A to Z April Challenge: E is for Easter

Genealogists and family historians get a lot of satisfaction from chasing their ancestors’ stories. Finding a diary, a message on a postcard, or a photo with a name attached is like the sun coming out after a storm. One day we will be somebody’s ancestor. We need to leave our descendants a little bit of sunshine too. So here is my story told alphabetically, not chronologically: Growing Up in Cradock.

is for Easter.

If Easter had fallen in April this year instead of March, this post would be timelier. Next to Christmas, Easter was my sister’s and my favorite time of the year. Our mother was an amazing seamstress, so we always expected to have a beautiful new dress. That meant new shoes, a purse, a hat, and gloves were coming our way too.

Wendy and Mary Jollette Easter 1960

Easter 1962 or 1963 at our grandparents'  house

Easter 1965
My outfit was a brocade dress and jacket. I wore it when
Miss America Vonda Kay VanDyke was in town.
As I was asking for her autograph,
she complimented me on my beautiful dress.

Easter 1967

Of course, no Easter dress was complete without a corsage. Daddy always bought us an orchid with an appropriate colored ribbon. At one time, a corsage could be purchased only at a florist, but grocery stores began carrying simple orchid pin-ons too. As I looked around in church this past Easter, I did not see a single corsage. What a pity that this custom has seemingly gone by the wayside.

Easter 1969

The best part of Easter though was not the corsage and not even the candy. In my younger years, the options for filling the Easter basket were chocolate bunnies, marshmallow eggs, chocolate-covered marshmallow bunnies, Peeps, and jelly beans. Except for the jelly beans, BLEH on the rest. After my sister came along the candy selection vastly improved with the introduction of Reese’s peanut butter cups. While we waited for the world to catch up with our taste in candy, we satisfied our sweet tooth with a cake egg from Caffee’s Bakery. They made the best pound cake egg with a chocolate shell decorated with our name piped in sugar icing.

Easter cake eggs and baskets 1971

What my sister and I enjoyed most was the Easter eggs. We could not wait to open the Paas egg dye kit and sort the six color fizz tablets into six bowls. We lowered hard-boiled eggs gently into the colored water and swirled them around with the handy egg dipper until each egg was just the right shade. The wax crayon was only mildly effective in helping us be creative with our designs. The introduction of stickers to make funny faces was more our speed.

Easter 1965

The effort we put into great egg design was worth every minute. Despite being 8 years apart in age, we could come together on a good Easter egg hunt. We played hide’n’seek with those eggs for weeks. Indoors. Outdoors. It did not matter. They would be cracked all to heck with chips of egg shells falling off in their hiding place. We would not stop playing until Momma grabbed them up and threw them out. She was probably so relieved when plastic eggs came on the market.

I cheated - I caught Mary Jollette hiding the eggs.
Boy, was she mad at me!

To Explore more Entertaining E subjects, Exit this blog and Enter the latest Edition of the A to Z April Challenge.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved. 

A to Z April Challenge: D is for Driving

Genealogists and family historians get a lot of satisfaction from chasing their ancestors’ stories. Finding a diary, a message on a postcard, or a photo with a name attached is like the sun coming out after a storm. One day we will be somebody’s ancestor. We need to leave our descendants a little bit of sunshine too. So here is my story told alphabetically, not chronologically: Growing Up in Cradock.

is for Driving.

Getting that driver’s license is a rite of passage that most teenagers anticipate and act on as soon as the law allows. However, that was not always true when I was growing up. I remember my grandmother getting her driver’s license and the little grey Rambler that she purchased not long afterwards. My own mother was late getting her license too, relying on other teachers to pick her up for school.

I suppose she eventually grew tired of the inconvenience of having to rely on others, so she decided to learn to drive. Daddy took her out faithfully to practice driving and parallel parking. When Momma was confident that she had mastered her driving skills, she went to the DMV to take her written test and then road test. We were all set to celebrate when she got home, but the look on her face said there would be no cheers that afternoon. She failed parallel parking.

The main DMV office in Portsmouth had a reputation for being ridiculously strict about that part of the test. Momma’s friends all said, “Go to South Norfolk. You’ll pass.” The word was out: the South Norfolk DMV was soft on the road test.

Me and the family car 1969

Sure enough, when Momma went to South Norfolk, she returned in no time with a driver’s license in hand. Parallel parking was no problem at all there.

