As a child clover, bees and myself were very close. Too close. I have stepped on so many honey bees that the count is well past single digits. My field of delight and peril existed between my grandmother’s antebellum house on Three Chopt Road in Richmond and the tiny little two car garage size home my grandparents built for my dad, mom and myself. The builders literally moved the garage to the side and back and turned it into a house. I’m not sure why they just did not convert the garage where it stood but that they did not. The end result did make for easy parking.
Me on the steps of the Little House front door which was situated on the side facing an overgrown field where the clothes line for both houses was located.
And it was a wonderful flat cement play area. I drove my stubborn pedal car around and around and created so many dirt towns in that parking space.
As good as that was the best play area was in the backyard that stood between the Big House and the Little House. There was a huge weeping willow tree, a big shrub that was open in the middle to create the perfect hideout for a kid. It was where I tried to teach myself to read after moaning “Why is this taking so long?” not even understanding what ‘this’ was and deciding that maybe learning to read would help. But the clover was the absolute best and the bees loved it as much as I did. They were busy gathering nectar all day long and I never let them stop me from dancing barefoot through the soft flowers and good luck leaves. Mom would not let me wear my shoes. Tougher up your feet she told me. Shoes were costly and saved for going out. Even Keds, the only sport shoe available. I always got a new blue pair of Keds for summer. I yearned and begged for a red pair. Or even white. But I was denied.
Star, me, Suzanne, Peyton and Rick on the stairs above the bee landing
The bee sting only lasted a short while. Years later when we discovered bees in the entire outside wall of the Big House we understood the attraction to the close by clover. Those bees were entrenched. Mother Leigh tried every which way from Sunday to get them out. Nothing worked. During warm weather anyone using the popular front stairs (the back stairs were tiny, and curved in a tight spiral, meant for servants only) had to negotiate a path fraught with bee bodies, some dead, some dying, all with stingers. My poor cousin Jett always managed to get stung. The bees never flew in the house, only died on the stairs. Or more specifically on the top landing which was down several steps from the long hall that ran the length of the second floor. Three bedrooms ran along one side and had interior connecting doors. There was an ample closet across from the bedrooms next to the central bathroom and a sunporch beside that. My grandmother’s room was at the back off of the hall and had its own bathroom with an interior as well as hall door. The adjoining linen closet was always full of fresh off the clothes line sun drenched sheets that smelled heavenly.
There was also a winding open stairway, a continuation of the main stairs, to the third floor attic which was harrowing to get to because even with rails you could see all the way down to the first floor. And it was a long way. But once through the full size door we endlessly played dress up with the few clothes hanging up there. Among them were bridesmaid dresses apparently from my aunt’s weddings. They were elegant looking full length taffeta affairs with puffy sleeves and encompassed yards of material. Each being a different color they were perfect for our imagined events. The house proper was full of furniture, books, to the extent of organized clutter but the attic was empty save the hanging clothes and so we could preen and pretend to our hearts delight. There were two dormer style windows at the front and natural light created a fort like feel (descriptor compliments of cousin Peyton) to the entire area. It had wooden flooring that stretched from eave to eave with only the least accessible parts left without flooring. When we lived in the Little House I was allowed to set up a play kitchen in the dormers and it was perfect for me and most likely the adults because it got me out of the way for hours. My grandparents were still active in the church then and took on renters for the house. Mom became very good friends with renter Mickey Pope and their friendship continued even after the Pope’s moved. But back to the clothes. We remained in the attic because it was so big and empty and we could not get in trouble if no one saw us. I recall at least one time creating a fashion show downstairs using the pocket doors for each grand entrance. Rick most likely donned something mens wear like. He would not have been left out.
Donny & I had our wedding reception at Three Chopt because it was made for such an occasion. The bees came in the high window behind me.
The house lower floor had a huge central entrance hall complete with a full size oriental rug that saw many games invented by me the oldest cousin, a living room with fireplace off to the left (the second floor bedroom just above had a fireplace as well sharing the chimney), a dining room that was reachable from the living room or the hall via double hung pocket doors which were never closed unless we grandchildren were playing a game that involved the doors. This was rare because the adults commandeered the living room for bridge and closing the doors made things too stuffy.
At the back of the hall and just beyond the floating stair case was a small library which held the one telephone and a small television. It had wall to ceiling book cases built on the back wall with a door to the pantry in between. The main hall merged into a smaller hall that ran alongside the dining room and library. It had a sink with a draining board which is where as a teen I washed my hair because it was not in a popular bathroom and rarely used for anything. This tiny hall opened onto a general space that got you to the pantry on the right, the eat in kitchen to the back on the left, the tiny backstairs located between the kitchen and the dining room, or a study directly ahead which my grandfather used when they first moved into the house.
There was a maid’s room complete with bathroom that used to be accessible only from the screened in back porch off of the kitchen but the back of the closet connected to the pantry so a door was cut to make it more user friendly in cold weather. My aunt Keese and her husband Martin always claimed this room. (It was my grandfather’s before he died.) Mom and Dad, my aunt IG and her husband Dick took two of the upstairs bedrooms, we kids, seven of us in all, got the big master bedroom with single iron beds for each. As we grew older my cousin Rick was moved to the downstairs study because of propriety but he always snuck back upstairs.
My uncle Martin always organized the Easter egg hunts. And they were epic as the house had a huge pine tree shaded side yard that flowed into a formal garden with the aforementioned field beyond that.
There was another landing before you got to the bottom of the front staircase but the bees liked the top landing best. We played many a game on those steps like button button usually always thought up by me being the oldest cousin and put in charge so the adults could play endless bridge. We always used the lower landing and steps to avoid the bees. There was a Harry Potter style closet under the stairs that was so full of coats it was not even good for hide and seek which for us was a game better played outside anyway because of the vast area to pick your hiding place. We tried but always got too scared to hide in the dirt floor single car garage under the house screened in porch that could only be accessed by driving the entire way around the house. It connected to the basement proper by a dirt crawl space that spooked all of us. But we had plenty of other hiding options and in the waning daylight you could absolutely hide in a tree shadow and the seeker would walk right by you.
The basement was a world unto its own. It had a typical not really offensive old basement musty smell and could be spooky if you let your imagination take hold. But it was light because all of the rooms had windows, the ones on the enclosed steps side were high but plentiful. The steps were a continuation of the winding upper stairs but with a door on the kitchen level. There was a coal room off to the left that the delivery truck could easily pour in coal via a chute. Straight ahead were two bedroom type rooms with doors always left open and nice casement windows. There was a short hall between the coal room and the bedrooms that lead to an outside door which opened under the steep steps up to the kitchen screened in porch. To the right outside was a separate dirt floor gardening room with big windows and built in work tables. The outside wall along this room was always sunny and here my grandmother planted spearmint for her legendary sweet tea. Planting mint was always one of the first things she did when moving to a new parsonage.
Back in the basement and to the right at the bottom of the stairs was a big laundry room. It had deep sinks and an old washing machine. There with a brick wall a few feet tall beyond which was the crawl space dirt. In the summer the adults would sneak away to this cool area to set up their bridge table. We kids didn’t care, that meant more open space upstairs for us which probably was when we put on fashion shows.
All in all we fit comfortably into the house and filled it with love and laughter every Christmas, Easter and summer days before the bay cottage was built. Thanks to my grandfather three decades of Jett family history made their mark on 6416 Three Chopt Road. As a minister family their life was always on the move and parsonages were homes. My grandfather promised my grandmother that he would buy her any house she wanted when they retired and to think about it. I am paraphrasing but she basically told him that she did not need to think about it and told him that the Three Chopt Road house was the one she wanted. He sold three lots on Broad Street to pay for the house and it was theirs. (It had been occupied by many cats apparently according to my aunt Keese and my grandparents tried everything they could think of to rid the house of cat pee smell and finally had to resort to airing the house out unoccupied for a year as they were not ready to move in just yet anyway.)
Later their three children, my aunt Florence Leigh known to all as IG (Keese’s childhood version of her sister’s name), my dad Star Four, and Clarice better know as Keese, laughingly lamented that if my grandfather had not sold those three Broad Street lots the family would be rich. But of course we were rich and the house was a big part of that. For three decades the Big House made as much of an impact on us as we did on it. Our good times still float through those pocket doorwayed, radiator heated, no air conditioned fourteen foot ceilings rooms.
View from across Three Chopt Road. There was a semi-circular driveway lined with daffodils in the spring, a privy hedge along the road side and a beautiful Japanese cherry tree on the left mid front yard. A gift to my grandmother and her pride. It was a breathtaking beauty when in bloom.
