Oral History Transcription

Oral History Interview Interviewee: James Roland Interviewer: Mary Lipsey Wednesday, June 1, 2005

MARY LIPSEY (MARY): Good afternoon. This is Wednesday, June 1st, and I'm Mary Lipsey, and I'm interviewing James Roland as part of the oral history interview collections on the "Look Back at Braddock District." And I know that you and your family are long time residents. If you could give us a little background of your family, how long they've been here, and where they lived. And we'll start there.

JAMES ROLAND (JAMES): My mom and dad is originally from Clarke County, Tennessee, which is eastern Tennessee in the Smokies. They didn't know each other in Tennessee. They met up here. And they came up. My mom came up, I guess, during World War II, and my dad was in the Navy in the Pacific, so he came here after World War II. The first place we lived at when I was born was Sideburn Crossing. We rented from Walter and Clyde Wood. His sister Esther originally owned the house. She died of cancer. And I was born in Arlington Hospital in '52, 1952, and we lived there until I was three years old, 1955. And then we moved to the present address, which is 10607 Zion Drive. It used to be Route 4, Box 350. And I've lived there ever since. My mom died there in 1998. My died there in the year 2000. So I'm the only one left of the kids there. And my wife. And we own two donkeys, 27 fish, two dogs.

MARY: Now when your family moved here, were they farmers?

JAMES: My dad started off as a carpenter after World War II, and then he went into dry wall. He was a dry wall hanger. And then I started hanging dry wall with him when I was 10, and did it until, let's see, I stayed there until 1988. And then when all the immigrants started coming in, the prices went down, and everybody could make a living in it. So I started building then. Have been ever since.

MARY: Are you talking about building houses?

JAMES: Yeah, building houses, barns.

MARY: Anything.

JAMES: Boat docks, fish ponds. And I do my own electrical and my own plumbing, my own framing, my own tile work.

MARY: So you're definitely the --

JAMES: My own excavating.

MARY: You do it from the bottom up.

JAMES: Yeah.

MARY: Okay. So what was it like growing up on Zion Drive?

JAMES: Well it was quiet. We used to just about know every car that went by. And you had the black section on the other end of Zion, and there was, I think, seven white families up on our side, and everybody got along. I used to deliver the newspapers down there to both sections. I did it, I think, a year, and it didn't pay well. It was the Washington Star, and the route paid $7, and it was round trip for me. It was over four miles. And on year or one month, I put a pair of horseshoes on my horse. It cost $10 for a set of horseshoes, and I wore them out in less than a month, so I had to go back to the bicycle.

MARY: But you did try delivering the newspapers by horse.

JAMES: Horse and then they started building across the street from us in '67, and that guy bought a tractor. We didn't have a tractor at the time. And so I had him bring all the attachments to it, so sometimes I would deliver on the tractor and in the spring I would plow gardens on my paper route. And then you had to let the ground dry out for a couple of days, and I'd go back and on my paper route I'd (indiscernible) the gardens, which paid a lot better than the newspaper did.

MARY: Okay. And so now this was in your teen years?

JAMES: Yeah. I did that, and then I guess I was 12 when I first went to work for Henry Stabler, the guy that had the nursery up there where the bridge is now. And every boy in the neighborhood, I think, at one time or another worked for Henry Stabler. And he died in, I guess, it was late 70s. I know he was up in years when he did die. And we had another old guy up there that I can remember. It was Pop Demaine. I know his last name was Demaine, and we only called him Pop. He was about 90 then, and I was probably seven or eight years old. He used to come by on Sundays and bring his ice cream. And he lived, go down Zion like you're heading towards Burke, and after you crossed over Sideburn, his house was right there on the right. He had a pretty big place. He had a range out back for people to come up from D.C. on weekends and target shoot.

MARY: Not skeet shooting, but target shooting.

JAMES: No, just target shooting. I'll never forget one story he told me, although it's funny how stuff you remember when you're a kid. But he was talking about the Civil War, and he said that when he came here, he was from a foreign country. I can't remember from where. But he said he came here, that you go down the creek there at Sideburn, that gun barrels would be sticking out of the creek banks. But he said back then it was just rusty old guns; nobody wanted it. I was just amazed --

MARY: Civil War collectors would have loved to have picked those.

JAMES: Well, my dad found pieces of cannonball out there in the garden, and my uncle had the place above us, and his son found part of the cannonball up there. And daddy's gotten two or three arrowheads out there in the garden made out of the cords.

MARY: I've heard that Sideburn Road was named for Burnside. Is that true, or do you know? Lots of legends.

JAMES: There supposedly was a guy named Sideburn. Well, see, our road used to be Sideburn, too. We were Sideburn until, I think it was about '67. Anyway, they had the Civil Rights Movement, and they had the Zion Baptist Church down on Zion. Well, the next thing you know we're Zion Drive. We were never questioned, asked about it, or nothing. Next thing we know our address is Zion Drive. But for years we were Sideburn. And the old timers, if they'd come up here, they want to know if we're still on Sideburn.

