Top 10 Myths About the Great Depression

A bread line during the Depression

March 4, 1933, 90 years ago: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States, at the very depth of the Great Depression.

Top 10 Myths About the Great Depression

1. The Depression was caused by the Stock Market Crash of 1929. That was part of it, but by no means all of it. The end of World War I meant that farmers, having lost a big chunk of their market, had already been in a depression since the Armistice, 11 years earlier.

The famous headline in

the film industry's "trade paper"

In his nationally-syndicated newspaper column, Will Rogers spent much of the "Roaring Twenties" saying how, for farmers, the decade didn't roar so much as mumble. He pointed out that the economic boom wasn't universal for the cities, either: In 1928, about a year before the Crash, he wrote, "Wall Street has never been better off, but Eighth Avenue has never been worse off."

When he was President, John F. Kennedy quoted an old saying: "A rising tide lifts all boats." Not a boat with a hole in it. And, of course, in the 1920s as now, some people didn't have boats, and some people couldn't even swim.

Even with the Crash, the Depression might have been sharp, but relatively short, if not for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law on June 17, 1930. Named for its sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and Representative Willis Hawley of Oregon, both Republicans, the law raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.

Willis Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot

This prompted retaliatory tariffs by other countries against America. As a result, between 1929 and 1933, American exports dropped 61 percent, and American imports dropped by 66 percent. Between 1929 and 1932, real Gross Domestic Product fell 17 percent worldwide, and 26 percent in the United States.

Unemployment was 8 percent when the Act was passed. It doubled to 16 percent in 1931 -- already higher than any of the "recessions" since the Depression -- and 25 percent in 1932. It is suspected that, when FDR took office on March 4, 1933, it may have been as high as 31 percent. If the Crash was the biggest cause, Smoot-Hawley was a strong second.

2. Stockbrokers and other ruined businessmen jumped out of windows to their deaths. Since then, whenever there's a dip in the stock market, demonstrators go to the New York Stock Exchange at Broad and Wall Streets, and yell, "Jump! Jump! Jump!" Because they think that's what happened during and after the Crash of '29.

There is no record of a single stockbroker suicide in the wake of the Crash, let alone one via jumping out of a window. In what remains the definitive book about the Crash, The Great Crash 1929, Pulitzer Prize-winning economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "In the United States the suicide wave that followed the stock market is also part of the legend of 1929. In fact, there was none."

3. Herbert Hoover Was to Blame. The 31st President of the United States took office on March 4, 1929. Within 8 months, the crash came. But the policies that caused it were already in place. Hoover was a convenient scapegoat, because it happened on his watch.

When Warren Harding was elected President in 1920, he appointed Andrew Mellon as his Secretary of the Treasury. Harding died in 1923, and Calvin Coolidge became President. He kept Mellon. In 1927, Coolidge famously said, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928." Hoover did, and won. He also kept Mellon.

Andrew Mellon

Mellon's policies may have set up the post-World War I "paper prosperity," which became known as the "Coolidge Prosperity," but they also did the most to set the Depression up. If anybody can be called
"Mr. Depression," he's the one. Perhaps Coolidge knew the crash was coming, and left one step ahead of it, and left Hoover holding the bag. A sign at the 1932 Democratic Convention read:

Hoover blew the whistle

Mellon rang the bell

Wall St gave the signal

And the country went to hell.

4. Hoover did nothing about the Depression. This is a considerably fairer statement, but not completely fair. It would be more accurate to say that he tried something, but not enough of it.

One thing he tried was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, although he didn't sign it into law until January 22, 1932. Had such a bill hit his desk 2 years earlier, it could have made a much bigger difference. The RFC -- a precursor to FDR's "alphabet soup" agencies in the New Deal -- provided financial support to State and local governments, and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations, and other businesses.

The RFC became more prominent under the New Deal, and continued to operate through World War II. It was disbanded in 1957, when the federal government concluded that it no longer needed to stimulate lending.

Hoover's main problem is that he was a "strict constructionist" in regard to the Constitution of the United States, and didn't believe it offered him what FDR would, in his Inaugural Address, call "broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe."

5. The Depression was the Golden Age of Gangster Movies. This one is true. People could watch movies about the gangsters who troubled their cities, but, with the Hays Code in effect, could watch them get their comeuppance, as "sin" had to be punished for such a movie to be released. It started with Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, released on January 9, 1931. Paul Muni starred in the original version of Scarface in 1932, which also helped to make a star of George Raft.

James Cagney starred in The Public Enemy in 1931, Lady Killer and The Mayor of Hell in 1933, Angels with Dirty Faces in 1938, and The Roaring Twenties in 1939 -- perhaps the 1st film to treat the 1920s with nostalgia. Later, he would top them all with White Heat in 1949.

James Cagney

Raft -- who, unlike the others, really did consort with gangsters -- was another actor who played those guys with aplomb, in films like Quick Millions and Hush Money in 1931; Night World, Love Is a Racket and Madame Racketeer in 1932; The Bowery in 1933; Limehouse Blues in 1934; and I Stole a Million in 1939. He was in a few films with Cagney, but, ironically, in those films together, neither of them played gangsters. Both men actually got their starts as dancers, or "hoofers."

Incidentally, in the 1932 film Taxi!, Cagney played not a gangster, or even a cop, but a taxi driver, who, at one point, yells out, "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat!" This led to every impressionist to misquote him by saying, "You dirty rat!"

6. The Depression was the Golden Age of Monster Movies. This myth being true is a matter of opinion, but the way certain characters were depicted at this time defined those characters, possibly to this day. In 1931, Bela Lugosi starred in Dracula. Later in the year, Frankenstein introduced Boris Karloff as the monster, with Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein himself. (The monster was never named in the film, but has, himself, been mistakenly called "Frankenstein" ever since.)

Left to right: Boris Karloff, Maureen O'Sullivan and Bela Lugosi,

posing for the newsreel feature Screen Snapshots #11, 1934

King Kong, about a giant ape taken from his tropical island home to New York, breaking out and terrorizing the city, debuted in 1933. The same year, Karloff starred in The Mummy, and Claude Rains starred in The Invisible Man. In 1935, The Bride of Frankenstein premiered, with Karloff and Clive reprising their roles, and Elsa Lanchester cast in the title role. It wasn't the 1st film sequel, but it can safely be called the 1st good one.

And people identified with the struggles against these characters, as, unlike the Depression itself, they were an enemy that could actually be seen and heard. And, if they touched you, they could harm you in definitive ways, unlike the more subtle harms of the Depression.

And yet, both the Frankenstein monster and Kong were more victim than villain, and people could also sympathize with humanity's unwillingness to accept them. White Americans might not have seen either figure through the prism of civil rights, but they could see them through the prism of "the forgotten man," the man that the establishment didn't want to remember.

Lon Chaney (Leonidas Frank Chaney), who had starred in the silent films The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923 and The Phantom of the Opera in 1925, had died in 1930. His son, Lon Chaney Jr. (Creighton Tull Chaney), starred in The Wolf Man in 1941, toward the end of the Depression, so it can't be counted with these others.

But that started a new trend: With World War II coming up, people decided it was better to see these creatures fight each other, and even to laugh at them, than to be afraid of them. So films where they fought were produced, and there was a series of Abbott and Costello Meet... films with the monsters, some played by their 1930s portrayers.

7. The Depression ended "the Jazz Age." It is true that the term "Jazz Age" applies to the 1920s not just because of the music, but because of a lifestyle that included the happy dancing, the happy drinking, and the gangsterism that supported it. As the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, set in 1935, shows, the Depression showed going out and dancing to have become a very different thing during the Depression, and the 1933 repeal of Prohibition didn't change that. (That film also showed people dancing under a mirror ball, 40 years before the rise of disco music. In fact, the mirror ball had been invented in 1917.)

But, as for the music, if anything, the 1930s were the decade when jazz came out of the shadows of a black-only phenomenon and into the mainstream of white America. The best jazz groups remained black ones, led by pianist-composers Edward "Duke" Ellington, William "Count" Basie, and Thomas "Fats" Waller, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and drummer Chick Webb. But bandleaders like Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and the brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey -- first together, then separately after a feud, then occasionally together again after reconciling -- proved that white men could uphold the mantle of jazz as well.

By 1938, Goodman and Basie could appear together onstage -- at no less a classical music venue than Carnegie Hall in New York -- and be celebrated for it.

Count Basie, fronting Benny Goodman and Ethel Waters,

at the Stage Door Canteen, New York, 1943

8. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal solved the Depression. Certainly, it made things better. By May 1937, early in his 2nd term, FDR had cut unemployment to 14 percent, approximately in half. But that's still worse than it has ever been since, with the brief exception of the height of the COVID epidemic. Even FDR's commitment and hard work, and the geniuses (genii?) of his "Brain Trust" couldn't get it lower than that.

9. The New Deal "made the Depression worse." This is what conservatives have wanted you to believe ever since. In May 1937, another downturn began, and by June 1938, unemployment was back up to 19 percent, back to where it was in 1935. The Democrats paid for this at the polls in 1938: The 336-88 advantage they had in the House of Representatives after 1936 dropped to 262-169, and their 77-15 Senate advantage (there were also 4 independents) fell to 69-23.

This had an interesting side effect: Just as the Congressional and gubernatorial elections of 1930, '32, '34 and '36 had wiped out many potential future Presidential candidates for the Republicans, so too did the '38 races knock out some potential Democratic candidates for 1940. As a result, neither party had much of a "bench" that could replace FDR. Without such a challenger to him, FDR knew there was no one who could seriously challenge Nazi Germany's Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, in his bid for world supremacy. FDR thought his Vice President, John Nance Garner, was too conservative to give Hitler the strenuous level of necessary opposition. So FDR ran for a 3rd term.

