In this place: Pearisburg, Virginia

Behind the Bank, 2011 - Pearisburg, Virginia 

The House Behind the Bank

The rock faced concrete block building on the far right of the picture above is the First National Bank of Pearisburg building. A restaurant operates there now. A row of houses once filled the space between the house on the left and the bank.

When my grandparents moved from West Virginia to Pearisburg in the 1940s, they lived in one of the houses behind the bank. By the time I came along, my grandparents had moved to a new house on the other side of town, but I remember the row of houses behind the bank. At some point, several of the houses, including the one my grandparents had lived in, were torn down to make way for a parking lot. The picture to the left is my dad's younger sister standing in front my grandparent's house behind the bank in 1947. The house in the background is still standing, and I photographed it when I visited last spring. That house is vacant now, and the porch has been removed, but it is still recognizable as the house next door in the 1947 photo.

My grandparents lived in a house that once stood next door to this house 

At the end of the war, my dad returned to Pearisburg and trained as a watchmaker on the GI Bill. He went to work at the jewelry store on Wenonah Avenue.

My mother's sister and her husband also lived in Pearisburg, and they helped mom find a job and move to Pearisburg. My aunt was the bookkeeper for the jewelry store where dad worked, and she introduced the young watchmaker to her sister.

All of these threads came together in the living room of that now vanished house behind the bank where mom and dad were married in 1946.  My grandfather performed the ceremony.

Tomorrow: The Pearis Theater