This is the family who owned Variety Shades, and sold a parcel to Dominion for the proposed compressor station site.

I wanted to write a bit about the Variety Shade house that I knew as a child before it was torn down to prevent a fire that might burn down the nearby trees planted for VSLVA. No one had lived in the house for some years, vandals had broken in leaving all sorts of trash in the house, and no one in the family had an interest in living there or restoring it to its former beauty. I am not sure just when it was torn down, but I know it still existed in the 1960’s when Tom and I visited it and saw what a wreck it was. There are some pictures of it at that time on the VSLVA website. My memories of the house itself are inextricably connected to my experiences at Variety Shade, so I shall write about both.

My most vivid memories consist of the summer of 1943 (I think) when our grandmother, Big Mom or Mum as she was called, took Marcia, my older sister, and me to spend the summer there. After a week or so we were joined by our cousin Betsy Harrison. She was driven to Variety Shade by her father, who brought Pop, our grandfather to stay for the rest of the summer. I have vague memories of being at Variety Shade earlier with Sister (Emily Harrison Wilson) and Mum when I was quite young, maybe three or four. I will never forget catching my hand in a mouse trap and being laughed at as the biggest mouse ever caught in a trap!

Later as a teenager I went back to Variety Shade with Mum to go through Aunt Fannie’s possessions after she died. Aunt Fannie was Mum’s older sister, a spinster, who boarded with relatives in Buckingham County in the winter and always joined whoever came to Variety Shade in the summer. She was stone deaf and decidedly odd. I am now ashamed that we had such little compassion for her.

First for a bit of history. Thomas Bondurant, my great grandfather lived there with his family before the Civil War and was considered one of the finest farmers in the county of Buckingham. There is a silver cup in the Buckingham Courthouse which was awarded to him for being the most outstanding farmer in the county. I have forgotten the date on the cup. After the war the family moved to Auburn, Alabama where Thomas Bondurant taught agriculture for many years. I think the family went to Variety Shade every summer. There was no electricity or running water in the house, and the only heat would have been provided by fireplaces in each room. All in all, not a very comfortable place to be in winter.

Cooking was done on a wood stove in an indoor kitchen which was added to the original house. As was common in the early 19th century houses, the kitchen had originally been in an adjacent building in case of fire while cooking, but that building had been torn down. Close by the house were several small buildings, the ice house, the smoke house, another (I am not sure what it was used for) and farther away, the school house. All these were falling down when I went to Variety Shade as a young child. The pump was nearby, and all water for cooking and washing had to be carried from the pump into the house.

The house itself was a large two story clapboard house with a front veranda where we often sat in the evening to chat or to visit with Uncle Sam and Aunt Sally, our grandmother’s brother and his wife, when they came to see us. They lived on a farm called Seven Oaks which was nearer to Buckingham Courthouse. We had few visitors since this was during World War II, and gas was rationed. We did not have a car so we had to get to Buckingham for supplies in a horse and buggy driven by Mr. Hackett, the caretaker, a small jolly man who chewed and spit tobacco. Kerosene for the lamps was one thing we often had to go to Buckingham Courthouse to procure.

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