Frankly, I’m offended.
When King Charles III was in Virginia recently on a visit to the U.S., he chose to stop in Front Royal instead of Fredericksburg.
Now, nothing against Front Royal, not that there’s anything wrong with Front Royal, but why there and not our bustling region on the Rappahannock?
Is there something I’m not thinking of? I have dined at Spelunker’s Frozen Custard & Cavern Burgers, and it is pretty darned good.
But, from what I read, it was simpler than that: British Embassy staff just liked the Shenandoah Valley locale.
“They just really enjoyed Front Royal,” Town Manager Joe Petty told The Northern Virginia Daily newspaper.
I still think the king and queen should’ve visited Fred Vegas, though. Look at all we have going for us.
Fredericksburg was named for Frederick (1707-51), who was Prince of Wales just like Charles used to be.
The University of Mary Washington men’s basketball team just won the NCAA Division III championship, and we had two native sons — Elijah Sarratt and Aiden Fisher — play for the national champion Indiana University football team and go on to get drafted by NFL teams.
Fredericksburg’s Caroline Street also was recently chosen as the “Best Main Street in the South” by Garden & Gun magazine voters in a bracket-style competition. The city bested 16 competitors from across the Southeast, ending in a final round of voting against Deland, Fla. (The king didn’t go there, either).
I don’t know much about the magazine, save for they’ve published at least one piece by one of my journalism mentors.
And, truthfully, I don’t know much about gardens or guns, or whether they’re supposed to be combined like this — should you “guard your garden WITH a gun?” — but a member of the Fredericksburg Main Street organization said the contest was important, so I was OK placing several votes, just like I do in all elections. (That last part is just a joke, by the way).
Seriously, though, I get the importance of Garden & Gun and the chance for Fredericksburg to be featured in a national publication.
But aren’t I right? It was just another reason King Charles and Queen Camilla should’ve come by.
I’m going to complain to the mayor. I think she would be on my side.
Also, if the king had come here, I maybe could have interviewed him. I met Margaret Thatcher back in college, but that’s it as far as my experience with world leaders.
And I mean when I was in college. We weren’t in college together. I’m not THAT old.
I would’ve had to leave out, however, recollection of when I nearly caused an international incident in London when I was a senior in high school.
I was on a school field trip, and I thought it would be funny, while posing for a photo, to put bunny ears on a Beefeater, one of the royal bodyguards of the Tower of London.
Turns out, despite the gazillions of tourists these guys must see every day, they don’t have much of a sense of humor.
The Beefeater said that, if I repeated the tomfoolery, he would, “bust my blankety-blank nose,” though instead of “blankety-blank,” he used a word that I don’t say around my mother and shan’t use on a family website.
You might guess that, at this point, I was plenty ready to fly back to the good, ol’ U.S.A., and was conjuring thoughts about how “at least we won the war.”
I am, unfortunately, the picture of the “ugly American.” And, if that happened in London, you know I’m not even trying to go to Paris, where I understand from a recent traveler’s report that some don’t even care if you can speak French. My French-speaking ended in my sophomore year of high school.
Anyhow, we’ve gotten WAY off the topic, but I’m still offended the king didn’t come to Fredericksburg.
I mean, for goodness’ sake, you live here.
And just who exactly did Charles think he was not coming to see you? The “king of England” or something?
Oh wait …
