ARMISTEAD GARDENS - CHAPTER THREE

The chapters which are numerical are factual. The chapters which are alphabetical are fiction, though in some instances the fiction modestly drapes what is factual. I will post one chapter a week, alternating factual and fiction.

At the end of my third grade in school, my brother would soon be three years old. The project by now was being operated by the Baltimore City Housing Authority. Rents were determined by your family income. Since our family had two boys and a girl we qualified for a three-bedroom house. We were put on a waiting list. We wondered where our next house would be located. There were some areas of Armistead Gardens that seemed like slums. Or maybe we would get a house in the new section.

The house we were given came as a happy surprise. It was at the beginning of Armistead Way, where it junctured with Pulaski Highway. There were single story duplex houses with gabled roofs in a column which followed Pulaski Highway down a hill to the northern end of the project. They were originally built to house the foremen at Glenn L. Martin.

There was a large grassy yard on three sides of the house. A street ran parallel to Pulaski Highway separating these houses from the cinder block two story row houses. These houses had asbestos shingles on the outside walls and drywall inside walls. There were three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, a kitchen/dining area. There was even a pantry off the kitchen.

Across Armistead Way there was a wooded and grassy area running alongside Pulaski Highway. Across Pulaski Highway from the wooded area was a large Acme Markets supermarket. The sidewalk in front of the house went to Pulaski Highway and there was a stop light so you could cross the highway safely. After you crossed the highway, there was a row of shops – a variety store, a drugstore, and a liquor store. Up the hill from these shops was the Acme Market and beyond it a Sunoco gas station.

That fall all the elementary school children living in Armistead Gardens were transferred from P.S. 231 to P.S. 83. It became known pretty quickly throughout the project that the parents in the neighborhood around Brehm’s Lane School had complained to the school board about busing children from the project to their school.

Another change was that there would no longer be school buses. We had to ride the city transit bus. The transit buses ran all through the project to Fox Mansion. That was the end of the line. P.S. 83 was in East Baltimore. It was situated between Fayette Street and Orleans Street. About a mile north of the school Fayette Street and Orleans Street merged and became Pulaski Highway. Entering the project, the first bus stop was in front of our house. Leaving, it stopped at the corner diagonally across Armistead Way from our house.

I think the first year the school gave us tokens. That changed and we had to pay 10 cents fare. There were many, many days that if I wanted to go to school I had to walk because my parents didn’t have 40 cents that day for Beverly and me to go to school and come back on the bus. I have always wanted to measure the distance from where we lived to P.S.83. I’m sure it was over two miles.

One aspect of the new school that I particularly liked were the libraries. There was a school library from which I borrowed many books. At home, unless I had some chore to do, I could be found lying on my bed reading a book. Beverly made many friends in our new neighborhood, but I didn’t. At school the school librarian noticed that when we were out on the playground, I would be off by myself or getting beat up by some other boy. I couldn’t and wouldn’t fight back. I tried to protect myself from the blows, but my attempts were ineffectual.

One day when I was in the library, the librarian said, “I need someone to help me by shelving the books that are returned and by repairing the books. If you are interested, you could come to the library during recess or at lunchtime if you are free.” I jumped at the chance to stay away from the playground bullies. Shelving books was easy. Repairing books took a great deal of learning, but the librarian taught me to do one stage at a time. Until I learned that stage I couldn’t go any further and had to leave the book for the librarian to complete. By the end of that school year, which was my fourth grade, I could repair a book as well as the librarian and could letter the titles on the spine as neatly as she could.

During the next school year, I began to go to the Enoch Pratt Free Library branch on Fayette Street about two blocks north of the school. I began to carry as many as six books home at a time and would read them all in a week. Once I read through all the books by Roy Chapman Andrews, a paleontologist. Then I read all the books by Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein.

In the fifth grade I started and edited a homeroom newspaper called Class Gossip. Members of the class would write out riddles, jokes, innocent bits of gossip, news about upcoming events in their clubs or neighborhood. Some drew sketches or cartoons. I would organize the pieces. One girl in the class was very artistic. She would make a cover with a piece of colored paper and crayons. Another girl, Gloria Mosca took the material home and her mother typed it onto typing paper, pasted in the cartoons and pictures, and put holes in the pages with a three-hole punch. The cover and pages were put together with brads. The newspaper was kept on the teacher’s desk. Students who finished their work ahead of the class could take it from the teacher’s desk and read it.

 The years living in Armistead Gardens were mostly financially hard years. We would receive boxes of clothes and sometimes food from the Church. Several times at least Grandad Pritt would find out that someone he knew well was going to Baltimore. He would send us a bushel of potatoes and some home-canned food.

Many, many times I went out with my wagon with a Kotex cardboard box in it. The box was so big that only one side fit in the wagon. The other side was propped on the other wagon side. That worked out fine. There was still room in the wagon for any soda bottles I found. I went up and down the streets in the old section looking in the garbage cans for newspaper or cardboard. After a while, people would stack their newspapers and put them beside the can. I was also looking for soda bottles that I could take to the Acme Market for the deposit. When the big box was full, I went across the highway and pulled the wagon almost a half mile down the highway to the salvage yard. They would buy the box of paper from me. Including the box, I would get 15 or 20 cents. I would wash out the bottles and take them with me to the store. I think the deposit was 1 cent per bottle. For 25 cents I could get a box of macaroni and cheese and a can of Manning’s beans. If I had 35 cents I could also get a loaf of day old bread.

