More Old Photo Memories: Centreville

Going through old photos can be dangerous to your time, I find.

Another surprising photo turned up, and I don't know how long I've had it. I believe my father gave it to me when he and I were looking through his boxes of old pictures. That was a pleasant time, sitting at his kitchen table surrounded by black and white photos, and listening to him try to remember who the people were and what was going on.

I believe that's Judy on the teeter totter, with Joe on the other end; I am in fron of Pinkie Moran and Tom is seated on a swing beside me. Bill is the tall one in back, and I can't remember the name of the girl in front of him. Mickey Moran is on the swing, far right.

In this one, I am with my brothers Bill, Tom and Joe, my sister Judy, I think? and the Moran children. This was taken at our first house in Centreville, Virginia, on Beanblossom Road, probably around 1955. The Morans lived behind us--there was a path through the piney woods that led from our back yard to theirs. The Morans were all blonde-haired, well-tanned and rowdy. We loved to play with them although I think they made my mother nervous--and that's saying something as we weren't too tame ourselves.

One of the things we loved to do was roll on a barrel. We'd get an old metal drum and lay it on its side--30-gallon size was best, but we tried it on 55-gallon drums too--and stand on top of of it. Then by walking backwards or forwards on the rounded side we could roll the drum. It was awesome if there was a little slope as the drum would roll faster and we had to be fast with our feet to stay on top of it.

One day when the Morans were over we had the brilliant idea to get inside the drum and have someone stand on top rolling it. I was inside, as I recall; whoever it was on top started rolling and I started screaming, because I was tumbling all about inside, and it hurt! Another bright idea we had was to put a washtub on someone's head and beat on it with a hammer, like a drum. Tom or Joe, I think, had the drum on his head and Pinkie Moran was beating on it. That lasted only seconds!

Maybe I can see why Mom didn't really like us playing with the Morans after all.



Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Easter Memories

Easter was an exciting time when I was young. Lent finally over and I could quit feeling guilty about eating the candy I was supposed to have given up for the season. There were special services at Church and we went to every one of them.

Easter 1954, at our first house in Centreville, VA

The services I remember the best were Palm Sunday when everyone was given a palm frond to take home--it would hang over our dining room door all year. Then there was Maundy Thursday, I think, and the Washing of the Feet? Elder men in the church would take off their shoes and socks and the priest would wash their feet. I was fascinated to see all those bony white feet, although I have to say the symbolism of the event escaped my notice.

There was the Stations of the Cross too. Our church had beautiful stained glass windows depicting the stations, and we would move from one to the other, saying the special prayers required for each.

And confession. Oh dear. Mine were pathetically the same almost every time I went: I was mean to my brothers, I fought with my sisters, I answered back to my mother...the sins of childhood hung heavy on my head.

Same Easter, 1954, at St. Timothy's Catholic Church in Centreville, VA

The Saturday before Easter was a busy day. The house had to be cleaned top to bottom, and then our dresses had to chosen and ironed, white ankle socks (hopefully with lace at the tops) and crinoline slips laid out, patent leather shoes shined with Vaseline, and our Easter hats refreshed with new fake flowers. We could buy sprays of flowers at the dime store for a dime, actually--we could really splurge and spend 19 cents or even (gasp!) 29 cents for really fancy ones. New ribbon trim was added too. Sometimes we had white gloves, and I remember once having a pair of pink ones--and sometimes we had little handbags too, dainty little things that just charmed me and probably didn't survive long after I got it.

I don't remember the boys being in the same uproar about getting outfits ready but for us girls it was a real flurry of excitement and anxiety.

Easter Sunday began early, with many of us going to the 9:00 am Mass. Dad usually went to the 7:30--I'm not sure why, but that was his habit. I think on Easter we all went together, filling a pew and then some. It had to have been stressful for Mom trying to keep us all behaving properly through the long service. But with Dad there, no one dared get too far out of line.

When we got home, there would be a big Easter breakfast and we would get our Easter baskets. Then our parents would disappear outside for a while. They would be hiding the eggs they'd dyed late the night before, about 12 dozen--really! The older children, me included, got to help with the dying when we no longer believed in the Easter Bunny, which meant that sometimes white gloves on Easter Sunday were for more than looks because our fingers were multi-colored.

Easter Sunday, sometime in the early 1980's

And then it was naptime for Mom and Dad and we were supposed to be quiet. The Easter finery was taken off and put away, play clothes came out and the ravaging of the baskets began in earnest with lots of trading of favorite candies, counting and stashing away--and eating. Dinner later was always the same: ham, potato salad, macaroni salad, green beans. I don't remember dessert but with so much candy floating around it wasn't needed.

Mom on probably the same Easter, early 1980's

By evening we were back to normal: squabbling, fighting over who took whose candy (confession the next week was far away at that point!), arguing over whose turn it was to wash the dishes. But the magic of the day, and the awe of the morning service and of the whole Easter story of tragedy, pain, redemption and exultation hung over us all for days to come.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Secret Hiding Place

Tipper at Blind Pig and the Acorn wrote a post about her children's "camps" made with sheets on their Granny's porch. Her post made me remember things from my childhood and the ways we played, especially in the hot summer months of the pre-air conditioning world.