MARY: Well, as you talked about the target shooting, what other kind of amusements did you have? Any hunting?

JAMES: Well, I didn't go up there and shoot. When he died, I was eight. Matter of fact, the day he died, me and my dad had went up there that day, that afternoon, it was a Sunday, and had put a, well, dad did it, I watched. He put a new roof on Pop's outhouse. And that night about 10 o'clock, I'll never forget, the ambulance went by. Well, the kid that lived up on the hill, it was Arthur Magnus's son, we called him Art, where the swimming pool is now, a day or two before that they were surveying across the road there, and I found a broad ax. I gave it to Art, and he was like two years younger than me. And mom said, he'll kill himself with that. Well, that night when the ambulance went by, that's what I thought, Art had killed himself, and then we found out the next morning it was Pop and that he had had a massive heart attack and died.

MARY: Now you said his last name was Demaine.

JAMES: Demaine.

MARY: Is that any relation to the Demaine Funeral Home?

JAMES: No, I don't think so.

MARY: It's just a coincidence. Well, what did you do besides deliver the newspaper?

JAMES: Rode horses. Went hunting. I was a big hunter at one time. I can't do it anymore. My conscience bothers me. But it used to, I'd get home from school, put on my hunting coat, head to the back of the house, and I would go all the way through to the railroad tracks, and then I'd come back out on Sideburn, the Sideburn now. It was a dirt road then. And I'd walk back home. Usually it would be dark by the time I get to the house.

MARY: Now tell me what you were hunting for.

JAMES: Anything.

MARY: Anything?

JAMES: There wasn't anything there. We've got more wildlife there now than then. We never had deer. You might see a squirrel occasionally. Very seldom saw a fox. And now, my mother died in '98, and that summer we had over 200 tomato plants, never got the first tomato. The deer kept eating them. And we had problems with deer until I got the whole place fenced and got the mule back there. The mule don't like deer. And, of course, the deer don't like the mule. So I don't have any more deer problems. I'm sure they're back there, but I assume they eat in Mary's backyard, but they don't come to my house.

MARY: Well, that's a good way you can tell suburban people if they want to keep their tomato plants, just get a mule.

JAMES: Just get a mule.

MARY: I never heard that before.

JAMES: Out west, they use mules and donkeys both to guard goat and sheep herds because coyotes and dogs is their natural enemy. And, of course, I didn't know that when I got the mule, and the first thing I did was let my blue tick coon hound out in the field. I thought I was going to lose her. They've been around each other now, and now she loves them to death. They don't love her, but they tolerate her. They don't try to stomp her anymore.

MARY: Now you said that when a car would go by, you just about knew everybody that was in the car. So was there a lot of traffic or not?

JAMES: No.

MARY: No?

JAMES: You had to watch for a long time to see a car.

MARY: How about when you did shopping and things like that? Where did you go for shopping?

JAMES: Well, if you wanted a soda, you go up to Jack Ryan's. There was an Exxon station there at the corner. That was Jack Ryan who ran it for years. Joe Story owned it, but Jack ran for years. And then if you wanted a candy bar or something, you could go up to Courthouse Market, which is still there.

MARY: That's on 123?

JAMES: Yeah, right as you come in the city. And the two major grocery stores in Fairfax City at the time was the, Camp Washington, was Grand Union and Safeway. Now Grand Union now is Frank's, and Safeway is some carpet place there now.

MARY: Okay. So right at Camp Washington.

JAMES: Yep. That was the two. Now University Shopping Center there in the city where Harris Teeter is now, later on in years they got a Safeway there. But for years, it was just that Grand Union and Safeway in Camp Washington.

MARY: Now that's a little bit of a trek. I mean, you just didn't stop by every once in a while.

JAMES: And if you needed a toilet or something like that, I always went to Sears in Clarendon.

MARY: Oh, okay. How about clothes?

JAMES: Let's see. I can't really remember where mom went to. I guess probably Clarendon because there just wasn't any --

MARY: No Springfield Mall or Tyson's? JAMES: It was my dad, he was good in dry wall, but he wasn't too much of a plumber. One Saturday he wasn't going to fix the toilet tank, so he tightened it down, and he broke it. This was on Saturday afternoon. Mama had to drive all the way to Clarendon to get another tank. Brings the tank home, he gets it to the top of the stairs, drops it down the stairs. She had to go all the way back to Clarendon and get another tank.

MARY: I bet he wasn't very popular.

JAMES: He tried to do plumbing, but he just never had much luck at it. And back then we had a well, too. Mom saw him going down him going down the basement steps with a pipe wrench, and she'd hurry up and fill up everything with water so we'd have water for a couple of days. And then we had always had grandma next door, and we could go down there and get water.

MARY: Did you ever have to worry about losing electricity and things like that?

