Maryland 1950

So I was off to Maryland, starting work there as a GS-3, hired by mistake at a low rate as a student-aide trainee, the government thinking they were hiring me just for the summer. I had to leave the family behind with my folks until I could secure a place for them to live.

New hires were put up on base (Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, MD) in what functioned also as Bachelor Officers Quarters barracks. I used all of my spare time to search out a suitable place for my family to live on what amounted to $3,000 per year. I found something way down the peninsula in Scotland, MD, where there was a lady willing to rent to us one bedroom with kitchen and out house priveledges for a small sum.

I hopped into that same trusty old 1936 Ford V-8 4-door, buzzed back to Connecticut, loaded up my family (we were now four), and went back to Maryland to settle in. It was a little rough living in that way. The lady turned out to be not all that friendly. It was a rather long commute miles-wise, and therefore cost-wise. So I joined a commuting group which helped some. But one day, driving down the Three Notch Road, not that many miles from the base, I saw a sign, "Building Lots for Sale, $200, terms if desired".

It looked like the solution to our problem: Close to work, and a place of our own. I sought out the owner and gave him a down payment to get a lot I had selected across from a blacksmith shop. To give you some numbers that are probably wrong, lets say the lot was 200' wide by 400' deep, or 1/4 acre. But there was no electricity going past the place. I was all excited. No electricity? Big deal! We could get along without that. Both of us had had the experience. Me while growing up, and Marjorie summers when her mother put her out on a farm.

I was on the way from work going back down to Scotland to pick up my family and drive the 400 miles back to Connecticut to put them in "storage" with my folks while I intended to build a small place on one corner of the lot that would later be our tool shed. I would do this little construction while living out of my car. I had gotten acquainted with Oliver Wise, a carpenter across the road from our building lot, and stopped in to share the news with him.

It turned out much different than I expected. The story is long, but I'll tell it. Oliver Wise and his wife lived in a nice place right next door to the blacksmith shop owned by Oliver's brother, Johnny Wise, an old bachelor in his 70's. Now the Wise's sister had years earlier moved to Alaska, to an island I think near Ketchican, and had married an original Russian by the name of Sobeloff. They had the only general store around on that island, and were quite wealthy. Then about the time of the above events, he had died, and Mrs. Sobeloff wanted to return to Maryland.

Now Mrs. Sobeloff was afraid of flying, and insisted on travelling on the surface. Furthermore she didn't want to travel alone, and also she had obviously a lot of business to "wind down" there. So she sent six $100 bills in the mail to her brother Olver Wise and his wife, and asked them to come up to Alaska to help her with the transition, which they agreed to do. So about that time they would be gone about one month.

Some years earlier, Oliver Wise had build a very nice tool shed on the edge of his property, and he and his wife lived in it while they were building their nice place. So Oliver very kindly offered to let me and my family live in his tool shed (it was a comfortable place, well built), while he and his wife went to Alaska to bring his sister back. And it worked out beautifully. So I didn't have to take the family back to Connecticut again, and I didn't have to live in the car.

I took all the time off from work that I could get without loosing any pay, and began to build as fast as I could. I put the place on cinderblocks, using pine lumber for framing, and Gyplap (US Gypsum Co.) for the walls. The roof was originally to be double pitched, but to same time and materials, I just made it single-pitched, and covered with tarpaper. It was 10' x 20', with a door and two windows in the front, and a door and one window in the back. I build an outhouse in the back, and attached an office to it where I could study. Johnny Wise showed me a spring in the woods behind his place where we could get good drinking water.

So we were all set! I hadn't QUITE finished when the Wises returned from Alaska, so Oliver helped me finish up especially hanging the doors. And so we were finally established in southern Maryland.

More later.