Porch Light
OUR HERITAGE
Stories that shine a light on life
A look at the Central Rappahannock Heritage Center collection
...and master of none
football and turkeys
By Nancy Bruns & Judy Chaimson
By Rob Huffman You run a good interview, sir. Really makes me root around in the old memory. You should be comm…….excuse me? Absolutely. Ready? Okay, like most teenagers, I washed dishes. Been a trash man –twice – hanging happily from the side of one of those behemoth trucks as it sailed (sorry Emily, but there is no frigate like a garbage truck) along suburban streets. I’ve unloaded coal from a train, realigned cemetery headstones, delivered packages on the Tech campus, and worked as a janitor. I’ve gutted office buildings,, was a swamper in Texas, taught high school English, and worked as a librarian. I made pizzas, was a bingo helper, mowed grass, and worked construction. Burned up lots of food as a short order cook, was a technical writer, and a uninformed and technically-challenged member of Geico’s Information Technology team. I sold toys (oddly enough, one of the few jobs I’ve held that required me to dress like a grown-up. Painted (houses, not art), processed passport requests, and labored in an Army mess hall. Masqueraded as a mechanic. Theoretically, my job was installing hitches and camper tops on pickup trucks. I’m guessing a lot of those hitches didn’t stay hitched and a few of those tops blew off. You’ll note, sire, I mean sir, that most of my jobs fall into the “unskilled labor” category. To which I say, bingo. But I do ask that you consider the impressive array of unskills I accumulated. You’ll have to agree that when it came to performing simplistic tasks, I cut a wide swath. Let me finish relating my work history. I drove a dump truck and delivered mail on a rural postal route. Moved furniture. For two years – a prodigious stretch of gainful employment! - I was a U.S. Army Combat
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Engineer. My actual duties however involved typewriters. The Special Secretarial Forces, you could say. I’ve tried telemarketing, too, but am pretty sure I hated it even more than the people whose dinners I interrupted. I’ve been a night watchman – sitting in the middle of a terrifyingly desolate construction site all night thinking about every horror movie I’d ever seen. I’d sit there, terrified, waiting for that first zombie strike. The graveyard shift never seemed so graveyard-y. I swept up hair in a barbershop. Poured concrete. Oddly, I never worked in a fast food place. I had my standards. I did, however, have to work in manholes where live sewage ran. So my standards were, shall we say, fluid. And though I’ve never been fortunate enough to ask a customer if he’d like fries with his order, I have used shovels. Lots of shovels. Used for the types of jobs where you come home muddy and tired and your breath happy hour beery. Speaking of beer, I never tended bar (pretty hilariously ironic, if you knew how comfortable I am on the non-working side of a bar. Worked at a truck wash, too. Drenched within the first ten minutes. I hadn’t been stuck in wet pants for that long since my early boyhood. I was a bakery apprentice, too. I sincerely hope you never ate any of my baked – for lack of a better word – goods. Because goods they were not. So, do you need to see some references? That’s okay, I can find my own way out. Rob Huffman continues to work and who would have thought he’d stick around so long? - as a high school librarian.
Front porch fredericksburg
The Heritage Center’s collections contain many photos and reminiscences relating to the game of football. Football was new to Fredericksburg High School in the 1920’s.(above) At first, the players were enthusiastic but poorly equipped, both in uniforms and skills, but by the 1925 season their knowledge of the game had greatly improved. The team won all of its games and was not scored on. One of the players, Warren Farmer, told the story in his oral history. “This team was made up of a bunch of hefty souls…We had a line where I guess some of them weighed 180 pounds, which was pretty heavy for a high school team in those days. It was just a unique congregation that was brought together by fate and the fact that for the first time we had a very good coach … named Ted Woodson. The result was we went through the [1925] season, won every game kept every opponent scoreless. That won us the district championship, which was in northern Virginia and included Alexandria, our greatest enemy.” The newspaper account of the district championship game was modestly worded, but upbeat: The game was not as difficult as expected and the local team “trotted out some new plays … and the trials were successful,” wrote the sports writer for the [Fredericksburg] Star. Then came what Farmer remembered was the eastern Virginia championship game – district champion against district. Fredericksburg played South Norfolk and lost 39 to 0. Farmer remembers: “It was one whale of a football game. They really beat us.” As for turkeys – the following story from the Center’s collections suggests that they are not just for Thanksgiving. Included in the Heritage Center’s vast collection of Knox Family documents are two notes about a turkey. In 1925, Lucy Brockenbrough Knox married Louis
