VIRGINIA: Wrong Turn at the Crossroads

The brilliant gold beeches, scarlet oaks and russet maples splashed their color against a green pine background as Virginia last week gloried in its autumn. Near Warrenton, the horn rang clear in the crisp dawn to summon pink-coated hunters. In the sandy jack-pine country near the North Carolina line, warehouses bulged with the Bright Tobacco that enriched Virginia by $84 million last year. In southside Virginia, below Richmond, jets of ocher-colored steam spewed from National Aniline's new, modernistic chemical plant. In Williamsburg, tourists moved quietly, reverently, through shrines that attest to Virginia's historic leadership. Near Berryville, plump apples were...