JAMES: Not too awful bad. Even in bad storms, it don't seem like we were out of it that long. Of course, I don't know. We didn't have that much electric, so I guess you wouldn't miss it as much as you do now.

MARY: How about getting snowed in?

JAMES: The biggest snow we got since I've been here was in 1966. It was in February. And going from my house towards the 123 up there on top of the hill by Beechwood Court there was a 13 foot drift there. And they were cutting wood down behind us, so they had big tractors down there, dozers for the saw mill. And they brought one of those over. I think we had been snowed in four or five days, and cleared it. Plus up in front of the golf course, that was always a bad place to drift. But that's the worse I could ever remember. It was bad that year.

MARY: Now were the roads gravel or paved, or what were they?

JAMES: Sideburn was a dirt road. Zion was gravel. And I was pretty young, but it did get paved. And then Braddock was dirt. My grandmother used to work at Singing Pines Nursing Home in Fairfax City, which is some church there now. I can't remember the name of it. But I would go with daddy in the evening to pick her up, and we would go Braddock to Roberts Road. Well, Roberts Road was gravel than, and Braddock had gravel and dirt. And between Roberts and Sideburn, if you met somebody on that part of Braddock, you'd have to find a wide place to pass.

MARY: So two cars could not pass.

JAMES: No, and then Sideburn, if there was rainy weather, it would a mud hole. You couldn't get through. Up there right where the elementary school is, that was a real bad place there. If it had been raining two or three days, you couldn't even begin to get through there unless you had four wheel drive, and back then four wheel drives were unheard of.

MARY: But you didn't have any warning. You'd have to head down the road and the find out, and turn I guess. Well, you said you went to elementary school here.

JAMES: Fairview.

MARY: Fairview Elementary? Can you describe for us what it was like?

JAMES: There were six classrooms. There were six grades, and then they bought a special education class in, I guess, when I was about in third grade. But it was a small school. Everybody knew everybody. There was a lot of poor people around back then. Matter of fact, my dad did dry wall. That was about the best paying job you could have back then. There was a lot of poor kids that lived on Pope's Head Road and down at Fairfax Station. Mom in the summer, actually mom was the only lady on our section of Zion that could drive a car. So during the summer, she would take those poor kids to the country doctors. She would volunteer. I remember her going down Pope's Head two or three times, and she'd take them to the doctor, take them to the dentist. And we were the only ones that had a phone down there for years. And the first line was a party line. We had three different people --

MARY: On the same line.

JAMES: -- on the same line, and, of course, one of them was an alcoholic, so he liked to answer on our ring.

MARY: Didn't make any difference if it was for him.

JAMES: No, he just liked picking the phone up. Phil Upshaw lived right across the creek where Kidd Court is now. I'll never forget, he worked for Eastern Airlines at National Airport as a mechanic. And any time he was sick, his wife would have to come over to the house to call them to tell them that he was sick. And then Blevins up there at Beechwood Court, it was a long time before they got a phone. They used to come down and use the phone all the time.

MARY: Now you mentioned Pope's Head Road. It still is kind of a bad road today, so what was it like when you were growing up?

JAMES: I don't think it's changed much. I think it was better back then because you didn't have all the traffic. Yeah, it had the turns and everything it's got it in it now.

MARY: Right, and the hills and stuff like that. So from Fairview Elementary you went to?

JAMES: Robert Frost. Went there the first year it opened. Went there, and then high school, went to Oakton, and I went there the first year it was opened. MARY: Oakton's quite a distance for you.

JAMES: Yeah. That was the closest one. Actually my sister that was two years old than me, she went to Woodson. And I guess Woodson was getting crowded, so the next high school that opened was Oakton. So they sent us over there. And my youngest sister, who's two years younger than me, she's 51, she graduated from Robinson.

MARY: So three people in the same family, didn't move, but three different high schools.

JAMES: Well, Jane went to Woodson, and I got a sister a year older than, Rera, me and her went to Oakton. And then Lynn went to Robinson. Yeah, they were building schools all over then.

MARY: Right. So what kind of bus ride was that for you?

JAMES: Nothing like it would be now.

MARY: Again, because of traffic.

JAMES: It wouldn't take you five minutes to get through Fairfax City. That's a thing of the past. No, it wasn't that bad.

MARY: It didn't seem like a long ride.

JAMES: No. I would hate to do that trip now.

MARY: Well, let's talk about the changes you've seen as this area has developed with shopping centers and fast food and things like that. When was the first time you had fast food close by?

JAMES: McDonald's over there by the old Fairfax High School. You'd get a three course meal they'd advertise for 49 cents. That was the first McDonald's.

MARY: Do you remember when that was?

JAMES: Let's see. I'd say it was about 1962. I was in Anchorage, Alaska when they opened the first McDonald's there. That was 1970.

MARY: Well now, what did your family do for entertainment?

