To Nancy, Amy and other McLeanites.....Sorry I've been away for a while, but I'm back and plan on posting at least a couple of times a week. This is my first foray into blogging and I am still learning....
Yes, I was talking about Beales. It was the best ever. They were on the corner of Kirby Road where Chesterbrook Road came into a T intersection. Linway Terrace went down once side of the corn fields and past St. John's Catholic Church on the way toward McLean. If you went the other way, you'd go by Potomac Hills.
There are a few things in life that we remember as wonderful - as near to perfect as you can get - and corn from the Beale's was one of them. I've talked to so many people that I know it is not just a childhood memory, enhanced by the passing of years. It really WAS that good!! How could corn deserve a blog posting? If you'd ever had that corn, you would know.
There was a sub shop in Blacksburg when I went to VA Tech called Mr Fooz that made the best subs ever!!! But that's another story and not about McLean....just about where some of us went after high school (which was Langley for me). But you know what I mean...it's like the Washingtonian magazine's list of "The Best of DC." Well I'd like to propose a "Best of McLean." All comments and suggestions welcome. Beale's corn was THE BEST EVER - It was five star restaurant corn - a Blue Ribbon for them!!! They get our first "Best of McLean" award!!
But I'm going to stop for a minute and give you a little about my background. We moved from Fairfax City into McLean in October 1954 and moved in on Halloween. My parents had our house built in Chesterbrook Woods off Chesterbrook Road and my grandmother could not understand why my parents wanted to live "way out there." So I went to Chesterbrook Elementary, Longfellow and then Langley, graduating in 1970 - the second class to go all 4 years there. My older brother finished just in time to graduate from McLean High School. I had lots of friends there from Longfellow and other groups that I belonged to in those days of the late 1960s. So, if any of you McLean HS folks are out there, leave us a comment - let us know what your favorite place was to go parking, or your favorive teacher, or any other memory you'd like to share. That's what we're here for. I've got a list of future topics, but am anxious to hear from you. Does anyone from McLean remember a guidance counselor named Peggy Parker? I'd love to know where she is today...my guess is that she's probably in her early 70s.
I remember everything mentioned in the previous comments and had some very similar experiences - including my first auto accident in the McDonald's parking lot in McLean. Remember when they added the extra parking section on the left? I was driving through the main lot and a younger girl - she was 16 and I was almost 19 - came from the side lot and clipped the passenger side headlight on my Mom's 1968 VW Squareback. We were both a bit freaked out, and neither had an adult with us....but our parents talked and everyone just took care of their own - no police, no insurance, everything was easier then. That was June of 1971.
And I loved the little McLean Library in the house (I think) across from McDonald's. I still remember that you went in and around to the left to get to the "Children's" section. I read a lot and loved biographies from the time I was about 8 or 10. I read about a lot of women - Harriett Beacher Stowe, etc. - all the biographies I could find on women...guess I was a "libber" even then. But I was used to a mother who worked from the time I was 4, so professional women were the norm for me. My Mom taught at Falls Church HS, Whittier and then Cooper Intermediate from the day it opened until she retired, but that's another post. I think there are some teachers we could nominate for our "Best Of McLean" List. But I want to get back to the places mentioned in "downtown" McLean.
Mesmerelda's was one of my favorite places to poke around. I loved all the little gifties they had. It was a fun place. I'd go there or the "variety" store whose name I cannot remember - please help. And, my brother would go to the hobby store. He was an HO train fanatic and also got model cars there. Salona Village had so many great places....Mort's Bootery was a funny one for me - I did not have to get into the door before he'd shake his head and I knew that meant that he did not have any shoes to fit me. My feet were so small that I remember celebrating when I graduated froma girls' size 13 to a size 1. I think that was 6th grade. By the time I was 13 - the summer between 7th and 8th grade, my feet grew to a women's size 4....and it has never changed since. If shoe stores were as personal now as they were then, I'm sure someone would still be shaking their heads to tell me there were no shoes for me. I have an old McLean phone book from the 60s that, when I can locate it, I will have to see if I can identify all the stores that were in Salona.