For most of 1939, unemployment was around 17 percent. By 1940, it had dropped back to 14; for 1941, 10. So what happened? Did FDR's New Deal programs make the Depression worse?

"Worse"? Worse than what? Worse than what he inherited on March 4, 1933? Don't be ridiculous. Republicans then, and conservatives now, want you to believe that "big government" does this. In fact, it was the exact opposite. In 1937, FDR was doing exactly what conservatives want the President to do: He was cutting back on spending. He thought he could do it because of the successes he'd had.

By 1938, he realized what a mistake this was, and, after his "First New Deal" of 1933 and his "Second New Deal" of 1935, he started a "Third New Deal." (His 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights has not been called a "Fourth New Deal," but it should be.) History has repeatedly proven it: The way to cause a recession is to have the federal government cut taxes and cut spending; and the way to get out of a recession is to have the federal government raise taxes and raise spending.

10. World War II was what really ended the Depression. This one is true. As stated, unemployment was still above 10 percent through most of 1941. On December 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The armed forces took on 16 million Americans, enlistees and draftees combined. Many jobs they left behind had been taken by those previously unemployed. And many businesses that were deemed vital to the war effort were running 24 hours a day, thus increasing the need for available workers. Because of this, by mid-1942, in a matter of months, unemployment was down to 3 percent. It remained there for the duration of The War.

FDR could not have been elected to a 3rd term in 1940 without the threat of war from Nazi Germany and/or Imperial Japan. He would not have run for a 3rd term without it. Could anyone else, elected in 1940, have brought unemployment back to 1929 levels without entering The War? It is incredibly unlikely.

The people who lived through the Great Depression are now either dead, or very old. They were the "forgotten man" and woman of their age. As my mother once pointed out, there were no support groups for survivors of the Depression, like her parents. There is no memorial specifically for them on the National Mall in Washington, although the FDR Memorial includes a tribute to them. They had their songs, and their movies, rather than tangible tributes.

We dare not forget them now. We have had hard recessions in 1973-76, 1980-83, 1990-93, 2001-03, 2007-10 and 2020-21. But not another Depression, because of the safeguards we put into place in the 1930s. If we fail to support these safeguards, then everything those people suffered through, and everything those who worked to help them did to do so, will have been in vain.

October 24, 1931: The George Washington Bridge Opens

October 24, 1931, 90 years ago: The George Washington Bridge opens, connecting Upper Manhattan at 179th Street with Fort Lee, New Jersey, over the Hudson River. Until the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco 6 years later, it is the longest suspension bridge in the world.

It was named for Washington because it was at roughly that spot where he evacuated the retreating Continental Army across the Hudson, to escape the British Army. Fort Lee was named for Charles Lee, one of Washington's Generals, a bad one. He wanted to use Washington's setbacks to get himself named General-in-Chief. Washington's Christmas victory at Trenton would end that ambition. Lee died in 1782, before the war ended.

The Tunnel that opened in 1937 was named for Abraham Lincoln because, along with Washington who had the Bridge named after him, Lincoln was 1 of the 2 most important Presidents.

The Bridge led to the great suburban growth of Bergen County, which eventually replaced Essex County as the most populous in New Jersey in the 1980s. In 1946, the upper deck was widened from 6 to 8 lanes. In 1962, a 6-lane lower level opened.

Today, it carries U.S. Routes 1 and 9, and Interstate 95. The State Line in the middle of the Hudson also marks the terminus of U.S. Route 46. Interstate 80 is not included in the Bridge, terminating at I-95, 5 miles west of the Bridge.

Through I-95, the Bridge is connected with in one direction with the New Jersey Turnpike, and in the other direction with the Cross Bronx Expressway, the New England Thruway and the Connecticut Turnpike. Through the Cross Bronx, it is linked with Interstate 87, and thus the New York State Thruway, accessing Upstate and Canada. Through I-95's link with I-80, it is linked with the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast.

The Bridge is a major entrance and exit in New York City for fans going to Yankee games. Many was the time that Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto wanted to leave a game early, saying, "I gotta get over that bridge!"

Of course, these days, it's best known for the scandal that sank the 2016 Presidential campaign of Chris Christie, and led to him being the most unpopular Governor in New Jersey's history, despite winning 60 percent of the vote in his re-election bid.

May 1, 1931: The Empire State Building Opens

May 1, 1931, 90 years ago: The Empire State Building opens in Manhattan, on 5th Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets. It is the tallest building in the world.

The land had long been in the Astor family, which preceded the Rockefellers as New York's richest. In 1893, William Waldorf Astor opened the Waldorf Hotel on the site. In 1897, next-door, his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, opened the Astoria Hotel. (John IV would die on the Titanic in 1912.)

In 1928, the Astor family, recognizing that the center of New York life had moved a bit uptown, decided to build a new hotel, and sold the property to Bethlehem Engineering Corporation. The old hotels were demolished the next year, and the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel -- now "Waldorf Astoria New York" -- opened in 1931 at 301 Park Avenue, between 49th and 50th Streets, 7 blocks north of Grand Central Terminal (a tunnel would connect them for special guests, such as Presidents of the United States) and 2 blocks east of Rockefeller Center. At 625 feet, 47 stories, it was the tallest hotel in the world until 1963.

But it would be dwarfed by what would rise on its predecessor's site. Developer John Jakob Raskob (no relation to the John Jacob Astors) and Pierre S. du Pont (a cousin of Thomas Coleman du Pont, a major investor in the previous hotel) formed Empire State, Inc. The State of New York was officially known as the Empire State. The group wanted to build the tallest building in the world.

At the time, there was a mad scramble in the City. At the time, the tallest was the Woolworth Building, which opened in 1913 at 792 feet, 55 stories, at 233 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. A few blocks away, at 40 Wall Street, the Bank of Manhattan Trust was building what it hoped would be the tallest. But automaker Walter Chrysler was trying the same, at 405 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street in Midtown, across from the Grand Central complex.

On May 1, 1930, the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building was finished: 927 feet high, 70 stories. But on May 27, Chrysler sprung a surprise: A spire, hidden within his Chrysler Building, emerged, and allowed his Building to become the world's 1st 1,000-foot skyscraper: 1,046 feet, 77 stories. 40 Wall had held the record for all of 26 days.

But Chrysler wouldn't hold the record for long, either. The original 1,050-foot plan for the Empire State Building was added onto, just in case Chrysler tried another dirty trick, like inserting a 6-foot rod up through the top of his spire. It wasn't just what the press called it, "The Race to the Sky": Essentially, it was a dick-measuring contest.

Excavation of the Waldorf-Astoria site began on January 22, 1930. Over 3,500 people worked on it, and 5 of them died. It was expected to cost $60 million to build, but it came in under budget: $40.9 million -- about $735 million today.

Running the corporation for Raskob and the rest was Alfred E. Smith, former Governor of New York, and the Democratic Party's nominee for President in 1928. His days as a "great man" over, he needed something to do. He wasn't crazy about the job.

The Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931. It was 1,250 feet high, with an outdoor observation deck at the 86th floor, and an indoor observation deck on the 102nd floor. At the opening ceremony, Smith was outshone by his former friend, and replacement as Governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mayor Jimmy Walker also attended.

At one point, the official film of the event showed someone calling out, "Governor?" And FDR said, "Which one?" The only person not laughing at this was Smith. The feud between them would continue until Smith's death in 1944.

The top of the Art Deco masterpiece was intended as a mooring mast for airships, but it was never used as such, due to wind gusts providing a safety issue. And while the Great Depression hadn't yet started when construction did, by the time the building opened, things were pretty bad. They had difficulty renting space. It became known as the Empty State Building. (My grandmother, who was just short of turning 7 and living in Queens when it opened, told me this. A PBS documentary eventually confirmed the nickname.)

But in 1933, the film King Kong was released, helping to make the building a legend. The movie's climax showed the big ape taking Ann Darrow, played by Fay Wray, in his hand, and climbing up the side of the Empire State Building. Spoiler alert for an 88-year-old movie: World War I-era biplanes try to shoot him down. He grabs one and throws it down into the street. Eventually, though, the fusillades of bullets gets to be too much for him, and he tumbles down.

The 1976 remake would see him atop the World Trade Center, while the 2005 version would be set in 1933 and put Kong atop the ESB, both computer-generated.

Still, the Depression put an end to The Race to the Sky. No one wanted to build the next Empty State Building. Towers would still go up in New York, including Rockefeller Center, with its centerpiece at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, formerly known as the RCA Building. It is this building, not the Empire State, whose construction included the famous photo Lunch Atop a Skyscraper by Charles C. Ebbets (no relation to Charles H. Ebbets, the former Brooklyn Dodgers owner who built the ballpark that bore his name). But no new record was even threatened.

By 1936, the Depression had eased enough that the building was turning a profit thanks to its observation decks. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber got lost in fog, and crashed into the north side of the building, between the 79th and 80th floors. There were 14 people killed, but the Indiana limestone of the building held, and everything reopened 2 days later.

In 1951, with the building finally becoming profitable, Raskob sold it for $51 million. In 1953, a TV and radio antenna was completed, extending the building's height to 1,454 feet. On October 19, 1970, after 40 years, the Empire State Building lost its title as the tallest building in the world, as the construction of the World Trade Center surpassed it.

In 1964, floodlights were added on the 72nd floor, so that the building could be seen from the New York World's Fair. Since 1976, the floodlights have had specialized colors for special occasions: Red and green for the Christmas season, green for St. Patrick's Day, blue and white for when the Yankees win a World Series, blue and orange for the Mets in 1986, and so on. When no special occasion is on, the lights are simply white.