Other times my mother would send me to Ginny’s house on the bus. She would send me with a note to Ginny asking if she could spare some food. Ginny would always send me back with a bag containing some potatoes, and a few cans of food.

We only had meat on Sundays and on payday (every two weeks). One time a man who lived across the street came back from a hunting trip in West Virginia. He had killed quite a few ground hogs and they were in the trunk of his car. His wife absolutely refused to clean them. He asked Mom if she would clean them and he would let her keep two of them. She worked several hours cleaning the groundhogs. Then she went to work on the two she had earned. She boiled them three times in water, maybe it was salt water, and threw the water down the sink. Then she fried them in lard. The meat was very dark and it looked like parts of a dog, but it was delicious and tasted like fried chicken.

I have painful memories of Mom standing at the door and taking verbal abuse from aggressive bill collectors. She had no money to give them. She would answer them politely. When they left she came into the house and cried. Other times she would have to ask the milk man to continue delivering milk and bread another two weeks and she promised she would pay him then. Afterward, she cried.

Too many years, I went all winter with holes in the soles of my shoes. Every evening I would have to cut a piece of cardboard to fit inside each of my shoes for the next day.

I read a lot of books, not so I could be smart in school, but so I could pretend I was living in other places and other times. I don’t have many happy memories of my childhood and teen years living in Armistead Gardens. Is that because I am morose by nature or did those years of my life make me that way?

ARMISTEAD GARDENS - CHAPTER B

The chapters which are numerical are factual. The chapters which are alphabetical are fiction, though in some instances the fiction modestly drapes what is factual. I will post one chapter a week, alternating factual and fiction.

Marvin Thompson was probably ten years old. I was nine years old and he wasn’t in my class at school. He must have been a year older. He lived on Quantril Way. Across Armistead Way from our house on Newcomb Way was the beginning of the woods. That is where the creek began. There was a culvert that ran under Armistead Way and water came out of it into the creek. Where did the water come from?

The creek and the woods held a fascination for a group of us kids – mostly boys. I liked to pretend that I was an explorer and was making my way through the jungle. Other times I imagined that I was out West. Perhaps I thought I would come upon a settlement of Indians, or at least discover the remains of one.

For Marvin the appeal of the creek and the woods was his quest for “specimens.” That was his word for them. He found a skin that a snake had shed. Inside a hole at the base of a tree he came upon a bunch of baby mice – less than an inch long with their tails. He took them home in a discarded tin can he found. After that he carried a couple tin cans from home. From the creek he captured a baby turtle and a frog. Marvin’s mother was proud of her budding scientist but sometimes she had to discard his specimens when they began to smell.

Marvin’s prize acquisitions were his collection of bird eggs. When he found a nest, he would watch it until the mother bird flew away. Then he would reach in the nest and take a few eggs. He borrowed a book from the library to identify the birds. After that he could say, “That one is a robin’s egg. This one is a wren’s egg.”

When his teacher heard of his collection of bird eggs she asked him to bring them to class and give a presentation to the class. Marvin was very careful because he had to ride the bus to school. His gave him a shoe box and a box of cotton. He rolled each egg in cotton before placing it in the box. He made an excellent presentation and the teacher gave him extra credit.

Marvin had a good friend, Roland. Roland was always eating and his nickname was Roly-Poly Roland. “I’m going down to the woods and try to find a bird’s nest with eggs in it. Do you want to go with me, Roland?” Roland agreed but went back in his house for a candy bar.

Marvin did not see any nests along the path that he had not already robbed. He plunged into the area where I often went exploring. It was thick with brush and trees. In the midst of the seemingly impenetrable brush, there was a sycamore tree. On one of its higher limbs he spied the nest of a cardinal. He didn't have any cardinal eggs.

Marvin climbed up the tree as soon as the mother bird flew off on an errand. When he reached the nest, he saw that there were four baby birds inside the nest. He decided to take the entire nest, baby birds and all. Carrying the nest in one hand he awkwardly climbed down the tree using only one hand.

He was holding on to a limb with one hand, holding the nest with the other hand and kicking around with his feet trying to find a limb or something on the trunk where he could get a foothold. Just then Roland started screaming. “The momma bird is flying back!... She is going crazy looking for the nest… Watch out!” The mother bird saw the nest clutched in Marvin’s hand. She started diving at him. He had no hand free to swat at her.

The bird made one last desperate dive at the burglar who had stolen her babies. She aimed at his eyes. In a panic Marvin let go of the limb and fell to the ground. His head hit a rock or hard ground. Blood was coming out his ears. “I made a mistake, Roland…Can I have a bite of your candy bar?”

When supper time came and he had not returned, Marvin’s parents checked with Roland’s parents and found out that he also had not returned. They started for the woods. Along the way others joined them. They walked way out on the path and back with no success. Then the men went into the dense brush. The searchers located the boys by the sound of Roland sobbing. By then he was in shock. He kept repeating, “He asked for a piece of my candy bar. I gave it to him, but he didn’t eat it.”

The bird’s nest had landed near the dead body of Marvin. The baby birds were still cheeping, but he was silent forever.  

ARMISTEAD GARDENS - CHAPTER TWO

The chapters which are numerical are factual. The chapters which are alphabetical are fiction, though in some instances the fiction modestly drapes what is factual. I will post one chapter a week, alternating factual and fiction.