JAMES: We didn't have anything like a recreation center. We had the horse. We had the creek where Kipp Court is now. We'd go dam it up and have us a nice little swimming area, and it would come and wash it away. And every time we'd build it, well, it's not going to go this time, and the next big rain, start from scratch. I guess that was the biggest thing. I had the horse, and then we had a pony. I tried little league one year. They had it in Fairfax City, and I didn't really care for it because it was city kids, and mom didn't care to drive me over there. So I went part of one season and that was it.

MARY: So you were considered country compared to the kids who lived in Fairfax.

JAMES: Oh yeah. Yeah, we had different lifestyles.

MARY: Not too many of them had horses and things like that.

JAMES: We raised our own beef.

MARY: So you had cattle.

JAMES: Yeah, raised hogs. Yeah, the last hogs we had was, I'd say it was 1977, I think. And I came home with pigs. Mom and dad had a fit, but they kept them, and we had them down in the barn. And they we're almost ready to butcher. And I was hauling trash down there one day, and the ground was wet, and I started seeing all these tracks, and I thought it was deer tracks. And I said, oh god, we finally got deer in here. And I'm still looking at all these tracks, and all of a sudden these four little kids were down in the gully, and they took off running through the woods. And I thought, nah. I looked over at the barn. They had turned those hogs loose. And they were almost ready to butcher, there was four of them. And nobody in the neighborhood was home. I finally got a hold of Nancy Elshar over at Kipp Court, and she came over and helped me round those pigs up. And after that daddy said that was it. No more livestock.

MARY: Yeah. So how many acres did your family own?

JAMES: We just had two.

MARY: You had two. But you said you had beef and you had pigs. So you had a barn for them or what?

JAMES: Yeah. You see the pictures. They were all barned.

MARY: Okay. And when it was time for slaughtering, did you do it yourself?

JAMES: We took them to Manassas Frozen Food Locker. I had two hogs one time my dad was going to kill. Walter and Clyde Boyd did live across from Target. They were going to help. I'll never forget, we got a scalded tub, and we got the water hot, and I had left for some reason. Thank goodness I did. But they killed one before I left, and Daddy was wanting to kill both of them. And Clyde said, no, just kill the one. Well, first off, they messed up. They put him in the water. You leave it in so long, you pull it out, you scrape the hair off. Well, they didn't leave him in long enough, and they had already started drinking a little bit. Well, they put him in again. The last time the hair wouldn't come off. It wouldn't come off. So Daddy started questioning Walter about his butchering skills. Well, come to find out Walter had never butchered hogs. They always had someone come up to do theirs. And daddy was thinking Walter had been butchering. So needless to say, the second one didn't get killed. We took him to the slaughterhouse.

MARY: Then that was your meat then for the season.

JAMES: Yeah. We had chickens. We had ducks. At one time we had just about everything there.

MARY: Yeah. Now did you have the chickens for the eggs?

JAMES: Yeah. It was mainly eggs, and then the ducks just for the heck of it. And I got four rabbits over there that they'll die of old age. All they do is eat.

MARY: Well, as you got older and the development started moving in, what was the biggest change that you noticed as suburbs started reaching what had been your country home?

JAMES: Well, the houses across the street wasn't too bad. I worked on those. I was 14 or 15 when they started. I did a lot of dry wall, hardwood floors over there. I did a lot of that work wise, so it didn't bother me. I don't know what mom and dad thought of it. But then after that developed it wasn't bad. We knew a lot of people had moved in, and a lot of people moved to Fairfax City over there. When the problems came when they started Little Ridge and Bonnie Brae, and then we started getting overrun with kids. And you'd ask them what are you doing here. Well, this is park land. I don't know how many times we heard that. And I got scared of the barn, kids up getting up there and starting a fire, falling out of the barn. So daddy called their lawyer and said, you know, what can we do? We're going to put no trespassing signs, and the lawyer said, you can put up no trespassing signs all you want. He said, some kid gets out there and falls out and breaks his leg, you're probably going to get sued. (Indiscernible) wasn't bad and Country Club View up on 123, that wasn't too disturbing to us. But when they came over on our side, that's when we got the aggravation.

MARY: So did they leave the barn standing? You said they were concerned about the kids in the barn.

JAMES: Left it standing and put a doorway up at the top, a loft, but they couldn't get in there. And we kept a watch on it all the time. And then they left in '97, and I ended up tearing it down because it was leaning bad, and my dad swore it was a log barn, it couldn't fall. But it was just leaning down the hill like this. I just decided to go ahead and take it down.

MARY: A little slant there. Now when your family moved into this house, was it a house your dad built?

JAMES: My uncle built it in '46. He built that house, and then the house below us with the stain front, that was my grandmother's house. My uncle built it, and it was built in '46.

MARY: And the barn, too?

JAMES: The next year. And there was a barn behind my grandmother's house, too, which ended up falling down because a roof was never put on it, and my grandfather used that, I guess, a lot of stuff he used to have quarry, he'd keep in that barn. And the quarry was in existence until they built the lake back there.

