Truckin' on the Western Branch

In 1967 they moved the shop to College Drive and Hampton Roads Parkway to property they bought from the Matthews family. College Drive used to be called Marford Road for Marine Forwarding Depot. Kids used to race cars ther e.

I always enjoyed going to work—something different every day. I worked with all the equipment, did repairs and welding. The Griffin brothers seemed to do everything in the world . We worked with all the farmers, the Trotmans and the Matthews, Lee Whitehurst and Ashton Lewis and more. Sometimes we didn’t get paid until the fall harvest. When we worked for the Riverside Dairy on Taylor Road, we got paid in milk. The Griffins moved houses and did custom harvesting. Dad and Uncle Jack were doing some rush harvesting in Newport News and had to drive the combines across the James River Bridge. They were barred at first but argued that farm equipment was rated with emergency vehicles during harvest time. When they were right and they knew they were right, you couldn’t stop them. We’re all hardheaded. We were the largest independent milk haulers around—mostly from the Mennonite farms like Yoder Dairy, and others like Maple Farms Dairy, Ed Gaskins and Tom Copeland. We picked up milk in large stainless steel tanks and had to be certified to sample and weigh the milk. We also did auto repair, land clearing, and laid pipe. Western Branch Diesel was a major customer. We did landscaping and reset the headstones on the Old Greene Farm cemetery. We had a salvage yard with 800 cars and also did construction. We built Loving Funeral Home, Seahorse Plastics, Churchland Hardware and more.

Virginia Griffin. Image by Sheally

We also ran tow trucks including Tiny Tim—a 2½-ton Army truck and the largest wrecker around. There were a hundred incidents with Tiny Tim, sparks and dust flew, cables broke. We used snow chains and burlap bags to rescue cows from a ditch. One night

another tow truck and two cars went into the ditches along College Drive at the same time. I pulled the whole train of them out at 3 a.m.

Dad went on your handshake and your word. Churchland was a stand-up community. I walked into a restaurant with my daughter, Christen, and Ashton Lewis and another man stood up to greet her. Very much gentlemen and you rarely see that anymore, but it was the way we were raised.

After Dad died in 1981, Jack and I ran the business. The economy was tanking and we scaled way back. Our property on College Drive was our retirement and there was no money left in the business so we sold the land to McDonald’s for a fast food place.

Virginia Griffin Richmond native Virginia Griffin was valedictorian of the class of 1943 at Thomas Jefferson High School and worked at the C & O Railroad. She met Jack Griffin and married him when she was 18 and he was on his way to war. He was a country boy who suddenly found himself in a foxhole in the Battle of the Bulge. It was a pivotal point in his life and he always had a war story. I lived with his family on Towne Point Road where the post office is now and worked at the Seaboard Railroad. I missed Richmond and shopping at Miller and Rhodes and lunch at the Thalhimer’s Tea Room where you always dressed in hat and gloves. Jack was away at war for one and a half years but I adjusted and made friends. We visited Ocean View and with Seaboard we got discounts on the Baltimore packet steamers. I got us an apartment in Portsmouth, then a little house in River Park. Jack opened the shop about 1942, and Gordon came in the next year. They were good workers, hard workers, but they were not businessmen. They often worked for free or didn’t collect on bills. It was a struggle for a long time. They started near where the barrel factory had been, then moved to Towne Point Road and then to College Drive. The Griffins could do anything. Everybody in Churchland has a story about Tiny Tim.

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