Part 12 (1/2)
Musical groups also sprang up spontaneously. One, which Joseph Beard referred to as a ”little old hillybilly band,” included besides himself on fiddle, Virginia Presgraves (piano) and her uncle Austin Wagstaff on ukulele. Richard Peck played banjo and saxophone for the group. They played together over a period of several years, using no sheet music, but becoming so comfortable with each other's playing that they could antic.i.p.ate the variations and style of their fellow musicians. They practiced in the schoolhouse, playing country tunes such as ”Camp Town Races,” ”Old Black Joe,” and ”Shortnin' Bread” for their own amus.e.m.e.nt.
They rarely entertained an audience.[262] Sometimes too the school or an unofficial group sponsored musical events, a notable one being the concert by ”Al Hopkins and his Buckle-Busters,” a celebrated country band from North Carolina.[263]
In addition, serious organizations like the Farmer's Clubs, Community League or church-affiliated women's clubs, mixed work and play by sponsoring picnics, quilting bees, and oyster suppers. The record made of a pleasant outing by Farmer's Clubs #1 and #4 to the Great Falls in 1913 was typical of many excursions in later years:
It goes without saying that all present had a very enjoyable day.
The children spent much time on the swings and Merry-Go-Rounds while the older members spent the day in viewing the falls....
While still others enjoyed fis.h.i.+ng.[264]
Home Demonstration Clubs also put on their share of entertainments, with buffet suppers and skits, rounding off one year with a ”husband-calling contest.”[265] Even the business meetings themselves were social occasions at which dinner and friendly conversation were mixed with more critical concerns.
Oyster suppers were a regional specialty held all over the county, of which Floris sponsored its share. They were often money-making events (as were the ice cream socials) at which dinner cost from twenty-five to fifty cents and featured stewed and fried oysters. Lottie Schneider recalled the bustle of preparation for an oyster supper given in Herndon, involving the setting up of tables and benches and flower arrangements, and the difficult choice to be made between fried or stewed oysters and the many different relishes brought by each lady.[266] The suppers in fact generally held an overabundance of food.
Again, Joseph Beard described the scene:
There were always a few who didn't like oysters and they always had ham for those.... Anything that you would have in a farming neighborhood like that, when you sat down to eat it was just like having a Thanksgiving dinner. Everything from sweet potatoes to scalloped potatoes to macaroni and cheese to string beans to corn-on-the-cob to tomatoes [would be served]. Most anything that could be raised or produced in a vegetable garden or in a truck patch they'd bring. Then we had custard pies and lemon pies and apple pies....[267]
The money made at the oyster dinners was used for school projects, to buy church furnis.h.i.+ngs or aid in mission work.
Professional interest and pleasure were likewise combined at the various fairs held in the area during the late summer. The county sponsored a fair at Fairfax Courthouse until 1933 which featured new farm machinery, exemplary produce and livestock, and a gay carnival atmosphere. The _Herndon News-Observer_ gave a colorful account of the county festivities in its September 23, 1926 edition:
The first day was largely devoted to judging, the second day saw a large picnic by Dranesville farmers, the County Chamber of Commerce and the 4-H Clubs frolicked on the third day while the visible and invisible empire [of the Ku Klux Klan] held sway on the last day.
Good racing cards filled much of the afternoon. The prizes were more substantial and the performances proportionally good. Every exhibit building was loaded with all varieties and grades of exhibits, while the livestock was as equally interesting in its magnitude and diversification.
The flower department was carried partly out of the building where loving hands [had] specially devoted time and energy toward perfection. The woman's department, with nearly a thousand entries, was a wonder of culinary art. The poultry building with every squeek and squawk imaginable, fairly dazzled the farmers and their friends, who came to see what Fairfaxians and their friends are doing. Certainly no other fair in Virginia presented an arena of keener compet.i.tion and the prize winners deserve to be most highly congratulated....[268]
The midway was a swirl of ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds and every variety of game by which you might separate yourself from surplus funds.
