Four generations of Whites, spanning a full century, have run White's hardware store and shops at the Norbeck crossroad. Here Lawrence White, the second generation, stands before the facility in 1935. His father Walter launched the family enterprise a century ago with the purchase of a smithy and wheelwright shop. Lawrence expanded into other businesses--auto repair, hardware store, gas station--in structures that today enclose the old smithy and wheelwright shop. Grandson Robert White recalled horse-drawn tankers from Standard Oil delivering gasoline and kerosene to his pumps--and having their horses shod at his smithy. Great-grandson Lawrence White runs today's hardware store.

Heart of old Oakdale, this rural scene was Martin's Dairy when photographed during World War II from a torpedo plane piloted by David Martin. It most recently was the Silo Inn. In the 1800s the Martin home was known as Higgins Tavern and welcomed travelers on the Brookeville Turnpike, now Georgia Avenue. In the photo above, single lanes carry Georgia Avenue toward Olney, to the right, and Norbeck. Martin's Dairy was a major community industry for half a century, processing and marketing the milk of 13 local dairy farmers and employing 60 persons. Several horse shows were held on the pastures at left. Today houses of the Victoria Springs subdivision dot these fields.