1205 Flobert Drive, Part One 1959-1965

When I was five years old and my mother was pregnant with my sister, my parents had a modest brick home built in Princess Anne County, way out in the country, far outside the city where my father worked and where my grandparents lived. The development, called Bellamy Manor, was owned by the Bellamy family. It was only a partially cleared property. The part of the development behind the manor house was called "the Hill." You either lived on the Hill or in the Woods. We lived in the Woods. Most of the Kempsville area around Bellamy Manor was farmland. There was a strong Mennonite population in Kempsville and much of the farmland was devoted to dairy cows.

After the Bellamy property was developed, the big white Manor house remained, facing Kempsville Road, until the "new" library was built around 1988. You can still see the ancient trees behind the library that give away the original location of the house.

A History of the Kempsville Library

The Kempsville Area Library is built on the site of the historic "Bellamy Manor" Plantation, circa 1715-1959. The 9.7 acres of land was sold to the City of Virginia Beach in 1967 for $50,000. On April 29, 1969 the Kempsville Area Library first opened its doors. Appropriately, the event took place during National Library Week. The building was 6,000 square feet and opened with a collection of 7,000 volumes to serve a population of 20,000 in the Kempsville area. At that time, the Kempsville Area Library was the fourth branch of the Virginia Beach Public Library System. As the Kempsville population grew, so did the business at the library. The year 1984 brought 239,400 visits to the Kempsville Area Library alone! By 1985, the library was serving a population of more than 65,000 and housed a collection of 53,000 volumes. By August 1986, plans for a new library building came to fruition. The original library building would become the Fourth Precinct police station. The community participated in planning the new building. A survey of library users helped determine the features that the residents felt were important. Ground Breaking ceremonies were held on October 20, 1988. The construction of the building began almost immediately and its entire outside structure was completed in just a matter of months! In January 1990 the new Kempsville Area Library opened, ready and eager to serve the residents of Kempsville!

http://www.superpages.com/bp/virginia-beach-va/kempsville-area-library-L0137952191.htm

My first memories of Bellamy Manor

There were no proper roads the first year or so, just ruts in the grassy lanes cut into the heavy woods. Some of the roads further back in the woods had no houses built on them yet and were great places to hike.

The woods smelled heavily of wild creatures - to this day the scent is distinct in my memory. And rattlesnakes galore! We killed many rattlesnakes in our first years in the Woods. I almost stepped on a coiled rattlesnake while playing tag in the Downs' yard. I heard the rattling and thought it was the water spigot. I looked down and screamed for help. Mrs. Edge rushed over with a 22 shot gun and blew it away right at my feet.

Old Mr. Bellamy came around in his big white car through the development periodically. He knew all of the residents and spoke to the children as he rode by. He told one child, "you've grown two ax handles since I last saw you!" At Halloween, everyone knew there were candied apples handed out at the manor house.

There were only a few houses back then on that quarter mile stretch called Flobert Drive. We were near the end of the street (the "turn around").  Our house was the third house in a row next to the Edges and Downs'. Our lot sizes were near a half acre. We had about fifty trees in our yard. The Gaskins family lived in a big house in the middle of three fenced in lots about halfway down the road. They had a horse, and also had a pony-sized black German Shepherd named "Mount" who charged menacingly at everyone who dared to go down the street.  The Watson family lived on the corner at the entrance to Flobert Drive. Our bus stop was at the foot of their driveway. Their oldest daughter Priscilla was our babysitter.

Hunters were used to letting their dogs loose in the woods to run. Mr. Jones would drive his pack of baying hounds to the end of our street and release them. He'd come back some time later to pick them up. His dogs were named after U. S. Presidents; invariably, Truman would be left behind and Mr. Jones would have to come pick him up the next day from our front porch.

Sometimes we would find cows or horses wandering in our yard. We'd have to call the owners to come get them. Once when my mother was hanging out clothes, a fox ran under the clothesline followed shortly thereafter by hounds and a hunter on horseback.

My best and only friend was the next door neighbor, also named Teresa. She introduced me to things I had never known, such as cussing and sex (on a very limited scale) and eating animals that were killed in the woods. Her mother had a heart as big as the moon, but could cuss like a sailor and didn't care who heard. They also had whiskey in the house and tobacco. Once she made homemade root beer that accidentally fermented and made all the neighborhood kids drunk. The Edges had their house built toward the front of their lot so there was a huge plot in the back for a garden and grape vines. I learned to shell butter beans and have grape skin fights. I also learned to be more physically daring - Teresa would swing as high as the sky and fly off into a hill-sized dirt pile. We made forts out of hay bales and played there all day. The Edges had a nasty dog named Jigger who bit everyone. Back then, getting bit by Jigger was just part of a normal day. My cousin Calvin biked his newspaper route with Jigger attached to one leg.

As more folks moved into the neighborhood, my circle of friends grew. We all knew each other and were in each others' homes as much as our own. As long as I came home when the cowbell rang, my mother didn't care where I was and never had to worry. My cousins moved into Bellamy Manor four streets away and within easy walking distance. Kids rode their bikes long distances from home - there were no restrictions or boundaries. The "big ditch" on the other side of the Edges' house was the pathway to our friends' homes on all the other streets that ran parallel in the "Woods." We had our secret forts in the woods. We were outside all day long. There was no such thing as air-conditioning so being outdoors was preferable to the stifling house.

... more later...