The Wythe District Fire Department had its beginnings at a meeting, Thanksgiving night in 1909, in W. R. Wright’s store at Franklin and Electric Avenues. Seven citizens including John M. Lynch, William E. LeCompt, A. J. Jackson, William Messick, W. R. Wright and W. G. Fraley attended the meeting called to order by J. Walter Smith, Sr. a Magistrate of the Wythe District, and a resident of the Riverview community. At this meeting, the citizens of Riverview voiced the need for a fire department in their neighborhood. Riverview was the most populous part of the Wythe District boasting 49 dwellings, 3 stores, a small school, and 2 churches.
On February 12, 1910 the Riverview Volunteer Fire Department was organized, meeting again in Wright’s store with 40 members present. The first officers for the department included: John Lynch, Foreman; J. E. Pape, First Assistant Foreman; John Bunting, Secretary; W. H. Morris, Treasurer; and W. G. Fraley and William Prince, Trustees. Mr. and Mrs. Fraley deeded a lot on Darnaby Avenue to the Riverview Volunteer Fire Department “for as long as the organization was active in the extinguishing of fires in the community.” On the endorsement of personal notes from the members of the Fire Department, money was secured to build a 20 X 20 one story frame building. The building was erected by members and friends in the neighborhood and the Department began to function in their new quarters.
As the activities of the Riverview Volunteer Fire Department expanded, financial support came in the form of donations from banks, individual county office holders and the Board of Supervisors of Elizabeth City County. Donations were also received from private citizens; however, a large portion of the company’s income came from activities sponsored by an entertainment committee who sponsored oyster suppers, ice cream socials, smokers, dances, trolley rides, and turkey shoots.
In 1913 Riverview built a hose wagon that could be drawn by either horses or men. This wagon carried 750 feet of hose. Riverview also purchased two 50 gallon chemical tanks from American Lafrance and mounted them on a Ford chassis in 1915. This was one of the first motorized fire apparatuses in Virginia.
Wythe Company Organized
During that same winter of 1909, a meeting was held by W. R. Rawlings at a store operated by W. C. Perkins. Present at this meeting were: W. C. Perkins, W. R. Rawlings, L. M. T. Beal, W. H. Morris and Colonel William Thompson, a retired Army officer. At this meeting the group organized the Wythe Fire Company. The Wythe Protection Association gave permission for a fire station to be built west of the present association building fronting on Kecoughtan Road. Funds were secured and a one story fire station was erected.
On February 12, 1910, the Wythe Fire Company elected the following officers: W. R. Rawlings, Foreman; Colonel William Thompson, Secretary; and L. M. T. Beal, Sr., Treasurer.
Wythe/Riverview Merger
In 1919, nine years after each group had formed, the Riverview Volunteer Fire Department appointed a committee for the purpose of merging the two organizations, and pooling their resources, however, nothing was accomplished until 1921. A decline in membership in both companies due to World War I, as well as friction between the two companies caused the Riverview Company to appoint a new committee to pursue the organizational merger. The new committee drew up a bill to present to the citizens of the Wythe District that would levy a tax for fire fighting and maintaining a water supply. After receiving the support of the citizens, Nelsome Gromme, the county’s representative in the House of Delegates was notified of the action and requested a special election. The election was held in August 1922 and the voters decided to levy a tax of ten cents on the $100.00 property valuation for fire fighting purposes.
Early in 1923 the two companies were finally merged under the name WYTHE DISTRICT FIRE DEPARTMENT. Two meetings were held in the Wythe Hall to perfect the organization of the merged companies. Bills were paid, surplus apparatus disposed of, the Riverview Engine House was donated to the Baptist Church and the lot on Darnaby Street was returned to Mr. and Mrs. Farley. The engine house of the Wythe Company became the new headquarters, and the White pumper from the Riverview Department became the principal apparatus for the new Department. The Board of Supervisors accepted the debt on the truck and relieved the note holders. The merged companies met again in March 1923 and elected officers under a new set of By-Laws. The department soon outgrew the quarters adjacent to the Wythe Protective Association, but not until February 1932 did the county provide larger quarters. The old Hooper-Hardy garage adjacent to the George Wythe School was purchased and the Department moved in March 1932. In 1939 efforts were made to still secure better quarters for the Department; however, progress was not made until October 1944 when ground was broken for a new station on the Hooper-Hardy property. The new station was first occupied in May 1945.
