The Ancestral Quarry

Last Sunday morning, I left my mom’s house early and headed up Interstate 66 toward Dulles Airport. I still think of I-66 as the “new highway,” because it was finished after Star Wars debuted, after I was in junior high, after my parents split up, after the last time I would have gone with my dad to see Lost John Austin, the alcoholic quarryman moonshiner who had raised him.

When my dad died in January, my mom, sister, and I did a deep dive into the past, finding a geologic map that showed the location of the Austin-Barbour Quarry on Bull Run Mountain. Lost John and his BFF Lewis Barbour had owned this quarry. Lewis had lived walking distance from Lost John’s trailer, in a wood cabin with a stone chimney, farther up the rutted dirt and rock road, if you could call it that. I think there had been a Mrs. Barbour when I was small. I don’t remember when Lewis moved into the trailer with Lost John, who himself had been married to my dad’s oldest sister long before I was born, before she died of something preventable. Hillbilly life in the 1950-60s was just different, particularly if you were a mountain man with a distrust of doctors.

Lost John was white. Lewis was Black. This was not unusual, and the area they lived in is now known for protected ruins of historic Black farms. What interests me about this, and about the story of Lost John being threatened by the KKK for dating a Black woman, is that we often see the world through educated liberal modern prisms, and these were just folks living their lives, long before we were all attacked as “woke,” though being on the outskirts of the Shenandoah Valley means the Civil War was still very much on the minds of locals. Lost John once found the ruins of a Civil War campsite. He thought it must have belonged to Mosby’s Rangers, but I have no idea what became of that notion or if anyone official ever followed up on it.

I was running early on Sunday and took the turn-off at the road to the town of Antioch. I felt I’d recognize something and find my way on instinct, but the map coordinates assured I wouldn’t get too lost as I followed my nose. I knew I had to turn left at a T-intersection. I figured there would still be some landmarks, some indication of the little stores where we’d stop for bubblegum cigars and Yoo-Hoos, even though as long ago as my 1970s childhood, there were already battles with encroaching gentrification.

When I got to the gravel drive leading to the quarry coordinates, I zipped past because as I’d just been taken by surprise by the steep road on my right. Bull Run Mountain Road. That’s it, I thought. He lived up there. I was right—I knew it when I saw it, though I’d last been up that road in 7th grade at the very latest.

The steering wheel gave a disconcerting tug, willing me to turn around, so I agreed to the car’s request, finding a cutout to u-turn in, and headed back to the gravel road.

There were a number of mailboxes at the top of the hill, and I knew I was semi-trespassing. I worried a bit about the rental Hyundai I was driving. Who was I going to call if I got a flat tire? I drove slowly and cautiously on down the hill, heading to the quarry instead of the homestead, passing nice, newish houses set back from the road.

To the right, the land was all posted, to the left were the homes. My phone app eventually informed me I’d arrived, that the quarry was over to the right. I saw nothing by leaves and trees, and a wild clearing beyond. I parked the Hyundai as far off the road as I could and cautiously passed the “no trespassing” signs, looking for clues.

There were plenty! Old liquor bottles. Rusted industrial machinery. I stepped carefully, even more unwilling to cut my foot than I had been to get a flat tire.

A woman and her son pulled up in a Suburban. “Excuse me,” she yelled across the briars. “Can I help you? Are you looking for something?” I knew my excursion was now over, and put on a dumb tourist face as I walked back to the road. “Do you know if there’s an old quarry around here?”

“I’ve never heard of that. This land is owned by the VOF, and you could get fined. And this isn’t a good place to park, we all honk our horns as we drive past other cars here.”

I apologized and got back in my car, looking cheerful and clueless. Inside, I was exhilarated. Because just as I was driving back up the drive past the site, I could see a craggy embankment rising out of the forest, and I could imagine it looking the way it had in the seventies, a stone outcropping with a bulldozer nearby, and my dad looking for Lost John, who might have been down there, or might be sleeping off booze in an old car somewhere.

There’s a 1984 article about Lost John from "Country Magazine" where the quarry is described like this: “While the word “quarry” is correct to describe Lost John’s place of business on the mountain, the actual operation did not fit the usual image the word conveys—there was no ravaged pit in the earth. When Lost John took me up the mountain one day to see his operation, I didn’t know we were there until he pointed to a rock outcropping through the trees and led me to the modest pile of rubble at the base.”

Maybe I was staring at it now. Or maybe I needed to find a way to park somewhere and hike in further, some other time. I headed up the hill, up to the tarmac of Bull Run Mountain Road toward the old driveway.

I couldn’t find any remains of the old rock road that went up in to the trees, leading to the clearing where Lost John’s trailer had been, with the drive continuing to Lewis’ old cabin. I felt sure that when the asphalt ended and the dirt road section of Bull Run Mountain Road began, I could just close my eyes and let the Hyundai take me to the base of the drive, more by timing and the curves of the road than by sight, but that seemed a poor plan, so I just drove slowly up the mountain until I was sure I’d overlooked it, then turned around and headed back down to the paved road, back toward I-66 and Dulles Airport. Later, I’d use Google Earth to identify some possible sites, but I really needed to be ready for interaction with the MAGA-immersed son of Lost John if I wanted to find the site. And I don’t think I’m THAT curious. Though I would like to see the spot where I learned to shoot a gun, where my dad was raised, where Spotsy was dog-sat when we went on vacation.

My dad had nothing good to say about Lost John in spite of maintaining a relationship with his pseudo-father, but John was quite the character, and while no one in my family adopted Lost John’s affinity for blind-drunkenness, I can appreciate how he’d show up in community meetings and play his harmonica through his nose, and give the wealthy landowners of Bull Run something to talk about.