MARY: Now was this a commercial quarry?

JAMES: All done by hand.

MARY: All done by hand. Just the pickaxe and whatever.

JAMES: It's hard to remember because I was a teenager the last time I was down there, but it seemed like it was 30 feet down to the water, and it was like 15 feet. We stocked it with fish. We used to go down there and fish.

MARY: Did you ever swim in there?

JAMES: No, that place was crawling with snakes.

MARY: Oh, my goodness.

JAMES: But when the county put the lake in back there, they filled it in, we didn't even know it. Somebody walked back there one day and said, where's the quarry? What are you talking about? There's an acre back there that my grandfather owned, and when he died my grandmother willed it to my uncle. And he sold that back acre to the county several years before we even knew about it, and they bought it when they put the lake in. We didn't know there was a lake back there for a long time.

MARY: Now which lake is this? Does it have a name?

JAMES: I see everyday when I drive by.

MARY: Is it on park land now?

JAMES: Yeah. It's been Holden and Kipp Court on Zion. I think it's Glen something Lake. I see it the sign all the time. But it was there for years before we even knew it. I knew they did a lot of excavating back there, but we didn't know what the excavating was about. Yeah, it was real rocky back there. Of course, my grandfather had the quarry. So when they cut the sewer line, the main sewer line, that was down on that creek bed, they had to do a lot of blasting down through there.

MARY: Now did your grandfather operate this stone quarry?

JAMES: Yeah.

MARY: Okay. So sold --

JAMES: He sold stone, and it was a soft stone. It never did real well out here. Of course, stone held up on that house I don't know how many years. They tore it down a few years ago. Now, if he had that stone quarry right here now with the way people are about stone, he'd be a millionaire because --

MARY: Do you know what kind of stone it was?

JAMES: Some kind of shell. It's in pictures of the house. It was brown, and it was pretty soft. It wasn't a real, but he took some big chunks out of it.

MARY: Now you were talking about your grandparents. What attracted them to actually move in this area?

JAMES: I think what it was is after my dad and his brother got out of the Navy, and then their sister's husband was in the Army, he came back to this area. And there was employment. There wasn't any employment back in the mountains. In those mountains there's still no employment. Almost everybody from down there either came up here, went to Detroit to the mills and the car factories. It just wasn't --

MARY: So you're talking from Tennessee. So they had heard that there were jobs up here.

JAMES: Yeah. Well, I guess my cousin George Roland lived at the corner of Pope's Head and 123, Ox Road. I think he was one of the first ones to come up. And matter of fact, I think my dad rented a room when he first came up. And then I had another cousin that was in Oakton, Brian Roland. He had a saw mill over here. And they used to take in borders all the time from Tennessee. Their place, you go down 123 going in to Vienna on the right is Nutley. You make a right on Nutley and the first street there is Roland. Well, that's where Uncle Brian's saw mill was.

MARY: If you had to think of your fondest memory of growing up in this area. It's often a hard question to answer, but I'll ask it anyway.

JAMES: I think it was probably when we were kids. I mean, we didn't have recreation centers and all this other stuff kids have, but we always seemed to be pretty happy.

MARY: Right. You kept yourself busy.

JAMES: We'd go down to the creek, ride a horse. I used to come down here to Burke. Jerry and Rob Payton live right where that power station is now, Guinea Road. They lived there, and we worked together. That's how we met. And I'd walk up to their house or ride my bike, and then we'd walk the tracks down here at Burke, and come up to Carson's Store. And then Brownie had the service station right across the corner, and, of course, the fire house was there then, and the post office was over by the fire house. But that was it for Burke.

MARY: That was it.

JAMES: Yep. And we had a water hole down here by the tracks we used to swim in, too.

MARY: Did your family do anything special like 4th of July celebrations or anything like that you can remember? In the future, young kids will be watching this.

JAMES: I think the biggest thing we ever did on the 4th was sit out I the front yard and watch the fireworks at the golf course.

MARY: At the golf course.

JAMES: Yeah. They always had, they still have fireworks every year. I mean, Christmas was always big and Thanksgiving, but, no. I guess we had fireworks, too, come to think of it. Daddy used to, they were legal back then.

MARY: And you got some pretty powerful ones, I bet.

JAMES: Well, we'd go to South Carolina to get the good stuff.

MARY: What would you say is probably the biggest difference between your childhood and kids today as they're growing up?

JAMES: I think there's just too much money. Kids don't know now to, and (indiscernible) (NOTE: This reference is at 0937). But, I mean, all of us kids always worked, tried to find something to do. And, of course, we didn't have a computer screen to sit in front of or these video games, so I guess it's just a change in society. I don't think it's for the best, but that's what it's came to. And the money around here is unbelievable. Now my dad dry walled up till, I'd say, the late 70s, early 80s. He made more money than any county employee ever thought about making, or government. And now it's completely opposite. Dry wall, with all these immigrants in here, is one of the worst trades you can have. Of course, now it's not a trade, the stuff they put up now. Nobody can advance because it's what everybody's doing.

