By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

Rappahannock New* Staff 1 rt»#*r A carefully tended rock garden with its burst of brilliant color surprises springtime picnickers and sightseers on their way to the top of Red Oak. Two miles up, the garden marks the entrance to the old man of the mountain’s home. At 87, Howard Jones doesn’t do much weeding anymore. Nowadays, his grandchildren have taken over the tending of the iris and daffodils that Howard’s wife planted so long ago. But if the approaching century mark hks slowed Howard Jones, it’s happened only recently. Born and raised in Rappahannock, Howard has roots in the county that go back to pre-Civil War times when his ancestors labored as slaves here. He’s been a worker just about all of his life. "I never did go to school. Anyway, they only had three months of school a year when I was a little fellow,” he recalled. “But I never was lazy. 1 was all the time doing something. I picked apples until three years ago when my heart went bad and the doctor said I shouldn’t climb any more. If you can’t climb, you sure can’t pick apples,” he said, chuckling. “I used to do 130,* 150 bushels a day—along like that. And I put me in a little crop too.”

Howard has spent most of his life in Rappahannock and remembers when horses and wagons travelled the streets of Woodville, the little village at the bottom of Red Oak.

"It looked then just about like you see it now ’cept for the cars. Now it's too dangerous to be on the road with a horse. There are too many of those cars,” he said, shaking his head at the “improvements” that come with progress.

”1 can remember Miss Sally Mason. She had one of the first Model T's around here, one with fringe on the top. 1 can still see her out at night on the side of the road with the wind blowing, trying to light the lanterns for that old car.”

When Howard Jones was a young man, Woodville's white children learned their ABCs right in the village. On May 2, 1929, a freak storm brought tragedy to the little school house.

The tornado that hit a half century ago followed a path around the base of Red Oak and right through the center of the community at the foot of the mountain.

The walls of the school came down and the building was lifted off its foundation. Children were lifted off their feet as well, picked up and carried by the wind and deposited in back yards and orchards. One little boy was killed, struck by the double doors of the school house.

Homes and churches were hit as the funnel whipped through the center of the village. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was destroyed, the walls were ripped away from the Baptist Church and the Methodist Church was pulled ofPfts foundation.

Howard remembers that tragic flay but he remembers its lighter side too. “The wind blowed Miss Lucy Botts' hat into our sweet potato patch,” he said, laughing at the picture of the bonnet deposited in the vegetable garden two miles up the mountain. “And we found Miss Clara Johnson’s sheets too. We recognized then ’cause they were em