Carol Phillips plays the autoharp and sings leads on many of the songs on Thursday mornings at the Locust Grove Variety Store. alx View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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Pickers rekindle 'American history'

Locust Grove Variety Store plays host to bluegrass and gospel breakfast jam.

By Brian Baer
fredericksburg.com

Date published: 6/4/2004

Ernie Young doesn't need a hypnotist to make him feel like a child again.

He need only turn out to the Locust Grove Variety Store on Thursday mornings.

"Coming here is like rediscovering my youth," he said.

It’s just after 9 a.m., and a smattering of amateur and big-name musicians are filing in to the small country shop.

Someone’s picking a banjo, no particular tune, in one corner, while another guy unpacks his acoustic guitar.

That’s GI-tar, by the way.

It’s a familiar setting for Young. In the early ’60s, he went with his dad, Ward, to Dodds Store off State Route 218 in White Oak.

The dads and granddads played checkers, sat around a potbelly stove and picked guitars and banjos. They solved the world’s problems and then filled the country store with bluegrass and gospel.

As more people moved to Stafford in the ’80s, Young moved out. He sought a quiet community like the one he remembered as a little boy.

He found it in Locust Grove, a rural Orange County community just outside the congestion of cars, strip centers and new rooftops that fill the nearby Fredericksburg area.

The Locust Grove Variety Store plays host to a much larger show the first Friday of the month, when families fill the listening room out back.

But the Thursday-morning affairs are far more intimate and, as one musician described them, more "real."

With soda-stocked refrigerators as their backdrop, musicians check any ego they might have at the door.

They sit on folding chairs—or stand, if they arrive too late—and take turns choosing songs their parents and grandparents played for them years ago.

Most of the banter between tunes is spent nudging reluctant pickers to play a favorite classic.

The musicians come from Locust Grove and Lake Wilderness, from Bowling Green and King George, from Madison and Spotsylvania.

Many are retired; others patch roofs, baby sit and landscape houses to fund their musical passions.

With spouses, senior citizens and—quite frequently—town officials looking on, the picking starts just after 9. But musicians come and go as their work and life schedules allow.

Many take breaks to fill up on eggs, bacon and coffee—all fixed just a few feet away.

The playing wraps up around noon.

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Date published: 6/4/2004