Across the playground from our front door, Armistead Way was a boundary of sorts. On the other side of it there was undeveloped land going north from where Newcomb Way came into it. Going across Armistead Way there was a steep path down into a wooded area with a stream coming out of a culvert and going east. That stream was another boundary to the project. After about a city block of woods there was an open field. The summers we lived on Newcomb Way my father made a garden in that area. We had no plow so he had to use a spade to turn over the soil in the area he planted. I helped in the garden, planting seeds after he prepared the rows.

Following the stream a bit further, it became wider and deeper at one place. There was more water sometimes than other times. When it was deep enough the children would go swimming. I don’t remember, but my sister insists that once she and I went “skinny-dipping” there.

Further north along Armistead Way, it was dense with bushes and trees. One time I found a butcher knife and went hacking a path through the brush and low hanging tree limbs. Maybe I thought I was a jungle explorer and the knife was a machete. Something went wrong. I hacked into the top of my wrist. It was a very nasty cut. I don’t know what I did, other than run home. I’m sure my mother was scared to death. I don’t know if she took me to the doctor or bandaged it herself. I do know that it left a distinct “F” shaped scar which was duly noted in my military records years later. 

When we first moved into Armistead Gardens, the Presbyterian church was the only Protestant church. It met in the community building. The building was built of concrete block. The ground on which it was built was on a steep slope. The front of the building faced Armistead Way and was almost on street level, but the back, which faced Horner’s Lane, looked like it was more than a story to the beginning of the main floor. The church services and adult Sunday School classes were held on the main floor, a few steps up from street level. The children’s Sunday School classes were held a million steps down in the “basement.” The rooms in the basement were gloomy. It seemed like a dungeon.

I remember a Hallowe’en Party in the basement of the Community Center. I think the Presbyterian Church organized it, but it was for any of the children in the project. The organizers decorated the room with flickering red lights, fake cobwebs, cardboard skeletons, witches hanging with black thread from the ceiling so it looked like they were flying on brooms. There was punch made of red Kool-Aid, large grapes made to look like eyeballs. After we ate the obligatory cup cakes, washed down with Kool-Aid, there was a costume contest and bobbing for apples.

The Catholic Church met in Fox Mansion, a real mansion with a rich history dating from before the War of 1812. After the new section was built it became the community center for that area.

The new section had been built long before we moved to Armistead Gardens. The houses were much more attractive both inside and out. Some of the houses were brick, while many were row houses built of cinder block. They all had pitched roofs. Their houses faced streets with sidewalks rather than narrow alleys. They had hardwood floors and drywall walls. They were heated by coal furnaces instead of fuel oil which had to be carried into the house every day.

The summer after we moved onto Newcomb Way we had visitors. My Grandad and Grandmom Pritt came from Elkins in a new Ford. My Uncle Donald and his new wife Delania came with them. Beverly and I had been living with Grandad and Grandmom when Donald returned from the War. We had learned to love Uncle Don, but Dad had not seen Don since he was drafted into the Army.. Delania lived out in the country and the road to her parents’ farm was paved with large stones. Tires at that time were not good quality and Donald had a number of “blow outs.” I remember Grandad saying, “If you don’t marry that girl soon, you are going to go broke buying tires for the car.”

They had loaded the car with home canned food and some dishes and other treasures Mom had left with them. Strapped to the back of the car was a bicycle they brought for me! They were not selling bicycles in the stores at that time. This was an old pre-war bicycle. It was made of steel so it was heavy. Don had sanded it and painted it royal blue (The paint used by Western Maryland Railway on its passenger coaches). He had shined up the chrome spokes and wheels. It looked brand new. That bicycle opened a whole new world for me.

I think they were only with us two days. They must have stayed in a motel for several nights. I guess they also went to Washington to visit Myrtle (one of my father’s sisters} and Gene before their long trip back to West Virginia. The second day they took us on a picnic to Bay Shore Park. The trip out to the park was across a long bridge. What I remember was hunting for shade. There was plenty of beach but no trees. With red hair I sun burned easily.

After they left I rode that bicycle on every street in Armistead Gardens. I had to learn how to fix a flat tire, put the chain back when it came off, and other mechanical skills. The bicycle took me to every place in the Gardens and I made a lot of new friends.

There was a Maintenance Office for the project. There were men who would repair plumbing, the furnace, or other problems in the house. They also loaned tools for the lawn and gardens. They gave out grass seed. They would also give paint for doors and screen doors. Automobiles were scarce, but some people in the project were finding old pre-war cars and fixing them up. Some of these old clunkers sported new paint jobs using screen door paint from the Maintenance Office applied to the cars with rags.

Most of the people in the old section lived on the edge of poverty. I remember one day when there was a knock on the door. When my mother opened the door there was a little boy dressed only in his underwear. “Lady could you gimme a piece of bread?” She took a slice from the loaf. “Is this all right?” “Well, do you have some oleo or jelly you could put on it?” All the time he was shivering. As soon as she handed him the sandwich, he devoured it and ran off, barefoot, up the street.

From Christmas time until the end of February many of the men were laid off and had no income. Either the coal miners were on strike, the steelworkers were on strike, the longshoremen were on strike – always some reason to lay off the workers in the dead of winter. That was when the weather was cold. The fuel oil tanks were soon empty and unless some money could be borrowed at the loan company or from relatives, concrete block houses with concrete floors were miserably cold and damp. My parents’ first stop for Christmas shopping was at the two loan companies where they had accounts to see how much they could borrow and add to their account.

During this time, we would see oil trucks that did not usually deliver oil in Armistead Gardens. When I was older I learned that they were delivering oil to Freemasons who were out of work.

