A Small Town Love Story--Colonial Beach, Virginia

by Sherryl Woods

  The story is told that if their mother “hadn’t been in such a hurry to make the ferry,” Betty would have been born in Colonial Beach.

  Once the three of them start reminiscing about Colonial Beach, the stories and laughter don’t stop for a minute. Neither do the occasional tears as some memory or another strikes a particular chord.

  Luke Sydnor’s big oak tree

  Their parents first came to Colonial Beach as a young couple and their dad started building a house for the family in the late ’30s or early ’40s. In their yard was a big black oak tree, estimated to be over 250 years old, that was the family’s pride and joy. There were stories that Robert E. Lee had once sat under that very tree as a child. Betty and Edna recall sitting under the shade of that tree to read or play. Out of respect they didn’t climb it. Around town it was admired for its historic age and spreading branches. And when it was eventually felled by Hurricane Isabel, there were tears shed.

  So many of their best memories are tied to this town, to building and to growing up during carefree summers here. They learned to cut grass with a sickle and to use rakes to deal with the thousands of leaves from that big old oak.

  Edna recalls helping her father sand boards as he built the kitchen. Luke remembers mixing up rock salt and water to kill the weeds. “That was our Roundup,” he says.

  At one point, with their father using every spare minute to work on the house, they remember him being cited by Captain Joe Miller, the police chief, for working on a Sunday, which was against the state’s “blue” laws at the time.

  Edna learned to drive a car at the beach. “But she couldn’t get it in Reverse,” Betty taunts. “She threw Luke and Daddy into the front. Luke hit the mirror.”

  Their parents had planned to retire to the beach. Sadly, though, their father died on June 19, 1964. He was set to retire on July 1. Though he’d spent many a weekend working on the house, he never had the chance to live in it full-time.

  “Back then everybody knew everybody by name,” Edna says. “And they knew your mother.” Which meant that any mischief, no matter where it happened, was likely to be reported right back to your parents.

  People walked places or rode their bicycles. “Luke, as the baby brother, had to be watched over,” she says. They’d walk to Denson’s for kerosene for the stove or groceries. They walked to the icehouse to get a twenty-five-cent block of ice, and pulled it home in their little green wagon. They used that ice to make ice cream in an old churner.

  “We made quite a bit of ice cream. That was the most fun,” Edna recalls. “Our mother would tell us there was no need to discuss who would get to lick the paddles—that was her decision.”

  Though the children went to retrieve the ice, many items were delivered house-to-house in those days. Farmer’s Creamery from Fredericksburg delivered milk and Charles Chips would bring potato chips.

  One of their favorite local door-to-door produce salesmen in that era was Joe Roy. He was an African American Baptist minister who lived out in the nearby countryside and farmed. He would come around with a team of horses, selling produce. They especially loved the watermelon and cantaloupes. “He’d take a plug out of the watermelon so the customer could taste it,” Luke says.

  Oyster shuckers at Curley’s

  “I thought that was so neat,” Luke adds. He’d spend over four hours riding through town with Mr. Roy, while the man’s grandson, Dallas, would ride along beside the wagon on Luke’s bike. “I’d drive the team of horses.”

  “Mr. Roy never came to the front door,” Edna remembers. If he and Dallas were invited to join the family for a meal, it was served on a picnic table in the backyard. It was a sign of the times that they didn’t feel comfortable coming inside.

  Even so, the families were so close that when their father died, their mother gave Mr. Roy his clothes, Betty recalls, choking up at the memory.

  Though they had a lot of freedom in those days, Luke was very firmly instructed to stay away from Curleys’ oyster packing plant and the store where the rough-and-tumble oystermen hung out. He was told “it was not a place for youngsters.” That didn’t stop him.

  He loved watching the African American shuckers working. “They’d sing gospel music and get this rhythm going. I’d stand there just to listen. We didn’t have recorders then, but I wish I’d been able to record it.”

