Hank, Ben, and Ray and Other Memories

 

Hank, Ben, and Ray

And Other Memories

 

Five Points in Norview (a section of Norfolk, Virginia) was a meeting place back in the 1950s and 1960s. There Sewells Point Road, Chesapeake Boulevard, and Norview Avenue converged.

 

The men, fathers, and uncles, met at their watering hole, Vann’s. It was a beer joint, and it was located next to the Be-Lo Grocery Store. Those businesses faced Sewells Point Road.

 

Most of the employment in Norview, the entire area, was the United States Navy. My father worked at the Naval Supply Center (NSC) on the Navy Operating Base (NOB).

 

When I advanced from elementary school, the newer junior high school experience was a jolt. It seems that there was less control of students by teachers in the classroom and in the halls of the school. Junior high brought on the change of classes every fifty-five minutes, and a change of teachers. Wow. That was great. That began in 1958.

 

Norview Junior High School was the old Norview High School campus. As I recall there were three different buildings: the main building with two or three stories; the old elementary school building (my first through sixth grades were there); and another building, probably where the shops were, and the band. I was in the band – a trumpeter-convert to French Horn.

 

Downhill from the “band” building (yes, a gradual decline going off campus) was Twine’s Grocery Story. Before school and after school, Twine’s was at those moments not a grocery store. It was a hangout for junior high kids. It had no soda fountain.

 

Twine’s faced Sewells Point Road bordering the junior high campus, and about one quarter to a half-mile from Five Points proper. The side of Twine’s facing the school was the area for smokers. Unofficial, of course.

 

My home was on the other side of the school from Twine’s. That meant that when I walked to school in the mornings – there were only five houses between my house and the school – I never passed by Twine’s where the morning smokers gathered. No telling how my clothes would have smelled had I joined in with them. My luck, however, was that I was surrounded on four sides by fourteen-year-old smokers in the classroom.

 

Eventually I discovered Hank’s. This was not my discovery. One of my friends, probably an older friend, suggested that we walk to Hank’s one afternoon after school. The walk was beyond Twine’s near the center of Five Points, and further away from my home.

 

Hank’s had a soda fountain. It had six bar stools, a juke box, and a pin-ball machine. It was really a hobby shop. But I am sure that Hank made a lot of money from serving up fountain cokes: vanilla and cherry. I had never heard of either.

 

Hank’s owner was Hank Bachman. To me at that time, Hank was just a friendly man with red hair and a strong voice, which means he had a strong, dominant personality. He needed to be that way because most of his customers, I suspect, were junior high and high school students. During the working day Hank probably had his hobby clientele to take care of. But after school Hank’s the store was inundated with students.

 

I learned only years later that Hank Bachman and Ben Buckner (the owner of the barber shop next door) were World War II veterans. I suspect the same of Mr. Twine.

 

Woody Norman: written on April 8, 2020