Of quartz she could do it
Friday August 26th 2011, 10:41 pm
Filed under: History

Some people have just the most perfect names… Lilly Stone wouldn’t take That’s gneiss, dear for an answer when she was between a rock and a hard place.

Tina at Blue Moon, this link is for you: a little of back home for us both and, for me, the memory of once, just once as a kid, letting the older neighbor kids’ peer pressure goad me into crossing over the fence (completely forbidden by both my parents and the signs) to come just close enough to the top of that quarry way over there to see some of the brown dirt of the rough sides and to know that no way was I going to get one inch nearer that drop off. Get me out of here!

My in-laws’ house in Kensington, MD had a beautiful stone hearth and fireplace, and the house I grew up in a half mile up Seven Locks from that scary cliff had a sturdy slate entryway in shades of gray, hewn just close enough to evenness to satisfy but that no snowman-building mud on the boots could ever make it past. The rocks for both surely came from Lilly’s quarry.

But I especially like that it was a woman born in 1862 who, beginning when she was 60, dug deep in the earth and crafted in stone.

Now there’s your original Earth Mother type.


4 Comments so far
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We had three quarries within half a mile of us, two on River Road and one on Seven Locks. The one on River Road you refer to became the location for a firehouse and a string of high-end townhouses. I think Lilly Stone’s quarry was the one on Seven Locks, since there is an important residential street that takes off near it and is called after her.
Of more interest is that our house was in the epicenter of three exclusive country clubs, Bethesda, Burning Tree (originally men only, men like Pres. Eisenhower), and Congressional, which is the scene every year of a televised golf tournament.
Your readers might be interested to know that in order to get to the top lip of the quarry you mentioned, you had to cross what had been a NIKI site,(not sure of the spelling) one of the protective bases set up around Washington with antiaircraft missiles, which were gone a bit before we moved into our house. Only later did Lockwood and another development mushroom on the site.
Dad

Comment by Dad 08.27.11 @ 7:19 am

I never know when or where I will learn something. I’d always thought ‘gneiss’ was pronounced ‘ee’ as in ‘eek!’ And I thought your pun was stretching it a bit. But when in doubt, google it. And of course you are correct.

Comment by Don Meyer 08.27.11 @ 9:36 am

The development behind Lockwood, where the NIKE site was, came into being as I left home. Very big and pricey. It was scrub, and we used to roam it as a group, the only way we could get permission to go that far. And, just for the record, I never, never climbed the fence–I was scared just leaning my head over it to look! We had a lot of freedom as kids, and we knew we would lose it fast if we were irresponsible.

Comment by Marian 08.27.11 @ 6:23 pm

What an amazing woman! I am re-reading the Amelia Peabody mysteries (almost done) and it reminds me how very many remarkable women never got much notice.

Comment by Diana Troldahl 08.28.11 @ 3:12 pm



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