The Marshall House stood upon this site and within the building on early morning of May 24, 1861 James W. Jackson was killed by Federal soldiers while defending his property and personal rights, as stated in the verdict of the coroners jury. He was the first martyr to the cause of Southern Independence. The Justice of History does not permit his name to be forgotten. Not in the excitement of battle, but coolly and for a great principle, he laid down his life, as an example to all, in defence of his home and the sacred soil of his native state, Virginia.
Erected by the Sons and Daughters of Confederate Soldiers
When I was a youngster baseball was impossible in our suburban neighborhood. Hardballs and windows are a bad combination. From time to time, we played wiffle ball (often with a paper and tape ball), but almost every day we played football. We played football in the front yard, in the back yard, in the street and in the school yard. We played football almost any where you could find a level patch of ground.
To look at my stomach now you might not guess it, but I was pretty dern quick in those days. Or as my brother once said at a football game in our twenties, "You were never as fast as you used to be."
Although I was a Redskin fan, my favorite player was Fran Tarkenton the scrambling quarterback. Like Fran Tarkenton I used my fleet feet and threw the ball. Each time I scored a touchdown or made a gain, I got a little better in my mind. Eventually, I began to think of myself as the total package. No one could tackle me in the open field. No one
... or so I thought.
The pinnacle of my arrogance came one day when I challenged the entire neighborhood to a game of football.
"That's right. On one side, it's me. On the other team are all you losers."
A couple of my Facebook buddies, including my brother Eric and Chuck S., were there that day, though perhaps they don't remember the day as well as I do. They started by kicking the ball off to me. I caught the ball and started down field. A half-dozen redneck children and a black kid charged downfield at me. I gave a limp leg here and a stiff arm there, spin move and then a leap, but ended up under a pile of kids.
No worries, four downs to get that ball in there. I stood at the line of scrimmage and was already realizing a number of life's most valuable lessons.
On one side of the line of scrimmage was me, all by myself. On the other side of the line of scrimmage were friends and neighbors and my younger brother---all of them grinning. I looked left and right. No blockers. No receivers. I barked out a snap count to ... myself and took off.
They buried me.
The Big Wheel had been a Christmas gift from my Pepaw. The little red wagon was a gift from my Grandpa. Sure the Big Wheel was sporty, but Grandpa love the practicality of the little red wagon. I never found much use for the hauling capacity of the wagon, but none-the-less we had the sportscar and the pick-up truck at our disposal.
Eric and I never had much use for the wagon, but my cousins showed us how you could flip the handle around and sit in the wagon. Then one brother would run along, pushing the wagon while the other brother sat in the wagon using the handle as a steering wheel.
You could push that wagon as much as you wanted but the Big Wheel seemed to have performance edge both because of it's lower suspension and because the drive-train didn't disengage when your brother's hands came off your back. Now that our cousins showed us that the wagon could be of some use, Eric and I took them a half block down the street to an intersection.
At that intersection a cross-street climbs a small (by Virginia standards) hill. When I was a kid this hill seemed as steep as a mountainside. We took the wagon a couple paces up the hill and then climbed on board. Now that my cousins showed us how to ride the wagon, we showed them how to ride down a hill. The wagon gave a pretty terrifying ride, picking up speed quickly as it came downhill.
We took turns riding the wagon and standing in the street to catch each other as we came down the hill. Now if you know anything at all about the Wargo clan, you know that they love speed. That's probably one reason my cousin John Wargo still works around fast cars in his Custom Shop. Being from Virginia, Eric and I respect the hills and we knew better than to go too far up that hill for a ride down.
But Jamie must have been intoxicated on speed and silly from the wind in his hair from riding the wagon. Maybe he just didn't know better because kids from Illinois don't really see much in the way of hills. Jamie grabbed the Big Wheel and went past where we started the wagon. He went all the way up to the intersection of the next street.