I remember the 5 cent cones at High's and have told so many people about that..and that went on into the late 60s when it was next to the old fire station. It makes me sound ancient when I talk about it....and I loved the lime sherbet, too. What about the bowling alley behind the Safeway...after it moved from the center of town to Salona Village? And Pizza Supreme that always had a local political cartoon-like painting on one whole wall....I think I remember Nixon and Agnew there...what a funny place we grew up in....it was all just home to us, but of National interest to others.
I remember when the Beltway (aka 495) opened and it was the thing to do to drive all the way around - just for fun....and now, I avoid it at all costs if I can. But I don't get that way too much anymore - maybe a couple of times a year. Then I stay with some other Langley friends that I've always kept in touch with and we go to the Birchmere for a concert or into DC to eat...even though that's changing a lot too!! When Blackie's closed a couple of years ago and auctioned off the furnishings, it was the end of another era.
I collect old postcards of the McLean area and the local places we went and I just found one of Hogate's in DC where our family went for seafood. But there were still favorite restaurants in McLean. Steak in a Sack was a great one and I think I can still taste their roast beef sandwich. There was Three Pigs, the classic Evan's Farm Inn and a local family favorite - the Pikestaff. I have many memories of going into the dark red and black interior with differnet people - our whole family, with friend's families and with the teachers from Cooper when they used to go there for their "Monday Club." With my mother being a teacher at Cooper, I was privy to some interesting gatherings - teachers talked about a lot of things not related to school. Teachers really were REAL people!! They had lives that did not always revolve around the kids and the environment in which we knew them. It was fun sharing this other world of teachers.
I'm going to toss out a couple of more names and see what comes back.....but I've got to hold some things for another day....but what about Eleanor's Town and Country next to People's Drug Store in the Giant Shopping Center? My first job was there when I was 16....I worked there when Eleanor had 3 stores - the one in McLean, one at Tyson's and one in Vienna. But I'm going to do a post soon on just the clothing stores where we shopped....Eleanor's was just one of them.
And, did anyone go to the James Loizu (probably spelled wrong) School of Dance? It was near the Pikestaff and Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors. A group of us took dance lessons from him at Chesterbrook Elementary - Ballroom dancing, a little Virginia Reel and, if we'd been good, we got to twist at the end of the day.
I hope I have stirred some more memories that we can chat about and if anyone has a photo that they'd be willing to share, let me know and we'll get it posted. I hope to scan in some of my old postcards in a future post and I'd love to include some photos. My brother was a photographer for McLean High School and the Northern Virginia Sun, so I hope that maybe he has some pics he can send me.
Maybe I have fed the interest a little so that we can attract some more folks. This is starting out fun for me...and I hope for you too. Keep in touch!!
10 comments:
Hi, Carol:
Awesome post and more memories!! Eleanor's was a more "grown-up" place to shop to me, I think, but we did go there, also, way out to Corner House at 123 and 50 in Fairfax for discount Ladybug and Villager clothes!
Carol:
Our sister (mine and Amy's), Maggie, worked at Evans Farm Inn as a spoonbread girl. What a hoot. We also loved going there to feed the ducks and see the farm animals.
I think I had a friend in elementary school (Lori Darnell) who's mother sang at the Pikestaff. That was way too much of a grownup place for any of us to go to, although I'm pretty sure it was a CIA hangout.
Mesmeralda's still smells the way it did way back then.
Glad you're back and keep the McLean memories coming.
oh yea, i could go for a pizza supreme pizza right about now!
I wrote a longer post earlier today--not sure what happened to it!
