Chuckatuck, Virginia

I went out for a drive with my dad today (he can no longer see to read or watch much television, but he can see well enough to admire the countryside), and we explored the far reaches of Suffolk, VA, where I live. As I've said before, Suffolk was once Nansemond County, a huge stretch of farmland studded with small towns. The small towns still exist as "communities" within Suffolk (and there's still plenty of farmland to be seen, too!).

In the Dominance series, I placed Gabe's home in "the sticks outside of Smithfield," but we were quite near to that area today (though Smithfield is in Isle of Wight county, just outside of Suffolk), and we came across a couple of small towns I wish I'd used as his home town. The first was Sandy Bottom (I love that-- I'll have to use that in some later book!) and the second was Chuckatuck. Its name derives from an Indian word, as many odd-sounding Virginia towns and rivers do, and it was the home town of Charlie Byrd, the jazz guitarist.

Despite being part of a moderate-sized city and a large metropolitan area (Hampton Roads), Chuckatuck still retains its small-town character. I thought "fish fry" sounded very small Southern town-like (the blurs aren't on the sign, but from dog noseprints on the window, which I didn't think to roll down-- clearly Windex is needed in a big way):

We have a large and modern library in our area of Suffolk, so I was a bit surprised to see this as I drove through:

Clearly the library has been there a long, long time, but it's not quite as outdated as it appears: