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 entire 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