  There was almost always someone who’d pop the top off a bottle of soda and hand it to him as he listened. He’d nurse that Coke as long as he could.

  The boardwalk was the liveliest place in town during those days. There were several open-door bingo parlors with gaudy prizes on display. The sound of people calling out “Bingo,” echoed outside. At that time, players marked their cards with kernels of corn, rather than the markers used today.

  Luke and his friends also made a little money “reserving” benches for the grown-ups who liked to sit along the lively boardwalk and watch people. “We’d lay down on the benches until our customers came along. They paid us twenty-five cents for holding a bench for them, and we’d go off and spend it on something.”

  The Sydnor siblings remember remember the workboat races on Monroe Bay, when boats mostly owned by Mr. Curley, Pete Green and George Townsend competed. There was a ski club that did shows on the bay.

  “They didn’t have the money for fancy boats or costumes,” Luke recalls. “But everything they did at Cypress Springs in Florida, they did here. People made donations to help them out.”

  They speak longingly of the Panzer bakery and the aroma of the rolls, especially on a Sunday morning. Luke recalls that his friend Sugie Green, who married oysterman Pete Green, worked at the old A&P as a cashier. “They had a big old manual cash register. I’d be mesmerized by that,” he says.

  They all lament that so many of those old ways have been lost. “We claim to be tourist-friendly, but we’re not,” Luke says with a deep sense of regret. “We claim to be business-friendly, but we’re not.”

  All three of them have taken active roles in their adopted town over the years. Luke attends almost every Town Council meeting. He’s worked with the Chamber of Commerce on events. Edna belongs to the Colonial Beach Historical Society. Betty participated in many of the Potomac River Festival parades as a clown.

  Betty recalls the days when the beach was known far and wide as the Playground of the Potomac. “A summer population explosion happened then,” she says. “But there was such serenity, such joy, such comfort” in days gone by, Betty says.

  And while some of that may be missing now, their love for the beach remains strong and their ties here deep. Not a one of them shows any signs that they’re ready to stop fighting to make it that way again.

  A LOAF OF BREAD, PENNY CANDY…AND FREEDOM

  Growing up along a very busy road—Fairfax Drive—in the bustling Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, there were a lot of cautions and restrictions in my life during my early years. But in Colonial Beach, with its quiet streets and slower pace, a walk to Mrs. Sullivan’s, a tiny neighborhood grocery store, all by myself or with friends, was an indelible summer memory, a rite of passage.

  The Fox General Merchandise store, restored in 2012

  Mrs. Sullivan’s, which was probably no more than a twelve-by-twelve room with crammed shelves filled with basics, was only two blocks away. I could be sent there alone for a loaf of bread or go with other youngsters to get an ice-cold soda from the big red Coca-Cola cooler or a Popsicle on a steamy, hot afternoon. It gave me a remarkable sense of freedom at a very early age. I still get a twinge of nostalgia whenever I pass by that building, though it no longer houses a business.

  I was not alone in seizing this rare opportunity. Among the many memories shared by others in this book were their visits on foot or on bicycles to the neighborhood grocery stores close to their houses, stores that dotted the landscape of Colonial Beach in those early days when cars were few or only to be used for long-distance, “important” travel.

  Though the ent
ire town covers just a few square miles, in one small area alone there were stores owned by Mattie Hopkins, Oliff’s near the water tower, another one that primarily served the oystermen at Curley Packing Plant and, perhaps the longest-lasting of all, Denson’s. One statistic indicates that in the 1920s there were nine bars in this town of some three thousand or fewer residents and seven grocery stores.

  Weber’s 5 & 10 Store, pre-1944

  Hopkins Store

  Original Cooper’s Store

  Greenlaw’s Hardware Store

  Post Office and Potomac Interest Bank, 1959

  But if going to one of these tiny neighborhood stores, each with its own distinct personality thanks to its unique owner, was a rite of passage, so, too, was a trip to Klotz’s. While the store stocked a wide variety of merchandise, as a child I always gravitated straight to the penny candy, as did most every other child in town, adhering more or less to a strict no-touching rule.