The region boasted a similar fair held generally in Prince William County and having the dual purpose of promoting and celebrating the dairy industry. The Piedmont Dairy Festival, as it was called, was modeled after the famous Shenandoah Apple Blossom festival and was jocularly known locally as the ”Cow Blossom festival.”[269]
Floris itself held a substantial fair in the years following the decision to stop running a county exhibition. It grew out of the yearly ”Flower and Vegetable Show” which had been sponsored by the 4-H and Home Demonstration Clubs and took place on the school grounds. The community divided itself into committees which met year-round to plan the produce and homemaking judgings, livestock shows and entertainment and the result was an event of countywide interest. A program from the 1939 fair lists among the categories ”three summer squash,” ”best adult clothing,”
”best b.u.t.tonhole,” and ”best Holstein heifer.” Prizes consisted of cash (usually one to two dollars) or practical items such as five gallons of fly spray. Ironically the award for the best team of draft horses was three gallons of oil.[270]
A good deal of pride in everyday achievements resulted from the contests. Elizabeth Rice, writing of the excitement caused by the fairs, recalled the year she entered a devil's food cake in the county exhibition and ”received the blue ribbon and a prize from Swann's Down Company of a cake mold, measuring cups, spoons and a box of Swann's Down cake flour.” ”I still feel 'up' over it,” she concluded.[271]
Others took their entries a little less seriously. Emma Ellmore remembered the year her mother simply cut a tangled ma.s.s of clematis from the back trellis, stuck it in a white vase and entered it in the flower-arranging contest, to win a blue ribbon from judges who admired its exceptional artistry.[272] The day was concluded with a ”tournament,” in which the neighborhood's young manhood vied with one another for the honor of crowning their lady queen. Lance in hand, ”Sir Lancelot” or ”Sir Frying Pan” rode at a gallop on a ”steed” (often a draft horse) attempting to spear a ring suspended above the track. The winner reigned at the square dance that evening which capped the day's entertainment.[273]
Blue ribbons and fair champions.h.i.+ps were respected and admired by the neighbors and gave the recipient a certain amount of status. In a community in which no one had much ready money, this evidence of leaders.h.i.+p or skill counted for a great deal. One person suggested that a large family gave a farmer a certain standing among his peers, and that homemaking was equally respected with the outdoor work. A clever manager was perhaps most admired of all. As Joseph Beard remarked: ”There are some people who have very little money, but have the ability to use it in the right place at the right time and get a great deal more out of it than others. I suspect that the person that had the highest standard of living with what they had to do with was respected more than any one thing.”[274]
Farmers from the Floris area also held private entertainments, such as the Peck family reunion of 1927, or the bridge parties which became so fas.h.i.+onable in the late 1920s and 1930s.[275] On rare occasions they travelled to Was.h.i.+ngton to see a show or to shop. More often they went to Herndon which had long catered to the farmer's needs. Stores, grain companies and mills, blacksmith and livery stables built their business on fulfilling the farmer's everyday requirements, while ice cream parlors and movie theaters provided pleasant distractions. The latter was an especially popular form of entertainment for young couples on dates. Frances Simpson recalled the excitement of going to the movies and the unique personality of the Herndon theater:
What a fascination was that theater or 'movie hall' as it was called.... It was a real treat to go with our friends to the movies at the movie hall, not that we always saw one when we got there.
Sometimes the reel would break, other times a tremendous storm would come up and the electric power would be shut off, leaving the player piano to carry on alone in the darkness while we crept home with flashlights, and more than once an angry skunk sought refuge under the movie hall causing the audience to disperse in three minutes flat. Still, it was great fun.[276]
All of these community events--ice cream socials, fairs, Community League meetings, and school events--were attended by the whole family.
Social activities were less strictly drawn along age lines than they are today; young and old enjoyed the same amus.e.m.e.nts. The ladies chatted while preparing the dinners at Farmer's Club meetings, and the children came along and played together. Funerals and weddings were also family events for children were expected to learn of life's joys and sorrows through partic.i.p.ation. This too encouraged community cohesiveness, as all parts of the society were included in its rituals, and children learned at an early age that they played an active role in the neighborhood's well-being; there was a place for them within the community which would last the length of their life. Strong evidence of this community ident.i.ty is seen in the large numbers of Floris young people who, even in the face of urban opportunities, elected to stay on the family farm, or chose careers in the agriculture-related fields of veterinary medicine, extension work or fish and wildlife protection.[277]
Floris and the other closely knit agricultural villages of Fairfax County were exceptionally unified and supportive. Yet even these communities had fringe groups, which were not entirely fulfilled within the neighborhood or accepted by the majority of farmers. In some cases, this was caused by under-stimulation and exasperation at the slow patterns of rural movement. ”We were bored to tears,” wrote one Floris resident of the long Sunday afternoons spent discussing nothing but politics.[278] More frequently an individual was ignored or shunned by the society because of personal problems which had become a community nuisance: drinking, drugs or s.e.xual indiscretions. The families of such social deviants were pitied and aided, but the offending individuals were avoided--”To whatever extent we could we would ostracize them.” In one extreme case the neighborhood took the law into its own hands and lynched a man suspected of rape. ”This man may have been innocent as you look back on it now but they thought he did it and they got rid of him right then,” related one local citizen. ”They just wouldn't put up with that. It just wasn't tolerated, that's all.”[279]