My sister and I enrolled in P.S. 231, Brehm’s Lane Elementary School. A school bus came for us and carried us to a brick school building in a very nice neighborhood. In later years everyone I knew who lived in that neighborhood were upper middle class – the manager of an upscale leather goods store, an executive of American Stores grocery chain, a banker, a manager in an industrial plant, a lawyer.

We attended that school the rest of the school year and all of the following school year. I have my report cards from those years. They show an unusual number of absences. I am surprised that I passed.

ARMISTEAD GARDENS - CHAPTER A

The chapters which are numerical are factual. The chapters which are alphabetical are fiction, though in some instances the fiction modestly drapes what is factual. I will post one chapter a week, alternating factual and fiction.

As the Second World War was drawing to a close, many Germans could see that defeat was inevitable. Those who held positions of authority in the government or the National Socialist Party knew that if/when the Axis powers were defeated, they and their families would both be vulnerable to arrest by the ruling power installed by the conquering armies and to revenge by disgruntled fellow Germans.

Some of them sent their families out of Germany to Switzerland or to Turkey or Morocco. From there they made their way to Uruguay and Argentina. Some of the fathers were subsequently killed in the waning months or weeks of the War. Others used that time to collect as much money, gold, jewels, or other portable booty and then fled themselves. Whether any high ranking Nazis evaded arrest and made their way to these two South American countries has been material for many articles, documentaries, and stories. The undisputable fact is that following the War there were large colonies of Germans and Ukrainians in Argentina and Uruguay.

In Baltimore there were many first, second, and third generation German-Americans. Before the War started, the German Bundt brought together thousands of Germans who supported Hitler. Their building in downtown Baltimore was a classical Greek structure whose auditorium held at least 2000. Many dropped their support when they found out what Hitler was doing to the Jews or when their own sons were being killed in the War. The Bundt was outlawed after our country entered the War. There were still a sizeable number who silently maintained their allegiance to Nazi Germany.

Several of these Nazi sympathizers secured jobs in the Rental Office and the Maintenance Office in Armistead Gardens. They worked hard and gradually worked themselves into supervisory positions. Mr. Wieneger became the Manager of the Rental Office. Mr. Schwartz became the Supervisor in the Maintenance Office.

During the War good workers were being bled away by the draft. Every time there was a job opening Mr. Wieneger and Mr. Schwartz hired only men or women who were supporters of their cause. By the time the War ended, all of the workers belonged to their Cause.

They recognized that the column of duplex houses which ran along Pulaski Highway might be useful to them some day because a road running parallel to Pulaski Highway was an innocent and unobtrusive passive barrier to the other residents of the project.

When the project was turned over to the Baltimore City Housing Authority there were some anxious weeks and months worrying about whether the Authority might send in some of their own people. As time went by their worries were laid to rest, because Armistead Gardens was run more efficiently than any of their other projects.

Mr. Schwartz had a short-wave radio in his office. There was a sophisticated antenna array on the roof of the garage where the trucks and equipment of the Maintenance Department were stored. In the evening after the offices were closed, Mr. Schwartz was occupied with his amateur radio. The radio hams he was contacting were in Argentina and Uruguay.

Now that wealthy ex-pat Germans had reached the relative safety of South America, their next goal was to reach the United States and settle there under a new identity. There were many less wealthy German immigrants who would have to adjust and content themselves living in a Latin society that was less developed, less modern, less cultured than Germany had been before the War.

The leaders of the Noble Cause had decided to establish Kamp Armistead in that row of duplexes along Pulaski Highway. The duplex facing Armistead Way was unsuitable for their use because of the heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic- too many people with too many eyes and too many brains and too many mouths.

As for the other duplexes, if a family moved out, the Cause sent one of their followers, who had an apartment or house elsewhere in Baltimore, to occupy that unit until it was needed by the Cause. Other families were gradually moved to units in the new section with the excuse that the State wanted to widen Pulaski Highway. In six months they had control of all the duplexes except the one facing Armistead Way. Kamp Armistead was ready to open. There were twenty three-bedroom units.

Mr. Schwartz kept in communication with the Noble Cause each evening. When encryption was necessary, they used some book with 365 pages or more. This year it was Moby Dick. The page for that day was ruled off in rows and columns. The first 26 lines stood for letters, the 27^th line was space and the 28^th line was “period.” In this manner Mr. Schwartz communicated to Argentinian and Uruguayan collaborators that Kamp Armistead was ready to receive twenty families.

These families could not fly to Baltimore or travel by commercial ships because they did not have valid passports and visas. Travel was on yachts. The amount of baggage they could take with them was limited. The captains of the yachts were cautious concerning the weather. It was a long trip to travel by yacht in the Atlantic Ocean. They had to stop often to refuel. Most of the passengers were seasick at least part of the time.

When the yacht reached the Chesapeake Bay, it steered for Back Creek. There was a yacht club there with some members who were loyal to the Cause. One of them would take one family and its baggage to Kamp Armistead at night. The next night he would take another family. In six months’ time, only ten families had been moved into Kamp Armistead. Then winter halted any further travel.

There were some families who tried other ways to get into the United States: through Mexico and into Texas or Arizona or through Cuba flying to Canada and from there into Detroit or New York. None of them made it without being arrested. The location of Kamp Armistead was kept secret, even the fact it was in Baltimore. It was thought that they might be followed and the existence and location of Kamp Armistead would be discovered.