Equipment
Equipment from both companies was donated to the newly merged unit. Riverview received a reel and 350 feet of hose from the Hampton Fire Department, as well as two heavy rubber buckets, helmets, boots and coats. The Phoebus Fire Department donated a reel and 500 feet of hose. A hose rack previously used by the West End Fire Department of Hampton was also secured by Riverview. The White Pumper and the new LaFrance from the Riverview Squad were both used until May 1936, when the White was sold for $30.00 and the money turned over to the Department by the Board of Supervisors.
In 1939, members of the department converted a 1926 Packard passenger car into a utility truck that was used for brush and field fires until 1946. At that time a new Chevrolet chassis was purchased by the County and Oren installed a 250 gpm mid-ship pump and hose body with a 250 gallon tank, which was enlarged to 600 gallons. In 1949, a 750 gpm Mack triple combustion pumper was placed in service. This pumper proved itself at the Owings Warehouse fire when it was the sole source of water from the only hydrant available. In 1960, a 1,000 gpm Mack was placed in service. An additional three pieces of equipment were added to the building in 1966 and an additional 1,000 gpm Mack was added in 1971.
Involvement Around The State
The Department was honored to have J. G. Crenshaw, a former Department Foreman, serve as President of the Virginia State Firemen’s Association from 1943 to 1945. He also was the President of the Tidewater Fireman’s Association. Chief E. F. Ware, also a former Foreman in the Department served as secretary-treasurer of the State Fire Chief’s Association of Virginia from 1941 to 1945, and as President of the Virginia State Firefighter’s Association from 1960 to 1961. He also was the editor of the Association’s newspaper for over 25 years. Ed Gwaltney was President in 1983 and 1984 and was later followed by his son, the current President, Larry Gwaltney. This is the first Father – Son President combination in the 110 years of the Virginia State Firefighter’s Association history.
Members of the Wythe Volunteer Fire Company continue to be active in all phases of State Association activities; 4 of the Presidents of this Association have come from Wythe.
Wythe Fire Company Rescue Squad Organized
The Wythe Fire Company Rescue Squad was actually started in 1939 by a series of events that occurred in the Wythe District Fire Department of Elizabeth City County, which was precedent to the present Wythe Company of the Hampton Division of Fire & Rescue.
A first aid class taught in 1937 was the spark that made the Wythe District Fire Department first aid conscious and resulted in the formation of a first aid committee. This committee was charged with continuing the training and maintaining the first aid kits carried on the fire apparatuses to give first aid to members and citizens injured at fires. Soon after the Packard was equipped a call came in to the station that people were injured in an auto accident at Kecoughtan Apts. on Kecoughtan Road. Lacerations of the injured were bandaged and a broken leg splinted. The injured man was transported to Dixie Hospital and the Wythe District Fire Department Rescue Squad was born. The Packard was used to answer many more calls for assistance until August 1940 when Dixie Hospital donated a Buick ambulance to the squad. Although the ambulance was as old as the Packard, it permitted its driver, crew and patients to be sheltered from the elements. The ambulance was painted a bright red and served until 1943.
In 1952 the county of Elizabeth City merged with the Town of Phoebus and the City of Hampton and the name of the squad became the Wythe Fire Company Rescue Squad. The squad handles in excess of 2,800 calls annually.
The Future
The Wythe Volunteer Fire Company and Rescue Squad has been integrated into a more streamline organization, combining functions when possible. This was a reaction to the City’s request for the volunteers to take a larger role in manning the station. Basically, prior to this request, the volunteers at Wythe were predominately in a reactive mode; the bells went off and volunteers went to the fires from their homes. Now, in addition to responding from home, volunteers schedule and man the station regularly. This helps the City with manpower shortages and allows the paid crews some time off. This has required changes in the management structure for the entire Company. Roles and responsibilities of the officers have changed and an extra level of management has been added. Each member, rescue or fire, is assigned to a platoon. This facilitates scheduling, training, and so forth.
