I wasn’t keen on Pickett’s idea to open a bed & breakfast. Strangers wouldinvade our house. I would have to stop leaving my shoes and socks in the living room. When I travel, I prefer hotels, where I don’t have to interact with people.
But what was I going to do? Forbid it? Then it would be, “So long, Mike!”
So our summer home in Cluster Springs opened to guests in 1988 as Oak Grove Plantation but later changed to Oak Grove Bed & Breakfast. The visitors stayed in two rooms on the second floor but had to come downstairs to use the bathroom that we shared with them.
That isn’t what guests want these days, so she had a second bathroom built on the second floor. I remember helping Pickett clean the newly built sink just as the new guests arrived. That’s OK—I’m good on deadline.
In those days, people found out about us through guidebooks, a much simpler forum than today’s online reservation systems. We tried lots of gimmicks: a cooking class weekend, a wellness camp, family friendly activities. Not much worked when we were trying to get people to come to a farm in the heat of July and August.
But she was bent on expansion: the former office was converted to the Library, lined with books and my grandfather’s 1880s typewriter. When a falling tree destroyed the little rental house next door, she remodeled it as a cottage for the B&B.
I can’t fix anything myself, but Pickett was great at recruiting repair and construction help, including Joe, a 52-year-old who was a preschool student of hers in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago.
Then we made the best of a bad situation. We were terrified spending most of the year on the 14th floor of an Arlington apartment building in 2000 when covid hit. We moved to Oak Grove temporarily but decided to stay.
Open year around, we could get steady business especially in spring and fall, when the weather is better. A major source was VirginiaIinternational Raceway.
I’m not much of a host, but I’m an experienced professional busboy. I was good at helping out at breakfast and chatting with the guests. Some of the fascinating people we met were good sources for news stories. I was especially interested in a guy who rode a bike across the state. He wrote back that his visit was the highlight of his trip.
Best is coming across musical people who asked to hear me play the piano. I have accompanied several singers and made videos with one of them. She is coming back again this fall.
We often say, “We don’t travel a lot. People just come to us.”