When the sun is shining just right, Carl Kersey Sr. takes photographs of homes in the Fulton neighborhood where he grew up. Nevermind that it has been more than 30 years since they were razed by a bulldozer.
Kersey, 73, began building scale miniatures of buildings in Happy Hollow, a group of nearly 50 homes at the intersection of Jennie Scher and Government roads in eastern Richmond, after attending a reunion of its former residents six years ago.
A booklet of old pictures and neighborhood memories was made for the reunion, which was attended by about 300 people, Kersey said.
"That's where I got the idea of sitting down and building. I had a few pictures, but it was mainly up here," Kersey said, tapping his head. He started with his grandmother's two-story clapboard house and his parents' green-roofed bungalow at 4225 Government Road, where he was born.
"On the corner was a store where you could buy penny candy, and the old man used to use it for a radio shop," Kersey said.
So far, he has reconstructed nearly three dozen buildings and surrounding yards, including details such as flower boxes and clotheslines draped with tiny bedsheets. In the rear of his grandmother's and parents' homes are minute reproductions of the fishpond and swimming pool that his father made by cutting a fuel tank in half.
Such details evoke memories, such as the water-filled gravel pits where children swam and the grassy lots between homes where they played baseball, cows grazed and tent revivals were held.
"Two doors down, they had cows. They would turn the cows out in the morning," Kersey recalled. "They'd put a steel post in the ground, chain the cow to the post, come back at 4:30 or 5 p.m., get back to the garage and milk them."
Kersey, a retired draftsman and engineer, also refers to spiral-bound notebooks he has filled with names and sketches of street layouts and homes when building the 1:87 scale structures.
"All these houses were drawn with a T-square and a straightedge -- no computer. The old-fashioned way," he said.
After a structure is completed, he takes it outside his Chesterfield County home and photographs it.
"This is so true it even looks real," Kersey said, holding a black-and-white photograph taken recently of the model of his grandmother's home.
"Every time I show it to some of my cousins and everybody, they say, 'I thought they tore that down.'"
Happy Hollow was among 300 acres of Fulton demolished in the 1970s as part of a revitalization effort by the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
Kersey said he isn't sure what he'll ultimately do with his re-created neighborhood but wouldn't mind putting the models in a local museum.
"I'm looking for a buyout," he said. "I guess I have plans, but I'm not sure if they'll come true or not."
Contact Melodie N. Martin at (804) 649-6290 or mmartin@timesdispatch.com.
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