E. Marie, Jr., an officer in the U. S. Marine Corps. In 1928, Lieutenant Marie was posted to China, where the couple apparently enjoyed sightseeing and established friendships within the military and local communities. The following year they were transferred to the Philippines. The two notes, quoted here, are testament to the high regard in which the Maries were held, as well as to the plight of poultry in the summer of 1930: “Dear Sir & Madames: I am with great pleasure sending you a turkey and a fruit cake for “The 4th of July Celebration”, and I hope you will all enjoy with them. With best regards, I am, Yours respectfully, Foo Ying, 5, July 1930
Town Meeting With Open Minds & Open hearts comes opportunity By A.E.Bayne talk about racism in an open, racially mixed, safe setting. Established and future community leaders, and anyone interested in improving race relations, are invited to attend. Dinner will be served Eunice Haigler and Lee Criscuolo look forward to during the final hour of the event. The event’s sponsor, The the upcoming Town Meeting in November. Fredericksburg Area Race Relations Protests in Ferguson, Missouri Coalition, was born of concern from a this summer prompted many people to small group of people who were looking closely consider the realities of racial for leadership and guidance about ways to inequalities within their own effect positive improvements in communities. Ferguson showed us that all communication and understanding within is not well, that fear is still a factor in our our community. They partnered with interactions with one another, and it Virginia Organizing, an established inspired some toward positive action in grassroots group with experience in our own area. The Fredericksburg Area facilitating meaningful dialog between Race Relations Coalition, in partnership groups of different backgrounds and with Virginia Organizing, will hold its first ethnicities. The coalition grew with each Town Meeting on November 15, 2014, meeting, pulling in attendees from area between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. at Shiloh churches, community groups, and the Baptist New Site on Princess Anne Street in NAACP. The expanding email list and Fredericksburg. The event is free to the attendance at meetings inspired them to public, but registration is requested. plan this first event in November. Plans for the event include a Facilitator and Virginia workshop developed through Virginia Organizing member, Eunice Haigler, says Organizing which allows people of she has been impressed by the coalition’s different backgrounds the opportunity to open-mindedness and lack of personal
agenda. She says, “It looks like they want to go in the right direction. I like that the group is so open to suggestions. They’re just looking for what might work and examining what didn’t work in the past. They are committed. They don’t just want to talk; they want to take some action, which really piqued my interest. When they came up with this event, that was my hook.” While the group is in its infancy, member Lee Criscuolo is encouraged by the number of people requesting to be on the email list and each meeting’s new attendees. She says, “We have a lot of people who want to be in the loop. We’re actively looking for people to join the group, and we would like to share information from other groups if they are having events in the community so our members can be involved.” Members agree that the open dialog and discussions have been Ernie Ackermann has constructive. attended meetings from the beginning. He says, “It’s really nice the way it’s coming together, and we’re fortunate that there are other people interested. People in the community are feeling like they want to talk about racism in general. Just hearing
what other people are saying changes perspectives.” Ultimately, members approach it from a variety of places, many of them Ainsley Brown explains, “My personal. interest stems from Ferguson, and all the other Fergusons that I’ve heard of before and that I knew were coming. Because I am the mother of someone of another race, it’s the micro-aggressions and dehumanization that my daughter has experienced that have made me ultrasensitive to the way we treat each other.” With open dialog and open doors, The Fredericksburg Area Race Relations Coalition hopes to create real and positive connections within our community. As Eunice Haigler explains, “You know, it takes a village for this to work.” For more information, please contact Addie Alexander at addie@virginiaorganizing.org or Lee Criscuolo at ziggy22553@gmail.com. Register for the first Town Meeting at Shiloh Baptist New Site online at http://tinyurl.com/mpclbo7. A.E.Bayne is a teacher, writer and artist who lives and is involved in the Fredericksburg community.
To Lieutenant & Mrs. Marie & Mrs. Knox [Lucy’s mother lived with them] U. S. Naval Station, Olongapo, P. I. My dear Friends: I am very sorry indeed that the turkey I sent you for July 4th was dead. I think it was because of the sea sick and the turkey had been on board the Genesee for more than four days. But now I feel very happy that I have obtained in town another one for you, and I sincerely hope you all will enjoy with it. I know very well that you do not like me to do that at all, but to me, you know how I feel and I cannot help it, as you all have been very kind to us. If I want to send something to a friend, I always want to see that he will make good use of it. With best compliments, Yours very sincerely, Foo Ying” While we are enjoying our football games and Thanksgiving turkeys this November, we might remember with pride and with sorrow those events of the 1920’s in Fredericksburg and around the world. Nancy Bruns and Judy Chaimson, volunteers at the Heritage Center. front porch fredericksburg
November 2014
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