MARY: It's not the same.

JAMES: No. It just lost the trade. I was down in Tennessee last year. My sister bought a new house in Knoxville, and Tennessee used to be way behind up here. Now they're way ahead of this place. The trade are so much better down there. MARY: Now we've kind of lost our pride in quality.

JAMES: Get it done. Get it done.

MARY: Yeah, and as fast as possible. Did your family ever go down to D.C. for any reason?

JAMES: No, we didn't go to D.C.

MARY: That was definitely leaving the countryside, wasn't it?

JAMES: Yep. No, didn't go to D.C.

MARY: What about when the Beltway came in? What was your feeling about that?

JAMES: It wasn't bad when it first opened. My dad worked for years in Maryland. He did dry wall for (indiscernible) (NOTE: This reference is at 1011) in Rockville. And then they put a four line highway into Montgomery Village before they ever built the first house. They made so much money out of Rockville job. And I used to go with dad on weekends because the guy he worked for also did the dry wall in Kings Park, which is around the corner. But he would rather go to Maryland because it was a lot easier houses to do than to work in Kings Park because there wasn't no traffic. I mean, we could get from our house to Gaithersburg in 20 minutes. And you wouldn't see but a few cars on the Beltway. You wouldn't see many more on 66.

MARY: And now it's 24 hours a day.

JAMES: Now if you have a choice between Gaithersburg or Kings Park, you'd be in Kings Park.

MARY: We've heard about Braddock Road. I don't know if you are familiar with what they call Rebel Hill on Braddock Road, a very tall hill near Ravensworth? Can you describe any experiences you had?

JAMES: We never really came down that far.

MARY: Okay. That was too far in.

JAMES: Yeah, until it was good road. But we very seldom came. I remember mom was riding us around one time, we were kids, and they had just started Kings Park. And we just thought those were amazing, and all those windows and stuff, and that rambler and stuff. We were looking. That was really a trip coming down that far back then.

MARY: So it was like a field trip for you.

JAMES: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

MARY: Did you ever get down to the Burke Lake area?

JAMES: The guy that lived up there on Beechwood Court used to take me down fishing. I was probably about 14 when they opened it up, and for a couple of years they had good fishing, but after that it just, I don't know. There's something about these man made lakes. Once they're in for a while, they just don't seem like the fishing is as good.

MARY: Well, how about your parents? Did they belong to any organizations in the area, like Rotary, or did you do 4-H or anything like that?

JAMES: I did 4-H one year, I guess, or maybe two, and I was getting into the horse shows. And we had horse shows in Clifton, and I used to ride a horse from Zion Drive over to Clifton down 123. And that was during the Kennedy era, and Carolyn Kennedy would bring her pony, and the Shrivers would come.

MARY: I'm trying to think of her pony's name, Macaroni?

JAMES: Yeah.

MARY: Okay, yeah. JAMES: They used to come, and the Shrivers would come. And I think Clifton was really bound down to get them in there just for the notoriety of it. So they came several times. I just couldn't imagine riding a horse to Clifton to Zion Drive now.

MARY: No. You wouldn't be able to get on the road for one thing. What was that, maybe five, seven miles?

JAMES: Let's see, I'd say it's about six.

MARY: About six miles? Yeah.

JAMES: But we would go across the railroad and then where Bill's Farm Market is, we'd go down there. The Finnegans lived all the way at the end. We'd go by their place, and there was a trail over to Colchester. And we would get on Colchester and go underneath the railroad tracks and go up that way. The only really bad spot was 123, which 123 back then was narrow, but there just wasn't that much traffic.

MARY: Was there a lot of train traffic through the area that you remember?

JAMES: I think it might have been more than it is, you used to hear whistles a lot more. And we had hobos. We had them until I guess I was eight or nine years old. They'd come by, and then we moved up on Zion. They'd come by, and mom would always have biscuits or cornbread made up, and she'd give them whatever she had made up. She'd give them that and give them a glass of milk. And they'd sit on the front porch and eat and then go on their way.

MARY: So they were riding the trains.

JAMES: They were riding the trains, and then the steam engines were getting phased out, and these other trains were a little bit harder to hop off of.

MARY: Oh, a little faster.

JAMES: Yeah. Walter and Clyde lived there across the Target. I guess I was about 12 years old. And one day we sat down on the screened in porch a lot in the summer. It seemed like it was cool there. And this hobo came up the railroad tracks. And he bought his headboard to his bed. And then he walked back, got a mattress, and walked it up, and then went back and got the springs. He was going on the railroad with his bed, carrying it so far and then come back and get the rest of it. Walter used to tell a story, him and Lick Cameron, Lick lived right over here in Burke over by the nursery. Him and Lick were going to Carson's Store, and they were going back out to Sideburn. So there was a train at the Burke Crossing. So Walter said they knew that it was a slow train because they get water in Alexandria. If they had to stop and get water in Burke, it was a slow train. So they were going to get a ride up to Sideburn. Walter said when they got to Sideburn, it wasn't a slow train. He said that thing was flying. They jumped off right there at Guinea Crossing. Both of them got banged up. They didn't break any bones, but they got banged up.

