By Mary Morony
There is a lot of talk these days about the good ol’ days, implying that these days right now ain’t so great. Perhaps that is so. I suspect most of the talk is rooted in nostalgia—sentimental thoughts of a happy time gone bye. Overcome by a little nostalgia myself about growing up in Charlottesville, I remembered my children’s oft-voiced complaint that I gave directions by telling them what used to be there.
Our little town has changed a lot since my childhood. I thought I would share some of those changes from my point of view. Like nostalgia, these words do not pretend to be a history; they have little if any basis in fact only memories. My memories of locations, bet on it, will be just a little fuzzy. Besides, it was over a half-century ago, and what do you want from a fiction writer? Yikes, that was a long time ago!
From where I viewed C’ville, as far as space was concerned, then, there was a whole lot more of it. Woods, as ubiquitous as fences today, separated large yards. While not necessarily dark and deep, they were dense enough for children to play with abandon, devoid of fear of disturbing a crabby neighbor, actually devoid of any fear. It was safe back then in the woods and most worthy of fueling imaginations with ideas of exotic foreign parts. That is especially useful since back then no one could afford to go to such places much less take their children if taking the kids even occurred to a parent. Vanity license plates are a relatively new phenomenon; rest assured that children first would not have been a big seller in the day.
Sidewalks, where there were some, were for old people — anyone over twenty. In a neighborhood, you cut through yards to get from point A to point B. So much more efficient and social, you just might bump into someone who wanted to play. Maybe that was why so many fences cropped up later on. Who wants the liability of children in their yards much less tracking up the lawn?
The University had yet to spill out much beyond the bounds of the Grounds. Copley Hill, as far afield as it went. The trailers and houses that constituted married student housing hardly resembled anything might have sprung from the mind of Mr. Jefferson. Enrollment back then reflected a mere subset of the state’s total population. Neither gender nor race may have barred your entrance to the University; those two factors did not exclude your tax dollars from paying for it.
Charlottesville, like the University had yet to succumb to sprawl and sat tidily within the limits, delineated by signs along the major thoroughfares. I’m unclear where the limit was to the south as that was territory little known to me at the time. I hope someone knows and will write to share their knowledge. The north city limit was a stone’s throw beyond the 29 North and Barracks Road intersection. The east boundary was in the middle of the old Free Bridge and the west was at the west end of St Anne’s campus. Belfield, at that time was an old Army surplus Quonset hut up 29 beyond even the drive-in, near where Berkmar Drive is now. Let’s not get started on the separate but equal public schools that also sat neatly within the bounds of the city and followed the rules of the day!
Deliveries were a way of life when I was a child. Groceries, laundry and milk arrived at our house just like The Washington Post in the morning and The Daily Progress in the afternoon. The mail had been curtailed to just morning delivery sometime around the time that stamps went up to four cents in 1958. That was in my tony neighborhood. I don’t suppose too many groceries or jugs of milk were delivered to Vinegar Hill and forget about the sheets though I imagine the mail got through.
Eliwood Keith’s stables were decidedly in the city. Generations of Charlottesville horse folk learned to ride at that stable. I imagine one particular garden on Bollingwood Road rivals few in the city. I don’t know where Joe, her stableman lived or how he got home. If he rode the bus, he sat in the back.
Barrack Road Shopping center was a pine forest in my youth. Foods of All Nations (used to be in the Meadowbrook Shopping Center) and a gas station or two were the furthest outpost of civilization before crossing 29. Beyond the pines was Duke’s pond known for great ice-skating when the weather cooperated. The streets with a real, 12 -18″, snow were always the first chose for sledding. One year we missed so much school because of snow, real accumulation a foot and over, besides making up the lost class time at the end of the year we had to go to school on Saturdays. Cue my son saying, “Yeah, and she had to walk to school uphill both ways!”
The City Laundry bisected Preston and Grady avenues in my good old days. It was a monster of brick and glass that belched steam and smoke all year and I bet was a living hell to work in. Our sheets were laundered there. Bundled up like a huge hobo’s sack, they left our house under the care of laundry man. He would toss the dirty sheets in the back of a blue van and bring them back on Friday clean, crisp, pressed and wrapped in brown paper. I can remember thinking there was something magical about the transformation. Now, that I know almost no one sleeps on pressed sheets including me, I understand the magic!
The design of the downtown mall may have been a glimmer in Lawrence Halprin’s eye back then. It was still a thoroughfare when I was going to school down the hill at Lane High School (County Office Building now). My classmates and I skirted past the slums as we walked up to Gleason’s bakery to catch the Charlottesville Transit bus home after investing in a bag of a half-dozen donut holes for the ride. If exactly the right number of people congregated—I have no idea how many was the right number—we would forgo the early busy home. Instead en masse we would hightail it up the street to Timberlake’s Drug Store. There a chocolate coke at their soda fountain was a must before crossing the street to the five story Miller & Rhoades to play hide and seek. You know the store loved that! Today, I suspect such horseplay today would have us run out of the store on a rail if not jailed.
When the circus came to town, you had better hoped, there had been no rain in the past few weeks. The big top, tents, cages and concession booths would set up behind the AT&T switching station on High Street. In the Rivanna flood plane like it was, you could be mired in mud with the multitude of feet and cars and the mosquito, oh my!
While I miss the Shadwell Store, and every traffic light after River Road is a personal insult, I wouldn’t give up the Charlottesville we have now for Charlottesville then. By the way, I noticed my children have begun to describe places with the designator; you know where so-and-so used to be.