When I was in high school, only a few of my friends drove. No one had a car of their own, so I was in no hurry. Driver’s Education was not a required part of the school curriculum. As I recall, it was taught only in the summer. One summer, I decided to sign up.

Several weeks before class was to begin, it occurred to me that my car mates might already know how to drive. I did not want to be the only one with NO experience behind the wheel. Daddy would be the perfect one to help me learn.

I remember that first lesson.

Momma was at the sewing machine just sewing up a storm. Daddy came in with his favorite tennis shorts in need of repair. Before he could speak, I grabbed the opportunity to ask for a driving lesson. “What do you need a driving lesson for?” he said. “You don’t need a lesson. You just get in the car and drive.” I tried to protest, but he would not listen. He had that darn hole in his favorite shorts on his mind. He asked Momma if she would stitch it up.

My quick-witted mother replied, “Fix it yourself. Sit down here at the sewing machine. You don’t need a lesson. You just sit down and sew.”

With that, Daddy reached into his pocket and tossed me the keys. For several evenings we went for short drives through the narrow streets of Cradock and out to the highway, usually Victory Boulevard which did not have much traffic. I do not recall anything eventful about my lessons except one time pulling into the driveway. I just drew a blank. How do you stop this thing? Where is the brake? From the comfort of the passenger seat, Daddy stretched that left leg over and found the brake just in time to save our garage door (and our car!).

At least I had some experience behind the wheel when Driver’s Ed started that summer. We spent a fair amount of time driving around the school parking lot and parallel parking between cones. When it came time to hit the road, our instructor often had us drive him to various golf courses where he picked up a fresh box of golf balls. Maybe he was even booking a tee time. We went to a lot of golf courses.

When our driving course was over, I did not rush out to South Norfolk to get my license. Why? That classy Chevrolet we drove in Driver’s Ed had power steering. Our family car did not. I suppose I was too afraid that it would be difficult to adjust and I might hit a garage door.

Barry and his Chevy Nova II

It was several years before I tried driving again. I was a sophomore in college taking a psychology course. Yes, psychology. Our instructor assigned us a project: create our own project to expand our horizons; dare to do something we have never done. I decided to get my driver’s license. My then-boyfriend/now-husband was my teacher. He had taught his own mother to drive a few years before.

My lessons were in a little Chevy Nova II. What a great little car. I took my driver’s test and passed with no problem. Lucky for me, by 1971 parallel parking was no longer a part of the test.

The psychology teacher added a twist to the project. We had to present our project to the class AND we had to give ourselves a grade. Was that crazy or what? I remember only two other projects. One guy learned to bake cookies. A girl made her own wedding dress. I am not sure what any of these projects taught us about psychology. As for my grade, I gave myself a “B” justifying that my new driver’s license trumped freshly baked cookies but paled next to a wedding dress.

Discover delightful displays of daydreams and discourse at the A to Z April Challenge.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved. 

A to Z April Challenge: C is for Cradock

Genealogists and family historians get a lot of satisfaction from chasing their ancestors’ stories. Finding a diary, a message on a postcard, or a photo with a name attached is like the sun coming out after a storm. One day we will be somebody’s ancestor. We need to leave our descendants a little bit of sunshine too. So here is my story told alphabetically, not chronologically: Growing Up in Cradock.

is for Cradock.

I was not born in Cradock, a community in Portsmouth, Virginia, but it was my mother’s home from the 1940s and the place we returned to not long after Daddy was finished with school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Cradock was a wonderful place to grow up in the 1950s and 60s. That was a time when neighbors knew neighbors and no one locked their doors. Children played outside and had lots of freedom to explore even after dark. We lived there until 1971 when my parents bought a new house in the up and coming area known as Western Branch in the neighboring city of Chesapeake. Still I regard Cradock as my home although it is difficult to drive through there today. The vibrant community I knew has deteriorated due to age of the homes and buildings, economic woes of residents, and lack of leadership in city government. Revitalization efforts have mixed results.

Photo by Laura Purvis

Cradock is a historic neighborhood built in 1918 to house shipyard workers during World War I since the neighboring city of Portsmouth, Virginia was not equipped to handle the large numbers of workers moving in. It was the first government-funded community in the United States. A little over 300 acres was developed to be a fully self-contained pedestrian neighborhood of 35 blocks surrounding a shopping district close enough for most residents to walk to stores, to school, to church, to the library, to the post office, and to recreation areas. Today that is called “new urbanism.”