MARY: So it had to be a water tower at the end of the train stop, right?

JAMES: Yeah. There was there on Sideburn, too, up at the Sideburn crossing, right before you got to the crossing. It was on the south side. And VDOT had a yard there. They used to haul salt in for when it snows. I was out there one day, a kid. And they dropped it all over the roads. They were hauling it. And I was out there eating it. So mom caught me eating and it terrified her, so she called VDOT, and they said it wasn't harmful. I don't know.

MARY: Yeah, I guess it might be a different type of salt than what you use on your table.

JAMES: Well, I salt roads. I got a salt sprayer at my house, and after two years of salt, that thing looks pretty bad.

MARY: Yeah, it definitely eats up the asphalt, so you don't know what it would do.

JAMES: Yeah, people in this day and time probably don't even know what a hobo is.

MARY: Right. Right.

JAMES: It was just common. MARY: I guess today we would call them homeless, but homeless generally stay in one location. The hobos rode the rails.

JAMES: They rode the rails. And never had a problem out of them. And mom, we were little kids, and mom wouldn't hesitate to give them something to eat and something to drink.

MARY: Did they ever ask to do work or anything like that?

JAMES: Not to my knowledge, but Clyde's niece, Barbara Robinson, I was trying to get some information from her the other night. She lives in Arizona. She said that they used to come by their house and they would ask if they could do some work, and she said that her mother would get them to split wood. And then she would fix them a meal. But I can't remember mom would ask them to do anything. She would always give them, she always had biscuits or cornbread one and milk.

MARY: So you're talking through the 1950s is what we're talking about.

JAMES: Yeah, up to around '60.

MARY: You don't think of that happening, I mean, during the Depression.

JAMES: Especially in this area. MARY: But you don't think of it as happening later on. What about medical care, if you had to go to the hospital or anything like that?

JAMES: The closest hospital was Arlington. There was three doctors in Fairfax, Dr. McCord, Dr. Fagen, and Dr. Werner. He was our doctor. And if you felt real bad, he'd come out to us.

MARY: Make a house call.

JAMES: Yep.

MARY: Yeah. And I bet you could call on the weekend, too.

JAMES: Oh yeah, call him any time. Yeah, that was the only doctors I knew of back in the late 50s, early 60s in Fairfax.

MARY: My goodness. And so if you had a real emergency, you ended up going to Arlington Hospital.

JAMES: Arlington, and that hadn't been open long. At Fairfax, I broke my arm in '64, I guess. And Fairfax hadn't been opened long then. It was just one building.

MARY: Right. Now it's a huge complex. Let's see if there's anything here that I want to ask you. I guess my last thought is, you know, we've looked at the suburbs grow and grow in terms of expanding. And, of course, everybody would like to think that they're the last bit of the suburbs, and we're not going to expand anymore. But what's your feeling about the urban sprawl, I guess I'll call it?

JAMES: I'm more into the middle of Tennessee. They can have this sprawl. I've had all I want. I liked it the way it was back in the 50s and early 60s.

MARY: Right, okay.

JAMES: Everybody knew everybody. Everybody helped each other. We'd get a big snowstorm, everybody would get together and go down (indiscernible) (NOTE: This reference is at 1448) driveway. I had a horse died in '67. All the neighbors came over to help bury the horse.

MARY: Which is quite a bit different than today.

JAMES: And Tom Wells that lived up there on Beechwood Court, he used to come get me every weekend to go hunting because my daddy worked all the time. I mean, me and my dad didn't do much together other than work. But Tom was, he was a county employee, came up here from the mountains. And I'd be 12 or 13, and he'd come get me, and he had a good rabbit dog. And I told his daughter, her husband is a doctor in a hospital out in northern California. She was here last summer. I told her, I said, you know, I can't believe your dad used to come get me. I was 12, 13 years old. I had a 12-gauge pump shotgun. He used to take me hunting al the time. I would be terrified to take some 12, 13 year old out now with a shotgun. But he used to come get me almost every weekend.

MARY: All right. And now, of course, in Fairfax County you can't fire a firearm, I think.

JAMES: It depends on how bad they're bothering your garden.

MARY: Oh, we won't talk about that.