When a family arrived, the person who had been house-sitting would stay with the family a week, helping them get settled. They all had learned basic English beforehand. He showed them the Acme Market and went with them on their first trip. They were encouraged to walk up the sidewalk along Pulaski Highway so as not to be noticed by the residents of Armistead Gardens.

Mr. Schwartz would buy a car for them (with their money). A Cause volunteer would coach them in learning the highway laws. Most could drive but they needed a few practice drives before taking their test. A driver’s license was an important identity document. A volunteer also took them on the city bus. They would go with them to the center of Baltimore and go through the department stores with them. They showed them the German neighborhoods.

The whole elaborate set-up was almost shattered. One of the German  undocumented immigrant families in Kamp Armistead, the Krachts, had a teen age son. He was in Fox’s 5&10 when Mr. & Mrs. Fox were heatedly arguing about something. Mr. Fox used some rough language in Yiddish. The boy may have thought Mrs. Fox was Aryan because of her blonde hair.

That night the boy returned with a can of black spray paint. He sprayed a giant swastika on one window and KIKE in giant letters. He probably would have put more, but a young man driving by saw him and yelled. He stopped his car and gave pursuit but the offender got away. Mr. Schwartz had a good idea who had done it. The family was put into a station wagon, driven up into the mountains and left to fend for themselves and die. Too much was at stake.

The enforcers for the Cause did not reckon on “mountain people.” A man in an old pickup truck came upon the family huddling in a shelter of snow and fir branches by the side of the road. He picked them up, took them home and his wife fixed them a hot meal of cornbread and beans. She gave them old ragged blankets with which to wrap themselves. The foreign people did not know where they had been living. Their teenage son was sick with a bad fever. The mountain folk had no extra beds and no telephone but they made the people as comfortable as they could.

The next day the mountain man drove into town and told the storekeeper who called the sheriff for him. The sheriff took the three foreigners to the hospital. Since they could give no address and had no identity papers the sheriff called the FBI.

The wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly fine. The family was kept as long as questioning them was yielding useable information. Just the names “Fox’s 5&10”, “Kamp Armistead” and “Mr. Schwartz” helped to pin down the location of this camp for undocumented aliens. When the FBI was finished with them, the family was sent to their last legal residence, which was now in East Germany. The entire staff at Armistead Gardens was sent to various other projects and was replaced by other Housing Authority employees. Mr. Schwartz was fired and was indicted on several Federal charges. The remaining residents of Kamp Armistead were deported to Germany.

Mr. Schwartz was able to warn two important residents before the authorities arrived. Mr. Karl Bruning and Mr. Eisen Schultz had been in high administrative posts at the Dachau death camp. If they were arrested and deported they would face prosecution at the Nurenberg War Crimes trials. Both men took off on foot for Horners Lane. They entered the National Bohemian Cemetery. One of the graves had a concrete covering on the grave. The concrete had cracked. It was only an inch thick. Its purpose was to disguise a metal door the size of the “grave.” They lifted the door. Its hinges were rusted and protested with a loud squeak.

This bunker had been put in place about five years before America became involved in World War II. The Bundt had built it as a refuge for spies who might be sent from Germany. There were a number of attempts during the War to infiltrate spies into the U.S.A. but they were all unsuccessful and the bunker had been unused for its original purpose.

When it was built, the bunker contained a shortwave radio which had a telescoping antenna which used the metal cover to reflect its signal while transmitting. It had half a dozen beds with wool blankets. Storeable food and water in sealed cans, and a cache of American money were all part of the bunker’s contents. There was a latrine connected to a septic tank.

When Bruning and Schultz entered the underground retreat, they discovered that it had been plundered. The radio was gone. The mattresses and blankets were gone, all the food and all the money had been taken. Someone who had been involved in building and stocking the hideout, and knew how to get into it, had returned at a later time and liberated the contents.

They were in a real jam. They would have to remain in the bunker at least until tomorrow. Maybe the authorities would be gone by then. They could go back to their now vacated homes and scavenge whatever food or clothes remained in them. If their cars were still there, they could get away in them.

They spent the night lying on metal cots with no mattresses, shivering in the cold. The next morning, they broke open a couple cans of water. It tasted awful. They used the latrine and then lifted the hatch to exit. As they did, they found themselves facing two Federal marshalls.

“We knew about this hideout. When we saw the broken pieces of concrete scattered on the ground we knew for sure you were inside. We have been waiting here for you. There are some people in Nurenberg who want to hold you accountable for your roles in killing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.”

ARMISTEAD GARDENS - CHAPTER ONE

The chapters which are numerical are factual. The chapters which are alphabetical are fiction, though in some instances the fiction modestly drapes what is factual. I will post one chapter a week, alernating factual and fiction.

I was born in Elkins, West Virginia. Although we lived in several different houses when I was an infant and toddler, the two houses I remember were across the street from my paternal grandparents. The first one was a two-bedroom house my father built from plans he bought from House and Gardens magazine. My sister is one year younger than I am. When I was six years old, my brother was born. My parents bought a larger house next door, directly across the street from my grandparents. We were living there when I started school.

My father worked as a machinist on the Western Maryland Railway in Elkins. When World War 2 ended, he accepted a job on the Atlantic Coast Line Railway in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. My parents sold the car, a 1937 Oldsmobile, and all the furniture, pots and pans, dishes, and linens. My mother and baby brother went to Baltimore to live with her sister. My sister and I went across the street to live with our grandparents. I was beginning the second grade.