Since 1990, the Rescue Squad has procured new state of the art ambulances with State funds and donations from the community. The newer ambulances have helped to provide a higher level of care, namely Advanced Life Support or ALS. For the last several years, members have been challenged to attain higher levels of certifications. This effort has proven successful in the medic program where over 15 members have graduated as ALS providers. Also, most of our firefighters are dual certified as EMTs. Volunteers have also helped with the addition of an engine, a 1995 Quality 1500 gpm. This engine added the ability to transport more than the typical four firefighters to an emergency. Ten firefighters can now be transported to any type of emergency.
The current leadership of the Rescue Squad, the Fire company, and the Volunteers have recognized the need to further improve the management and leadership skills necessary to continue to provide excellent service. The Booster program encourages participation by those who cannot respond to the actual emergencies. The Boosters were revitalized in 1992 after an inquiry by the wife of one of the members. It provides an opportunity for men and women to participate without responding as emergency providers. This group has been active in providing refreshments during emergencies and run fund raisers. They also participate in community fire and safety education. Without the communities support, the squad could not continue.
The following story is reprinted with permission from The Edwin Mellen Press. The book that is chapter comes from is called "Hampton Roads...Four Centuries as a Sea Port". Written in 1996, the chapter called The Boulevard is a look into the lives of the families that lived on the street we now called Chesapeake Avenue. If you wish to purchase this book you can by contacting the Edwin Mellen Press order department, telephone 716-754-2788 or e-mail to sales@mellenpress.com
On the map and street signs it’s an avenue, to its people, “The Boulevard,” though no flower-bedded parkway serving only mansions. There are those, also modest homes, more.
“The Boulevard,” Chesapeake Avenue, runs three miles along the Roadstead shore of Hampton and Newport News, the longest stretch in the two cities (maybe any) with no traffic light. From when it was an Indian path, it has given a vista of history. The Spanish saw it. George Washington knew it as a lovesick young man socializing, later sailed past it to talk to Admiral de Grasse about Yorktown. British troops came ashore in the War of 1812. The Monitor-Virginia battle was watched from it.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet gathered and returned in sight of all. Woodrow Wilson walked and continued to play golf. Warships, transports, tankers, and munitions freighters crowded before it in two World Wars. That one day during the seventy-two-day 1981 coal strike, those fifty-nine colliers lay in sight.
“The Boulevard” is the only place to look east past Old Point Comfort and Fort Wool into lower Chesapeake Bay, south to Norfolk and Portsmouth, west to Newport News Point at the mouth of the James River, southwest to the Nansemond. On clear nights look east again for lights, at least the loom, of Norfolk’s Ocean View and Virginia Beach’s Chesapeake Bay shores. With a reflecting overcast, twenty-second flashes from the Cape Henry lighthouse show. In season, the sun or full moon rise from and set in water. In calm dawn or dusk, Venus can shoot an arrow the five-mile length. If a navigational star’s azimuth is right, you get a natural horizon for sextant practice.
Here, and nowhere else, you see all Hampton Roads.
Norfolk has waterfront, most of it along or near Hampton Roads in industry, commerce, boat yards and marinas, motels, restaurants, and the Navy. Portsmouth sees mostly the Elizabeth River, Chesapeake Dismal Swamp, both scenic, but not broad water. Virginia Beach shores see only the lower Bay and the Atlantic.
“The Boulevard” runs west from Hampton’s LaSalle Avenue to Newport News’ small Anderson Park and Peterson Boat Basin, once the mouth of Salters Creek. From 1916 to 1927, when it joined Newport News, from the present Hampton line west to Salters Creek was a town of Kecoughtan, then and still “one of the very best residence sections on the Peninsula” though in the late 1980s briefly threatened with a pox of condos or a high-rise by a developer.
“The Boulevard” goes on, as Newport News’ Sixteenth Street, away from water through a housing development, to end just east of railway yards, James River coal piers, and Newport News International Terminal piers.
At the Hampton end, a big house at the foot of LaSalle, now replaced by a condominium, was once the Boulevard Inn. Just east Church Creek, named for the Elizabeth City Parish Church first built by it between 1610 and 1620, flowed into the Roads. There, where old Alfred Lavallette lived on a houseboat full of U.S.S. Constitution and Civil War mementos and raised terrapins until the 1933 hurricane, the creek is mostly just low ground. Kecoughtan, the Indian village, may have been on its bank.