When I was little we lived in a tiny house in the woods that offered opportunities of all kinds for play. Pine forest, a crawl space under the house, sheds and ditches and a rose arbor were all perfect for the kinds of games we played. I was only 5 when we moved, but my memories of the little house are vivid. I remember well my first secret hiding place; it was in the woods, surrounded by bushes and not visible to anyone passing on the path nearby. A perfect place to hide.

(photo below was taken in Centreville, before we moved to the big house in Manassas. Apparently a game of cowboys and Indians was in progress.)

Our next house was big and old with large rooms, high ceilings, tall windows, and cool plaster walls. In summer, the windows were open and sliding adjustable screens let in any breezes that might stir the mimosa in Mrs. Blakemore's yard or the old silver maple in our back yard. A large fan on a stand rotated in the dark downstairs entrance hall and often we'd put our fingers through the open cage and let them rat-a-tat-tat on the blades as they whirled. Sometimes an unfortunate child would get their fingers in the wrong place and get whacked hard by the spinning blades, but I don't remember any cuts from the fans.

Dad made schedules for his thirteen children in the summer, and created to-do lists with incentive prizes for doing certain chores. This worked well to motivate us right after school was out, but after a while we'd get tired of the lists or we'd have developed a game we liked to play. So we'd do the assigned work but the incentive lists usually languished after the end of June. Dad's strategy was probably to keep us busy while we adjusted to being home--and to keep us out of Mom's hair while she adjusted to us being home.

By July one or two games were usually in full swing. We didn't play games like most people think of them; for us, games went on for days or weeks, even all summer. Our favorite was the Town we created in the back yard. There was little grass in the area immediately to the right of the back porch steps. We kept it worn off with our play. In the bare dirt we used our little beach shovels or Mom's garden trowel to create roads, dips, curves, intersections, shopping centers, schoolyards and farms. Each of us had a role to play--farmers, mothers, fathers, shopkeepers, teachers, doctors. I was usually the orphanage keeper and my name in our games was Uncle John and Aunt Susie (dual personality, I guess). Many an emergency, conflict, injury, death, wedding and party happened in the course of an afternoon ---who needed General Hospital with all the drama we had going on in our yard?

When it rained the fun moved indoors. Upstairs would become a Wild West town. We'd raid the attic for clothes, Joe would wear his play gun and holster, someone would have the popgun, and always we'd have a dance with Joe as the caller, standing on the dresser and singing ("I belong, I belong, on the lo-o-o-ne pray-er-ee"). Indians would raid, cattle stampede, gunfights were many and bloody and bodies often littered the floor. Joe or Tom played the sheriff and would pronounce guilt or innocence and generally keep the peace. When the town got too rowdy, the real boss--Mom--would make us settle down.

We played long-running Monopoly games that resembled some of the pictures I've seen of poker games--intent faces, piles of money, deal-making and breaking, occasional fights and tears. A single game once lasted almost a month, with money changing hands as quickly, and probably as crookedly, as on Wall Street.

When we got tired of each other's company, we all had our secret hiding places. I had several: the attic was best for reading, and there was always a breeze through the little half-moon window in front with the far-off view of the Bull Run Mountains. Under the front porch was cool and damp and kind of scary, and a good place to go with Judy if we wanted to be alone. The cherry trees were excellent in June when they were filled with cherries and a girl could climb into the branches and eat to her heart's content. There were plenty for me, the birds and for mom's jam-making. The side yard with my redbud tree and bluebell garden was fairly sheltered and if Miss Mary, who lived next door, wasn't home I could climb up into the redbud tree where I would be out of sight and could spy on brothers and sisters who played on the swingset. Why did I want to spy on them? I have no idea. Maybe I should blame it on Nancy Drew, since I read every one of those books and all of the Hardy Boys too during my attic visits.

I wonder if children still play games like these, and if they still have secret hiding places? As an adult, I sometimes long for the redbud tree and the sanctuary it offered when my little life felt too tumultuous and overcrowded with siblings.

Tipper's daughters still have that magical gift of childhood, the gift of play. I hope there are many other children out there with the same gift, touching the past and inventing futures to suit themselves. I am afraid that today's children are losing the magic of creative play. I hope that in some small town in America, there is a child building a castle under the dining room table or a fort behind the sofa. I hope a little girl or boy is exploring under a forsythia bush and finding a hidden-way world that only he or she knows. I want to believe that children are still chasing birds with salt shakers, looking for four-leaf clovers, lying on their backs and finding shapes in the clouds, catching tadpoles in puddles and finding wild berries along the sides of dusty roads.

I hope childhood is still the place of possible hopes and inspired dreams, where anything can and will happen for the child who imagines it into being.

Granddaughter Haley in the yellow apple tree--one of her hiding places at my house.

Hurricane Hazel: October 15, 1954

It was Hurricane Hazel that I remembered in my Centreville ramblings. A quick search of the internet turned up lots of information about that storm.