Each night, those lights were shut off at midnight, when the observation decks closed. I developed a trick: At 11:59 PM, I would stand outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, and tell a tourist that I could turn off the Empire State Building. I looked at my watch, waited as it creeped up to 11:59:59, pointed my finger at the building, and said, "Zap!" And the lights went out, right on time at 12:00:00. A less scrupulous person would have offered bets on it. I never did. The look on the tourist's face was worth it.

After September 11, 2001, I realized the trick would now be in bad taste. In 2010, the 601-foot Eleven Times Square went up on the opposite corner, blocking the view of the Empire State Building from 42nd and 8th, so the trick became impossible, anyway. Eventually, the Empire State began keeping the lights on until sunrise.

In 1980, the U.S. Postal Service gave the Empire State Building its own ZIP Code, 10118. The World Trade Center also got its own, 10048. So did the Chrysler Building, 10174.

In 1995, Donald Trump bought 40 Wall Street, and, naturally, renamed it the Trump Building. On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was destroyed, and Trump called in to a news organization, bragging that he now had the tallest building in New York. Like pretty much everything Trump says, it wasn't true: It was now the tallest building in Lower Manhattan, but the Empire State Building was still taller.

I visited the observation decks a few times when I was younger, when the price of admission was just $20. Today, it's $42 for the 86th Floor Observation Deck, and $75 for the Decks on both the 86th and the 102nd Floors.

As of May 1, 2021, there are 14 completed buildings in New York City that are at least 1,000 feet high, as there is once again a building boom in Manhattan: 

1. One World Trade Center, 285 Fulton Street, opened 2014, 1,776 feet, 104 stories, tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, 6th-tallest in the world. The address "1 World Trade Center" used to belong to the North Tower of the old WTC. The South Tower was "2 World Trade Center."

2. Central Park Tower, 225 West 57th, Street, 2020, 1,550, 98, tallest residential building in the world.

3. Steinway Tower, 111 West 57th Street, 2021, 1,428, 84, known as "the world's most slender skyscraper."

4. One Vanderbilt, 1 Vanderbilt Avenue near Grand Central, 2020, 1,401, 59.

5. 432 Park Avenue (at 57th Street), 2015, 1,397, 85. Part of a section of 57th Street known as Billionaires' Row.

6. 30 Hudson Yards, 500 West 33rd Street, 2019, 1,270, 73. The Hudson Yards project might generate a lot of jobs and income for the City, but it's ruined the view of the City coming down the ramp heading into the Lincoln Tunnel. It even blocks the view of the...

7. Empire State Building, 350 5th Avenue, 1931, 1,250, 102.

8. Bank of America Tower, 1101 6th Avenue at 42nd Street, 2009, 1,200, 55. If you watched the TV show Younger, this building was used for exterior shots of the building that was home to Empirical Publishing.

9. 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, 2018, 1,079, 80. The address formerly belonged to the 1981-2001 Vista International Hotel/Marriott World Trade Center, adjacent to the Twin Towers.

10. 53W53, 53 West 53rd Street, 2019, 1,050, 77.

11. Chrysler Building, 405 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street, 1930, 1,046, 77.

12. New York Times Building, 620 8th Avenue at 41st Street, 2007, 1,046, 52. Across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

13. One57, 157 West 57th Street, 2014, 1,004, 75.

14. 35 Hudson Yards, 532 West 33rd Street, 2019, 1,000 even, 72.

The World Trade Center officially opened in 1973, surpassing the Empire State Building. That was surpassed by the Sears Tower (now officially named the Willis Tower, but nobody calls it that) in Chicago in 1974. That lasted until 1998, when the Petronas Towers, another set of "Twin Towers," was built in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They were surpassed in 2004 by Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan.

And in 2007, Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is 2,717 feet high, with 154 stories. But, like the Empire State did, it is having trouble filling its space, as Dubai hasn't really recovered from the 2008-09 worldwide recession. Saudi Arabia is trying to build the Jeddah Tower, with the intention of making it at least 3,281 feet high -- the world's first building to be taller than one kilometer. But construction was halted in 2018, with the tower only 1/3rd finished, and it hasn't come any closer.

Things Today's Kids Just Won't Get

Jerry Carroll, doing a Crazy Eddie TV ad, 1986.

Unfortunately, he kept getting confused

with company founder Eddie Antar.

Eddie was the crook, Jerry was just the pitchman.

Today, my nieces Ashley and Rachel turned 11. I have been much more successful in extending my taste in baseball to them (they are Yankee Fans) than my taste in most other things. Their younger sister Mackenzie is 2, and she doesn't even know the Yankees exist, even though she's seen the pictures of Yankee stuff at my place.

This past Friday, Toys "R" Us closed forever, after 70 years, including 43 years in my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. It was at their Loehmann's Plaza location (which they left a few years back, moving down New Jersey Route 18 to take the spot formerly occupied by Meyer's hobby store) that I bought things ranging from superhero action figures to baseball cards, from that Mattel Electronics Football II handheld game I wanted so badly to game cartridges for my Atari 5200 SuperSystem (which I got a half-mile down Route 18, at Crazy Eddie, now also defunct).

Remember the commercial jingle? "I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid!" Well, now, we have no choice: We have to grow up.

When I was their age, 11, "50 years ago" would have been 1931. Think about what TV was like back then. You can't, because there was no TV! Movies? Sound had just come to movies. It was very sketchy. Movies were black and white. And they didn't really look right. It was all shades of gray. (No, not that kind of Shades of Grey.) Even the movements didn't quite look right.

Today, go back 50 years, and it's 1968. You can watch TV shows made that year like The Ed Sullivan Show, Laugh-In, and others. Except for the hairstyles and the clothing, these are shows that could have been made today. It's color. The sound is right. I could tell you that, however silly they might seem today, Get Smart, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and others were made last week, and, for a kid who has never heard otherwise, it wouldn't be all that easy to doubt it.

I'm 37 years older than Ashley and Rachel. And 46 years older than Mackenzie. 37 years ago would be 1981. 46 years ago would be 1972. There were people on TV back then who are still on TV now. Ashley and Rachel know who Betty White is. They can watch old episodes of The Golden Girls, and see Betty playing Rose Nylund. They can watch even older episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and see Betty playing Sue Ann Nivens.

But try telling them that Roseanne Barr and Dennis Miller were once liberals. And funny. They're not going to believe that.

But there are some things they will never truly understand. Some of these have been remarked upon before. For example, the "Save" icon. Which represents a hard disk for your computer, which we nonetheless called a "floppy disk," because they started out as floppy disks. Typewriters that weren't also computers.

All those functions that your smartphone has used to be done by separate machines. A library. A notepad. A calculator. A map, made of paper, that you had to fold and unfold. A camera, a record player, and a TV. Essentially, a radio station and a TV studio.

An alarm clock. A regular clock. It's getting hard enough to find an analog clock, so today's kids can use the skill of "telling time," but they don't know about "tick, tick, tick," "Wind your watch" and "You can set your watch by it."

Lots of things related to telephones. "Hang up." "Collect call." Having a phone book with phone numbers and addresses -- or its office desktop equivalent, the rolodex -- instead of looking them up on the Internet. Using a phone book as a booster on your seat.

Explaining what Doctor Who's TARDIS is supposed to be. Explaining why Superman went into phone booths. Forever associating a dime with pay phones. Explaining the title of country singer Travis Tritt's song, "Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)."

Or any other coin-related analogy. We still have coins, of course, but we have to explain penny candy. Penny-ante. "A penny for your thoughts." "Not one red cent" or "Not one thin dime." A plugged nickel. "Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon." "Nickel-and-diming." "Five-and-dime" stores. "A dime a dozen." Dime novels. The Dime Savings Bank. Video gamers actually leaving the house to go to the mall, walking into the arcade, and lining their quarters on the bottom of the screen to reserve their place on the machine.

Indeed, even in my youth, the old term for a quarter, "two bits," had to be explained, in connection to the old Spanish dollar that could be broken into "pieces of eight." And calling something cheap could be done by calling it "two-bit."

Having to call the movie theater to find out what time the movie you wanted to see was playing. Loading your camera (not a phone with a camera app, but a separate device) with film, taking the film out to be professionally developed, because you couldn't edit it on the spot yourself and take a better picture, and discovering, days later, that most of the pictures were blurry and no good. And, by the time you found out, it was too late, because you'd already paid for it.

Taping songs off the radio. And, if a song you liked wasn't getting played, calling the station on the phone, and waiting on hold for 45 minutes to get your request played by the DJ. 

Record stores. Having to buy an entire album for one song, and ending up with maybe one other good single, two mediocre songs, and several pieces of crap that were just filling the album out. In 1981, an album cost $9.99 (converting that from 1981 money to 2018 value: $28.40), and a single was $1.15 ($3.27).

The albums were wax platters called "records." And, for singles, we had those three-pronged adapters. This was also how you heard (but didn't see) your favorite comedian, unless you got to watch The Tonight Show. Yes, from the 1950s to the 1980s, comedians made albums. Heck, up until The Beatles and Bob Dylan came along, most of the albums sold were classical music ("LP" did, after all, stand for "long-playing"), Broadway show and movie soundtracks, greatest-hits compilations, and comedians.

At least with a record, if you couldn't make a lyric out, you could pick the tonearm up and put it back down on an earlier part of the record. With a tape, you had to rewind, and guess when to stop.

You went to Sam Goody for records. Crazy Eddie for electronics. Blockbuster Video for movies. Two Guys for pretty much anything. Goody got it, but Crazy Eddie's prices were in-sane! (The commercials with Jerry Carroll were considered edgy at the time.) Blockbuster Video? Wow, what a difference! We save money for you at Two Guys... naturally! 

