.
Let Your Little Light Shine: Leaving Farmville.
Debbie had a 0 – 1 % chance to survive her brain surgery. She had an anuerysm in her brain that was big. This was back around 1995.
“It was rough.”
To perform the surgery, she was not able to have any anesthesia so for 9 hours, she felt them operating on her brain.
“I would rather have like 10 babies.” She tells me as she takes a drag from her Virginia Slim cigarette.
She is headed to Ocean City, Maryland to meet a friend and she picked me up right outside of Farmville.
“You reminded me of a college boy or one of my sons.”
Debbie is wearing a purple sun dress and an Indian Necklace with a feather. She is about 50 years old, but she is often mistaken for being a “sister” of her daughter, who is 31 years old.
Recently divorced, she now spends as much time as she can traveling with her 3,000$ a month alimony payment.
“This is my Time!” She says.
Debbie dropped me off on the outskirts of Richmond on Patterson Avenue.
William picked me up soon after that. I had asked him for directions to a bus stop & he was worried I would be walking awhile and it was about to rain.
William was an older black man who worked security.
“It ain’t always Sunday.” He said, in reference to our current economic crisis.
He dropped me off at a bus stop and I caught a bus into town.
***
Eric bailed on me. He was my couchsurfing host for tonight. He is in a local play and after the show all of the cast are going camping. Luckily, another couchsurfing host, April, had offered me a place to stay earlier as well, so I have a place to stay across town.
Ho Chi Minh
A Sculpture by Degas.
"It seemed like reaching for the moon."
Here are some photographs from visiting the Virginia Historical Society, which has an exhibit on Vietnam and a sculpture dedicated to the students whom walked out of their Farmville class in 1951 to protest inadequate school conditions, in what eventually lead to desegregated schools.
Also, from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which had a great sculpture by Degas.
Create our world,
ben.
“It seemed like reaching for the moon.” – Barbara Johns, the 16-year old Farmville girl whom helped orchestrate a protest of the R. R. Moton School, which eventually helped lead to desegregated schools.
Tags: adventure travel, adventure travel blog, Benjamin Jenks, create our world, degas, desegregation, fine arts museum, hitchhiking, moton, richmond, roadtrip around the USA, travel blog, vagabond, virginia, virginia historical society
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Hitchin Stories.