Cradock was named for Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock whose fleet was sunk by the Germans in 1914. The street layout is based on an anchor with Gillis Road (where I lived) forming the stock and Afton Parkway forming the shank. The curved part is created by Alden and Dahlgren Avenues. Many of the roads were named for naval heroes.

I’ve put together some “then” and “now” photos of the commercial district of Cradock.

Historic photos
http://rqbing.tripod.com/afton_square_1950s/

It was a short six blocks from my house on Gillis Road to Afton Parkway. At the corner was Reds, a bit of a forerunner to convenience stores where you could get lunch as well as buy light bulbs, cleaning supplies, toys, and candy. I was often scared of this store because boys smoking cigarettes were always hanging around. However, I had to be brave because Reds had the best selection of Barbie doll clothes. Today a Christian outreach operates there, still a gathering place for Cradock residents.

Afton Place is a Christian mission
where Reds used to be

Next door was a hardware store, but I doubt it is still in business. At the opposite corner was a bakery and later a florist. I don’t know what is there now.

Across the street was a dry cleaners (although it was some other business in this older photo) and jeweler. At one time there was an upholsterer.













Now, the stores are home to a real estate management company and other offices.

Moving on up Afton Parkway the road becomes “one way” around a circle. 

The park in the middle was where every summer Holy Angels Catholic Church held its annual bazaar. We went every night. We could play Bingo, enjoy pony rides and carnival rides, play carnival games for cheap prizes, and even have our fortune told. My favorite game was picking a plastic duck out of the “pond” to see if I was a winner – yeah, I’m easily entertained. And cotton candy! COTTON. CANDY. EVERY. DAY. This park remains although not quite as lush as it used to be, but it still sees plenty of action with fall festival and “Come Home to Cradock” activities. That iconic cannon is still there too. I am sure kids climb on it just as we did.

Cannon in Afton Square

Shops and apartments on Afton Square

This part of the shopping strip gives a good view of the “new urbanism” concept with apartments above the stores. On the right was Highs Ice Cream. It was five cents a dip when I was a kid. My friends and I used to find bottles to trade in at the grocery store - 3 cents for small bottles and 5 cents for large ones. On a good day we could get a double dip of ice cream for our efforts.

On the far left corner was Moys. They ran both a Chinese laundry and take-out restaurant. I remember thinking it was such a treat to get chow mein to bring home for dinner. A variety of businesses have come and gone over the years including appliance stores, antique shops, thrift stores, and beauty parlors.

Here’s the bank where I had my little savings account and Christmas club. In recent years a series of restaurants have tried but failed to make it there. The empty lot was once Overtons Supermarket. We did most of our grocery shopping at Colonial Store where my grandmother worked, but if we needed something right away, Momma sent me to Overtons because I could walk there. Supposedly a community garden is there now.

Next to the old bank is the library marking the end of the commercial center and of one-way traffic. Across the street facing Prospect Parkway are the fire station and post office.

Fire station and post office (hidden by the tree)

Coming down Afton in the other direction is – or WAS – the Afton Theater where we spent many Saturday afternoons. Since I wrote about that on A day, I’ll move on. Next door was Halls Drug Store with the best penny candy. Independent real estate offices, property management firms, and tax services have made these old buildings their homes.

Left to right: Halls Drug Store, Afton Theater, Afton Apartments

Down from the Afton, the shop on the corner was a fabric store where Momma was a frequent customer since she made most of our clothes. At one time it was run by her high school friend Bertie Winn Campbell. It is now a convenience store.

The corner store was a fabric shop but now a convenience store.

In the next block was a restaurant and appliance store ending with Chapman's market, a butcher shop. My grandmother sometimes helped out since the Chapmans were old family friends.

Now look at that stretch of Afton Parkway. So depressing. The Bar & Grill with upstairs pool hall are long gone; even the restaurant in business when Google Maps took this picture is closed.

On the curve were the bakery although I have more vivid memories of it being a florist, a grocery, a beauty parlor and another drug store. This was my favorite drug store. Although Halls had good penny candy, this store sold Sixteen magazine and boasted a lunch counter. Today the VFW occupies that spot. I do not know if there are other businesses next door.

This brings us back to the park in Afton Square. The Gazebo (bandstand) has always been the heart of “downtown Cradock.” It was originally on Prospect Parkway but was moved to its current location to be a focal point for community activities.