Hampton and Newport News shores of Chesapeake Avenue have changed in our century. “Pioneers” have seen Elizabeth City County farmland become city residential, some elegant.
Those who swam off beaches now see almost no beaches, gone in tidal currents and storms. Seawalls and riprap give a little protection against hurricane seas and tides, though even in moderate summer southerlies surf spouts through the riprap in places to eat dirt and grass at high tide. Hurricanes blow shingles off ashore and spray shrubs and windows with salt.
Some think shore erosion started with the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. The long bridge approach to the mile-long tunnel under the channel changed currents, they think. Or the heavy shipping of two World Wars. Still others recall beaches getting narrower at least since the 1933 hurricane. Miss Fanny Landon, whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Landon, bought a piece of farmland for a home in 1901, when she was three, saw fifty feet or more disappear before she died in 1988. Without the seawall, built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, she felt there now “would be no front yards – or back – nothing.”
The erosion concerns Hampton’s Chesapeake Avenue residents. They own to the water across “The Boulevard.” Newport News’ Chesapeake Avenue waterside is city-owned, but in Hampton the people mow grass, get riprap, and pick up trash. If concrete is poured nearby, the transit-mix driver can be asked to dump any left over in a hole.
Mowing grass is no great chore, the ground mostly level for the double-track trolley line washed away in the 1933 hurricane. But trash, even if no worse than anywhere, can be a damned nuisance to residents keeping the strip neat, as they often must do by picking up after a warm weekend. Hampton streets to “The Boulevard” have public parking on the waterside, and three or four cars, radios loud, can generate plenty. It must delight distilleries, breweries, soft drink peddlers, and pizza, chicken, and fast-food joints to see non-biodegradable evidence of popularity. Occasionally a man goes along with a sack but at a cent an aluminum can, there are easier ways to get whisky money.
Residents put old utility poles and railroad ties end-to-end close to the pavement to keep cars off the grass. This has been most necessary July Fourth, when crowds watch fireworks in Norfolk or at Fort Monroe. Otherwise you pick up more trash, often fill in where cowboys spin wheels. The last George Smith told one young buck, who actually asked permission, to park but bring a load of topsoil to fill any holes. The fellow drove off. The general situation improved with the city finally posting “Private Property” signs and others forbidding fishing, closing street-end “Scenic Overlooks” at ten P.M., and setting a twenty-five-mile speed limit. Promised “total enforcement” of the speed limit lasted a few weeks.
This is perhaps a price of civilization. Yet people like Fanny Landon and others who lived most of their lives along “The Boulevard” could tell of days when the price seemed reasonable.
Miss Landon saw the streetcar line laid down along the shore, the second of two joining Hampton and Newport News. The other ran along Electric Avenue, a mile inland, to become, more elegantly, Victoria Boulevard in 1946 when the tracks were torn up. Until the second line came, “We had to walk a mile to catch a car.”
“The cars were two-man, motorman and conductor, and the fare from Newport News was a nickel to Hampton Roads Avenue.” That north-south street is almost two blocks west of her family home. “The motorman was supposed to make us get off there or pay another nickel. But sometimes they’d forget and stop at our house. Mother always had coffee for them!”
Miss Landon also remembered the carmen in cold weather with a kerosene heater, when power failed and a trolley was stalled near.
Betty Martin, who grew up on the little Indian River, a tributary creek west a few blocks, where British landed in the War of 1812, remembered also that pranking neighborhood boys made the run one of the least liked by the carmen.
“The kids would pile brush and trash on the tracks and sometimes set it afire when they heard the trolley coming behind the curve there,” she recalled. “The car had to stop and the motorman and conductor get out and push the fire off the tracks, and the boys ran behind and pulled the trolley pole off the wire.
“Then one time the boys put a big stone block on the track and covered it with brush. They didn’t set it afire. The motorman thought he could just push through and his cowcatcher would clear the track. He hit the block and had to stop. His cowcatcher was all bent. He and the conductor had to push the block out of the way before they could go on.”
These were no Hallowe’en pranks. The carmen could expect them at any time the boys were out of school.
