Truckin' on the Western Branch

New people are moving in now but the community is not as close and it would be nice to see West Norfolk back the way it was before. People do band together for problems like when Cogentrix installed a steam pipe that sounded like a jet plane had landed in the front yard. We got them to put a silencer on it. Or when we knew permits were lacking to implode the old Virginia Chemicals building or when the terminal trains were going to block one way out of West Norfolk.

Maurice Dennis Maurice Dennis grew up on a 35-acre family farm halfway between West Norfolk and Churchland.

I was in eighth grade when we moved to West Norfolk by the Coast Guard road to the family farm of my great-grandfather and grandfather. West Norfolk was a very small community with small houses and everyone knew each other . We truck-farmed cantaloupes and sold for them for five and ten cents each. We had pigs, chickens and ponies. We also raised corn and sold asparagus at Proctor and Gamble Skippy Peanut Butter plant in Portsmouth where my father worked as a mechanic. Daddy worked all the time and on the farm there were no vacations.We had one car so I rode the bus to Churchland High. I rode a pony to A. W. Johnson’s store at the end of the farm lane at West Norfolk Road or across the bridge to Port Norfolk where there

was a BeLo. The first West Norfolk Bridge was a walking bridge with a turnstile in the middle and cost five cents. We were in a very isolated area—you could only court a girl as far as your pony could go. Churchland Baptist was my lifelong church. I used to be hypnotized by the stained glass window with my great-grandfather’s name on it. My grandparents lived in a two-story four-room frame house with a wood stove. I chopped kindling but it was always cold there.

Sheila Grimsley. Images by Sheally

We did a lot of hunting on the farm and went swimming and fishing in the Elizabeth River near Craney Island. We ice skated on the frozen lake. I built a treehouse with my cousins who lived on the farm. It took a year and I sat out a 1955 hurricane in that treehouse. Craney Island Local lore suggests that the name Craney Island comes from the earliest English settlers who mistakenly assumed that the masses of egrets and herons populating the area were really cranes. Over the years the point of land near the mouth of the Elizabeth has been popular for fishing, swimming, motorcycle racing. Craney Island’s strategic location figured in both the War of 1812 and the Civil War. In 1836 a “pest house” for isolating people with serious communicable diseases such as yellow fever and smallpox was built there. Craney Island has also been used as a Navy refueling depot, a city trash dump and a rare bird habitat.

In the 1900s there were rumors of UFO’s over the area. Carolyn Honeycutt said, “There were always rumors of strange things going on there—light and a low droning sound.”

Linda and Maurice Dennis. Images by Sheally

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