Why this particular ride?

Back in 1972, when I lived in Burbank, my pal and I used to like to drive to Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
One day there appeared a giant billboard of Stephen Stills' latest record, "Manassas" (which was also the name of his band).
Knowing that Manassas was associated with the Civil War - an interest of mine - I thought, "Someday I'll go to Virginia and visit that place."
So why not take an easy and pleasant F-HOGs ride out to there for lunch on a cold January day?

Oscar Scott Woody

We'll be riding through downtown Clifton. In the little post office there is a framed photo of Clifton resident
and postal employee Oscar Scott Woody, who died April 15, 1912 on his 44th birthday when the H.M.S. Titanic sank
after it struck an iceberg. A dedicated man, he was last seen with four other postal workers attempting
to move 3,423 sacks of mail aboard the ship to keep them from getting wet!
His home was the one with the black metal fence on the corner of Church and Main. We'll ride right by it.

Perry Lee Compton

We'll also be riding past a small Compton family cemetery located at 12365 Henderson Road; it'll be on the right-hand side
of the road. Buried there is Perry Lee Compton, who, in 1949, got two additional years of jail time
for "contributing to the delinquency of minors" by taking his sons on a chicken-stealing raid. From a paper of the time: "The charge grew out of the same
episode for which Compton received sentence totaling 8 years and 11 months in the County Circuit Court.
The gist of the testimony in the several trials was that Compton, with his sons, raided Kirby Day's
chicken house in Annandale last June, stole three or four chickens and shot Day. Compton
was sentenced to 11 months for wounding Day and eight years for stealing the chickens. Both convictions
have been appealed to the State Supreme Court of Appeals." Those stories are here and here.

Eight years for chicken stealing and eleven months for shooting someone? I'd appeal it, too.

The Manassas Train Depot

The first Manassas Junction rail depot was a small log building located to the east of the present station
and on the north side of the tracks where the Alexandria and Orange
and Manassas Gap railroads crossed in 1852. After the Civil War, the first depot on the present site was a long frame
building constructed in the 1880s following the typical depot designs of the Richmond and Danville Railroad Company,
which purchased controlling interest in the Orange & Alexandria in 1886.
This frame depot was dismantled in 1904 and replaced by a brick passenger depot.
On June 25, 1914 a fire broke out in the baggage room and the depot burned, leaving only the foundation and walls.

Work on the third and present depot was completed in October 1914,
in a red-brick Victorian style with a ceramic tile-covered hipped roof.
The structure partially incorporated the walls of the burned depot, which measured about 20 feet by 77 feet, and had four new rooms; an office,
a ladies’ waiting room, men’s waiting room and a baggage and express room.
The “new” structure is about 32 feet longer than the earlier one permitting a modified room arrangement
and included the addition of an umbrella shed on the front and east side,
the installation of electric lights, and an attractive tile roof.

Ice Cream Girl

In the men's room of Fosters Grill there's a painting of the area.
The little girl in the foreground with the huge forehead looks like she's about to mash ice cream into her mother's eyes.
But everyone's an art critic, right?