#52stories - Week 12 (Mar 22nd - published late)

Early memories in Buena Vista. 1961-1962.

And that's pronounced like B-you-na Vista (not Veesta).  So not the Spanish pronunciation.

We only lived in Buena Vista for a year, although it seems longer somehow.  I was in the 4th grade at Mountain View Elementary School. We lived in a building that was the old school house. It was at the corner of what is now Borden Grant Trail and Mountain View Road. It had a very large flat yard on one side, which was probably an athletic field when it was a school. (I'm pretty sure Cathie had the chore of mowing that yard!)

Below is an aerial view from Google maps of what it looks like now. The house is obscured by trees, but you can see the field in the upper left.  The house with the green roof was next door and a younger girl named Linda lived there.  There was a steep hill on that side of our yard leading down to her house.  We liked to roll down that hill through the grass.  I also found lots of four leafed clovers there.

This is the only time period that I remember owning a dog.  He was a boxer named Sigmund Otto Von Dom, Sig for short.  He was a great dog, but he liked to chase cars.  Unfortunately, he chased one down Mountain View Road to the T intersection and into the next road where a car hit him.  He didn't survive.  It was the only time I saw my mother cry.

I got my first bicycle when we lived here.  It was a used bike; blue with relatively wide tires.  I had a hard time learning to ride and remember skidding on gravel and getting scraped up quite a bit.  We would ride a long way up Mountain View Rd.

There was a creek on the other side of our neighbor's house that we explored; it's called Marl Creek.  Graham and I found a large wooden bowl half buried in that creek.  Cathie raised a steer that was kept in a field across the creek.  I sometimes helped her carry feed over the creek to the steer.

That winter, we had the deepest snow I could remember.  I searched for this storm on Google and found that it was quite historic.  Here is an excerpt from This Day in Weather History: March 6.

"1962: The strongest nor'easter of this century struck the Mid-Atlantic Region on March 5-9, 1962. It is known as the "Ash Wednesday Storm" and caused over $200 million (1962 dollars) in property damage and major coastal erosion from North Carolina to Long Island, New York. In New Jersey alone, it was estimated to have destroyed or greatly damaged 45,000 homes. The Red Cross recorded that the storm killed 40 people. It hit during "Spring Tide." When the sun and moon are in phase, they produce a higher than normal astronomical tide. .... Heavy snow fell in the Appalachian Mountains. Big Meadows, southeast of Luray, recorded Virginia's greatest 24-hour snowfall with 33 inches and the greatest single storm snowfall with 42 inches. ... Roads were blocked and electrical service was out for several days. ...The Ash Wednesday storm is noteworthy for producing devastating tidal flooding along the Atlantic Coast as well as record snows and the interior of a Virginia. The extremely high tides and massive waves caused tremendous damage -worst in many of the hurricanes that have hit the region. Along the Atlantic Coast tide ran for 2 to 6 ft. above normal with 20 to 40 ft. waves crashing ashore. ...Other snow totals included 15 inches at Richmond; 23 inches at Culpeper; 26 inches at Charlottesville; 32 inches at Winchester; and 35 inches at Fort Royal, Virginia and Big Meadows on the Skyline Drive top the list with 42 inches of snow."

I didn't realize the storm's significance until just now.  What I remember is my Dad shoveling a path to the car and the snow was about 3 feet deep.  My sister, Sally, who was 3 years old, could not be seen above the snow when she walked down the path.  My Dad helped us roll a huge snow ball down the yard and we carved it into a fort.  It was probably 4 or 5 feet in diameter.

An aside:  I was telling my husband about this memory and that I found out the storm was significant and caused flooding along the coast in addition to the snow.  He replied, "That must have been the Ash Wednesday Storm."  He knew of the storm because of photos of it that were posted in a store in his small town, where the Gum Neck community had flooded.  He said he would tease his friends in Gum Neck that they didn't need cards, they needed boats.

I started wearing glasses while we were living in Buena Vista.  I think I mentioned that in my school discussion.  

One day, we heard our neighbor Linda screaming very loudly.  We ran over to her house to discover that one of her parents had chopped off a chicken's head and the body was running around the yard headless.  It's no wonder she screamed.  

Here's a picture of Mom, Grandma Barnett, Sally, Linda, Graham, and me in the yard of the Mt. View house.