Annotated PHV

I found the following aerial photo of PHV on some German-language website and found it incorporates a lot of the locations I’ve described in this blog over the years.  I decided to annotate the picture with some notes.  First is the unaltered picture, then is a version where I’ve added numbers, and then below that are my notes for each number.

This photo was dated 2016 and my memories are from roughly 1977-1981, so there are quite a few changes.  This photo is cutting off a good chunk of the north end of PHV, to the right, and also the south end of PHV to the left, but many prominent locations are visible.

1. This area north of the main gate was undeveloped as far as I can recall.  Just out of the frame to the right was a row of buildings, and in one of the first ones I remember there being a day care center that I attended for some amount of time.  I seem to recall there being a big nutcracker statue out front, or something similar to that.
2.  This is the church, which I vaguely remember attending.  During one Christmas presentation I played an angel, which basically meant I wore wings and I stood around in the background not really doing anything.
3.  I believe this was the library.  One time we checked books out from there, then we were playing in the trees near the church and ended up leaving our books under a tree there and I assume our parents had to pay for them.
4. One of these buildings was the movie theater, and the other was the bowling alley.
5. This is one end of the little strip mall which included Foodland, a book store, and other shops I’m forgetting offhand.  In the parking lot they would set up a big tent for Oktoberfest.  Just off frame to the right would be the NCO club, I believe.
6.  The front gate.  In my time at PHV it was just a straight road with a small guardhouse.  We never needed to stop for the guards as I recall, and they would salute as we drove by since my dad was an officer and we had some sort of identifying sticker on the car.  I’ve read online that security at PHV was tightened up after 9/11, and this entrance area is much more elaborate than it used to be.
7.  This is the Primary Center, where I attended 1st and 2nd grade with Ms. Stasavich and Mr. Moore, respectively.  It was separated from the main elementary school (#9) and only had three classes in it (the other being 3rd grade).  I don’t completely understand its purpose but I think it was experimental in some way, either in teaching method or just in having a smaller learning environment than a large school building.
8.  This entire area between #7 and #9 used to be open space.  That light blue building sits roughly where there was a large playground – I remember swings, a big jungle gym, and also a metal slide that got very hot in the sun.  The big parking lot closer to the camera and the connecting road didn’t exist at all, it was just a large field where I think we would sometimes play soccer.
9.  This is the main elementary school, where I attended 4th grade, I believe my teacher’s name was Mrs. Klar.  The central area was the gymnasium, which was also where we ate lunch — as I recall there was no cafeteria and all kids had to bring their lunch from home.
10.  Another part of the elementary school, where I attended kindergarten with Ms. Staley.  It was right at the central crosswalk which was heavily used because as far as I recall all kids in PHV had to walk to school.  I got to be a crossing guard there at least once, holding up a little Stop sign to manage traffic.  Also from an upper window of this building I took a photo using the camera I’d made from a Quaker Oats cardboard cylinder.
11.  This large paved area used to be where we’d play sometimes and maybe line up to return to class after recess.  I think there are more buildings back here, behind the main elementary school, than there used to be.  I remember that a giant map of the United States used to be on this pavement and we would all stand on whatever state we were from.
12.  I don’t know what this large area of red-topped buildings is, they didn’t exist during my time in PHV.  At least part of this area used to be a large parking lot where people would park their RVs or other vehicles that didn’t see everyday use.  It looks like that parking area may now be a grass lawn in front of these new buildings.
13.  This is marking the building that served as a concession stand for the track area.  I don’t remember it ever actually being in use, but that’s probably because we didn’t go to any events at the track when it would’ve been open.  But we kids used the dumpster and trees next to the building to climb up onto the roof and run around.  There also used to be a large metal tower right in front of it, I think for announcers during sporting events.  It has since been torn down but you can still see the concrete slab where it used to stand.
14.  This building, the 3rd one back, is where Mrs. Taylor used to live.  She ran a daycare center out of her apartment and we used to walk there after school until our parents picked us up after work.
15.  This building, the 2nd one back, is where I lived while in 4th grade.  The big field in between #14 and #15 is where I spent a lot of time playing.  There were three playgrounds in that area, and also marble courts (dirt areas with “pots” dug into the ground).  We played games like Red Light Green Light against the wall of #14 that faced this open space.
16.  This is the building that had the big hedge out front running the entire length, and over the years kids had sort of hollowed out that hedge to form a long tunnel/hideout.  The building I lived in during kindergarten-2nd grade was along the street the same as this one, but two or three buildings to the left out of frame.
17.  There were baseball diamonds here where I used to have tee-ball games.  The middle school is just out of frame to the left.  That square-shaped building with an inner courtyard, further back from #17, didn’t exist during my time.  Instead it was a big open space where people would fly kites, and in the very back was a dirt BMX track where kids would ride their bikes.