  That memory is so clear in my mind that those of you who’ve read my Chesapeake Shores series will recognize that Ethel’s Emporium, with its colorful display of treats, is very much based on Klotz’s, as is Mick O’Brien’s habit of always having penny candy from Ethel’s available for his grandkids. I’m pretty sure it was my grandparents who indulged my sweet tooth more often than my parents did. (And on a side note, I know it was my grandfather who introduced my cousins and me to the old diner that sat on the corner of Colonial and Washington avenues and the particular joy of going out for an early morning breakfast.)

  These small stores have mostly closed over the years, making way first for an A&P and now for 7-Eleven and Food Lion. It was the arrival of a national chain of five-and-dime stores that ultimately drove Klotz’s out of business. The family-owned Hall’s store still operates just outside of town as a full-service grocery store, but Denson’s is perhaps the most unique in the ways it has reinvented itself over the years.

  Marguerite Staples, whose family owned Klotz’s, recalls her family’s history in town, her own years of trying to keep the store in business and the memories that people continue to share with her.

  Rocky Denson, who created the latest incarnation of the family business in a former ice-cream and pizza shop along Colonial Avenue, is at least the third generation of his family in the grocery business in Colonial Beach. He came to the business reluctantly and belatedly, but has made a thriving, award-winning success of it.

  Here are their stories.

  A LONG LINE OF MERCHANTS:

  The Densons

  In its early days, even a town as small as Colonial Beach had family-owned grocery stores in just about every neighborhood. Each one had its own unique personality, but none endured, adjusted and reinvented itself in quite the way that Denson’s did.

  “We came from a long line of merchants,” says Rocky Denson, the newest generation to supply food and delicacies to residents of the town.

  It was his grandfather, Frederick LeGrand Denson, who first came to Colonial Beach from Maryland in 1911. Not only did he open Denson’s grocery store in 1912, but he also had an oyster-packing plant—the Marva Oyster Packing Company—located near the Stanford Marine Railway. Workers earned chits for the oysters they shucked. At one point he also had a tomato canning factory in nearby King George County.

  When Rocky’s grandfather died in the ’30s, his grandmother, Jetta Denson, took over running the store. Even after his dad enlisted in the navy during World War II, he was stationed in Norfolk, close enough to be able to come home on weekends to help in the store.

  Mayor Boozie Denson

  His dad and Bill Cooper, whose family owned Cooper’s, which sold a little bit of everything, from clothing to hardware, were best friends, Rocky recalls. Seeing that his buddy had remained close to home while serving in the military, Bill Cooper also went down to enlist, but unlike Rocky’s dad, he was shipped overseas.

  Ann Denson

  “My dad was a signalman. One day they received sealed orders to go to Hampton Roads to greet an incoming ship, the USS Iowa battleship coming home from sea duty. On the deck, Dad kept thinking he heard his name. He finally looked up and saw Bill Cooper leaning over the railing of the Iowa.”

  Suffice it to say, Cooper had a few sharp swear words for his friend who’d convinced him to enlist thinking he, too, would stay close to home.

  Not long after his navy tour ended, Rocky’s dad met the woman he would marry. She was a nurse’s assistant at Mary Washington Hospital in nearby Fredericksburg, and she was caring for Rocky’s grandmother.

  They married and built a new, bigger version of Denson’s across the street from the original store. Rocky, who was born in 1956, recognized early on just how hard the work was. Today, though, he says those are “memories I wouldn’t trade for a million bucks. My dad would be working back at the meat counter, and he’d decide to take a break and we’d go fishing.”

