A birds eye view of my grandfather’s farm. The rural address was Route 1 Box 187 East.  I used both google maps and childhood memory to capture details of his and other black family farms where I grew up in rural Virginia Beach. Trees were special; hence the beads. They were play rooms, and giant yard art that I mowed around when  old enough. In architectural drawing style, simple denim rectangles recall the main house and numerous outbuildings. The main house, a design from Hampton Institute’s building program and graduates. The outbuildings range from a chicken coop and hog pen to a shotgun dwelling. In the 19th century that shotgun housed black tenant farmers before it became this rural community’s school, organized by black families when there were no other options. In the 1950s I.attended kindergarten there. My grandmother watched me walk the oyster covered path from her door and fed me lunch every day. I remember it well.