My family is originally from Northern Virginia. Falls Church to be exact. We moved to South Georgia when I was 4, then to Southern California when I was 6 and finally back to South Georgia when I was 10.

As a result of all that moving around, I did not see my extended family very often. Due to school, we almost always went “home” to visit in the summer. I remember the trips in the 1969 Volkswagen Beatle from Georgia to Virginia and the two times we flew from California to Virginia. It was usually a yearly event. We would travel all the way up and then spend a week running around seeing all my Mom’s sisters and her brother. It was the one time a year that I would also see my Grandparents.

My Dad is an only child, so my sister and I had his parents all to ourselves. Most of the time we would stay with his parents when we went to visit.

In 1981, we were living in Mission Viejo in Southern California. We had been out there a few years and for a family vacation, dad bought plane tickets so we could go “home” to Virginia that summer.

It was an amazing trip and my first time on an airplane. Granddad met us at the airport and drove us to their house. This was the same house that my Dad grew up in. If it was 800 square feet, it was too big. My Uncle once joked that you could spit from one end of the house to the other. What that house lacked in size, the yard made up for in spades.

This yard was huge. They were at the top of a big hill. The house was almost straight up from the street. There was a concrete walkway up the hill to the house. It was terraced with three sets of steps and a landing. The handrails were galvanized pipe, painted green and there was a wonderful boxwood hedge on at least one side. The back yard gently sloped away from the house for maybe 50 feet before dropping off all the way to the end of the yard. And I mean dropping off like 20 to 30 feet in elevation. The yard ended at the bottom of the hill where Granddad had an old shed. If you looked over the back fence, you could see an old well that was part of the original farm before the land was subdivided in the early 1950’s.

Here is a good aerial view of the house and yard.

Continue reading for the rest of the story and some cool old pictures.

The top of the back yard, near the house, had three or four large boxwood bushes. Each one was trimmed to be a half dome. It looked like there were three or four green snowballs in the grass. Just behind them and just as the terrain started to break, there was the largest black walnut tree that I have ever seen. It was at least 5′ in diameter, if not larger.

I am a very sentimental guy and sometimes what I remember best are smells. My Granddad’s yard had a certain smell to it. It was a combination of the type of grass, the boxwoods and the black walnut tree. The walnut tree had this amazing earthy smell to it. The walnuts that were dropped were covered in a green outer coating. It had a very pungent smell. I can almost smell it now.

But mostly, I remember the smell of the boxwoods.

How do you write about smells? How can I explain it? I can feel it and my mind remembers it, but I do not know how to put it into words. But this weekend, when I was pruning my own boxwood hedge, that familiar, yet distant, smell came to me. It took me back to 1981 and to my Granddad’s back yard.

Boxwoods have a particular smell. If you have ever been around them, you know what I am talking about. The funny thing is, in the summer, the smell is even stronger. It is like the heat “cooks” the bushes and they release even more scent. Since we always visited Virginia in the summer, that is the smell I remember most.

The boxwoods in the back yard were very large. I remember my sister and I playing inside of the bushes. They were almost hollow and made great forts. But there was always that smell. It just hung in the air.

Our vacation in 1981 was one of the best times we ever had in Virginia. We went into DC and saw all the Smithsonian museums. We have pictures of me and my sister with my Granddad in front of one of the lunar landers at the Air and Space Museum and a picture of me on a dinosaur outside the Natural History Museum.

The fondest memory I have is when Granddad took me down to the “Country”

The “Country” is what we called Granddad’s farm. It was located in Louisa, Virginia, about three hours south west of Falls Church. It was his father’s farm. He and his brothers and his sister had turned it into a hunting/fishing lodge. They had a large garden on the land and the land backed up to the North Anna River. Granddad’s Mom and Dad died in the very early 1920’s in the great flu epidemic. He was an orphan at 2 but was raised by his Maternal Grandparents. They farmed on the land until all the boys grew up and went off to fight in World War II. After the war, they tore down what remained of the old house and built a small cabin on part of the old foundation.

My Granddad woke me up real early and we headed out. Just the two of us. The only thing I remember about the trip was stopping for breakfast at some country diner, out in the middle of nowhere. I had eggs and scrapple. Oh my goodness, I LOVE me some scrapple. Especially Rapa Scrapple. Anyway. We got to the cabin and he showed me around. He took me to his garden and showed me the metal TV dinner trays he had strung across the fence that bounded the garden. It was something to help keep all the vegetable hungry animals out of his garden.

He grabbed his .22 rifle and we headed into the woods, down a faintly visible trail. I knew from other visits, that this trail led down to a spring. As we walked along the trail, he stopped me and squatted down. He pointed out into the woods to what looked like small ridges in the ground. The ground cover and ferns almost made it impossible to see, but you could see them, rows of little ridges. Those, he told me, were the old furrows from my Great-Grandfather’s cornfield.

We continued on the trail until we heard some rustling in the woods. Again, we squatted down and got real still. I remember my heart was pounding. Was it a deer? Was it one of the ever-elusive turkeys he was always telling stories about? What was it? It turned out to be a turtle. A slow turtle hauling itself through the woods.

At the end of the trail was the spring. There was an old wooden box built around the spring to protect it. Granddad opened it up and fished his hands up under it and pulled out two large crawdads. He pointed to paint markings on the trees across from the spring and told me that was the property line.

Much later in the afternoon, the rest of my family showed up. There were all kinds of things to do. My sister and I explored every inch of the area. We checked out the primitive outhouse and the garden and all the interesting things inside the cabin.

I do not remember if we stayed the night, but we must have because we went fishing and my Granddad taught me how to shoot a gun.

Now, my Mom was not very thrilled with the idea, but Dad talked her into it. Granddad nailed a paper plate with pen drawn circles to represent the bulls-eye to a tree and he began to show me how to aim.

The gun was too big, but he stuck with me and I did pretty well. I have always been a good shot and I think it is because Granddad taught me so well.

We shot the gun for what seemed like hours, but it was probably only an hour, if that.

Digging for worms

Granddad teaching me to shoot

Me and my Granddad

It was such a nice vacation that we hated to leave. But as all good things must, it came to an end. There were tears and hugs at the airport.

Once we got home, Dad developed all the pictures and they made Granddad and Granny a framed picture with all the best shots. That picture collage now hangs at my Dads house.

Life went on until one Saturday in March of 1983. I was outside playing in the dirt when Mom came and got me. Something had happened as Dad had tears in his eyes. They explained that Granddad had a heart attack and had died. I was not quite 10.

Dad left that day to help his Mom and we all came out a few days later for the funeral. I do not remember much about the funeral except for three things.

I remember Dad taking me over to Granddad and explaining that what I was seeing was just a shell and that what made Granddad, Granddad, was up in Heaven.

I also remember Dad telling me to always remember Granddad the way he was when we saw him on that last family vacation. He told me I would always have that memory.

Finally, I remember the backyard and the boxwoods.

But it was March and very cold and the boxwoods just did not have that smell.