 

Two Videos about Modern-Day PHV

Here are two videos from the last 2-3 years which show starkly different versions of Patrick Henry Village.  The first one talks about plans to turn PHV into a futuristic city within a city.  Some of the plans shown seem to lean toward some crazy, seemingly unrealistic architecture that almost feels out of science fiction.  Notice that the actual footage from within PHV only shows the “upscale” part where the high-ranking officers lived in private homes.  I have the impression that PHV has been divided in half, with refugees occupying the larger “apartment building” section.

The second video is more recent and seems in stark contrast to the clean, futuristic plans shown in the first.  It is an amateur video of someone walking around the “upscale” part of PHV which is now occupied by an artists commune.  It is very strange, maybe a little shocking, to see these homes now painted up in various ways and with a noticeable lack of the crisp order of a military facility.  You can also get a good look at the large fences which now separate this area from the rest of PHV, which I believe is still used for refugees.

How Heidelberg Changed After US Military Left

Came across this article from September 2018 which talks about how Heidelberg coped with the loss of the major US military presence after decades of it being an ingrained part of the city.  It includes a gallery of 5 photos from PHV, Campbell Barracks, and Patton Barracks.

The photo that stands out to me is the grand ballroom at the former PHV Officers Club.  The chandeliers I remember are still there, and the tall curtains next to each exterior door, but the large round banquet tables with their white linen and the piano from which live music would accompany your dinner have been replaced with bunks for some of the refugees that have been housed there in recent years.

The Golden Rose

This blog has been inactive for years, largely because I had exhausted most of my elementary school memories of Patrick Henry Village–or at least the ones that might be interesting to others.  It has been interesting to see new people continue to discover the blog and post comments, and I’ve wondered if I should reorganize things to be more like a website than a blog because it seems like a pain to go back and read previous posts or find something specific with the current blog format.  I may yet do a reorganization to help make it clear what content is actually available.

Anyway, one draft post that I started years ago but never published was about a restaurant I remember in Heidelberg.  The memories are vague, given my young age at the time and the decades between then and now, but maybe these descriptions will spark memories of your own.

The main restaurant that I remember going to with my parents in Heidelberg was called The Golden Rose.  I did a quick search and found a place called Zur Goldenen Rose, which I assume must be the place.  It looks somewhat familiar from the outside (I vaguely recall passing through a garden area to get to the front door), but I remember it being sort of a small intimate place and the website above shows pictures of a large banquet room.  Who knows.  Here is the exterior picture from their site.

Since I was so young, my memories aren’t really of the food.  These are the two things that have stuck with me:

• Each table was lit by a candle sticking out of an empty wine bottle, and there was lots of melted wax going down the candle and onto the glass.  A lot of melted wax, as I recall.  The formations it made as it melted and resolidified were fascinating to me for some reason, and I remember breaking off pieces of it and getting scolded by my parents.  Also, it was at this restaurant that my dad showed me how you can move your finger quickly through the flame and not get burned at all, and where I learned that the blue part of the flame is the hottest.  All that was amazing to me at the time.
•  The bathrooms were in the basement, and to get there you had to go down a brick spiral staircase.  I remember it being great fun to stay as far on the inside of the spiral as possible, where there steps were very narrow and more challenging.  I’m surprised I never fell and busted my head while doing this.

I always associate this restaurant with the electric street cars that used to take you around Heidelberg (and they were still in operation when we passed through in the year 2000), but I’m not sure if there actually was a street car route right outside the restaurant or if these are two independent memories that have merged in my mind over the years.