Ethan Roques, almost 5, spends most of his time outside when he visits his great-grandmother, Betty Hilosky.

Bob Yarbrough likes to attach his sky chair to the rope swing and glide through the air near the Rappahannock River.

Falmouth home looks "normal" from the front, but the backyard is a combination playground for kids and hangout for adults

Date published: 6/25/2008

By CATHY DYSON

Betty Hilosky's backyard is an outdoor version of "Cheers," mixed with elements of Davy Crockett and set against the natural beauty of the Rappahannock River.

It's a place where friends spend leisurely Sundays eating hunks of grilled meat, climbing on tree trunks and throwing axes at wooden targets.

But don't worry.

"We are a child-safe area," said Bob Yarbrough, the main host of the outdoor gatherings. "This is just a lovely place to be."

Yarbrough is Hilosky's son and a well-known Fredericksburg bartender.

His mother balked when he set up a campsite right outside the basement door. He assembled his cooking gear and stereo system, pieces of driftwood and homemade Adirondack chairs, then covered them all with a blue tarp.

"I kept thinking, 'How long is that going to last?'" she said. "Then I thought, 'Why not?' What does it hurt? It's not for everybody, but we sure get a tickle out of it."

She jokes that at least her home looks normal from the front.

Hilosky, 71, and her late husband, Charlie, bought the two-acre riverfront property 40 years ago for $5,600. They built a three-story house with a brick facade and white columns.

At that time, there were so many doctors in the neighborhood, people called it "Pill Hill."

Charlie Yarbrough was an engineer at Dahlgren, and his four children grew up swimming in the river and camping.

Neighborhood kids gathered for softball games, parades and the occasional fistfight, said Hilosky's daughter, Mary Beth Yarbrough.

Not much has changed, though Hilosky--known as "Nonny"--is quick to point out there's never any trouble.

On most holidays and many Sundays, there are so many children wandering around, "you can't count them," Hilosky said. "They're like fleas."

The boys typically are barefoot and shirtless. They beg adults to push them on a rope swing, which careens high into the branches. Or, the boys pretend the tree house is a pirate ship, and they must defend it with wooden swords.

The adults aren't quite as active. They talk and listen to music while they watch Bob Yarbrough scamper around.

He cooks slabs of beef, racks of ribs and pounds of "yard bird"--otherwise known as chicken--on a homemade grill he carved from a 275-gallon oil drum.

There are two massive tree trunks in Betty Hilosky's backyard, but they didn't come from her property. She had them trucked there. Last summer after a storm, she was sickened to see a giant tree cut down in a yard under the Falmouth Bridge. "That tree had to be centuries old," she said. " Who knows how many times George Washington passed by that very spot, how many Civil War soldiers rested beneath it?" One Sunday on her way home from church, she saw the tree being sawed apart and asked if the two big pieces could be taken to her home instead of the landfill.

Date published: 6/25/2008