Kitty Howard said to me a couple of years ago.We were lying on our stomachs on the old dock that rambled drunkenly from Kitty’s bed-and-breakfast inn, on a spit of swampy land that bordered a sort of hiccup in Chesapeake Bay, near Ware Neck. Why anyone wanted to sleep and eat cinnamon buns on this beautiful but desolate and mosquito-haunted piece of Virginia earth remained a mystery to me all the long days of our friendship, but somehow Kitty’s charming little pre-revolutionary house, leaning precariously toward the bay, seemed perpetually full of wayfarers eager to get away from Washington or Richmond or even Williamsburg. Most were young families in SUVs, eager to give their bored children a firsthand look at their country’s birth state as it was before malls and ye-olde-colonials moved in, or groups of gray-haired ladies wearing no-nonsense walking shoes or Wellingtons and studying bird books at breakfast. I don’t think Kitty made a lot of money off them, but it was enough to keep the Ware Neck Inn open and enough to allow Kitty to pursue her heart’s passion, which was painting.
