Roanoke Meet and Memory Lane

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I'm in Roanoke, just 2 hours from C'ville, with Andrew and Margaret for a meet tomorrow.  So I decided to find the house Mom and Dad lived in (with Kate and Anne---7 and 3---respectively) for what turned out to be God's way of getting them from Richmond in the early-mid '70's to Columbia (1978-1991).  It was a mere 9-month stop for them, but long enough to (almost) bring Emily and me on board.  We were evacuated just 3 weeks after they moved from this house to Columbia.  And what finds BOTH properties were!

They weren't kidding it's a STEEP hill up to the end of their street.  This picture doesn't come close to doing it justice.

BIG, beautiful trees in the wonderful unique parking lot of a driveway, with a view to boot!  What a great place to ride bikes!

As Mom described, you drive up to the side of the house.

Couldn't quite tell what was going on with the chain link fence in the back.

Heading towards the front door...

             ...the perfect serpentine wall of which they were so fond!

Oh, heck.  As long as we're trespassing, why don't we go all out...

Andrew and Margaret stood by the car yelling at me to come on along quickly before I got arrested!  (Good kids, I suppose:-)

But this huge, FLAT, driveway (we don't do flat in Charlottesville)....can you imagine raising kids here?!?  Would have been a wonderful property!

501 Dillard Way SW :-)

 

Ironically, we got absolutely no pictures of the kids at their meet, only videos of their wonderful swims, including Andrew's 9% time drop (12-second) on his 100-breast!  Margaret loved her 100-IM and Andrew was excited to have his first opportunity to swim the 200-free.  A fun meet, even if COVID protocols kept us sitting in the car most of the day.