My father lived in a boarding house while he was working in North Carolina. However, he couldn’t find a house for us. Just before Christmas, he quit his job in North Carolina and went to Baltimore to look for a job. He worked as a machinist in several places including the Bethlehem Steel shipyard, Glenn L. Martin, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Eventually, he went to work at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s Mt. Clare Shops.

Soon after Christmas 1945, my parents sent for my sister and me to join them in Baltimore. My sister had pneumonia and couldn’t travel. I went to Baltimore on the train by myself. I’m sure that now a seven-year old child could not travel without an adult accompanying him. But, I’m sure the conductor had strict orders to watch out for me. My Grandad Pritt was the track foreman who was in charge of all the tracks in the yard in Elkins, the terminus of the Western Maryland Railway.

I left in the morning while it was still dark. When the train went through Thomas, West Virginia, I could see the coke ovens on the hill above. I didn’t know about coke ovens. They looked like dragons with fiery eyes and flames shooting out their nostrils. I was really scared and tried not to cry.

The train arrived in Baltimore late that evening. I had eaten the sandwich Grandmom Pritt had packed for my lunch. It was a manly meal made with thick slices of homemade bread. But by the time I arrived in Baltimore I was really hungry. Dad met me at the railway station and took me to the apartment where my Aunt Ginny, Uncle Darld, their two daughters, Darlene and Margaret Lee and now Dad and Mom and my brother Marshall Lee were all living in a two bedroom apartment on the second and third floor in a housing project. In hindsight, I cannot imagine how we all found places to sleep.

Aunt Ginny had fixed a plate of food for me and poured a glass of milk. I had barely begun to eat when we heard the loud screech of brakes and people screaming. A crowd of people came pouring out of the apartments and ran to the street intersection. A newspaper boy had gone through a trackless trolley hawking the evening news. He exited the bus and ran around to cross the street at the intersection. The driver pulled away from the curb, did not see the lad running across the street in front of him, and hit the boy. An ambulance came, but it was too late for the newsboy; he was dead.

Two things I remember clearly from the time I was at Ginny and Darld’s home. There was a playground between the two long rows of apartment buildings. I went out and was swinging on one of the swings. A boy came up to me and told me to get off the swing because he wanted to swing. When I continued to swing, he pulled me off the swing and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of me. I never could or would fight. I went back to the apartment with a bloody nose and bruises. Darlene (who was my age) said, “Show me who it was.” Out of the second story window I pointed out my attacker. She marched down the steps, crossed the playground to the swings, and yanked the boy off the swing. She beat him up so bad that he ran back to the apartment where he lived.

The second thing I remember is that Aunt Ginny made butter. The War was over but a lot of commodities, including butter, were still not in the stores because price controls were still in effect. Ginny got milk from Golden Guernsey Dairy. Their bottles had a bulbous shape at the top. There was a plastic stopper you put in the neck of the bottle to pour out most of the cream. Ginny poured the cream off every bottle into a pint jar. When the jar was nearly full she put the lid on the jar and shook it vigorously. When she was tired, she enlisted the help of her daughters and even me. After much vigorous shaking there were some clumps of butter and buttermilk. 

During World War 2 the Federal government built and operated hundreds of housing projects in cities where there were defense plants. They had to house the workers who came from the small towns and rural areas to work in the plants that were producing military equipment and supplies needed for the war effort. So many people moved from West Virginia to Dayton, Ohio to work in the rubber plants that people jokingly said the largest city in West Virginia was Dayton, Ohio. Virginia Lee and Darld Isner lived in the Perkins Project which was near Baltimore’s harbor and the shipyard. Since the War was over, the Federal government was in the process of turning the projects over to municipal authorities to operate.

My parents were able to get a two bedroom row house in Armistead Gardens, another housing project. We moved there in the beginning of February 1946. I don’t know what furniture there was in the beginning. I know my brother, who was about 18 months old, slept in a wagon, his Christmas present. I don’t know if my sister joined us while we were at Darld and Ginny’s or after we moved to Armistead Gardens. My father’s sister Myrtle and her husband Gene, who lived outside Washington, DC, brought her from Elkins in their car.

Our house was at the end of a row of houses, 1127 Newcomb Way. There were two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. The living room, kitchen/dining area, and fuel oil hot air furnace were on the first floor.

Armistead Gardens was just inside the northern city limits of Baltimore. Pulaski Highway was on its eastern side. The houses in Armistead Gardens were originally built to house workers at the Glenn L. Martin plant. It was built in two stages. We lived in the “old section.”  The houses were built as row houses – five or six houses joined together. These units were on both sides of a narrow alley with no sidewalks. There were several streets in that section suitable for vehicular traffic and these had sidewalks.

In the old section the houses were built of cinder block and had concrete floors and flat roofs. The cinder block of the outside wall was also the inside wall. The cinder blocks of the outside walls were 12 inches thick. The walls between each house were 8 inches thick. The cook stoves were gas. Gas, water, and electricity were included in the rent However, the heat was from fuel oil. Trucks came around to fill up 55 gallon oil drums which lay horizontally on concrete stands. There was a spigot to fill the can you carried into the house and poured into the hot air furnace. You had to pay the oil truck in cash for the oil.

The thin walls between the houses meant you could hear the neighbors arguing. We lived in a house at the end of a row, so we only heard one set of neighbors. Lying in bed some nights I would hear the man and woman next door fighting. Sometimes I could hear him hit her. More than once I heard her screaming, then tumbling down the steps. They had three daughters – twins my sister’s age and an older girl my age. I wonder what it must have been like for the girls living in the midst of it.

