Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Guns, Chocolate and American History
The Chocolate Festival was upon us, and the ice storm miraculously cleared up. It was like Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. I had awakened, waved my arms vigorously and we were free of the ice storm. What more could you want out of a morning? The weather was nice, my wife was firing up with anticipation, and it would turn out to be one of the best days of the weekend. But, then again, we didn’t know that at the time so that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
The first stop was the Chocolate Festival. Basically, downtown Fairfax turns into a little chocolate land with various activities all around. The main center, being at the old City Hall, where vendors from around the area set up and they sell their chocolate wares. You buy little pogs and they sell the chocolate based on the price in pogs. One piece of chocolate was one pog, etc... One piece of cake, two pogs. A really special piece of chocolate could be four pogs.
"Why don’t they just use money?" Margherita asked.
"Because most people would get quite upset when their spouse spent $10 on chocolate. 10 pogs doesn’t sound as bad."
We bought some chocolates for the day’s walk, some for taking home and some for eating on the spot. Chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate-covered graham crackers, and just straight chocolate. Margherita was happy and, as a direct correlation, I was happy. Is the happiness correlation symbiotic, a symptom of marriage or the pure delirium of chocolate?
In another building, they had a chocolate cake contest where you could actually bid on some of the cakes entered. In another, they had classes and, in the firehouse, a chocolate breakfast. Right there in the firehouse, they cooked pancakes with chocolate chips, sausage, coffee and juice, with the entire town around. Watching everybody who knew each other and welcoming everybody with friendly faces was almost as good as the chocolate chip pancakes.
But Dominick, while your story has kept to some theme of chocolate and some tangents, your title is, "Guns, Chocolate and American History," but the only gun part is the NRA museum. Yes, my dear reader, you’re right.
That is why we headed to Bull Run shooting range to learn skeet shooting for the afternoon. Picture it, a beautiful sunny day, standing on the ice (remember the ice-storm), and a group of people learning to shoot a shotgun at a skeet target. At first, Margherita was a bit nervous to go shooting and she felt intimidated because I shot a gun once 15 years ago in Boy Scouts. She thought that it made me seem to be at least a semi-pro. Even though I explained my experience was quite literally next to nothing, she still was nervous. After talking with the instructor, she felt reassured that anybody could shoot a gun.
It took forty-five minutes of learning, but yes, Ms. Anybody was able to shoot a gun. Just seeing her face jump up and down screaming with glee as she shot skeet was worth it. To be honest, this was one of my highlights. No, I’m not being overly emotional commenting on witnessing her reaction, I also enjoyed the chance to shoot the gun myself and to get to move off the damn frozen ice. We had a little skeet competition with two others and I fortunately came in second.
Here we were, high on both chocolate and adrenalin, which made for quite an interesting day.
But wait, there’s more.
Heading back from dinner we passed a strip mall. In the middle of this non-descript and stereotypical strip mall was an Italian restaurant. To the left was a stereotypical Chinese take out place, which even had the stereotypical pictures of the dishes posted right above the counter. To the right, was a few empty stores that, in turn, had the bland repetition of a strip-mall. Overall it was pretty much the definition of "strip mall"-edness. If one needed a basic strip mall to introduce the concept to foreigners, this location would have served quite nicely. It seemed like any strip mall in American except I don’t recall if it had the mandatory video store.
Dolce Vita
It is on this stage that we present Dolce Vita. You walk in and, just within the entryway, you are crushed by the thongs of people dying to get in. Outside, is the non-descript strip mall, and inside is the restaurant. They don’t serve Americanized Italian food, but real Italian food. Real calamari, where the squid is grilled and not fried. Real pizza from a brick oven (shaped like a face), covered with real seafood from, well, the sea, but you get the idea. As Margherita said, "As an Italian, this rates a nine-out–of-ten in authenticity." I simply liked the fact that located in one of the traditionally fakiest places America has to offer, a strip mall, out pops some of the most honest and real Italian food one can find. The juxtaposition wasn’t lost on me.
At this point, I’m sure you’re thinking. What could top this? The day must be done. No, we went to George Mason University for their Performing Arts Center. It’s a top of the line performance hall, right here in Fairfax County, with prices much more reasonable than in downtown Washington, D.C. The center looks beautiful and the building, itself, looks as high quality as one you’d expect in any major city, let alone 45 minutes outside of a major city.
Yes, real jazz performances, after real Italian food and real gun shooting after getting high on real chocolate. An odd, but genuinely, well, real day.