One thing I remembered when you mentioned dancing, was playing a Beatles record in 4th grade at school and also doing the twist. And one of the best memories of all--Junior Assembly. In 7th and 8th grade, we had dance lessons at the St. John Episcopal Church on Georgetown Pike. They were taught by the Lawyers, and I remember her being so beautiful when she danced, just like ballroom dancers on tv today. We wore fancy clothes and white gloves!! We learned the waltz, the cha-cha-cha, swing, etc. I always hated free-style dancing because i had no rhythm!! And also refreshments--punch and cookies!
I think the Variety STore was just called the variety store! I remember i got a bathing suit there one summer, so they really had everything!
I also think I was a little afraid of MORT, and i always had to buy shoes that were so hard! Blisters anyone?
There was a fast-food restaurant next to the 7-11 on Chain Bridge/Salona Village--I think it started out as a Hardee's, and then was called Full o'Bull--roast beef sandwiches. I remember being so scandalized about the name!!
Do you remember Geno's back behind the Super Giant?
Amy and Nancy,
There are so many things to talk about - we're remembering a lifetime. Funny thing about Corner House....I used to go there too, but across 123, in the late 1960s was a jeans shop in a little purple house. That purple house was previously yellow, and my family lived there before we moved to McLean. I was too young to remember it, but my brother does. That spot eventually became a Ranch House and then a Chinese restaurant. Connections are funny.
Do you remember David's Village Shop and going to their warehouse sale way down in Alexandria? You got great Ladybug and Villager clothes, John Meyer, John Romaine and Etiene Aigner, which we called "agner." It's still hard for me to change that - I have to make a point to be careful when I talk with people. Anyway, one year I remember going there with my mom and getting 5 skirts and 5 sweaters and a pair of shoes for $50. That might get you one shoe or a pant leg now!! Did you know that Villager is a Liz Claiborne company now and still exists? I have a Villager sweater. And I still have a green pair of my old Villager socks with the dress form logo woven into them. I know that I have a number of the old Ladybug pins, and gold Villager pins that came on oxford shirt collars. I also still have a pair of old Aigner leather and linen shoes. I keep everything - no wonder I started a blog about memories!!
Glad to hear Mesmerelda's is still there!!
And, Yes, I remember Geno's - or was it Gino's?
You've reminded me of a couple more stories that I'll save for another post. And some photos that I'll try and get permission to use - they're mine, and although they were taken in a public place, I'd like to hear from the other folks that it's okay to publish them to the blog. Keep in touch!! I've emailed the link to some people from both Langley and McLean HS, so maybe we'll get some more fun comments.
Okay, I don't have much time today and my memory is fading a bit (it takes longer and longer to retrieve stuff from mental storage) but here are a few tidbits.
Yes, the variety store was just called the Variety Store. It wasn't always in the Salona Village Shopping Center, though. It used to be in a tiny little storefront on Old Dominion Drive, south of the old Chain Bridge Road intersection, behind the JV and OV Carper Esso station, not far from the original Franklin Sherman school building. The new school building had been built by the time I started school (1955); the old one had been built in 1910 I think.
I did have classes in that old building for a time in 5th grade in the fall of 1959. Do you remember the fire escape tube from the second floor of that building? If you looked at the building from the front, that fire escape ran from the upper right front classroom down along the side of the building. We used to climb up the tube after school and slide down it - great fun, until we made so much noise (like, every day) the janitor would come and chase us away... The classroom that the fire escape was attached to was, later, my temporary fifth grade home for a few months.
Anyway, the variety store was in this little two-story building just a little way in front of the old school building. I remember vividly my favorite treat from the store, which I could not acquire often: little packs of wax soda bottles that contained a sweet sugar-flavored liquid. You bit the "cap" off, drank the liquid, and then chewed, like bubblegum, the wax bottle until you had drained every last bit of flavor from it.