This same couple would sometimes have a dozen or more children from nearby houses come to their home and sit on the floor in the living room. They would turn out all the lights and tell ghost stories.

The kitchen/dining area, the furnace, and the bathroom all faced the alley which was Newcomb Way. The front door from the living room opened onto a long playground. Directly in front of our house was a “monkey bars.” It was a squarish gridwork of pipes that children could climb on, hang upside, and all kinds of activities. Further down were swings and see-saws. In the middle was a large grassy area where ball games were played. At the far end there was a large area of smooth concrete where children could roller skate, play hop-scotch, etc. In the center was what resembled a giant metal mushroom. On the rounded top was a large shower head. In the summer, when it was blistering hot, they turned on the sprinkler, the children put on bathing suits and ran through the water.

Between our house and the first house of the next row of houses was a large area of what should have been grass but was hard packed dirt. It was there that we boys played marbles. Each boy had a bag of marbles and as the play went on a bag became filled or emptied. Each boy had a large marble which he used as a ‘shooter.” That is also where we played “mumbley-peg” with our pen knives.

ICE DREAMS - CHAPTER H (the last chapter)

I have posted one chapter per week of my latest book, ICE DREAMS. Please note that the numerical chapters are autobiographical. The alphabetical chapters are pure fiction. If you would like the complete book in .pdf format, send your request to mtnpride@gmail.com and I will send it to you as an email attachment.

         After Lorraine left, I had two big projects for the month of August. The salmon would be running that month. The men had been busy building a big fishing wheel, going by pictures and drawings in books which the Department of Interior sent to me. They had also built some salmon smokers. I warned them that both the fishing wheel, when it was spitting fish into a barrel, and the salmon smokers, when there were fish on them would attract bears. Therefore, we needed men on guard at the fishing wheel during the times when it was catching fish and at the smokers anytime there were fish on them.

Also during August, I needed to be planning school classes for the coming year. As Mrs. Wallace observed, I am just “winging” it, but I think that is harder than if I had a set curriculum to follow. I probably will have to introduce mathematics and science for the older children.

I was puzzled about Tatyana. Will she be willing to help again this school year? One day as I was walking out toward the woodline, she fell in step with me. In my mind, her thoughts came as clearly as if she were speaking to me in audible sounds.

“You may be wondering why I acted the way that I did while your wife was here. When we first met, the Starshij told you that I am a virgin – I do not have a husband. I brought you into the cave because I thought that you could be my husband. It was not until you were talking to Starshij that I found out that you are married.

“I was crushed, because I like you so much. It is only because our souls are so close, that our minds can converse like this. I tried to deceive myself into thinking that you really weren’t married, that you were shy or reticent about giving your heart. I thought that eventually you would allow yourself to feel about me the way that I feel about you. When I saw Lorraine, I perceived what a wonderful person she is. When I saw you with her, my self-deception collapsed. Yes, I’ll help you in school this year. But I had to tell you how I feel.”

We continued walking. I didn’t know what to say.

The day after Labor Day (I was the only one who knew or had ever heard of Labor Day), we started school. I divided the class into those who were almost 12 or older. I started them with arithmetic with the intention of going on to algebra after Christmas. While I was teaching them arithmetic, Tatyana worked with the younger children helping them review the alphabet, the colors, and numbers and then having them color. I asked Mrs. Wallace to buy some coloring books and crayons in Bethel and send them out to me.

I had also rearranged the classroom. The younger children were behind the older children and were facing the rear of the trailer. The older children were facing the front so that I could use the whiteboard. I also had a table on which I could put similar objects to illustrate simple addition and subtraction problems. I also had a map of the world, a map of the United States, and a map of Alaska.

Since coming to the Shemyite community, I had been more serious about doing the University of Kentucky correspondence course on classical Greek. I had finished the first course and received a grade of A- and three semester hours credit. I was now working on the second course. I have almost completed it and I will be sending for the final exam in a couple weeks.

The gardens produced an abundance of produce. The women were finding ways to preserve it. They were using the roofs of the trailers to sun dry many things. They dug root cellars in which to keep potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips, and parsnips. I remembered reading about the Korean women making kimchi by cutting up cabbage, hot peppers, and fish and burying it in jars in the ground. All through the winter they dug up one jar at a time. Some of the women decided to try that.

The women already knew how to make bagels. Every trailer kitchen had two or three strings up near the ceiling with dozens of bagels hanging there.

For their part, the men were already going through the woods looking for dead trees which they would saw out in the woods, then drag the pieces back to their trailers. There they split the sections of logs into useable sized pieces. The women’s cook stoves were wood-burning. When it became really cold the pot belly stoves in the center of the trailers were lighted.

I couldn’t help thinking that if I had turned down this assignment and stayed at Fort Meade, I would be in college now. Had I made a mistake? Am I throwing away a year of my life? I cannot deny that the Shemyites need me. Before I came, they were dependent on whatever the Department of Interior would dole out to them. They knew that it wouldn’t go on for long. What I am doing is helping them to become self-sufficient. That will preserve their dignity and self-respect.

The children are being prepared to go to school or at least to earn a G.E.D. diploma. The adults can now defend their community from wild animals, buy food and other necessities with earned money, harvest enough fish and garden vegetables, and gather enough wood for fuel to last through the coming winter.