A neighbor a block west of the Landons was Ernest W. Sniffen, an engineer at The Shipyard. His son, Harold, retired assistant director and curator of prints at The Mariners’ Museum, recalled that his father built there in 1910 “because that was as far as he could ride for a nickel.” He liked the summer southerlies off the water, and gave his house Hiawatha’s name for the south wind, Shawondassee. He also like the say if he looked east, the next land was Portugal.
“The Boulevard” served many “Shipyard family,” more from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, today’s Langley Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Big houses were built, some with gingerbread and towers, several, years later, to rent rooms or apartments as children scattered and old folks found themselves with too much house. In the 1930s the neighborhood became a “little Athens,” with dozens of NACA scientists and engineers who came to “The Boulevard” or near. Among them were John Stack, a Collier Trophy winner; H.J.E. Reid, a director; Charles Hastings, founder of an electronic navigation firm; and the late F.L. Thompson, a director. Bill and Betty Martin remember NACA’s Eastman Jacobs building an airplane to fly from a neighboring field.
Where young blades now sit in parking areas, drink, smoke pot, and get droopy-glassy over car radios – at least until someone calls police – in Fanny Landon’s time there was much to be enjoyed from a front porch.
“On Christmas Eve the harbor was filled with ships, mostly Navy, and all outlined in lights. I think they were battleships with the old basket masts.”
Navy officers often came to Hampton, some to live in those big houses. Proper folk in Norfolk put up signs, “No dogs or sailors,” but “The Boulevard” welcomed the officers. “The Fergusons [Homer Ferguson, Shipyard president] were friends of Mother’s and Father’s, and when ships were taken in for repair, we met the officers. Once one staying at our house said to us, “Come on, let’s go for a ride.” We didn’t have an automobile, so we thought that was wonderful. He was captain of the biggest ship at The Shipyard. It was Raymond Spruance! He was a lieutenant commander. I was only nineteen then. He stayed at our house and went by Navy boat to the Navy Base at Norfolk.”
Miss Landon had seen, among great liners that crossed or anchored in Hampton Roads, the Leviathan going to or from The Shipyard. “Seeing ships was just as exciting as going to the movies – and we didn’t go to the movies often!”
Ernest Sniffen rode the Leviathan on her trial run after reconversion from transport. He, and many others, had worked on her. Shipyard workers and others from near and far crowded “The Boulevard” for the Leviathan, the United States, the America, and for great warships. George Smith remembered coming out of the tunnel to see an aircraft carrier, back from overseas, passing the Chamberlin. When he got home, “The Boulevard” was tightly parked.
From her porch, Miss Landon could see the double-ended Norfolk ferry at the end of Manteo Avenue, a few blocks farther west. “It ran all the time, every time he got a chance, unless the weather was too awful. It took about a half-hour to cross. We used to go and watch it come in.”
The Landons did not use it. “We always went to Newport News and rode the C. and O. Virginia free. My father was the agent for the Old Dominion Steamboat Line and we had a pass. All the lines and the railroad gave passes then. When I went to school at Fredericksburg, I rode on a pass. Everybody was doing it. Father had a pass on the streetcar line. He gave one to Mother.”
Harold Sniffen remembers going under the ferry pier to look for coins dropped through cracks. Also spending a find in the pier store for a penny Tootsie Roll, once he learned this roll was not bread. There were big nickel ones, too, if you found a nickel. The Martins also remember swimming off an adjacent pier, with a few youngsters drowning in the deep hole made by the wash.
Another Sniffen boyhood memory is of the presidential yacht’s tender coming to the pier, Woodrow Wilson walking with his golf bag a block east, then up to the Hampton Roads Golf Club’s now forgotten links, the first in Virginia. One tee was almost at the Sniffen back door.
Another “Boulevard” visitor by yacht was Bud Fisher, whose Mutt and Jeff are better known to many than Woodrow Wilson. Fisher anchored off the Landon home, then a small resort hotel, Widewater, and Mr. Landon rowed him, his wife, and mother-in-law ashore for a few days in a house with “electric lights and long distance telephone.” A couple could stay a week for twenty or twenty-five dollars.
