I remember Daddy stopping at the store on the corner of Rt. 7 and Rt. 123 to get Coca Cola in the bottle (were they 6 or 8 oz. then?) because my little sister Linda would get car sick on the way up Rt.7 to Herndon. This was in the days before the big malls at Tyson's Corner...the early 1950's. We were driving from Cameron Valley, Alexandria. to visit my paternal grandparents who, when they sold the farm in Aldie, Loudon County, moved to a "smaller" house in Herndon. Herndon was one of those towns built on the railroad line and not on a major highway, a town from the last century. The house, an old Victorian, is still there but the front porch has now been made into a wrap around. I drive by every once in a while when I'm in Virginia because I sometimes dream about this house--adding rooms that never existed anywhere but in my mind.
You walked up steps to a front porch with a swing and a front door with glass panes. As you stepped into the entry hall there was a door to the right for the living room which was never used. The door on the left led into the sitting room and straight ahead was a door to the dinning room, a door to a coat closet under the stairs, and the stairs went up to a landing and then doglegged right to reach the second floor landing.
The sitting room was where everyone sat and visited and, next to the kitchen, was the heart of the house. There was a double tall and a single tall wood pane window. A daybed was where my Grandfather slept after he had his accident at Murphy and Ame's Lumber Yard which made it painful and difficult to climb to the second floor and his big bedroom. He had been standing on a platform at the lumber yard with his back to the outside and stepped back and stepped off the platform about fifteen feet off the ground. He had enough sense about him to turn himself upright to land on his feet but his legs were crushed and he spent many months in the old Leesburg Hospital. In the sitting room was his big secretary desk which I admired as a little girl...it was way bigger than the secretary I sit at today writing this memory on a laptop. It didn't have a bookcase on top of the desk but there was a porcelin clock decorated with flowers. The room was heated with a fancy ceramic gas heater that showed its little blue flames with the orange tips. It was so pretty and all the rooms in the house were heated this way. There also was a crown molding on the ceiling that covered where the gas lights were before electricity.
From this room you walked into the kitchen with more big windows and cabinets so tall they reached the ceiling. It was in this room my Grandmother baked her pies and roasted the mutton we would make cold sandwiches with. A slice of Grandmother's chocolate pie was so big it felt like she was giving me a whole quarter of a pie and apple pie was always served with a warm hard sauce. Grandmother called cookies "cakes" as in "Would you like to have a cake?" My Father, her son, had a saying he always used when he liked something "it tastes so good it makes you want to swallow your tongue" and I know I've told you this before but I loved it when Dad said this. As you walked into the kitchen you could go out the door to the left and there was a pantry with a door to the outside. The door on the right led into a well lit room that held my Grandmother's wringer washer (laundry was hung outside on the line), a sink, a shower, and a toilet.
Back in the kitchen opposite the door to the pantry was a door to the dinning room. Just as you entered the door there was a big wardrobe on the right which my daughter has today. She also has the china closet to Grandmother's mahogany dining room set. A huge mirror was above the buffet and I remember a picture she had which was a piece of apple printed cloth stretched behind a picture frame. Some fancy plates hung on the wall, also. In this room she also had her sewing machine all modern and electric. If you passed through another door you were back in the the entry hall.
At the top of the stairs on the second floor landing if you walked to the left was a huge bathroom with a claw foot tub. Before indoor plumbing everyone had there own bowl and water pitcher in their rooms for bathing. I think when they brought plumbing into the old houses they just took a bedroom and converted it to a bathroom so the bathrooms were huge.
Directly across from the top of the stairs was a bedroom which had a kitchen sink. This was already installed when my Grandparents bought this house. Down the landing and on the same side as this bedroom was my Grandfather's bedroom which I have never been in, just glanced inside from the hall. This is the room that I've had dreams about. In my dreams I've put a door inside this room leading to other rooms that I wander through finding treasures.
There was a window at the end of the landing that looked out on the street and on the other side of the landing was my Grandmother's bedroom. Grandmother had beautiful linens, bedspreads, sheets, pillows, towels, stored in a big armoire stuffed full. I think my love of beautiful linens came from my Grandmother.
In the back of the house was a carriage house and a paddock for when former owners had a horse and carriage. Granddaddy had a metalic rust colored Hudson automobile that had a backseat that felt as large as a sofa and looked like a big beatle which he parked there. Also, in the back of the property Grandmother kept bees. I remember being somewhere between three and five thinking to myself "I'm going to go visit the bees". I remember walking down to the hives and being stung and screaming. Daddy ran down and picked me up and ran with me back to the house. I hadn't been stung that many times but it sure hurt and I never did that again!
Granddaddy died in 1964 and my Grandmother turned her house into a boarding house. It was set up perfectly for this. She rented the downstairs living room out as a bedroom and there were two bedrooms upstairs for rent with the third bedroom set up as a kitchen/sitting room which all her boarders shared along with the bathroom. Grandmother made the dining room her bedroom, had the kitchen and sitting room and a bathroom/laundry room for herself. She made her living quarters completely independent of the rest of the house. She did this for about ten years till she was unable to take care of herself anymore and the house was sold and she went to live with her daughter my Aunt Annabelle.
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