When I was a little girl, my mom would drive us to my grandmother’s house about an hour and a half away. The beginning of the drive was always boring, although it had the crackling anticipatory energy the start of every road trip contains. It was the second part of the journey that was the most interesting, once we got off of the major interstate and began winding down I-264 through Wakefield and the other farming towns. There was the sign for peanuts, one of Virginia’s proud staples, the Virginia Diner and then on either side of the highway, farmland.