That little building also housed, for a time, the offices of the old "Providence Journal", the town newspaper which disappeared about 20 years ago, I think. I once wrote a third-grader's version of "The Night Before Christmas" and submitted it, and Bill (last name escapes me at the moment) the editor printed it. I can't remember the poem at all, except I remember one line referenced "Spanish galoshes". I have no idea what those galoshes rhymed with anymore...
The little "house" (the one-story, brick, flat-roofed building)that contained the library was originally the McLean post office, long before McDonalds' was built. In front of it, and directly across from McDonalds', was a Texaco station. I have vague memory shadows of stopping by the old post office when I was quite small when my mother mailed packages or bought stamps. By the time I learned to read in first grade, the building had become the first home for the library, the "new" post office building having been built a bit further up on Elm Street.
The intersection of the old chain bridge road (123), Old Dominion Drive, and Elm Street was the center of town - a five-sided center controlled by a stoplight that must have been something to navigate on a rainy rush hour evening. The little brick building on 123 in front of McDonalds' was originally the Safeway; I think it became a TV store when the Safeway moved to its new location across from the new Salona Village Shopping Center.
I lived behind the shopping center (our house on Calder Road was the seventh house to be built in Salona Village) and remember when it was built in the mid-50s. The site had been a field, and my brother and I dug what seemed to us to be endless tunnels in the dirt, actually trenches about two feet deep that we covered over with orange crate slats and then piled dirt on. World War II was only about eight or nine years old then, and playing "war" was second only to "cowboys and indians" in our world. We got the crates from the new Safeway; we would walk across the field and across 123 to the grocery and bum the crates from the produce guys at the loading dock.
In 1958, I knew the location of every soda machine in McLean. My pal Alan Shearer and I used to ride our bikes to them everyday after school to collect the bottle caps in burlap sacks. We were preparing for "Coke Day" and "Pepsi Day" at Glen Echo, the Mayland amusement park. Ten cents and ten bottle caps would get you a ride, and we were going to be KINGS of the park. We had amassed perhaps 5,000 of them when, about three weeks before "The Day", his mother got tired of having "those old smelly things" in the cardboard box in his basement and THREW THEM AWAY!!!!! We were CRUSHED!!!!! We never got to Glen Echo.
Thanks Steve for the GREAT Post!!! I'm sure folks will enjoy it. I believe the name of the "TV Store" that replaced the Safeway was Arfax. Sound familiar? You gave me another memory of playing Powderpuff touch football in a field in Salona. Don't remember what the field was attached to - probalby a school. Any idea?
Also gave me another thought about OLD McLean - but I'll save it for the future. Come back and chat again!!
i went to vpi in blacks burg. i remember mr fooz (and foozball) but i think the best subs were from the 'olde sub shoppe' around the corner. their footlong vegetarian subs were great (with all sauces). doug
Carol,
Love reading all about McLean. Brings back a lot of memories. The McLean library, Mesmeralda's, The Joshua Tree, The Corner House which is now a Fuddrucker's...during high school I worked at the Drug Fair on Chain Bridge. I moved to Forest Villa off of Old Dominion and Linway Terrace in '62.
Lived there through Franklin Sherman (where we could play dodge ball), Cooper and Langley, graduating in '73.
It is nice to know Mesmeralda's is still there.
I remember skipping school and riding my horse when Mr. Lyons would come get me.When 495 was being built I raced Jackie Bliss on her quarter horse and beat her on my TB.
we never locked doors and left keys in cars. Teen club was a place to dance and meet up with friends. McDonalds and Tops were the hang out places but you had to back your car in or you were not cool! Pikestaff had the best cheeseburgers besides Prestons drug store where Wes Goings worked who I am now married to. I use to race cars under the bridge that connected VA to MD, I was one of a few girls that could drive a stick shift and fast!! Use to ride my horse to IGA to pick up groceries, they had a hitching post one day my horse got stuck in mud trying to jump a creek, fire dept had to pull her out. Still stay in touch regularly with my close friends from McLean High. We meet in Fredericksburg. So many more memories :))))
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