Woolworth. Woolco. McCrory's. Newberry's. Grant's. Those were 5 of the "five-and-dimes" I mentioned. Kmart was the same style. In East Brunswick, it replaced S. Klein On the Square.

Department stores that used to anchor malls, like Bamberger's at Brunswick Square here in East Brunswick, and at Menlo Park in Edison. Caldor at the North Brunswick Shopping Center. Alexander's at Menlo Park. A&S (Abraham and Straus), Stern's, Ohrbach's, Steinbach's and Hahne's at Woodbridge Center. Korvette's. We didn't have Gimbel's or TSS (Times Square Stores) in New Jersey, but New York City had them.

KB Toys. Child World. Meyer's hobby store. Pergament Home Centers. Channel Home Centers. Waldenbooks and B. Dalton's. Now, Toys "R" Us has joined all of these companies in that great mall in the sky. At least I don't have to explain to Ashley and Rachel what Toys "R" Us was, because they'll remember it. Mackenzie won't, any more than I remember S. Klein (or "Klein's").

Kids today won't understand how television worked back then. Seven channels and nothing on. Not seven hundred, not a hundred and seven, not seventy, not even seventeen. Seven. Rabbit ears. Foil on the antenna to improve reception. Test patterns. Please stand by. Film at 11.

Having to wait until 6 or 11 PM to see the news. (Which, itself, helped to phase out an institution that I never really saw: The evening paper. The Newark Evening News, my parents' favorite paper, folded in 1972.) An hour-long show meant 50 minutes of programming and 10 minutes of commercials, not 44 and 16 like it does today.

Having to get home by a certain time, because VCRs didn't hit stores until the mid-1970s, and didn't become common until the early 1980s. In our house, we didn't get one until 1985. Reagan's 2nd term. (We weren't rolling in dough, but we weren't dirt-poor, either.)

The only time you could see a baseball team was when your local team was playing them, or else wait for the NBC Game of the Week on Saturday or ABC Monday Night Baseball. And if you were a fan of an NBA or NHL team, forget it: They were shown on tape delay on an "independent" station at 11:30 at night.

Truly being shocked by an event on TV or in movies. Henry Blake dies in a plane crash before he can go home. J.R. Ewing gets shot, and we have to wait until September to find out if he lives -- and November to find out who did it. (It was his sister-in-law, also his mistress, Kritsin Shepard.) Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker, "No, I am your father!" Spock dies... and comes back.

No Internet meant you had to go to the bookshelf and look things up. I remember taking Ashley and Rachel to the East Brunswick Public Library, and showing them the most recent edition of The World Book Encyclopedia, 22 volumes strong, and telling them, "When I was your age, this was what we used to look things up for school, instead of the Internet." Ashley wasn't impressed. It takes a lot to impress her. But Rachel said, "Wow!"

The library also had the card catalog, to find books, instead of a computer terminal. At home, I used The World Almanac and Book of Facts and The Baseball Encyclopedia every day. That's not much of an exaggeration: On pretty much any day as a kid, I used at least one of them.

As a kid in the late '70s, up to the mid-'80s, the best day of Spring wasn't Opening Day, it was the day the new Topps baseball cards hit the 7-Eleven. 15 cards for 49 cents, a 3-pack for 99 cents. (In 2018 value: $1.39 and $2.81.)

The World Almanac, The Baseball Encyclopedia, and baseball cards. I used them so often, and loved them so much. They're all still around, but they're kind of pointless now, having been made obsolete by Wikipedia, Baseball Reference and Google Images, respectively.

If you lived in the Eastern Time Zone, and your local team was playing on the Pacific Coast, and the game started at 7:30 local time, but it was 10:30 your time, then you had to go to bed not when the game was over, but while it was still in progress. Unless your mother was mean, in which case the game could have started at 7 your time, and you still had to go to bed before it was over.

Thus, you thanked God for the invention of the little transistor radio that could be kept under the covers with you. But if you didn't have that, you waited until the next morning, and you looked in the newspaper. Which was actually printed on paper. And had actual news, instead of "infotainment" like Fox "News" does.

If your team was playing at home, you might see this under "AL SCORES":

Yankees 6, Oakland 5

The Yankees and the Mets were always listed in bold on the score list. If it was the other way around, if the A's were the home team, you were outta luck, Jack. Instead, you saw...

Yankees at Oakland, n.

N for "night game." It didn't get finished in time to meet the paper's deadline.

No, the Internet wasn't invented so that teenage boys (or grown men who act like them) could talk trash to those like them in New York, Newcastle or New Dehli. Or so that teenage boys could find naughty pictures and movies. It was so that people of any age could know the score of last night's game before they left for school or work the next morning.

If you're under age 21, I know what you're thinking: "smh"

I'm shaking my head, too. But from the other direction.

How to Go to a Football Game In Virginia

This coming Friday night, the University of Virginia, a.k.a. UVa, will play their arch-rivals, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a.k.a. Virginia Tech, in football, at UVa's Scott Stadium in Charlottesville. The rivalry is nicknamed the Commonwealth Cup, for the trophy given to the winner.

Before You Go. Virginia is in the South. If this were Summer or early Autumn, heat might be an issue. But this will be Thanksgiving Weekend, so the weather won't be appreciably different from New York and New Jersey. It's predicted to be in the mid-50s on Friday afternoon, but the low 30s on Friday night. Bring a Winter jacket.

Virginia is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to adjust your timepieces. Despite Virginia being a former Confederate State, you will not have to bring a passport or change your money.

Tickets. UVa has been averaging 38,000 fans in a 61,500-seat stadium the last few years. But we're talking about the UVa-VT rivalry, so expect a sellout. The entire lower bowl will be $75, but most games are a lot cheaper: $58 on the sidelines, $43 in the end zone. In the upper deck, it will be $75 on the sidelines and $65 in the end zones, usually $43 and $23.

In contrast, Tech usually gets over 60,000 in their 65,632-seat stadium. So getting tickets for them will be tougher. For today's game against Pitt, right before kickoff, all they had left was $7 seats on StubHub.

Getting There. This will be Thanksgiving weekend. Due to demand, the amount of seats available and the prices you could expect to pay will not be as usual.

From Midtown Manhattan, it's 343 miles to Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, and 491 miles to Lane Stadium in Blacksburg. It's in that tricky range: Too close to fly, but too far to get there any other way. I wouldn't recommend flying, as neither Charlottesville nor Blacksburg is big enough to have a major airport with nonstop flights.

If you want to take Amtrak to either city, you'll have to go down the previous day -- in this case, Thanksgiving Day. Round-trip fare to Charlottesville is $196. The station is at 810 W. Main Street. To Blacksburg, however, you'll have to get off at Roanoke and switch to a bus, which will take an hour and 10 minutes. And, for some reason, the fare is almost double what it is to Charlottesville: $369. But it will drop you off at Tech's Squires Student Center, 291 Alumni Mall.

Greyhound doesn't go to Blacksburg. Their round-trip fare to Charlottesville is $272, but it can drop to $179 with advanced purchase. The address is 310 W. Main Street, just 3 blocks east of the Amtrak station.

If you drive down to Charlottesville, take the New Jersey Turnpike all the way down to the Delaware Memorial Bridge, then the Delaware Turnpike and the JFK Highway in Maryland, through Baltimore and to the Capital Beltway around Washington. Take Exit 49A onto Interstate 66. You won't get many kicks on this Route 66, though. Take Exit 43A to U.S. 29, which will go into Charlottesville.

Either way, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 20 minutes in Delaware, an hour and 40 minutes in Maryland, and 2 hours in Virginia. That's about 4 and a half hours. Throw in a couple of rest stops, and it's about 6 hours.

The drive to Blacksburg is a bit different, as you'll bypass not just Philadelphia, but Baltimore and D.C. Take Interstate 78 West across New Jersey to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There, switch to Interstate 81 South through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and into Virginia. Take Exit 118 to U.S. Route 460 North, turn right on Southgate Drive, and that will take you to the campus.

If you do it right, you should spend an hour and 15 minutes in New Jersey, 2 hours and 45 minutes in Pennsylvania, 15 minutes in Maryland, half an hour in West Virginia, and nearly 4 hours in Virginia. That's 8 hours and 45 minutes. Counting rest stops, it should be around 11 hours.

Once In the State. Today home to about 8.4 million people -- a little less than New York City, and a little less than New Jersey -- Virginia was settled by the English in the early 17th Century, but the plan for it was first filed in the late 16th Century, when the monarch was Queen Elizabeth I, who never married, and was thus known as the Virgin Queen. (We will probably never know for sure, unless some 400-year-old letters are found and can be authenticated. It's not like there were the portrait equivalent of sex tapes in those days.)

And yet, there's that slogan again, in use since 1968

and contradicting the State's very name.

The 1st settlement was in Jamestown in 1607, and it badly struggled, because the plague that nearly wiped out the Native tribes hadn't yet come. By the time the Pilgrims arrived at what's now Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, it had devastated what's now the Northeastern U.S.

Virginia was the largest of the 13 Colonies that became the 1st 13 States, and its contribution to America's founding era is incalculable: George Washington, Patrick Henry, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee, their cousin Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, and, if you want to stretch the timeline a little, James Monroe.

In fact, the reason Jefferson became more revered in history than Massachusetts' John Adams boils down to the fact that Adams told Jefferson that he should write the Declaration of Independence, for 3 reasons: He thought a Virginian should write it, based on the colony's moves toward independence to that point; he knew that Jefferson was considerably more popular among their colleagues; and he said that Jefferson could write 10 times better (an exaggeration, but he was better).

