Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406030077
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: CURRENT9 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: |By KATHIE DICKENSON| |SPECIAL TO ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS|
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
PRICES FORK - These days, people pass through this village much too rapidly.
Hurrying out Prices Fork Road, they see little more than a group of houses, a red-brick school and several churches - without realizing what the community used to be.
Once, says community resident Florence Price Kinnear, Prices Fork was a true village, independent and self-reliant.
Despite the changes invading the village, a vibrant sense of tradition remains. It is a place defined less by boundaries than by its history and sense of community.
Kinnear, who lives in a home built by her mother in 1913 across the busy road from her grandparents' Civil-War-era home, is among longtime Prices Fork residents who fear the village's younger people won't remember the community's history.
The village traces its name back to 1838 when a turnpike was built through the community, according to a history written for Prices Fork United Methodist Church by Kinnear's husband, retired professor Lyle Kinnear.
Local legend recounted how numerous sideroads developed off the turnpike. "... there were about ten forks in the several roads and that a family named Price... lived at each fork," wrote Kinnear - hence the village's original name of Prices' Forks.
Even now, any list of participants in a community activity will turn up more than a few Prices.
"People who lived here when World War I began can almost all trace their roots back to the Price brothers -probably 90 percent of them," said Al Hylton, a longtime member of the Prices Fork Grange. Hylton jokingly calls himself "an alien" since he has only lived in the village for 43 years. "I don't have my citizenship papers yet."
The four Price brothers moved here in the 1740s, and with other German settlers formed the New River German Settlement. These early settlers' names read like a random selection from today's phone book: Price, Wall, Olinger, Keister. Soon the German settlement was an integral part of the community and Prices Forks had becoming a bustling farm community.
To preserve the rich memories of the place, one local descendant, Stella Mae Price Keister, joined with Naomi Walton Olinger to write "The Honey Pond: The Village of Prices Forks."
The booklet, completed in 1992, is a combination of historical tradition, recipes and memories. One longtime resident commonly referred to the village as The Honey Pond, believing that those who once lived in Prices Fork would yearn to come back and bury their feet in the imaginary mud of this mystical pond.
Through their book and other community histories, one can catch evocative glimpses of the past: a group of volunteer men moving a church building away from the road while the women prepared dinner on the grounds; the chicken lady, who could cure baby chicks of a throat parasite by twirling a certain blade of grass in their throats; the tragedy of a woman who was struck by lightning and lost her mind; a young girl who saved a piece of kindling from the fireplace of a room where a Methodist Bishop stayed.
Keister, a retired teacher at Prices Fork Elementary School, raised four children at Prices Fork, but regrets that her 11 grandchildren - scattered across the United States - won't have the same youthful bonds.
Residents have a strong commitment to the children who live in or near Prices Fork.
In fact, 65 people who grew up in Prices Fork have become teachers.
Just after the Civil War, a four-room, two-story school for students up to grade nine was built in the village. In the early 1900s, there was still no junior or senior year of school available, except for those who could afford to travel the winding road to Blacksburg. Kinnear's mother, Della Price, brought a teacher from Christiansburg to live with the family and provided a building as a school for senior high students.
That same community support for education is still apparent today for the Prices Fork Elementary School, according to Principal Larry Arrington.
Parents, many of whom attended Price Fork Elementary themselves, are in and out of the school daily, as are other members of the community, according to Arrington and Cynde Scott, former PTA president.
Wilmuth Odell, who lives a stone's throw from the school at Crows Nest Farm,
has worked with the children on horticulture projects for years. The children call her Granny Plant.
The school also gets help from another of the village's tradition's - the Prices Fork Grange. "The Grange has always been more than generous in giving us money for playground equipment and helping us with field trips," Scott said.
Because of the Grange, many children can attend field trips who otherwise could not go. The Grange also was instrumental in building athletic and recreational facilities.
In fact, the Grange won the 1993 National Grange Community Service Award, largely because of its involvement in education.
Hylton, a long-time member, said the Grange's emphasis is on youth in general and education in particular.
The Grange also is behind the community's annual event - the Prices Fork Fair, a slice of small-town life, complete with prizes for the best zucchini, strongest horse and cutest baby.
The Grange sponsors the fair more as a community tradition now - since the fair has been supplanted by the weekly bingo game as the Grange's fund-raiser, said Treasurer Margaret Sullivan.
The fair dates to 1932, just two years after the Grange itself was founded.
Much like the community itself, the Grange has been resilient. In 1963, down to seven members, the Grange nearly turned in its charter.
Hylton said a call was issued for members, and about 20 joined. Eventually, the membership was built up to about 63 - and the Grange survived.
The village, part of which now is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has seen tremendous changes since it thrived as a farm community in the late 1700s and 1800s.
The Civil War and the Depression had profound effects on the village, but the biggest change took place when the Radford Arsenal was built just after World War II.
"That's when the large farms began to break up," said Kinnear, who once taught
Latin and senior English at Blacksburg High School.
The farmers couldn't compete with the wages paid at the arsenal, said Kinnear. There was no more labor available for the farmers, who could not cultivate the land unless they had sons to work. "Eventually, the blackberry briars took over."
In addition, Kinnear recalled, the village was deluged with people who came to work at the plant. Without inns, "people stayed anywhere they could find - chicken coops, anywhere." Many residents were pressed to take in boarders.
To some, though, the arsenal was a boon to the area. Keister, whose father was a coal miner, recalls that the arsenal gave new blood to the community.
First to improve, she recalled, were people's houses. Wages allowed them to improve their lives and send their children to college. The opportunities created by education, however, also brought other changes. Keister recalls that the families of her father and his siblings all lived within sight of each other, and she grew up in a lively jumble of cousins. Her own grandchildren have missed that experience.
Change has been a constant in the life of Prices Fork.
Next year, the village is scheduled to suffer yet another change. The Virginia Department of Transportation plans to widen Prices Fork Road, taking down some of the stately trees that now shade the narrow curving road through the community.
Even so, Prices Fork's longtime residents are determined their community's history and spirit will endure.
by CNB