9 June 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2762: under the arch
In the great county courthouse of Lofton County, there was a grand arch, and on it was displayed the lives of Joseph James and Jonathan Lofton, who together set the foundation for what would become Lofton County. They in their lifetimes had held a combined 64 miles of the county's roughly 84-mile expanse for a total of 60 years. But this had not been an act of violence as one would expect: the land had already been exhausted by the violence of being worked without rest for 100 years while slaves were worked into the ground upon it. Elder brother Joseph James had picked up the “bad sixty” miles for pennies after all that.
The Lofton Brothers, in their overlapping 100 years of life, had ended slavery on their ground and restored it to productivity, leasing it to people willing to apply their methods and then turning the land over to them except for their personal residences … but even those were left to the Lofton Trust for the people. By that time, Big Loft, Jonathan's personal residence, had been the hub for so much of the business of the region for so long that the county's only city just grew up around it: Big Loft, VA, containing the major's residence as a memorial park just as Joseph James's personal residence, Fruitland, had been left as Fruitland Memorial Park.
The way the arch worked was having the two brothers as young men on one side, just about to walk through all the amazing events of their lives, all the way over to Jonathan looking at the New Year's fireworks of the year 1900, sitting by his second wife Mrs. Rebecca Mae Slocum Lofton in their rocking chairs on the porch at Old Big Loft. Joseph James was last seen at the top of the arch in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, pulling men out of the flames there regardless of whether they were Union or Confederate, thus laying groundwork for future peace and also of the Veteran's Lodge, which his brother founded in 1866 in his honor. All U.S. veterans, no matter what side they fought on in the Civil War, no matter what war they fought in afterward, could find help and supportive housing there.
Under the arch, great ceremonies public and personal had taken place … foundings of new towns made official … weddings … even the occasional lying in state, for both General Cassander Slocum and Mr. Samuel Smith Lee had lived just long enough to have their more sensible descendants annoyed by their less sensible descendants insisting on those two close friends, having died within hours of each other, lying together in state for Lofton County, in essence filling in for the fact that the Lofton Brothers had not been done the honor because there was no county courthouse yet. It was fitting in a way: Lofton, Slocum, and Lee, in that order, were the key names in Lofton County to 1931. A precociously young apprentice architect by the name of Edwin Ludlow would see this great arch at that time also, on his journey to leaving his name as the fourth most influential in the county's history.
This was therefore the last place in Lofton County that anyone wanted to see featured and introduced to the world on Uppity Foolery Watch, but … .
“On behalf of Edwin Ludlow, my father, and on behalf of the Lees-of-the-Mountain from whom I also descend, the Lees-of-the-Valley who are therefore my cousins, and all the Slocums and Loftons, I just feel the need to say, oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” Capt. Robert Edward Ludlow Sr. said as he saw two men at about his late middle age from one of the county offices roll right out of their office right under the arch, fighting. It had been live, but the replay was still getting thousands of views a minute hours later when the adults were catching up after the little ones were sound asleep.
“Look, I'd be mad too,” 21-year-old Melvin Trent said when he saw it.“You're supposed to be my best friend and you sign off on Bayard Heights at a higher level and you don't even slip me any of the extra kickbacks that you enjoyed for 30 years and now we're both definitely going to prison – yeah, that would be a whole problem if I loved money like that.”
“Did you want the cheese or caramel popcorn?” Melvin's days-from-18-year-old sister Vanna said.
“Both, Vanna – Capt. Lee's press conference replay is up next,” Melvin said. “Is Pop-Pop even off the phone making deals yet?”
“Nope,” Vanna said. “He said that there's a lot of stuff we're gonna have to shore up in the community with Lofton County probably going bankrupt, but just because the county's going broke doesn't mean anything else or anyone else needs to.”
“That's the spirit,” Melvin said.