Like Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kentucky, they officially call themselves not a "State," but a "Commonwealth": "The Commonwealth of Virginia." What's the difference? Officially, none: The federal government recognizes these 4 as "States," just as it does with the 46 that call themselves "States." Why do these 4 thus use "Commonwealth"? The story I heard is that the word seemed to suggest anti-monarchist sentiment. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Virginia were all among the Original 13, and Kentucky was essentially broken off from Virginia to become the 15th State.

Thus, there is both a Virginia State University, a "historically black" school in Petersburg; and a Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond. A nickname for Virginia is "The Old Dominion," and there's an Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Unfortunately, Virginia was also a slave State, and its capital, Richmond -- with a State House designed by the architectural mind of Jefferson -- became the capitol building of the Confederate States of America, succeeding its counterpart in Montgomery, Alabama.

The State House in Richmond

And Virginia's contributions to the CSA were staggering: Robert E. Lee (son of Light-Horse Harry), Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, Thomas "Tex" Rosser, Jubal Early, George Pickett, "Prince" John Magruder, A.P. Hill, Joseph Johnston. Indeed, the "Independent City" (meaning it's not part of any County) of Williamsburg was both a hotbed of activity in the American Revolution period and the site of a Civil War battle.

The 10th State to ratify the Constitution, on June 25, 1788, Virginia didn't secede from the Union until April 17, 1861, 5 days after the attack on Fort Sumter (and exactly 100 years to the day before the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba), and they almost didn't: In no other Southern State was the vote as close. It is 1 of 4 States to have been both 1 of the Original 13 and 1 of the Seceding 11, the others being Georgia and both Carolinas.

General Ulysses S. Grant finally broke the Confederate lines outside Richmond on April 2, 1865, burned the capital, and got Lee to surrender on April 9, at Appomattox. On January 26, 1870, Virginia was readmitted to the Union. Lee lived long enough to see that happen, dying 9 months later.

Virginia has not had the same reputation for vicious racism as, say, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi or Arkansas. And, thanks to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. taking on people getting more affordable housing, the State has voted Democratic in each of the last 3 Presidential elections (after doing so only once between 1964 and 2008, and that was for a Southerner, Jimmy Carter in 1976).

And Charlottesville, a.k.a. C-ville, founded in 1762, named for the wife of King George III, home of 49,000 permanent residents and the University of Virginia, founded by Jefferson in 1819, is generally considered to be a liberal city. Which made the neo-Confederate and neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville this past August 12 so jarring. (UPDATE: Since 2017, the movement to get statues of Confederate heroes like Lee and Jackson removed from public places in Virginia has had some success, including in Richmond.)

Blacksburg, a.k.a. The 'Burg, is another matter. Founded in 1798, named for local landowner Samuel Black, home of 42,000 people and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a.k.a. Virginia Tech, founded in 1872, is within the Shenandoah Mountains, the Appalachian range that forms the spine of the State. It is country, and it is unmistakably Southern, in each case letting on much more so than does Charlottesville. But Blacksburg doesn't have a bigoted reputation.

But it is best known for a tragic event: On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old Korean immigrant and Tech student, shot 49 people, killing 32 of them, before killing himself. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. In the last 2 years, it has been surpassed by the shootings in Orlando and Las Vegas. The community rallied around the victims' families, and the Yankees even played a fundraising Spring Training game on campus in 2008.

ZIP Codes for Virginia start with the digits 220 to 246. For Charlottesville, 228 and 229. For Blacksburg and the Roanoke area, 240 to 243. The Area Code for Charlottesville is 434, and for Blacksburg 540. The State sales tax is 4.3 percent.

Prominent newspapers in the State include the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Norfolk-based Virginian-Pilot, the Williamsburg-based Virginia Gazette, the Charlottesville Daily Progress, and, including the Blacksburg area, the Roanoke Times.

Charlottesville's address dividers are Main Street for North and South, and 1st Street for East and West. Charlottesville Area Transit runs buses, with a single fare being 75 cents and a 24-hour pass being a bargain at $1.50. From Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Washington, D.C. is 116 miles to the east, Richmond is 77 miles to the southeast, Colonial Williamsburg is 127 miles to the southeast, Norfolk is 169 miles to the southeast, and Virginia Beach is 183 miles to the southeast.

The Rotunda, like the State Capitol designed by

University of Virginia founder Thomas Jefferson.

You can see the similarity to his home, Monticello.

Notable non-sports alumni of UVa include:

* Vice President: Alben Barkley (Class of) 1900.

* Cabinet members: Attorneys General Thomas Gregory 1884 and Robert F. Kennedy '51; Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson 1913; Secretary of State Edward Stettinius '24; Secretary of Transportation Alan Boyd '48; Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow '65; FBI Director Robert Mueller '73, Secretaries of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano '83 and Kirstjen Neilsen '99.

* Governors, of Virginia unless otherwise stated:: Napolitano of Arizona, William Fishback 1855 of Arkansas, Henry Mathews 1856 of West Virginia, Samuel McEnery 1857 of Louisiana, James Clarke 1878 of Arkansas, Joseph T. Robinson 1895 of Arkansas, William P. Lane Jr. 1915 of Maryland, Charles Terry '22 of Delaware, Millard Caldwell '24 of Florida, Lowell Weicker '57 of Connecticut, Brereton Jones '61 of Kentucky, Angus King '69 of Maine, Chuck Robb '73, George Allen '74, Mark Sanford '88 of South Carolina.

* Senators, representing Virginia unless otherwise stated: Clarke, McEnery, Robinson (Majority Leader), Barkley of Kentucky (Majority Leader), Robb, Weicker, Allen, Robert Hunter 1828, Robert Toombs 1830 of Georgia, Eppa Hunton 1843, Thomas Turley 1867 of Tennessee, Nathan Bachman 1903 of Tennessee, John Stennis '28 of Mississippi, Harry Byrd Jr. '36, William Spong '47, John Warner '53, Bobby Kennedy of New York and Ted Kennedy '59 of Massachusetts, Kit Bond '63 of Missouri, Bill Nelson '68 of Florida, John N. Kennedy '77 of Louisiana, Evan Bayh '81 of Indiana, Sheldon Whitehouse '82 of Rhode Island, and John Cornyn '95 of Texas.

John N. Kennedy is a Republican, and no relation to Jack, Bobby and Ted. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. '82 is a lawyer and environmental activist. Harry Byrd Jr. was the son of a Senator, the cousin of another (Robert of West Virginia), and the cousin of polar explorer Richard Byrd. John Tunney was Ted Kennedy's roommate at UVa, and the son of 1926-28 Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunney. George Allen was the son of the Washington Redskins coach of the same name. Evan Bayh was the son of Senator Birch Bayh. And John Warner was the 7th of the 8 husbands of Elizabeth Taylor.

* Business: Dr. Charles T. Pepper 1855. According to the Dr Pepper Company, he's the namesake.

* Science: Walter Reed 1869, discovered how yellow fever was transmitted, and the U.S. Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. is named for him; Francis Collins '70, director of the Human Genome Project; Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, both '05, co-founders of Reddit (Ohanian is married to Serena Williams).

* Literature: Louis Auchincloss '41, Henry S. Taylor '65, Linda Fairstein '72, Claudia Emerson '79, Edward P. Jones '81, David Baldacci '86. Edgar Allan Poe attended, but had to drop out.

* Journalism: Virginius Dabney '21, Brit Hume '65, Fred Barnes '65, Tyler Mathisen '76 Katie Couric '79, Michael Vitez '79, Ron Suskind '81, Thomas Frank '87, Lane DeGregory '89, Rich Lowry '90, Laura Ingraham '91, Kimberly Dozier '93, Whitney Casey '97, Margaret Brennan '02, Krystal Ball '03. If you count sports journalism, add Melissa Stark '95.

Entertainment: Actors Dylan Walsh '86, Tina Fey '92, Benjamin McKenzie '01, Sarah Drew '02, Jen Lilley '07 and Sasheer Zamata '08; director Tom Shadyac '81; producers Paul Junger Witt '63, Mark Johnson '71 and Andrew Scheinman '73.

Blacksburg's streets don't really run north-south or east-west, but on diagonals. Nevertheless, they use the designations on street names. Main Street divides addresses into East and West, and Roanoke Street into North and South. Blacksburg Transit runs buses, with 90 percent of its riders being Tech students and faculty. A single fare is 50 cents.

Burruss Hall, fronted by the memorial

to the victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre

From Lane Stadium, the closest thing resembling a major city is Roanoke, 41 miles to the east. Washington, D.C. is 270 miles to the northeast, Richmond is 203 miles to the east, Colonial Williamsburg is 255 miles to the east, Norfolk is 279 miles to the east, Virginia Beach is 312 miles to the east, and Charlotte, North Carolina is 174 miles to the south. The distance between Charlottesville and Blacksburg is 150 miles.

Blacksburg doesn't have a highway that serves as a "beltway." Charlottesville has 3 that sort of serve this purpose: U.S. Route 250 to the north and east, Interstate 64 to the south, and U.S. Route 29 to the west.

In addition to the main campus in Blacksburg, Tech has campuses in Richmond, Roanoke, its Northern Virginia Center in the D.C. suburb of Falls Church, its Southwest Center in Abingdon, and its Hampton Roads Centers in Newport News and Virginia Beach. Notable VT graduates outside of sports include:

Politics: Governors Lindsay Almond '23 of Virginia and Chet Culver '88 of Iowa; and, on the not-so-savory side, Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis (dropped out in the 1940s) and Trump Administration advisor Steve Bannon '76.

Literature: Homer Hickam '64 and Sharyn McCrumb '85.

Journalism: Hoda Kotb '86, Brian Sullivan '93, Molly Line '99. 

