Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [66]
Around Town
Manassas is still an important link for Virginia produce, evidenced by the Farmer’s Market held every Thursday and Saturday morning on Church Street. Vendors come from as far away as the Shenandoah Valley. Whether you’re talking pork products or scones, it’s all hand-grown, raised or baked. It was the smell of baked good that drew us to two stalls adjacent to one another. In one, a local family, immigrants from West Africa, sold a variety of breads. In the other, an older couple from West Virginia sold their own assortment of baked goods.
John and Brenda “Mama” Bowling have been bringing their goodies to the Manassas market for 16 years. “Mama makes 10 flavors of scones,” says John of his wife, whose name and likeness grace their company’s labels: “Mama’s Goodies.”
“And they’re not dry like some scones; they’re extra sweet. Cross between a biscuit and a cookie. That’s how my mama and hers made them back in West Virginia for us kids to eat during the day.”
“Back home” is Coalwood, W.Va., setting for the film “October Sky.” John went to school with “those boys,” and played in the same fields. Their fathers were all coal miners. John and Brenda married there, then moved to Manassas about 20 years ago.
In the next booth over, the two young West African boys press the hard sell for goods their family of eight bakes at home in Sterling, Virg. Originally hailing from Togo in West Africa, the family named their baking enterprise “Becky’s Pastries,” after their littlest daughter.
“Our sweet Portuguese bread is like no other – you won’t find it in any store,” says Komlan Sessou, an enthusiastic teenage businessman. Jalapeño cheese bread is another specialty the family makes.
You’ll likely find these vendors, and a dozen others – many Hispanic farmers with vegetables and plants – at the Farmer’s Market April through October. It’s open Thursdays from 7 am to 1 pm and Saturdays from 7 am to 2:30, although we noted that several were packing up by 1 pm, so get there early!
Such ethnic diversity and the entrepreneurial spirit exemplify Northern Virginia. Old Town Manassas is a remnant of a small town surrounded by urban sprawl. There are even traffic jams in Old Town on any given summer Saturday. Just across the tracks, “real” Manassas, a modern city of more than 35,000 people, is a bedroom community for Washington DC, just 30 miles away. That just makes the gem of Old Town all that more special.
Attractions
At the visitor center in the railroad depot, pick up the Walking Tour and Driving Tour brochures of Old Town Manassas. Old Town is best experienced walking – it’s only about six blocks long and three wide. The walking tour includes the 1914 Old Town Hall, a 1908 candy factory, the 1875 red sandstone Old Presbyterian Church, the community’s first bank, built in 1896, and the Connor Opera House, where the last reunions of Mosby’s Rangers were held. The Manassas Museum is the last stop on the walking tour, but you could spend a couple of hours here alone, exploring the history of the railroad junction and of the Virginia Piedmont. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. $3 adults, $2 seniors and children age 6-17 (9101 Prince William Street, tel. 703-368-1873, www.ManassasMuseum.org)
Located about a mile southwest of Old Town on Wellington Road is the Manassas Industrial School/Jennie Dean Memorial, an intriguing re-creation of the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth that opened in 1894. Its founder, Jennie Dean, was born a slave in 1852 in Prince William County. Her dream was to create a school where young black men and women could learn marketable trades. It remained