Chapter 6: The Families of Jonestown (unedited)

CHAPTER 6

The Families of Jonestown

As Austin recalled more of Jonestown, he detailed each home and its residents.  In Austin's time, the first house on the right belonged to Hazel and Chessie Bogar, parents to Garland, Marvin, Linda and Patsy.  Oddly, Austin was not related to the Bogars.  They had a large side yard, one of the few treeless lots in Jonestown.  Marvin Bogar and Austin played horseshoes a lot in that side yard.  With real horseshoes!  He recalled reading that Marvin went on to become a Virginia State Horseshoe champion.  "I suppose our many matches helped him along the way, although I do not recall ever ever beating him."  After Marvin and Garland moved to Richmond, Austin lost tough with them. 

Next to the Bogars lived one of Momma's brothers, Arnold Childs and his wife, Rayburn.  "I remember they had four girls, but I think there were more.  For the devil, I don’t recall their names.  It's too bad because the family was real good to me and we played together a lot," he recalled fondly.  The older girls (Norma, Sylvia, Loretta and Judy) used to take care of me.  Uncle Arnold was well known as a top notch mechanic, very much like his father, Manuel.

On the other side of the Jonestown Road lived Ted and Margie Jones.  The Jones homestead a lovely farm with a good size growing area up the hill behind them.  "I'm pretty sure we were related somehow," he said, "Ted and Margie had three kids, all more or less my age.  We played together a lot."  One son, Ray, worked at a local piano company and still lives in the Potts Creek area, somewhere around Route 18 and the Mill Branch Road.  One of Ray’s sisters, Dreama, was quite lovely but her whereabouts remain a mystery to Austin.  Brenda, the youngest, lives in Low Moor, a town just south of Covington, and is married with children of her own.  

Getting to the Jones' home wasn't easy.  You had to jump the moat which was perhaps 5 feet wide and about the same deep.  It wasn't really a moat but more like a jagged scar in the earth.  This ditch (our moat) was actually a small stream named Sugar Run (which eventually emptied into Potts Creek a few hundred yards further along).  Its source was the only natural spring in the holler.  Perhaps that explains how the place came to be called Jonestown.  Usually, only a trickle of water filled Sugar Run, but during rainstorms it would rise rapidly, enough so to create a dangerous torrent of water.  The Jones family built a wooden bridge over Sugar Run, but it often washed away during severe storms.  Rainwater always seeks the lowest level and as it has over many years, the presence of Sugar Run helps ease flooding for those on the east side of Jonestown.  The Jones family parked their cars on a small plateau surrounded by pine trees. When the heavy rains came, Ted Jones invited everyone to park their cars there to keep them from floating away.

Past the Jones homestead, on the far side of Sugar Run, lived the Dawsons.  Like the Jones family, access to their home required crossing a small wooden bridge which - when it rained hard and the Sugar Run ran high - would also wash away, usually more often than the Jones' bridge.  "I don't recall much about the Dawsons other than in an area where folks had little hard cash," he noted, "the Dawson family was considered very poor."  The original Dawson home was torn down and replaced by a sturdier brick structure in the late 1950s.  Manuel once owned the farm land behind their home, but sold it off years ago.  Austin still winces at the mention of this land, "I know it’s not the same as when I was a kid, but this country is in my blood.  I should have kept that land."

Although their home was not in located in Jonestown proper, the Wright family lived nearby in a farmhouse just behind the Pinnell Chapel.  They were related on Austin's mother’s side, and George and Lyle Wright often looked after him.  Their farm holds many fond memories.  Uncle George had pigs, chickens and other farm animals, and they had a large barn with a supply of hay, too.  Once, when he was real young, Uncle George shot the first taste of raw milk into Austin's face and mouth,  " ... straight out of the cow’s teat! I was shocked and took off running, the whole time trying to determine whether I liked the milk."  It was warm and the flavor unusual.  Uncle George enjoyed a good hearty laugh.  Aunt Lyle made her own butter, cheese, and buttermilk.  Her buttermilk was to die for.   

There were some dangers, too, at that farm.  Uncle George owned a large red bull which he kept behind some fences in a nearby meadow.  At every opportunity, the bull would chase you and as you ran, all you hoped was that he could not bust through that fence.  With sadness, Austin noted, "I don't remember exactly when Uncle George passed away, but the farm was too much Aunt Lyle.  She ended up selling the farm, I think, and that was good because the heavy farm work would have killed her."  Sturdy little Aunt Lyle lived until the age of 100.  An axiom of the Valley is that while the men are strong, the women tend to live longer.