Going In. The official address of Scott Stadium is 1815 Stadium Road, about 2 miles west of downtown Charlottesville. Bus T goes to the stadium. If you drive in, parking is $10.

It opened in 1931 with a capacity of 22,000, rising to 26,500 in 1964, 42,073 in 1980, and 61,500 in 2000. The stadium is a horseshoe, open at the northwest, with the field running northwest-to-southeast. The field was switched to Astroturf in 1974, and back to real grass in 1995. The stadium has also hosted the NCAA soccer and lacrosse Final Fours, and Virginia has fine programs in both.

The colonnade and grass berm at the north end

The full name is the Carl Smith Center, Home of David A. Harrison III Field at Scott Stadium. That's a mouthful. Frederic Scott was a university rector. Harrison funded the restoration of the grass field. And Smith's donation allowed the 2000 expansion.

The official address of Lane Stadium is 185 Beamer Way, just to the west of downtown Blacksburg. Parking is a whopping $40. The field runs north-to-south, and has always been natural grass. The design is similar to the "two big dams facing each other" design also used at Wake Forest and Indiana in the 1960s.

"The Terrordome" opened in 1965 with 35,050 seats, and was expanded to 52,500 in 1980 and its current 66,233 in 2004. It was named for Edward Hudson Lane, a local furniture magnate and a Tech graduate who headed an educational foundation project that helped fund the construction. In 1992, the playing surface was named Worsham Field, for Wes and Janet Worsham, who gave $1 million to the school.

This past October 6, Thrillist compiled a list of their Best College Football Stadiums, the top 19 percent of college football, 25 out of 129. Lane Stadium came in 8th, and the article calls it "the loudest venue in the ACC."

Technically (if you'll pardon the play on words), Virginia Tech had the highest attendance ever for a college football game, although officially it was a neutral site game: The Pilot Flying J Battle of Bristol. The City of Bristol straddles the State Line between Virginia and Tennessee, and on September 10, 2016, the Bristol Motor Speedway, on the Tennessee side, about halfway between Blacksburg and Knoxville, hosted a game between Virginia Tech and the University of Tennessee.

The Guinness Book of World Records only counted tickets scanned, 130,045, which exceeded all previous records, including Tennessee's games at 109,061-seat Neyland Stadium, Michigan's at 115,109-seat Michigan Stadium, and the 123,000 at the old Soldier Field in Chicago for Notre Dame's 1927 win over USC. But the total number of tickets sold was 156,990, in a stadium that supposedly seats 162,000.

Food. Unlike many of these rivalry games for which I've done 2-in-1 posts, the 2 Virginia schools have very detailed concessions information.

At Scott Stadium, Virginia serves hot dogs at stands outside Sections 105, 109, 117, 123, 127, 311, 315, 321, 503, 505, 509, 511, 514, 517, 520, 523, 526, 529, 531, 534, 535 and 537; barbecue sandwiches at 105, 109, 123, 127, 311, 321, 505, 509, 514, 517, 523, 526, 531 and 535; nachos at 105, 109, 123, 127, 311, 315, 321, 505, 509, 511, 514, 517, 520, 523, 526, 529, 531 and 534; Chick-Fil-A at 108 and 126; chicken tenders at 110, 123, 313, 317 and 520; French fry stands at 110, 123 and 520; hamburgers at 313, 317, 511 and 529; bratwursts at 313, 511 and 529; Italian sausages at 313, 317, 511 and 529; Papa John's pizza at 313, 319 and 519; salads at 315; Philly-style cheesesteaks at 317 and 520; turkey legs at 318 and 519; Buffalo chicken cheesesteaks at 520; and Mexican food on the Pergola Plaza behind the colonnade in the north end.

Drinks and desserts? Dippin' Dots at 101, 122 and 131; shaved ice (snow cones) at 105, 109, 123, 127, 313 and 321; lemonade at 106, 127 and 521; Ben & Jerry's ice cream at 108 and 521; funnel cakes and kettle corn at 110; and Sweets and Treats at 123.

At Lane Stadium, you can find Bavarian Pretzels at 1, 6, 104 and 504; Minute Maid Lemonade at 1, 8, 14, 21, 507 and J; Hethwood Market Sno Cones at 2; Papa John's pizza at 2, 5, 13, 19, 20 and 503; HokieFit health-food at 2, 7 and 33; Hethwood Market Kettle Corn at 2 and 19; Hokie Smokin' BBQ at 9 and 102; Hethwood Market Cheesesteaks at 102; VT Dairy Club Milkshakes at 14; and Smokin' Hokie Legs at 501 and 510.

If you're a Rutgers fan, you might appreciate the sale of turkey legs, but, as you'll see in "During the Game," this item may be more appropriate for UVa fans to eat than for VT.

Team History Displays. For most of the 20th Century, this would have been a sorry sight, as both schools were rather lackluster. In other sports, they'd done well; in football, not so much. By the 1980s, both had begun to turn it around.

Virginia won the Championship of the long-defunct South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SAIAA) in 1908. They didn't win another title until 1989, when they shared the Atlantic Coast Conference title with Duke. They won another Co-Championship in 1995, sharing with Florida State.

They didn't play in their 1st bowl game until New Year's Eve 1984, when they beat Purdue to win the Peach Bowl. They've also won the 1987 All-American Bowl, the 1994 Independence Bowl, the 1995 Peach Bowl, the 2002 and 2003 Continental Tire Bowl, the 2005 Music City Bowl. But they've only been to 1 major bowl, losing the 1991 Sugar Bowl 23-22 to Tennessee.

They've retired 6 numbers: 35, 1942 running back "Bullet" Bill Dudley; 97, 1949 running back Gene Edmonds (killed in a car crash driving home from a loss to Tulane despite his own touchdown); 48, 1951 guard Bill Palumbo; 24, 1968 running back Frank Quayle; 73, 1985 offensive tackle Jim Dombrowski; and 12, 1990 quarterback Shawn Moore, who got them into that '91 Sugar Bowl.

The UVa athletic department also has retired jerseys without the numbers thereon being retired, which "honors Virginia players who have significantly impacted the program." Among these honorees are the Barber twins, whose senior year was 1996: Cornerback Ronde, who won Super Bowl XXXVII with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and running back Tiki, whose 10,449 rushing yards in 10 seasons with the Giants remains a New York record. (Curtis Martin rushed for 14,101 yards, but 10,302 of those were with the Jets, making it a club record but not a Tri-State Area record.)

This honor was also bestowed on, among others, 1990 receiver Herman Moore, who starred with the Detroit Lions before wrapping his career up with the Giants in 2002; 1999 running back Thomas Jones, who rushed for over 10,000 yards in a career that included the 2007, '08 and '09 seasons with the Jets; 2004 tight end Heath Miller, who won 2 Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers; and 2007 defensive end Chris Long, now with the Philadelphia Eagles after winning last season's Super Bowl with the New England Patriots.

Dudley, Palumbo, Dombrowski and 1952 defensive end Tom Scott are in the College Football hall of Fame. So is George Welsh, who coached Virginia during its greatest era, 1982 to 2000, after coaching Navy, and before that serving as one of Joe Paterno's assistants at Penn State. So is Earle "Greasy" Neale, who coached at UVa in the 1920s after playing both baseball and football professionally, before coaching the Philadelphia Eagles to their 1948 and '49 NFL Championships. Dudley, Neale, and 1956 defensive tackle Henry Jordan are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

As for Tech, they've won 10 Conference Championships: The South Atlantic Conference in 1916 and 1918; the Southern Conference in 1963; the Big East in 1995, 1996 and 1999; and the ACC in 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2010. They've won the ACC Coastal Division, but lost the ACC Championships Game, in 2005, 2011 and 2016. They've also won the Lambert Trophy, annually awarded to "the best college football team in the East," in 1995 and 1999. (UVa has never won it.)

Their 1st bowl game was the 1947 Sun Bowl, losing to the University of Cincinnati. They've won the 1995 Sugar Bowl, the 2009 Orange Bowl, the 1986 and 2009 Peach Bowls, the 1993 and 2015 Independence Bowls, the 1998 Music City Bowl, the 2000 Gator Bowl, the 2002 San Francisco Bowl, the 2006 Gator Bowl, the 2012 Russell Athletic Bowl (beating Rutgers in Orlando), the 2014 Military Bowl, and the 2016 Belk Bowl. (They've also lost, among major bowl games, the 1996, 2008 and 2011 Orange Bowls; and the 2000, 2005 and 2012 Sugar Bowls.)

Tech's greatest player was defensive end Bruce Smith, winner of the 1984 Outland Trophy as the nation's best interior lineman. As Dennis Hopper would have said in one of his Nike commercials, You know what Bruce Smith did in the NFL? Bad things, man! I mean, bad things!

In 1999, Virginia Tech came to Rutgers with their much-hyped lefthanded-throwing, crazy-running quarterback Michael Vick. He lit RU's defense up like a pinball machine. But I was more impressed with the defense that head coach Frank Beamer built, led by defensive end Corey Moore. I'd never seen an amateur defense that was so fast. Tech won 58-20, and took the Number 5 ranking they had in that game and got it up to Number 2 and a date with Number 1 Florida State in the Sugar Bowl for the National Championship -- but the Seminoles gave them a taste of their own medicine, winning 46-29.

Moore didn't last long in the pros, only playing in 2000, for the Buffalo Bills. Vick was luckier, at first, getting the Atlanta Falcons to the 2004 NFC Championship Game, before his extracurricular activities back in the Norfolk area came to light. Talk about "bad things"... Smith is in the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. His Number 78 and Moore's Number 56 have been retired. Vick, who wore 7 in Blacksburg and Atlanta, has not yet received any of those honors.