The bandstand will probably always be important in the hearts of Cradock citizens as a reminder of the Cradock that once was and the hope of what Cradock could be again. 

Count on my comrades at the A to Z April Challenge for clever and creative contrivances.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

A to Z April Challenge: B is for Baby Stuff

Genealogists and family historians get a lot of satisfaction from chasing their ancestors’ stories. Finding a diary, a message on a postcard, or a photo with a name attached is like the sun coming out after a storm. One day we will be somebody’s ancestor. We need to leave our descendants a little bit of sunshine too. So here is my story told alphabetically, not chronologically: Growing Up in Cradock.

is for Baby Stuff.

My daughters are new moms. Even though their babies are not even six months old yet, they are already experiencing that emotional realization of time passing too quickly as they pack up the newborn onesies and sleepers to make way for the 3-6 months ones. The need to hold on to those sweet moments is probably why mothers the world over since the beginning of time save SOMETHING for sentimental reasons.

My mother was no different. Here are her reminders that I was sweet once:

Book – a Christmas gift from my grandaunt Violetta Davis Ryan. It is called “Off to Bed” and includes seven stories “for Wide Awakes.”

Blonde locks – there used to be MORE hair in that little clump, but over the years, strands have come loose. Most baby books and memory boxes today have a special spot for that souvenir of baby’s first haircut. I cannot remember where Momma kept mine, but many years ago we attached the blonde locks to a velvet heart to go into a shadow box, one project that never was completed.

Box of baby teeth – well, what can I say? I guess the Tooth Fairy didn’t keep them after all.

Baby beads – A NECKLACE! That is how hospital personnel identified babies back in the 1950s. Yeah, with a strangulation hazard. Pink beads for girls. Blue beads for boys. They ARE cute though. By the late 1960s when my sister came along the hospital attached pink or blue bead bracelets instead, much safer yet still worthy of saving. My little grandchildren will not have anything like this. They had electronic security devices on their ankles like criminals on house arrest might wear. A sign of the times.

Bonnet – A crisp French bonnet was the ultimate gift for baby girls. My mother saved it and had it cleaned and starched for my daughter to wear on her first Easter.

Jordan wearing my French bonnet 1982

Be brave beholding a bounty of blogs at the A to Z April Challenge.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.   

Sepia Saturday: You Will Meet a Man

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt with its street scene in a Cornish fishing village takes me back to 2004 when my daughter Jordan and I took a trip to Italy. The narrow downward slope of the street reminds me of almost every street in the Cinque Terre.

THE street through Manarola in the Cinque Terre
2004

The Cinque Terre was our third stop in a 10-day tour that began in Rome followed by a weekend in Venice with my other daughter Zoe who was lucky enough to be studying abroad that summer. After we said our arrivedercis and ciaos, Jordan and I boarded the train for La Spezia located along the Ligurian coast. There we planned to hop on the local train to the town of Manarola where we had reservations at La Toretta B&B.

Unfortunately, we arrived in La Spezia too late to take a train to Manarola, so we hired a taxi. The driver deposited us in a dark parking lot at the top of the hill off the one main road that connects the five towns of the Cinque Terre. He assured us – in his broken English – that we would be safe finding our way through the town despite the total absence of lights. I am glad for the traveler’s tip to carry a penlight.

We followed the steep downhill path by an oratory, tall houses, a waterwheel, a church, and a bell tower into the piazza. We then followed signs to La Toretta along tight, twisted stone paths lined with vines and flower boxes. Our host greeted us (after repeated ringing of the doorbell – it WAS rather late!) and gave us directions to follow the road to the supermarket where we would “meet a man in the street” who would show us to our apartment.

A man in the street?? If this had happened in the United States, we would have been scared and possibly would have refused, but here in the Cinque Terre, it all sounded mysterious, funny, and even quaint.

Our apartment was cute and quite comfortable. In the Cinque Terre, buildings cling to the cliffs so it should not have been a surprise to find a huge boulder in the bathroom. I suppose their policy is if you can’t get rid of it, just build around it.

Jordan outside our apartment in Manarola

The rock in our bathroom
Beautiful blue tile though!

  [Please excuse the poor quality of my photos. These are pictures of pictures in my scrapbook.]

A look back at Manarola from the hiking trail

Clothesline system on the balcony of our apartment
Manarola 2004

In the morning, I was finally able to get a close-up look at the clothesline system that I spied only in flashes as we traveled by train. I wondered how clothes could be hung from a window. 