Miss Landon was fond of Old Point Comfort’s Chamberlin Hotel. “One time we were in the Chamberlin eating and I said, ‘Look – there’s a submarine!’ It was just out the window. It was fascinating – the first time I had seen a submarine come in.” Ships do seem to pass just outside the dining room. The Bay is forty to sixty feet deep close inshore, and steamboats stopped at the pier, now gone, until automobiles and trucks made us “mobile.”
The disastrous fire of March 7, 1920, was another of Miss Landon’s Chamberlin memories. “Grandma’s nephew, Mr. [Elliott] Braxton, was at the Chamberlin for dinner. He finished and took the streetcar home and got off at LaSalle Avenue and walked down to the beach. Somebody said, “Look!” He turned around, and said, ‘The Chamberlin! On fire!’ He was lucky he had gotten out. I thought at first it was the sun reflected from the windows.”
(Early March 31, 1985, fire, a mile east of “The Boulevard” and visible from all Hampton Roads, put beyond salvage another Hampton Landmark, the ninety-nine-year-old Strawberry Bank Manor. This was built as Roseland Manor, then sold to Harrison Phoebus, owner of the Hygeia Hotel, the Chamberlin predecessor. Strawberry Bank was the Phoebus home until his widow, Annie, died in 1906. It was an official State Landmark and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Before the fire, you could walk along its shore, look back at the Queen Anne chateau, overlook parked cars of a half dozen tenant professional firms, and know a little of our “Gilded Age.”)
Hampton Roads seemed clean enough for the Landons and many others along “The Boulevard” to swim, even with sanitary sewers running out from shore. Today you would risk an oil slick, small but messy, spilled or pumped from a bilge to blacken a few square feet of beach or riprap (a trifle compared to what had to be endured during two World Wars.) You would dodge among crabpot floats drifted astray but more plastic jugs, even a hard hat lost overboard, and underfoot broken whisky bottles. And always yellow signs – don’t take shellfish!
Seeing oysters on today’s storm sewer outfalls, or clam shells dropped by gulls to break open on the seawall, you might wish for a gull’s digestion. You still would have to contend with an occasional riprap rat, fat on chicken bones, sandwich crusts, and other garbage left in parking areas.
Fanny Landon remembered that the last oyster stake offshore was as far as anybody ought to swim. Harold Sniffen had a memory of three sandbars paralleling the beach, thick eel grass full of crabs in the troughs, the oyster stake beyond the farthest. Boys rowed out to “skinny dip.”
“One time I was out on the bar with my two brothers, and I stepped off into deep water,” Miss Landon recalled. “One of them looked and saw nothing but bubbles. He came out and got me.”
Rescue can be needed now. A driver speeding down LaSalle Avenue in a late night alcoholic fog may not turn. Then his car jumps the guard rail. If anybody around is awake, he too con be fished, presumably sober.
As with any through street, “The Boulevard” still gets to be a speedway, drivers taking their God-given right to do fifty in any twenty-five-mile zone. It was closed to through traffic for a few months in 1985 to rebuild a bridge over Indian River. Residents east liked the thinned traffic. Some even urged keeping the bridge for pedestrians and bicycles only. To others in the longer stretch west the thought was “elitism” since speeding continued there almost to the bridge.
Speeding cars and howling radios are two nuisances. All day people from time to time have to stop talking, telephoning, or listening while a military helicopter thumps by, along the shoreline and five hundred feet up if the pilot civilized, overhead or blocks inland and two hundred feet, even tree-top, if still adolescent. Or a jet, circling a half-dozen times to land at the Naval Air Station across the water, coasts under a thousand feet, its engines a stuck calliope. Protests get “There, there,” or “Who, us?” responses, plus a two-week neighborhood buzzing. Nothing is heard in City Halls but the rustle of federal dollars.
Miss Landon knew “The Boulevard” and Hampton Roads would go on changing as in the more than eighty years she watched them.
Change to be remembered included the old Robison brickyard, where “The Boulevard” runs behind a small bulge in the shoreline a half mile west, becoming a tennis court and homes built by J.C. and Tome Robinson for their families in the 18902s, then for others in the neighborhood’s first “development.” The Wythe community of Elizabeth City County was annexed by Hampton in the early 1950s, when more and more homes came to be.
The Chamberlin, now a National Historic Place against the bureaucratic wish of the Army, legal owner of the real estate, she hoped “would stay there forever.”