They've also raised a banner honoring former coach Frank Beamer's 25 years at the school, and named the street to the west of Lane Stadium Beamer Way.

Clearly, Virginia and Virginia Tech are each other's biggest rivals, playing for the Commonwealth Cup. They've been playing each other since 1895, but annually only since 1970, and the Cup wasn't first awarded until 1996, making it one of the newer major trophies. Tech has won 13 straight times and 17 of the last 18, to take a 56-37-5 lead in the series.

J.C. Coleman with the 2014 Commonwealth Cup

UVa no longer plays Maryland due to the Terrapins' 2014 shift from the ACC to the Big Ten. The 2 schools still compete for talent from the Washington, D.C. area. Maryland leads the series 44-32-2. UVa does still play what's known as "The South's Oldest Rivalry," with North Carolina. It goes back to 1892, as does what Southeastern Conference fans consider the South's oldest rivalry, Georgia and Auburn; and they've played every year since 1919. Virginia won this year to break UNC's 7-game winning streak, but the Tar Heels still lead 63-55-4.

Due to conference commitments, Virginia vs. West Virginia, which would seem like a natural rivalry, has rarely been played, and not since the 2002 Continental Tire Bowl. Virginia Tech had a strong rivalry with West Virginia, for the Black Diamond Trophy, but until this season's Tech victory at the Washington Redskins' stadium in Landover, Maryland, they hadn't played since 2005, and aren't scheduled to do so again until 2021. Tech has won the last 3 meetings, and 13 of the last 18 (going back to 1989), but the Mountaineers still have a 28-23-1 lead.

UPDATE: Through the 2019 season, Virginia Tech leads Virginia 58-38-5, and North Carolina leads them 63-57-4.

Stuff. Virginia has Cavalier Team Shops on each side of Scott Stadium, outside Sections 108 on the East stand and 126 on the West. The University of Virginia Bookstore is at 400 Emmet Street South, about a 10-minute walk northeast of the stadium and a 5-minute walk west of the Rotunda.

Lane Stadium doesn't have an official team store. The Tech Bookstore is about a 5-minute walk north of the stadium, at 115 Kent Street.

There aren't many books about either program. In 2008, Jerry Ratcliffe published the coffee-table book University of Virginia Football Vault. In 2001, Fitzgerald Francis published Greatest Moments in Virginia Tech Football History. While it's way out of date (1995), Roland Lazenby and Doug Doughty published Hoos 'N' Hokies, the Rivlary: 100 Years of Virginia Tech-Virginia Football.

Each school came out with a DVD in 2008: The Cavs released Wahoowa: The History of Virginia Cavalier Football, and the Hokies released The Legends of Virginia Tech.  

During the Game. Ordinarily, your safety would not be an issue. Neither UVa nor VT fans are known for getting rough. Tech fans can get very loud, making Lane Stadium one of the most intimidating home-field advantages in college football. But they won't start fights. But seeing as how they're playing each other, my usual advice for attending a rivalry game stands: Stick with the home team, and you'll probably be all right.

Both teams have rather odd nicknames. The official UVa mascot name comes from the original Virginia Cavaliers, named for the Royalists in the English Civil War of 1642-49, and who maintained their loyalty to the House of Stuart during the 11-year Cromwell Protectorate and the 28-year Stuart Restoration. Which makes it rather odd that the Cavalier would become the mascot of a University founded by the author of the Declaration of Independence, which faults both the British Parliament and King George III.

So what's a 'Hoo? It's short for Wahoo. What's a Wahoo? It has nothing to do with Chief Wahoo, the politically incorrect mascot of baseball's Cleveland Indians. In the 1890s, students at Washington & Lee University (named for George and Robert E.) in Lexington, Virginia, were quoted at a baseball game between the schools as calling UVa fans "a rowdy bunch of wahoos." The name stuck: "Wahooah" became the school's cheer, and "Wahoos" or "'Hoos" an unofficial nickname.

During the 1980s, UVa introduced a mascot called The 'Hoo, and it got booed off the field. So they've stuck to their Cavalier mascots: A guy in a big foam costume, and a costumed rider.

A few minutes prior to kickoff, on the Scott Stadium videoboard, The Adventures of Cavman is played. In this computer generated skit, the mascot of the opposing team is causing trouble on the Grounds of UVa, and the Cavalier slays him, then rides to the stadium via the Grounds. After the skit is over, the live Cavalier rides onto the field accompanied by orange and blue fireworks.

So what's a Hokie? In 1896, the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College changed its name to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and student Oscar M. Stull made up a new cheer to celebrate, claiming "Hoki" (as he spelled it, with the E added later) was just something he made up as an attention-getter:

Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hy!
Tech, Tech, V.P.I.!
Solah-Rex, Solah-Rah!
Polytech Vir-gin-i-a!
Ray Rah, V.P.I.!
Team! Team! Team!

This cheer is followed by the approximation of a turkey's "gobbling" sound, since the teams were previously called the Fighting Gobblers. The Gobblers name is still around, though not as popular as the Hokies name. The mascot is known as HokieBird (one word), and, as was done for Mariano Rivera when he came out of the Yankee bullpen, the Tech band plays "Enter Sandman" by Metallica as the Bird leads the players onto the field. He also has a weight bench, and bench-presses his barbell once for every point the team has scored -- a variation on cheerleaders' push-ups.

Wild turkeys can fly. As WKRP in Cincinnati taught us,

farm-grown turkeys can't fly. The HokieBird can't fly,

but don't tell Tech fans that.

The Cavalier Marching Band plays the UVA alma mater, "The Good Old Song" (or "The Good Ole Song"), to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne"; and the fight song, "The Cavalier Song," which was written in 1923, with lyrics by Lawerence H. Lee Jr., and music by Fulton Lewis Jr., both students at the time. Regrettably, in the 1940s and '50s, Lewis went on to become perhaps the original Rush Limbaugh, a strident, deceitful, bigoted right-wing radio talk-show host. Tech's band, The Marching Virginians, plays the fight song "Tech Triumph."

After the Game. If you're looking for a postgame meal coming out of Scott Stadium, you will run into difficulty. About a 10-minute walk south of the stadium, Maury Avenue and Jefferson Park Avenue have a few places, Durty Nelly's Pub-Wayside Deli (2 joints in 1), at 2200 Jefferson Park Avenue. 

After a game at Lane Stadium may be an even more difficult search. A few minutes' walk to the northwest is West End Market, at 720 Washington Street SW; and Deet's Place, a cafe that's part of Dietrick Convenience Store, on Ag-Quad Lane, across fro the preceding. In each case, other than that, your best bet may be to head back to the respective downtowns.

If you're a fan of a European soccer team, you're probably out of luck in both Charlottesville and Blacksburg. You'd be better off going to Gus' Bar & Grill in Richmond, or to one of the many such places in and around D.C. -- which might work, if your team is playing on Sunday instead of Saturday.

Sidelights. UVa opened the 14,593-seat John Paul Jones Arena in 2006. It is not named for the hot-blooded Scot who was the founding father of the U.S. Navy, but for a 1948 graduate of UVa's law school, the father of Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire who donated $35 million toward its construction. Nevertheless, Paul is a big fan of the Admiral, and also donated paintings of him, and Jones' motto "I have not yet begun to fight!" is inscribed in the building's concrete. 295 Massie Road, to the north of the main campus.

It was built across the street from the previous home of Cavalier basketball, the 8,457-seat University Hall, which opened in 1965, with a design similar to those of the West Virginia Coliseum and Georgia Tech's Alexander Coliseum/McCamish Pavilion.

The Cavs have won Conference Championships in the regular season in 1922, 1981, 1982,1 983, 1995, 2007, 2014 and 2015; won the Conference Tournament in 1976 and 2014; and reached the NCAA Final Four in 1981 and 1984.

Notable players include Wally Walker (1976, 1979 NBA Champion Seattle SuperSonics), Marc Iavaroni (1978, 1983 NBA Champion Philadelphia 76ers), Ralph Sampson (1983 NCAA Player of the Year, 1986 NBA Western Conference Champion Houston Rockets and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame), Rick Carlisle (1984, 1986 NBA Championship as a Boston Celtics player and 2004 NBA Championship as coach of the Detroit Pistons) and Olden Polynice (1987, 14 years in the NBA).

Tech opened the VPI Coliseum in 1962. In 1977, it was renamed Cassell Coliseum for Stuart K. Cassell, Tech's business manager, who had recently died. It seats 10,052. 675 Washington Street SW, just to the northwest of Lane Stadium.

Blacksburg has a few museums, most notably the Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation, at 204 Draper Road SW, downtown. Charlottesville has the Fralin Museum of Art, owned by the University, at 155 Rugby Road; and the Virginia Discovery Museum, at 524 E. Main Street. Both are downtown. Of course, Charlottesville's most notable museums are Presidential, which I'll get to later.

The Carter Family Fold is a combination museum and performance venue near the home of the Carter Family, pioneers of country music. The founding couple was A.P. and Sara Carter. A.P. (Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter) had a brother, Ezra, who also sang, and married Maybelle Addington. Ezra and "Mother Maybelle" had 3 daughters, one of whom was June Carter, who married Johnny Cash, and with Johnny's entry into the family, they were fully entrenched as "The First Family of Country Music."

Johnny Cash's last concert was at the Fold, on July 5, 2003, just 69 days before his death, and just 51 days after June's. Perhaps the least surprising thing about Johnny is that he died so soon after June did; the most surprising thing, given how bad his health was, is that she went first.

The Fold is at 3449 A.P. Carter Highway (Virginia Route 614), in Hiltons (formerly known as Maces Springs), in the Virginia Panhandle. It's about 150 miles southwest of Blacksburg. In fact, it's closer to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, about 115 miles northeast. It's about 275 miles southwest of Charlottesville.

