Chapter Six is a continuation of Chapter Five. I thought it best not to break them up with a fictional chapter in between.
All of my thirteenth summer, I went once a week
with my mother to a clinic at Johns Hopkin Hospital. The walls of the hallways
were painted dark brown. We sat on hard wooden benches waiting to be called. A
nurse would take a large syringe of my blood, and would take it to the lab.
Then we would wait for a long time again. I think a doctor talked to Mom
sometimes. The conclusion of our visit was that I would get a shot of
penicillin in my rear end.
That fall, I went to P.S.83 expecting to be put
into the second half of the sixth grade which I had missed by being sick. I
found out that Christ Child Farm had sent a report card for the classes I
attended there. P.S.83 accepted it and promoted me to the seventh grade. I was
told to go to P.S.40, Fortview Junior High School.
The school was in Canton. I think that I had to
take two buses to go to Highlandtown. Then I had four or five blocks to walk to
get to the school. The first two blocks were up a steep hill. I can still
remember that walk in the winter with bitter cold wind blowing in off the
harbor.
The school was named Fortview, because from
windows on one side of the building and even from the playground on that side,
you could see Fort McHenry across the harbor. Whereas the playground at P.S.83
had been concrete, the playground at Fortview was macadam.
The classes were excellent. The teachers were all
good instructors. The only teacher who
was unpleasant was the gym teacher. He didn’t like it that I was excused from
gym. He would make me change into gym clothes, sit in the bleachers while the
other boys were doing the running and playing he had planned, and then shower
and change back into street clothes along with the rest of the boys.
There was a heroin problem in that school. I heard
that the drug peddlers would tell the girls that if they took a shot of heroin
that they would have a vision of the Virgin Mary. One day they took us in
groups of boys or groups of girls to the nurse’s office. There we had to take
off all our clothes except our underpants. The nurse examined us closely for
needle marks. I had many needle marks from my weekly visits to the clinic. I
was taken with several other boys to the police station. I explained to the
nurse and the police about going to the clinic. My parents didn’t have a
telephone and I didn’t know the phone number of any neighbors. They called the
clinic. Someone there promised to call back. It was several hours before
someone called back to verify that I was a patient and had blood tests taken
every week.
The next year, I was transferred to Clifton Park
Junior High School. Sometime during the year, I contracted rheumatic fever a
second time. This time I didn’t go to the hospital or Christ Child Farm. I
stayed in bed and tried to get better. I found several activities to occupy
myself.
The school sent homework to me by way of a girl
who lived in Armistead Gardens and was in my classes, Charlotte Ickes.
My Grandmother Stalnaker worked as head of about
forty secretaries and stenographers for the Alien Property Custodian in
Washington, DC. During World War 2 the federal government seized all the assets
of citizens of Germany, Italy, Japan, and other Axis countries. Now that the
War was over, the government had the responsibility of determining rightful
owners and returning the property and assets. One of my grandmother’s bosses
was a stamp collector. He suggested to her that since I was restricted to
sedentary activities I might be interested in stamp collecting. He gave her an
old album that he was finished with. Thereafter she asked the secretaries to give
her the envelopes they received from foreign countries or to tear off the
section where the stamp was affixed. Soon she was sending me envelopes bulging
with stamps.
These stamps were not only a hobby but they
broadened my intellectual world. I often did a good bit of research just to
find out what country a stamp was from. I was learning what a large number of
countries there were. I was stimulated to find out a little bit about each of
the countries whose stamps I was mounting in the album.
For Christmas that year I asked for a new stamp
album because the stamp album I had been given didn’t have any post-War stamps
of the various countries. My parents bought my sister a table model radio with
a bakelite case. They bought me the stamp album I requested. Coming home Dad
slipped on the ice and dropped the radio. The bakelite case cracked all around
the bottom. He used some type of cement to put it back together. They decided
Beverly would never accept it in that condition. They gave me the radio and
Beverly the stamp album. Grandmother now had to divide the stamps into two
envelopes – one for me and one for Beverly.
I was becoming active in the youth group at church
and it was there that I made friends with Duane Dearth. We were best friends
for the remainder of the time I lived in Armistead Gardens.
My Grandmother also put me in touch with a distant
cousin. Margaret Denman and I had a lot in common. We wrote back and forth
about every other day while I was bedridden. Then the letter writing faded. I
did meet up with her again when Billy Graham held a Cusade in Richmond,
Virginia. My father got a free pass on the train for me. A distant aunt, whom
we called “Jidge” and who was a close relative of Margaret, picked me up at the
train, fixed supper for me. Maybe we went to the Crusade that evening. Margaret
was at Jidge’s and the three of us went to the Crusade together. She took
Margaret home after the Crusade. The next day after breakfast we picked
Margaret up at her home and they took me on a tour of Hopewell, Virginia where
they both lived. Jidge lived in a fine brick home. I couldn’t believe how
rundown was the wood house in which Margaret lived. After the tour of Hopewell, they took me to the
train.
One Saturday, I was listening to a country music
program sponsored by Johnny’s Used Cars. Johnny had lived in Armistead Gardens
a long time and now had a successful used car business in the center of the
city. There was an announcement of a Youth For Christ rally in the Odd Fellows’
Hall in downtown Baltimore. That evening they would have Percy Crawford as the
speaker and a quartet from Kings College, Briarcliff Manor, New York.
I was intrigued and went all through the project
to the houses of members of the church
youth group. Quite a few of them agreed to go with me. We had to ride the city
bus to downtown Baltimore. The Odd Fellows’ Hall was a large old building. The
auditorium was very large. There must have been several hundred young people or
more. The rally began with a lot of singing of hymns and gospel songs. The
pianist was extraordinary. She made the notes sparkle. The quartet was good and
they kept up a lively banter with Percy Crawford, the President of Kings’
College and his wife.
Rev. Crawford was an outstanding evangelist. In
his message that evening he made it clear what it meant to be a sinner, what
the consequences were of remaining a sinner, what the good news of salvation
meant. I had joined the church when I was twelve years old. That night when the
invitation was given to accept Christ, be born again, and become a Christian I
went forward without any hesitation. I know that I was born again that evening
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