JAMES: I was hunting on Poburn Road one time, down on Guinea, and I didn't know they had closed hunting off. I guess I was 16 then. I was driving. And I went to Fairfax City and got my cousin. And we went down and went squirrel hunting. And I'll never forget we were walking back down and we hadn't seen anything. And up there on the first ridge, there used to be some rocks and stuff there. That's why we always called it Stoney. All the new people called it Poburn Road. And we're coming down this hill, and here come the brand new Capris Chevrolet or an Impala. And my cousin goes, who in the world is that? I said, Johnny, that's a brand new car; that's got to be the game warden. I said, nobody else would drive a new car up here. And sure enough it was. It was two of them. And they said, (indiscernible) (NOTE: This reference is at 1536) . I said, man, we ain't see the first squirrel. And he said, you know y'all not allowed to hunt here? I said, I've been here all my life. And he said, no more. Couldn't hunt on that side of 123.

MARY: Did you have to have a hunting license back then?

JAMES: Yeah. I think I always, by the time I was 12 whenever I started hunting, I think I always had. Of course, it wasn't but a dollar, $1.50.

MARY: Well, was there anything else that you'd like to tell us about growing up in this area? I think we're almost to the end of our time here.

JAMES: I probably think of a bunch of stuff as soon as I pull out of the parking lot. It's hard to (indiscernible) (NOTE: This reference is at 1582). That's why I said it would be good to get a bunch of people around to jog each other's memories.

MARY: Any sledding?

JAMES: Oh, we'd sled from our house down to my grandmother's house, that hill there. My cousin would come out from Fairfax City. And I remember a lot of Christmases, they stayed down here the whole Christmas time because we'd have snow, and we'd keep that hill just a sheet of ice. We'd build a fire out there in a 55 gallon drum and that hill out there was a big sleigh ride, yes.

MARY: What kind of sleds did you have?

JAMES: Just the two runners. And then one of my cousins had a toboggan, and then they came out with the snow pans, which they were like aluminum, they were metal. And they weren't too good, but we used to run around, but a guy we used to run around with that used to live over there was John Carter, and he just retired from Prince William police. I used to tie a rope to the pan, get him in it, and then tie it to my saddle horn and pull him around with the horse. I got him the trees a couple of times during the turn.

MARY: Oh my goodness. But no skiing or anything like that.

JAMES: No.

MARY: No. Ice skating anywhere?

JAMES: No. There wasn't no --

MARY: There was not any --

JAMES: If you knew somebody who had a pond, but I can't remember any rinks anywhere in this area.

MARY: Were you familiar with Patty's riding stable?

JAMES: Yeah. Me and my dad used to every Saturday night would ride down there to walk her Clydes there. And one Saturday night he rode down, and one of Patty's horses he met up with it and caught it. He had got loose. So I guess he called up. Mom took me down there. And I rode that horse back to our house, and then daddy rode our horse back. And I guess it was the next day we found out it was Patty's and she came and got it. Yeah, she died about three months ago.

MARY: Oh really?

JAMES: It was in the Fauquier paper. I went to school with her daughter.

MARY: I know there's a lot of kids in this area that talk about, and now, of course, they're adults, talk about riding at Patty's stable.

JAMES: It was funny. Our horses were spirited. You had to hold back. And those horses (indiscernible) (NOTE: This reference is at 1710) because you just loose the reins and they would just, I guess that's what she had to have because if you had've had a spirited horse, it would have killed somebody. But those old horses, they'd just do whatever you want.

MARY: Go home.

JAMES: Matter of fact, he caught it there in front of Nellie White's place, and Nellie White lived where Rayburn School is now. She had an old white frame house there. I think she was, she passed probably when I was about 15 or 16, but we used to go over to her house. She's a real nice lady.

MARY: Well, that's something to think about because like Roberts Road I heard is named, of course, after the Roberts family. Somebody told me that Olley Lane was named after Olley Dodson, who was in this area. And it makes sense to think of the names being --

JAMES: The Dodsons lived right there on the corner, on both corners. Clark Dodson was over there by the church. Pete Dodson, which was a lady, she lived right next door to him. Right across the street, they had a big lot there. That was Snake Dodson. He was a Fairfax County cop.

MARY: And how did he get the name of Snake?

JAMES: He was a Fairfax County cop.

MARY: Snake in the grass, huh?

JAMES: He had a big house. That's what everybody called him for years. I think he may still be living. Everybody loses contact with everybody. There was a lot of Doves down through there, too.

MARY: Right. We've interviewed the Sheads, too. Bill Sheads.

JAMES: They had the tree nursery over here. Worked for the forestry. Yep. He was right across the road from Patty's.

MARY: Well, I want to thank you very much. It's been very nice, and wish you the best of luck in Tennessee. Hope that you enjoy it.

JAMES: No building permits. No zoning.

MARY: No zoning. Don't have to worry about it.

JAMES: No court hearings. No politics. I guess there's politics, but it's not on a grand major --

MARY: Maybe it'll drum a little bit differently down there.

JAMES: Everybody's just laid back down there. It's the way it used to be here. Everybody knows everybody, and if you need some help, more than glad to help you.

MARY: Well, I wish you the best of luck there.

JAMES: I appreciate it.

(END OF INTERVIEW)