The Washington Redskins are easily the most popular NFL team among Virginians, partly due to their proximity to D.C., but also partly because the 'Skins have long had their training camp, Redskin Park, in the State, near Dulles International Airport. Nevertheless, Virginia's western Panhandle, like most of West Virginia, prefers the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The most popular NHL team in the State is easily the Washington Capitals. But baseball and NBA fans are mixed, tending to favor which teams are winning at the moment. Television exposure to their success makes most of Virginia susceptible to the Yankees, the Red Sox and the Braves. It's not until you approach the Virginia portion of the Capital Beltway that you get a strong presence of fans of the Washington Nationals, the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Wizards.

Despite the Redskins' camp being in Virginia, and attempts to build new stadiums in the D.C. suburbs for a proposed MLB team (which eventually became the Nationals, but in Washington) and D.C. United (which also built a new stadium in the District), Virginia still has no major-league teams within its borders.

In minor-league baseball, the Triple-A International League has the Norfolk Tides (formerly the Tidewater Tides, a Mets farm team from 1969 to 2006 and for the Orioles ever since); the Double-A Eastern League has the Richmond Flying Squirrels (who replaced the former Triple-A team, the Richmond Braves); the Class A Carolina League has the Potomac Nationals (in Woodbridge, replacing the former Yankee farm team, the Prince William Cannons), the Lynchburg Hillcats and the Salem Red Sox; and the Rookie League-classed Appalachian League has the Bluefield Blue Jays, the Bristol Pirates, the Danville Braves, all in southern Virginia or the western Panhandle.

The Diamond, just outside downtown Richmond,

and Parker Field, a high school football stadium,

named for the minor-league ballpark that used to be

on The Diamond's site (1934-1984)

The closest team to Charlottesville is Lynchburg (slightly closer than Richmond), and the closest to Blacksburg is Salem. 

Minor-league basketball has the Lynchburg Titans. Minor-league hockey has the Norfolk Admirals and the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs. Minor-league soccer has the Richmond Kickers, the Hampton Roads Piranhas and the Northern Virginia Royals. But the Kickers and the Piranhas also have women's teams.

There are 4 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Virginia that have won “the National Championship of black college football.” Hampton University, north of Norfolk in Hampton, have won it 6 times: 1922, 1985, 1994, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Virginia State University, in Ettrick, outside Petersburg, have won it 3 time: 1936, 1952 and 2014. Virginia Union University, in Richmond, have won it twice: 1923 and 1981. And Norfolk State University have won it once, in 2011.

The Beatles never played in Virginia. Elvis Presley did. He played in Norfolk, at the Municipal Auditorium, on May 15 and September 11 and 12, 1955, and February 12, 1956; and at the Scope arena on July 20, 1975. He also played in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area in Newport News at the Paramount Theater on February 13, 1956. And he played in Hampton Roads at the Hampton Roads Coliseum on April 9, 1972, March 11, 1974, and July 31 and August 1, 1976.

He played in Richmond at the Mosque Theater on May 16 and November 29, 1955, on February 5, March 22, and June 30, 1956; at the Richmond Theater on September 18 and 19, 1955; and at the Richmond Coliseum on April 10, 1972, March 12 and 18, 1974, and June 29, 1976. He played in Roanoke at the American League Auditorium on May 18 and September 15, 1955; and at the Roanoke Civic Center on April 11, 1972, March 10, 1974, and August 2, 1976. He played in Danville at the Fairgrounds on September 20, 1955.

Virginia has so much history, it's hard to keep track. The 1st permanent European settlement in America was by Spain in St. Augustine, Florida on September 8, 1565, but the 1st English-speaking one was at Jamestown, Virginia on May 14, 1607. "Historic Jamestowne" is at 1368 Colonial Parkway. Colonial Williamsburg, the restored site of the former colonial capital, is at 101 Visitor Center Drive in Williamsburg, 10 miles to the northeast of Jamestown. Yorktown Battlefield, where the Revolution did not end, but victory in its war was all but secured on October 19, 1781, is at 1000 Colonial Parkway, 13 miles to the east of Williamsburg.

Both Virginia and Ohio claim to be "The Mother of Presidents." Virginia has 8 Presidential birthplaces, Ohio 7; but in terms of their political affiliation, Ohio leads 6-5, and, with the "election" of Donald Trump, New York tops them all with 7.

Presidential Birthplaces in Virginia: George Washington, house recreated, 1732 Popes Creek Road, Colonial Beach, 73 miles south of D.C.; Thomas Jefferson, house burned and never rebuilt, site at an unnamed road at around 2401 Richmond Road in Shadwell, near Charlottesville; James Madison, Belle Grove Plantion, house recreated, 336 Belle Grove Road, Middletown, 86 miles west of D.C.; James Monroe, house in ruins, 4460 James Monroe Highway, Colonial Beach, 9 miles northwest of Washington's Birthplace; William Henry Harrison, Berkeley Plantation (a mansion, not a log cabin as his 1840 campaign songs would have you believe), 12602 Harrison Landing Road, Charles City, 23 miles southeast of Richmond; John Tyler, Greenway Plantation, 10900 John Tyler Memorial Highway, 7 miles east of Berkeley Plantation; Zachary Taylor, probably (it's not certain) at Hare Forest Farm, 8369 Hare Forest Road, Orange, 33 miles northeast of Charlottesville; and Woodrow Wilson, at a parsonage that's been converted into his Presidential Library and Museum, 20 N. Coalter Street, Staunton (and that's pronounced STAN-ton, not STAWN-ton).

Harrison is now more identified with Ohio and Indiana, Taylor with Kentucky, and Wilson with South Carolina and Georgia, where he grew up with his traveling preacher father, and New Jersey, where he was President of Princeton University and then Governor. The other 5 are inextricably linked with Virginia.

George Washington's home of Mount Vernon, the very reason the national capital is now across the Potomac River, is still a working farm, and now has a George Washington Presidential Library. 3200 Mount Vernon Highway, 18 miles south of downtown Washington. Bus service is available.

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is at 931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway, 4 miles southeast of downtown Charlottesville. No bus service, and it's a bit too far to walk, especially since it will be uphill: Having an affinity for Italian things (food, wine, music, literature, and at least one girlfriend after his wife died), Jefferson named the home he built for the Italian word for "little mountain." There are taxi companies in Charlottesville, but they charge about $20. Each way.

James Monroe's Ash Lawn-Highland is about 3 miles south of Monticello, at 2050 James Monroe Parkway. And James Madison's Montpelier is about 28 miles northeast of Monticello (and Jefferson often stayed there on his way to and from D.C.), at 13425 Visitors Center Road in Orange, which is also about 10 miles southwest of Taylor's alleged birthplace.

John Tyler, hated by the Democrats because he joined the Whig ticket in 1840, and hated by the Whigs because he wouldn't let Secretary of State Daniel Webster tell him what to do after becoming President following William Henry Harrison's death in 1841, didn't run for re-election in 1844, because he knew he couldn't get either party's nomination. He said he felt like an outlaw, so he named his plantation after the Nottinghamshire home of Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest. 14501 John Tyler Memorial Highway in Charles City, about 4 miles east of the Greenway Plantation where he was born.

Richmond is heavy on the Confederate stuff, which is unfortunate, but it was the Confederate capital. The Capitol building that Jefferson designed opened in 1792, and succeeded Alabama's State House as the Confederate Capitol building on May 30, 1861. 1000 Bank Street. The Governor's Mansion is right across the street. The White House of the Confederacy, now the American Civil War Museum, is at 1201 E. Clay Street. All are downtown, and all were spared in the burning of Richmond.

About a mile west of downtown, on the James River, is Hollywood Cemetery. There are 3 Presidents buried here: James Monroe, John Tyler, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 412 S. Cherry Street.

The most important place in Virginia since Jefferson's 1826 death is the site of the Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. 111 National Park Drive. 60 miles south of Charlottesville, 111 miles east of Blacksburg, 94 miles west of Richmond, and 192 miles southwest of Washington.

The tallest building in Virginia is nowhere near Charlottesville or Blacksburg -- or Washington, and isn't all that close to Richmond, either. It's the 508-foot Westin Virginia Beach Town Center, 4535 Commerce Street, 9 miles west of the Boardwalk.

Television shows set in Virginia often have military or other governmental settings. JAG often used the Norfolk naval base and the Marine Corps headquarters at Quantico, and its spinoff NCIS still does. Major Dad also moved from the Marines' Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California to Quantico after 1 season. The FBI is also HQ'ed at Quantico, and so the TV series Criminal Minds, Homeland and Quantico are set there, and The X-Files had several episodes set there.

Also set in Virginia have been The Waltons (fictitious Jefferson County is based on Schuyler in Nelson County), the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World (Cliff and Claire Huxtable's alma mater, Hillman College, is definitely in Virginia, and hints suggest the Norfolk area), the cartoon Doug (the fictional setting of Bluffington is said to be based on Richmond), and The Vampire Diaries (in fictional Mystic Falls).

Movies set in Virginia have often used colonial (such as the story of Pocahontas), Revolutionary, Civil War or present-day FBI settings. Two recent sports-themed films set there have been Remember the Titans (in the Washington suburb of Alexandria) and Secretariat (the eponymous horse was born at The Meadow, a farm in Ashland, outside Richmond). And bridging the gap between TV shows and movies is the iconic 1977 miniseries Roots, with the Reynolds plantation near Fredericksburg.

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The Commonwealth of Virginia has more history than perhaps any other State. The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech have done their part to add to it. Their "Commonwealth Cup" rivalry has become a part of it.