We were all a little excited and scared. I was old enough to know better and I should have stopped him. But all of us wanted to see what was going to happen. Jamie saddled up in the Big Wheel and prepared to launch himself down the hill. Jamie gave us a thumbs-up and steeled his resolve. John and Eric and I got ready to catch him when he came down the hill. 
County near Flint Hill VA. If you're a parent of a school age child and you live within about 30 miles of Wakefield, I highly recommend you consider enrolling your child here.
A fact of life at Wakefield was your book bag. It was not unusual for elementary and middle school kids to carry around a large sportsbag like the Wilson bag pictured here.
These bags were stuff full of books because it wasn't unusual for each class to require 3 books. When I attended the Wakefield school day was about 2 hours longer than public school education, so you had a lot of books to carry. That meant that without a bag of some sort it was pretty much impossible to go from class to class or to take books home to study.
Well, my parents couldn't really afford Wakefield, so we cut costs where we could. Those sports bags weren't cheap, so my mom fished a bag out of the thrift store that could do the job just as well.
From an adult's standpoint, I suppose my bag was a pretty close match. I mean both bags have zippers and handles. Mine was a little taller rather than wider. Both bags have a place where you carry your books. My bag was safety orange. All in all, a pretty ugly bag.
About half-way through the 7th Grade I transferred to Strasburg Middle School. As good as Wakefield was, those schools in the shadow of Signal Knob were about as good a public education gets anywhere. But things were a little different in Shenandoah County.
You didn't take Algebra in the 6th grade at Shenandoah County. You didn't take French from kindergarten on up. There were lots of little things like that, so my parents had me bumped up a grade when I made the transfer.
That meant I was suddenly the littlest kid in the class.
Of course, in Strasburg, middle school students didn't need a giant book bag. In fact, you didn't really need a book bag at all. I learned some kids actually carried their books---get this---in their arms!
Someone could have given me a clue that I wouldn't need a book bag. Well someone did give me a clue and one of those somebodies was Richard Carbaugh.
On one hand you have me, the spindly under-aged prep-nerd with the bookbag and you have Richard Carbaugh big healthy red neck in an untucked flannel shirt. I've not seen Richard, other than on Facebook, in more than twenty years. Then and now, he was a big guy with a big neck and a big smile. He was generally a good guy, but had a quick wit that could cut to the truth in a flash.
Richard asked me, "Why are you carrying a purse?"
This wasn't so much a question, as a piercing insight. Point Carbaugh.
Richard suddenly caused me to take a look at my bag in a new light. He was right ... it was a little purse-like. "Damn it."
But here is my curse and blessing: I'm not the kind of person that accedes to peer pressure, ever. Maybe there is something broken in me. I say this because there are times when peer pressure is a good thing. Richard was sort of doing me a favor by calling that bag out ... but by God I wasn't going to bend to his will or anyone else's will.
Here's how my convoluted thinking works. If I stopped carrying the purse, then I have admited that Richard was right. But if I continue to carry the pur ... er ... book bag then the it's still a book bag and was never a purse. Point for me. Take that Carbaugh.
So, even though I didn't need the pur ... er .. book bag, but I simply refused to stop carrying it because I thought that meant I was admitting to Richard. So, what I did was a took a Sharpie and a Magic Marker and put graffiti all over the bag.
Now with Napoleon Dynamite styled "ligers" and my name in big bold letters no one could call this book bag a purse. I had created a real manly bag. If you can't tell I'm being extremely sarcastic. The truth is I couldn't have been a bigger enemy to myself unless I'd used that same marker to write "I am a dork" across my forehead.
So I refused to stop carrying the bag and Richard Carbaugh ... and Doug Clem and just about every other kid in my class gave me a little hell about it. But this bag is where I had planted my flag and here is where I would fight my battle.
I grew to really hate that orange graffiti-covered bag that I didn't really need, but I refused to stop carrying it because I didn't want to admit they were right. But damn it ... and it's 35 years late ... but I'm admitting you were right:
