Frying Pan Farm Part 12

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]

The largest group outside the community's mainstream was the black agricultural workers. Except in the realm of employer/employee relations they had little social intercourse with their neighbors. Floris Vocational High School was not open to Negro students and the schools that were available to blacks were much inferior to those which taught white children. No high school existed at all for the blacks and the one-to three-room schools that existed were "in the most dilapidated condition," with no water, heat or adequate toilet facilities.[280]

Edith Rogers made a revealing comment about the quality of the teachers when she stated that she knew of one that had a degree.[281] In extension activities blacks were also often overlooked. The first black 4-H club was organized in 1934 without the help of the county agent's office, and it was only after two years of exceptional work that he belatedly recognized its existence. "The colored club at the Vienna School was organized, but we did not expect much from it," Derr reported in 1936.

A few days ago we were considerably surprised to have the Princ.i.p.al of the School send in her report ... Nearly every colored boy and girl nine years up to eighteen did some work ... Taking it in we feel it is a credible showing for a colored school that has not received its full share of a.s.sistance in club work.[282]

Black activities in churches and farmer's clubs were similarly ignored.

Some black families appear to have been respected for their industry or farming ability. The George Coates family near Floris was one. White neighbors exchanged work and admired the Coates progressive techniques, but still "never went so far as to sit down to dinner with them."[283]

Blacks were excluded from the area's fairs, socials and concerts, except in rare cases when a rope kept the audience segregated.[284] Among themselves they, of course, had their own entertainments, but in general the broader opportunities and amus.e.m.e.nts of the county were closed to the blacks.

In the inter-war period another group was increasingly on the fringe of the established community. These were the urban migrants who came along the new roads and railroad lines, seeking an escape from city stresses.

The earliest to arrive were summer residents, then came the part-time farmers who wanted country air but city pay. Finally the unabashed suburbanite who looked only for a quiet place to rest between bouts of urban employment moved in. Nearly all came seeking how they could benefit by living in the country, not what they could contribute to it.

At first county residents welcomed this influx with open arms; they saw the expansion as a boon to employment and markets. Only later did they begin to realize that, in small ways and large, the forces of economic expansion would alter the shape of their community.[285]

Those who migrated chiefly in order to farm were welcomed by the county farm families, but those who were unaccustomed to country ways caused some problems for the rural folk. An editorial in the _Fairfax Herald_ for April 23, 1926, bemoaned the loss of many of the county's lovely wildflowers, for the suburban residents frequently ignored trespa.s.s rules to pick the flowers.[286] Also alarming were the differing habits and manners of the city migrants and threat of an infiltration of "unusual and often undesirable" people. Hearing rumors that a nudist colony was to be established in the county's Dranesville District, the _Herndon News-Observer_ declared stoutly

We have a lot of objectionable people in the county, who have spilled over from Was.h.i.+ngton, but we will at least require that they bring their 'duds' along before they can hope to experience a cordial reception.[287]

A more critical matter was the importation and propagation of insects from the city, such as the oriental fruit moth, which thrived in the carelessly kept backyard plantings of suburbanites and then wreaked havoc in commercial orchards. County agents Derr and Beard spent considerable time advising these newcomers and helping them plant their gardens.[288]

Aside from these minor alarms, the urban influx had really serious consequences for the farmers of Fairfax County. As the numbers of non-farm residents grew, political interest lines began to be drawn and in some cases the farmers began losing control over local governing policies. This did not happen in all areas; for example, the County Board of Supervisors consisted solely of farmers well into the 1940s.

However, in some vicinities there were definite political repercussions from the suburban population, such as in Herndon, which although commercially oriented, had always been sympathetic to the farmer's views. In the years after the arrival of the electric trolley, city workers and farmers battled at the polls over mayoral candidates and council representatives; by the 1920s the town council was dominated by businessmen and professionals.[289]

This growing tendency towards political alienation for the farmer was foreshadowed in a letter of complaint written by the Farmer's Club #1 to the Governor of Virginia in October, 1909:

The attention of the Fairfax Farmer's Club No. 1 has been called to the fact that the delegates from this county to the Farmer's National Congress are not farmers, one being Sheriff of the County, the other a merchant--both reputable citizens but neither interested directly in agriculture.[290]

Like the other changes shaking the farmers' world, the loss of government influence created a disturbing sense of impermanence and estrangement. This, coupled with the previously mentioned tax rise (which was exacerbated by the influx of people, all purchasing land and creating a rise in prices due to demand) indicated to the farmer that he was losing control over a world which had for generations remained secure and settled. Ultimately, these forces crowded him out altogether, and simultaneously destroyed most of the pastoral communities to which the suburbanites had hoped to escape.

PART V--NOTES

_Community_

[222] For an extensive study of community relations, see Kolb and Brunner, _A Study of Rural Society_, 75-139.

[223] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.

[224] Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 35.

[225] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.

[226] Derr Report, 1930, 16.

[227] Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978.

[228] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.