In the bight to the mouth of the Hampton River, in view of Chamberlin windows, “we used to see small boats, fishing boats and others, come in bad weather. It was a most fascinating sight.” A northerly blow now sends small boats into Hampton River, but on summer Wednesdays, dozens of sailboats swarm out to cross the bight on the windward leg of the Hampton Yacht Club race course around channel buoys on the Norfolk side.
Small boats today are mostly crabbers’, with clam dredges on Hampton Flats. The shoreline is no longer for pleasure boating, the water too shallow for cruising sailboats, too exposed to all but northerly winds. Piers still in use have davits or ramps for their boats. Some sailing people do carry small catamarans and wind-surfers to the water.
Most piers have been removed, partly because no longer safe, more because too many people fish, crab, sun, drink, smoke pot, neck, property owners vulnerable to suits if anybody falls off. “Attractive nuisances,” as lawyers have it, never mind your “No Trespassing” signs.
One good pier was found to be the watch station for a housebreaker, who timed goings and comings. He knifed his way out when found in one house. He went to jail, though not for that.
Other felonious ventures occasionally have been hinted. Once an outboard launch, with no motor, was anchored for a few days fifty feet out. Hampton police said nobody had reported a boat missing and if nobody’s interested we’re not. Then a resident recalled seeing, late one night, flashing lights and busy men. So a few bales of marijuana likely were landed, the boat abandoned. Another time an outboard with nobody aboard circled until it ran ashore and burned. Later, cars turned into parking areas, paper sacks were passed one way, envelopes the other, and wheels spun. Older residents remembered flashing lights and mysterious business during Prohibition. Nothing was new.
Thus “The Boulevard” of late. No streetcar again will stop for Miss Landon’s coffee, no Landon dog will bring home a live chicken – “Mother would nearly have a fit” – to Fanny Landon’s childhood delight. The small Civil War house just west of LaSalle, from which the Monitor-Virginia battle was watched and where Civil War photographer Matthew Brady lived for a time, was partly restored from what an interim owner did to “modernize” it. “It looked like they put it in a crate to ship off.” Miss Landon wouldn’t have been satisfied unless it looked as it did when she was a child. Nobody has to level corn hills, as Ernest Sniffen did more than three-quarters of a century earlier for grass to be cut by a hand-pushed reel mower.
But ducks, geese, and swans still fly over, spring and fall, also purple martins. Swallows nest under pier decks. A few ducks winter along the riprap. A pair of skimmers dip beaks. An occasional sandpiper looks for sand. Herons squawk their way from the Bay to the James. Stingrays and skates school, and people gather to watch wingtips cutting water, noses rooting for clams. A gull may struggle against a turtle holding its legs. Other gulls go crazy over a school of bunkers. A sick fin whale sixty feet long, looking for a quiet place to die, stranded on a bar off “The Boulevard” in late 1987, then wandered off at high tide, bumped a racing sailboat, and tried other Roadstead bars before being “put to sleep mercifully,” as we do with old pets, and towed out to sea for Nature’s own scavengers. Strangely, shoot-it-if-it-moves sports did not invoke the Second Amendment to use it for target practice, as had happened to a sick whale up the James River at another time.
Ships anchor, voyages completed or to start when holds are full of coal or grain or decks stacked to the bridges with containers. The Navy put a new ammunition pier out in the middle, and it can be hoped nobody sneaks a smoke. Those towers ashore might be blown off.
Along “The Boulevard” residents mow lawns, paint houses, and do yard work according to their years. George Smith told of a neighbor working on his knees on grass along the sidewalk when a big, air conditioned car with two blue-haired ladies stopped. One lowered a window to ask, “Are you the yard man?”
“I guess I am,” he replied.
“What do you change?”
“Well, she’s never paid me a cent,” he said, “but she lets me sleep with her every night.”
So, come by. Get the feeling, as so many did in those “pioneer” days, that “We knew we got to ‘The Boulevard’ when the air changed.” That summer southerly off the water, that Shawondassee that for Hiawatha.
Filled the air with dreamy softness.
Gave a twinkle to the water.
will do it for you still, if a four o’clock squall isn’t thundering from beyond the James.
