Falls Church was a very different place when I was going to school here.  I started public school in 1944.  At that time Falls Church was not yet a city and was in fact very rural in character.  I lived next door to a cattle farm and an apple orchard that boasted scores of trees, and the street in front of my house was unpaved, a pair of ruts with grass growing between them until the next block was developed  in 1940, and it became an unpaved road that was graded.  There were large areas of woods in three directions from my house and we kids had our “secret” trails and forts in those woods.

When Falls Church became a city, the schools were divided between the new city and Fairfax County.  The City got Madison and Oak Street elementary schools, plus the Jefferson Institute, but the county got Falls Church High (then still located within the city limits on S. Cherry St. and Hillwood Ave).  So the City needed a new high school.  There being no land for it in Falls Church, the City had to use land just outside city limits, on the city’s western edge, for the new George Mason Junior-Senior High School.

I lived (as I still do) on the city’s eastern edge, at least two miles from the new high school.  That was a stiff commute on a bicycle, and worse walking.  But the City then offered no school buses.  Some years there was a discount for students on the bus that ran along Broad St (then part of a private line of commercial buses that served this area).  Otherwise….

I had been biking all around Falls Church, but I was tired of pushing my bike up the many hills, and when I was 14 I got a motor scooter.  There weren’t many choices then, when it came to motor scooters.  The only brand I was initially aware of was Cushman.  Cushman made two styles of scooters:  One was conventional, and the other, the Cushman Eagle, looked like a scaled-down motorcycle, with the gas tank between one’s legs.  So I got a standard Cushman (used).  It was a stodgy scooter, but beat bicycling.  

But in time I discovered the Salsbury scooter.  It had been a post-World-War-Two product, produced between 1947 (when scooters looked like they might be big, sales-wise) and 1950.  It was built by Northrup Aviation.

The Salsbury was revolutionary then (and still is).  It was torpedo-shaped, very streamlined, with brake and gas pedals on its floor (no handlebar controls), a speedometer, a headlight, and an automatic (variable-ratio) transmission.  It was superbly balanced and could easily be ridden no-hands for blocks on end.  And the rear section (behind the seat) was several feet long, with side bumpers, so it was easy to carry one passenger (or even two), their feet on the side bumpers.

I could get to school much more easily on a scooter, albeit in all sorts of weather, including rain and sleet or snow.  And on some days I had one or even two passengers – friends I picked up along the way.

But one day, as I was approaching the school, I was stopped a half block away by a teacher, a Mr. Snodgrass, who taught math (but never to me, for which I was then grateful). He was not popular with most students, and known to be ill-tempered and punctilious.  On this occasion he ordered my passengers off my scooter and upbraided me for my carelessness in transporting them.  He threatened to get a “safety engineer” (by which he meant a traffic cop) to arrest or at least ticket me.  It did no good to protest that I’d been acting safely, knew what I was doing, and was not being careless.  He knew better.

Several years after I graduated George Mason, Mr. Snodgrass was in the drug store in what is now Broaddale Center, hanging out at the soda fountain with the then-chief of police of Falls Church.  The chief decided to demonstrate a “quick draw” of his service weapon from its holster.  He accidentally shot and killed Mr. Snodgrass then and there.  He subsequently resigned his position with the police department.