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It's holiday time in Reedville want to go?

December 4, 2007 12:35 am

FROM A Christmas tour of beautifully decorated houses--some accessed by boat--to a model train display that includes a Fredericksburg street scene from the 1920s, the Reedville Fishermen's Museum offers a unique holiday opportunity this weekend.

The main event is the "Christmas on Cockrell's Creek House Tour." Visitors can tour a handful of festively decorated homes, some dating back to the menhaden captains who made the town at the tip of the Northern Neck a thriving hub of maritime activities.

To get a feel for the festivities--which include breakfast with Santa Saturday after he arrives at the museum dock on a vintage buy boat--I visited last week with three folks involved with the event.

Getting started

Carol Cole had a broom in her hand as she and a handful of other volunteers worked to clean up the William Walker House last week.

Working upstairs in a house that was refurbished to resemble a typical waterman's home in the 1920s, Cole said she was the one who suggested holding a Christmas tour as a museum fundraiser in 1993.

She said it went well in its first few years, but really began to draw in a larger crowd once members of the local Smith Point Sea Rescue team volunteered their boats to shuttle visitors from house to house.

"That made it sort of unique. There aren't many Christmas tours where you get to visit one or more of the houses by boat," said Cole.

She noted the work of the Chesapeake Bay Garden Club, decorating the five houses open on Main Street and in nearby Fleeton.

Cole said the tour sells 800 or so tickets most years, and gets visitors from Fredericksburg, Northern Virginia, Richmond and Tidewater.

While many will simply walk from house to house on Main Street, the small boat flotilla will take visitors to the home in Fleeton, and/or give ticket holders a scenic tour of Reedville Harbor.

Cole said the fundraiser, which includes a display of festive holiday tables done by area designers, helps the museum's education and preservation projects.

Christmas and trains

Lovers of model trains and history are drawn throughout the holiday to the museum.

In a large, permanent gallery, the museum has more than 100 feet of track and scenes that range from the village of White Stone to Fredericksburg.

George Frame, one of a dozen railroaders and model-builders who have created the exhibit, said the Fredericksburg scene was built from a photograph of a spot downtown around 1920.

It includes several storefronts, a gas station and shoppers strolling by.

"Also, we're really excited to finally have the lift-bridge working," said Frame, referring to a model of a bridge near the Lancaster County town of Irvington. "That's taken awhile."

Coming home again

Fred Bowen was 16 when he first left his home near the end of Main Street in Reedville in 1954 to eventually join the Air Force and spend a lifetime serving his country.

When he retired from the CIA in 1993, he found some irony in the fact that he returned to Reedville, buying a house just 100 feet or so from his childhood home.

"It's kind of funny that the things that made me want to leave this place--all there was to do as a kid was fish, swim and boat--are exactly what lured me back," he said, tapping his pipe as he looked out over Cockrell's Creek.

Bowen's home on Main Street, previously known as the Williamsburg Kitchen, because it was modeled after a colonial kitchen dependency, is one of the five homes on the Christmas tour.

Bowen said growing up as the son of a waterman and menhaden fisherman gave him hands-on experience of the life of a waterman.

"Enough to understand why my Dad said I should find something else," he said.

Bowen waxed nostalgic about his youth spent in the Northern Neck town, at one point describing a double-date to a drive-in theater in Kilmarnock that "probably involved driving 125 miles to get both our dates picked up, to the movies and back home again."

His home, a comfortable dwelling filled with intricate woodworking and warm, hospitable touches, will be without him on tour day.

"We'll be somewhere else," he said of himself and wife, Donna. "We're glad to be on the tour, but will be elsewhere while it's happening."