Even though I was three when it struck, my memories are vivid. I remember the wind blowing us around--we thought it was fun. I remember Mom calling us inside and making us all sit around the table. I remember the wind shrieking around outside, and the sudden quiet. I remember the yard blanketed with hailstones that were as big as my little hand could hold. I remember laughing and licking the ice and being surprised that the hailstones tasted a little salty. I remember Mom's panic as she herded us back into the house--we'd been out playing in the eye of the storm, and it hit us again with renewed fury. We huddled inside as the house shook. Dad wasn't there and I don't think he came home for days because he was a lineman and he'd have been out working on repairs.

All that was recalled by that one mention of a hurricane in the Centreville post. Amazing.

There are many places to find out more about Hazel. One website is devoted to people's stories about the storm. Reading it now, I am astounded that our little house survived that terrible storm. Many others apparently did not.

Centreville

When I was a little girl, we lived in a small house my father built in Centreville, VA. Back then Centreville was a small place, not much more than a crossroads really. There was a hardware store, a general store, a diner, and a gas station. There must have been a post office too, but I don’t remember it. We lived on Beanblossom Road. The little house survived until about 10 years ago when it was finally torn down. Now it is impossible to recognize the place it stood.

That three-room house in the woods was a great place for kids. By the time we moved out of that house in 1956 there were six children, three boys and three girls. The house only had two bedrooms, but that wasn’t important because we spent most of our days outside, playing in the woods. Dad made us a playhouse, and we all had our secret hiding places under bushes, in gullies, or behind rocks. There were other kids who lived a short distance away, so we were never without someone to play with. Our house didn’t have running water and because the soil wouldn’t percolate we couldn’t have a septic tank. We had a chemical toilet, a sort of upscale outhouse. We heated with wood, and I remember there was a big vegetable garden.

The thing I remember most about Centreville, however, is my parents. They met in England during World War II where my father was stationed with the Army Air Force. After the war they lived with my father’s parents in Falls Church until the little house was finished. My mother was a beautiful English girl, with long auburn hair and a pretty cupid’s bow mouth. Every afternoon she would change into a clean dress and put on red lipstick before my father came home from work. We would all line up along the walkway to meet him. He would stride up the walk, looking so strong and healthy in his work clothes and with his lineman’s tools.

One year for my mother’s birthday Dad built her a rose arbor, painted white, with two seats built in. We loved to sit out there. Sometimes Mom would fix us a tea party, and we would sit like little ladies in the arbor sipping our tea. Other times we’d pick green persimmons for my mother, and she would put them in a wineglass on the table, telling us she would enjoy them later. We’d forget about them of course, and she’d quietly dispose of the puckery persimmons when we were playing.

Mom loved to braid our hair and wrap our heads in “crowns--Judy’s blond and shining like gold, mine with deep red lights in it, Mary—did Mary have braids? I don’t think so—she had black, curly, shining hair that bounced when she toddled around.

I was only five when we moved, but I remember so many things. A hurricane (what year was that? was its name Hazel?) that covered the ground with hailstones the size of shooter marbles. Mom lit a kerosene lamp and all of us gathered around the soft light shining on us while the wind and rain whipped the windows.

I remember:

• Playing in the woods—the pine needles a carpet of brown under our feet, pricking into my bare soles as I ran
• riding my Fire Chief car
• my secret hideout
• the playhouse where we got stuck on the roof and Dad had to climb up with his lineman's boots and rescue us
• the maroon-colored daybed with its rough upholstery that we slept on
• the pump in the kitchen sink (not a faucet)
• The chemical toilet outside, with it's half-door (there's another whole story about that little building!)
• the way the front door opened off one side of the house, hidden from the front and the road and very confusing to salesmen who would walk aroud the house, and even look underneath for a trap door
• Roses blooming
• visiting Dessie Deems who lived down the road with Nappy and his ancient pickup truck (see it in the picture above?)
• the way we’d aggravate the old neighbor lady woman by chanting naughty things about our underwear
• Joe cutting my hair, just one braid, leaving the other
• falling off the swing and cutting my knee open, how it looked, not really bleeding but more like the inside of an orange, only red.
• The ambulance ride, the hospital and my baby bottle that they took from me and put on a high window sill in some room (operating room? Emergency room?).
• Appendicitis--the old cellar on Signal Hill Road at Aunt Helen’s house (who was she, anyway? not my real aunt) with its slimy, slippery walls
• the green apple tree that hung over the cellar. I ate so many apples, I got appendicitis. What game were we playing when I went in there? Hide and seek?
• The path through the woods that went to the Moran’s house,
• rolling on 55-gallon drums
• putting the washtub on Mickey Moran’s head and banging on it with a hammer.
• I remember the soil being poor, with moss in the yard. But the roses did well, I remember that.
  
  All these memories, and yet I was only five years old when we moved. It doesn’t seem possible that I could remember so much, but I do. . We really lived in that house, you see; we lived like kids who were given the freedom to roam the woods, to play outside for hours because there was no television to keep us in, and to be alone outside because no one worried much about strangers in those days. Perhaps they should have, but they didn’t. We were free-spirited, full of make-believe games, and full of the joy of just being a little kid in a big woods in a tiny country community in the 1950’s.