  Rocky was the baby of the family. He had two older sisters. Jetta had multiple sclerosis and passed away a few years ago. Carol Ann still lives at the beach, and when Rocky first decided to open yet another version of Denson’s, she worked with him to get it established.

  Ironically, Rocky, whose real name is Bernard George, decided early on that the grocery business wasn’t for him. He went away to college, but continued to spend summers at the beach working as a lifeguard.

  He vividly recalls one particular summer when he and two of his boyhood friends—Steve Swope, who later became the town’s most celebrated basketball coach of its championship team, and Mark Green—worked as lifeguards together.

  The second Denson’s Super Market

  Second store’s grand opening specials, 1956

  “Walter Parkinson would come to the fishing pier first thing in the morning and turn on his loudspeakers to start announcing fishing charters and boat rides,” he recalls. After a night of partying, the three young men would groan at the sound.

  Rocky says he arrived late one morning to see his two friends standing on the town pier watching as Walter started his morning ritual. But when he made his announcement, there was no sound. Walter tapped the microphone, fooled with the equipment and finally discovered that the speakers had disappeared.

  Walter and another captain, Donald Markwith, searched the water and anywhere else they could think of, looking for their missing speakers.

  Months later, Markwith dropped in to visit his friend, waterman Pete Green, Mark’s dad. Pete was in his garage making oyster stew.

  “Donald goes in and spots something he hadn’t expected to find. ‘Those are my speakers,’ he told Pete.”

  Rocky laughs, but winces as he tells the story. “Do we have to use names?”

  Then he adds that back in the day that was the sort of mischief kids got into. “We did pranks. We didn’t get in real trouble.”

  He recalls all the things there were for young people to do on the boardwalk—Davis’ shooting gallery, Millie Mears’s snowball stand, the Black Cat, which had live bands for kids. “It didn’t serve alcohol. It was painted black and had black lights. It was really neat.”

  Rocky also recalls that his father, known in town as Boozie Denson, was active in politics. “He and Gordon Hopkins sort of alternated running for mayor over a period of twenty years.” The two men were good friends.

  “One time Gordon came by the store because he’d heard Dad was thinking of not running. He said, ‘Boozie, if you’re not going to run, will you endorse me?’”

  His father agreed, then later decided to run after all. Rocky’s mother, Ann, was appalled. “She never wanted to be involved in town politics in the first place.”

  She saw what her husband was doing to his friend as a betrayal and told him flatly, “I’m not voting for you.”

  On election night people gathered late into the night outside the old town hall as the votes were tallied. “It was 2:00 a.m., but people were riding around town, beeping their horns. Gordon had beaten my dad.”

  Third generation of Denson�
��s Grocery, 2013

  His dad made a traditional concession speech, thanking those who voted for him, praising his opponent and saying that Gordon would make a good mayor, then added, “And Ann would like to thank everyone who didn’t vote for me.”

  Rocky believes it was a simpler time back then, at least when it came to deciding what was best for the town. “People respected each other. Nobody yelled and screamed. Everybody had passions and emotions, but it was important to be friends at the end of the meetings.”

  Denson Family today

  Rocky has no interest in getting involved in town politics as his father did and for years couldn’t imagine following in his parents’ footsteps in the grocery business, either. He worked in financial services and spent most of his career with the Farm Bureau.

  It was during his tenure there that he met the woman who would later become his wife, Blaire, at a Farm Bureau event in Florida. They sat together by chance at a crowded convention session and were encouraged by their kids from previous marriages to spend more time together.

  When the convention ended, she went back to North Carolina and he came back to Virginia, but they continued to meet in Emporia, partway between their hometowns, whenever they could and eventually married.

  “During my last five years with the Farm Bureau, the only thing I could think about was reopening Denson’s Grocery,” he says, acknowledging the irony.

  With Blaire’s encouragement and help from his sister, who made the family’s chicken salad for the deli and helped with a million other details, Rocky opened in a former ice-cream and pizza shop on Colonial Avenue.