Since we allowed only one full day to hike the five towns, we started early. Around 10:00 in the morning, we wandered into a little bar just outside Riomaggiore. A large, friendly Italian tourist waved us in.

Jordan and a friendly Italian tourist
(although he doesn't look very friendly in this picture!)
Riomaggiore 2004

Not speaking any English, he gestured enough for us to understand he was encouraging us to order some wine and food. He even offered us a sip of his wine. Strangely, we accepted as if drinking out of a stranger’s glass was a normal and safe thing to do. He then offered Jordan a bite of his food. In her simple Italian, Jordan asked what it was. The gentleman turned to the waitress and asked, “Come si dice le acciughe a inglese?” She answered, “Anchovies.” Everyone in the bar laughed and roared in unison, “Anchovies!” as Jordan tried to find a polite and discrete way to spit it out.

We lingered a short while at this bar enjoying the atmosphere among locals drinking wine in the morning, but there was more hiking and more towns to visit before time to catch the train to our last stop in Florence.

Part of the hiking trail included this tunnel with windows.
You wouldn't want to miss the view!

Why not stroll the colorful streets of Sepia Saturday and partake of the delightful treats in story and photo? I doubt there will be anchovies.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

A to Z April Challenge: A is for Afton

Genealogists and family historians get a lot of satisfaction from chasing their ancestors’ stories. Finding a diary, a message on a postcard, or a photo with a name attached is like the sun coming out after a storm. One day we will be somebody’s ancestor. We need to leave our descendants a little bit of sunshine too. So here is my story told alphabetically: Growing Up in Cradock.

is for Afton.

Afton Parkway. Afton Square. Afton Theater.

I grew up in the 1950s-60s in a community called Cradock (more about that with the letter “C”) in Portsmouth, Virginia. Afton Parkway was the main road, sort of a divided “highway” on a smaller scale. It widened at Afton Square, the “downtown” of Cradock, where shops circled a small park. One of the main features at Afton Square was the Afton Theater.

The Afton Theater as it looked originally
from The Portsmouth Star

Everyone went to the Afton on Saturday afternoon. For 25¢ we could sit on maroon vinyl seats and enjoy a movie in an air conditioned theater decorated in that grand old theater style: painted murals on the walls and velvet curtains that parted to build our anticipation with a newsreel, cartoons, or other short subjects before the featured movie began. Popcorn was cheap. So were the Good & Plenty, Jujubes, Milk Duds, and Necco Wafers.

What movies I saw at the Afton slipped from memory long ago, but I remember the ladies’ restroom clearly. It had a vestibule with a picture window where you could continue watching the movie while your friend was “occupied,” so to speak. If the movie was REALLY good, we sometimes hid in the bathroom so we could slip back in and watch it again for free.

My friends and I routinely pulled that same trick at the three theaters downtown. We could ride the bus and stay all day if we wanted. It was perfectly safe and our mothers did not worry. Was it the State, the Colony, or the Commodore that featured “Parent Trap” (the REAL one with Haley Mills)? One of them lost money on me that day because we watched it two more times for free.

Speaker used in drive-in theaters
from wikimedia commons

I did not catch any free movies at the Super 17 Drive-in although it was common for teens to hide in the trunk of their friend’s car to avoid the per-person charge. Going to the drive-in was a family outing for us. My sister and I would go in our pajamas and take pillows and blankets along. Daddy bought us some popcorn or Cracker Jacks at the concession stand. Then he attached that old speaker to the window and we waited for the movie to begin. The one movie I remember seeing at the Super 17 was “Dr. Zhivago.” The scenes in that movie just made me cold, so I snuggled into my blanket and fell asleep.

Commodore Theater
from wikimedia commons

Today the only movie theater from my childhood still thriving is the Commodore. It is a beautiful and historic building in the Art Deco style. The owner has tried to buy the old Afton to restore it like he did for the Commodore and make it a viable business once again, but he was denied. Non-profit groups have tried raising money to restore the Afton to show second-run movies or be a venue for Little Theater. Their efforts lost steam after a while and the groups died out. The fact of the matter is that the Afton is probably just too far gone. The roof has collapsed and weeds and animals have taken over.

The old Afton Theater
image from Google Maps

Pretty much all that is left is good memories of Saturdays with popcorn and a second show for free.

I advise you to advance to the A to Z April Challenge where you are assured of amiable company among the most affable artists and authors.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.