Over 10 years ago I emailed an old friend from high school days, Connie B., whose parents had long been the owners and great stewards of the Montgomery News Messenger, as it was known in my childhood. The lovely and brilliant Connie was helping her folks run the paper in their later years. I had long had an idea for an article I wanted to write about the Little League All Star team from Christiansburg of which I was a part that desegregated a baseball tournament in eastern Virginia when I was 12. Graciously she consented and ran my piece on the 50th anniversary of the event (it was run again this past year on the 60th anniversary).
Thankfully, Connie encouraged me (or maybe I twisted her arm) to write more pieces and I think I have surpassed 200 in number now. I consider myself a “columnist”, not a reporter. Reporter implies some level of research and fact-checking that I assure does NOT go on. I will admit that I occasionally turn to Wikipedia or other internet sources to confirm a score or a date, but most of what I write is off the cuff, streams of consciousness usually written in 30 minutes very early on weekend mornings.
Several of my friends among my tens of readers have “marveled” at my memory for what I write about, and I have to remind them there is no fact-check for this stuff. I consider myself an “observational humorist” along the lines of Dave Barry or Bill Bryson or Erma Bombeck, but certainly not of their ilk. I am not an investigative journalist unless you consider my compilations of favorite bars or ballparks to be “investigations,” I hope to make people feel good about what I write, to maybe provide a few chuckles and maybe evoke some similar memories. Most of my writings have been attempts to capture the charm of the Christiansburg and the Montgomery County I grew up in. This is another such piece and also defies factchecking.
Part of growing up in Christiansburg in my day was its simplicity – we basically had one of everything. Just one. There was the “Park” (the great neighborhood off of East Main that extended down Park Street to the “Stockyard” (the place where farmers brought their livestock once a week to sell or trade). It seems half the kids I went through school with grew up in the Park, as well as my dad’s family of eight. My mother and her two sisters and my cousins also lived at different times in the Park. The Park had a unique character and closeness and continuity missing in most neighborhoods today.
Then there was the “Motel, Roberts Motel along Main Street owned by Ruby Roberts, Poet Laureate of Virginia for a time (I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but it sounded neat and she was a close friend of my Aunt Mary Alma). As I recall, the “Motel” had a pool and ended up (I believe) as a gas station known to us as the Motel where the “cool kids” hung out. I do not remember any other motels or hotels in town back then except for something called the Virginia Inn, on the Town Square, which I believe dated back to pioneer days and may have been the place where the word “seedy” was first used.
There was also the “Playground”, built I am pretty certain with federal funds in the 50’s or 60’s during the era of segregation to provide recreational opportunities for African- American kids in town. As I recall it had outdoor basketball courts and a swimming pool and became a place to hang out and spawned a number of good athletes. It was off of North Franklin, not far from the “Mill” where my grandfather Charlie King worked. The Mill stood for many years as an eyesore to most. I always thought of Grandfather Charlie when we drove past, although he had died when I was very young.
We also had the “Chair Factory,” owned for part of my childhood by our great neighbors Marvin Reed and Paul Maxey and at other points in time by “some people from North Carolina,” and the “Overall Factory,” where the mothers of many Christiansburgers toiled. The Overall Factory was directly across Roanoke Street from the “Market” owned and operated by the incomparable Red Phillips for many years. There was also the “Garment Factory,” another textile mill for which the rural south was famous in those days.
For many years the Chair Factory, the Overall Factory, and the Garment Factory were as close to private industry as the Town of Christiansburg had. The area also had the “Powder Plant,” between Christiansburg and Radford along the New River, a government contracting business developed at the outset of World War II to turn out bombs and other weapons to help win the war. In my years, many dads from town worked at the Powder Plant and made better livings than were otherwise available and at times it was the major employer in the region. It was also the source of occasional explosions which shook the town and we were never sure whether it was just a test or whether someone’s dad “had bought it.” Seriously.
Most of these businesses and places had formal names but they were not necessary in the Christiansburg of my youth. We knew what you meant, and it made life simpler. And they symbolized the hardworking people who made the town great.
