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ByTHERESA REYNOLDS
Rappahannock New* Special Writer
In bright painted wagons with their cooking cauldrons tied on the baek, gypsies came across the mountain every summer just as restless Rappahannock children began to think that nothing was ever going to happen in the sleepy farms and villages of the twenties and thirties.
“Oh, how I loved to see them come,” said Dorothy Hawkins. “The women were beautiful, the men were handsome, the children looked like little dolls.”
Hawkins had to admire them from a distance, though. “My aunt positively didn’t want me to associate with the gypsies. In fact, no one wanted their kids to even talk to the gypsies. No one wanted them here — they were supposed to be big trouble - stealing, trading horses, with a thousand different schemes for getting money from local people.”
Hawkins saw them down at the Washington fair grounds (at the end of Mount Salem Avenue then). “They told fortunes and hung around the carnival. In fact, I think they traveled with the carnival. During the day the women wore bandanas over their heads. At night they twisted their hair into buns or wore it long and loose. I thought they were so glamorous. And they had jewelry and scarves, shawls and long, bright skirts. We knew they danced at night with tamborines. I was fascinated. With everything bad I had heard, there was something about them that attracted me. They just looked like they were having fun.”
Randolph Foster of Flint Hill used to pass a gypsy camp at Cedarville, just above Front Royal.
“After they came through here, that’s where they camped,” Foster said. “And I went down there once at night. They were dancing and singing, with tamborines and other instruments. I remember that they were dancing to the Sugarfoot Rag. The women had shawls and scarves and long hair.
“And they loved baubles, little trinkets and flashy knick-knacks of any kind,” Foster continued. “There was a man in Centerville that used to keep shelves full of baubles and bangles to trade with gypsies. They’d come in there - it was a pizza place — and swap and trade and trade back. Somehow I got one of the gypsies’ ‘jewels.’ It was a star with a yellow center. I’ve kept it all these years. Long ago I had a jew^ eler look at it and it’s gold. I always' had thought it was brass. Now, I was
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