Also, the storekeeper had sold every one of their crafts and was begging for more. He made it clear that it is only during the summer that he can sell crafts to people who are just passing through. That is perfect because it is during the winter that the Shemyite people work on crafts.

I’m sure that I can get the Department of Interior to set some program in place wherein they will take the crafts to shops in Anchorage. Now that the people have been shown that they can sell their crafts here just as they did when they were living in the cave and now that they have received money for their crafts, I believe they will produce many more crafts this winter.

I am also going to suggest that a teacher be sent to take my place when I leave next fall and that Tatyana be sent to the University of Alaska to work with a linguist who can document the Shemyite patois. At the same time, she can learn English, (and maybe meet a young man whom she can marry.)

Life is about giving others what you have already been given. God leaves us on this earth after we become His children through the Gospel of Christ, in order that we can tell others about Him, and also in order that we may continue to serve others as Christ would have done.   

ICE DREAMS - CHAPTER G

I will be posting one chapter per week of my latest book, ICE DREAMS. Please note that the numerical chapters are autobiographical. The alphabetical chapters are pure fiction.

On Tuesday, March 12, 1961 two soldiers drove into the community in a M561, a large six-wheeled vehicle called a “Gamma Goat.” I couldn’t believe that they could drive up into our community. There was not even a dirt road from Tuluksak. Despite its size the Gamma Goat can go over terrain that would not be passable for a Jeep. In the vehicle there were twelve rifles and that many cases of ammunition.

“Sergeant, you sign for these. From now on you’ll be responsible for them.”

“Thank you.”

“We’re cold and hungry. Can you give us some grub? You wouldn’t make us eat these cold C-Rations would you?”

“Tell you what. I’ll make you some hot chili with soda crackers, some hot chocolate and some applesauce in exchange for your C-Rations.”

“You’ve got a deal, good buddy.”

They carried a whole case of C-Rations into the trailer.

By then a half dozen men had gathered around to gawk at this large six-wheeled vehicle which had managed to drive up into the community. I showed them the rifles and ammunition. Boris looked at the soldiers and pointing to his stomach he rubbed it and then pointed to them questioningly. I didn’t have to explain the meaning of his gestures. They enthusiastically accepted his invitation. He gestured for all three of us to follow him.

In Boris’ trailer he barked a few commands to his wife. She scurried into the kitchen and began preparing a hot meal whose tantalizing odor was driving us crazy. While we were waiting, Boris served us hot sweetened chai in glasses.

Then his wife began putting the food on the table. When we were seated, Boris clasped his hands in prayer and motioned to me. I prayed for the Lord Jesus to bless the food and to bless the home of this generous couple. When I finished the two soldiers joined us in an enthusiastic Amen.

The next day, I had the children busy drawing pictures of brown bears and moose – copying from pictures I found in hunting magazines. When the men came, I took a rifle, some ammunition, the pictures and some thumb tacks. We walked to the back edge of the clearing. I motioned for them to stay there. I walked out about 100 paces and tacked a picture about chest high on a tree. I walked another 50 paces and put up another picture on a tree. Going another 50 paces I did the same.

Going back to the men, I demonstrated loading the rifle, cocking it, taking the safety off, and firing it. I managed to hit some place on each of the targets, but I didn’t hit any of the animals pictured on them. I then had each man do the same. It was very difficult teaching them, especially gun safety, without words or language. The men, however, were very enthusiastic. Not all of them hit a target, but this was just their first time. I decided to have the men devote their class time to target practice every day.

By the end of March, the men were hitting the animals pictured on the targets. They had also learned to clean the weapons. I issued a rifle to each one who had been in the class.

Spring was coming. I drew up a schedule of these men, two per night, to stand guard over our community. One man would be on duty 4pm to midnight; the other man midnight to 8 am. They were to watch for bears and moose and to shoot the animal before it could get into the clearing.

A month went by. The men were grumbling about the watch duty. Then on the first night in May Boris spotted a brown bear about 75 yards from the trailers. He aimed for the chest, but shot the bear in the head. It roared and fell over dead.

That morning I rode down to the general store and asked if someone would show us how to skin the bear. A Native American man, grizzled in appearance, rode back to the community with me. He skinned and gutted the bear, then told me a few things about butchering it. He asked if he could have the heart and paws from the bear. The men were glad to give him those. He also told me that we must bury the guts in a deep hole and drain the bear’s blood into the hole, then cover the hole in dirt. That might keep wolves from catching the scent of the bear and coming to look for it.

The women butchered the bear and every family was given a share of it. Bear meat was strange to them and each of the women cooked it in different ways. Some roasted it, some fried it, others made stew of it.

The men were more alert now that they knew the possibility of a large and dangerous intruder was real. The possibility of another bonanza of fresh meat was also an incentive. In the next month the men killed a caribou, another bear, and then a moose.

We had no plows and the clearing behind the trailers had many stumps. All the men used spades to dig up garden patches for their own family. At the general store they were able to buy seed potatoes and packets of seeds. They planted the seeds and every day members of the families would carry water in buckets for the garden. They had already been carrying water for use in the home.

The children were making very good progress in basic English. I could sometimes tell one of the children something that I wanted to say to one of the adults and they could interpret it for me. The school district sent a woman to our school to see how much progress they had made, what teaching materials I was using, what my qualifications were as a teacher.

Mrs. Wallace came on a “dirt bike” motorcycle. She had the twelve children come to her one at a time. She asked them the numbers, the alphabet, the colors. Then she asked them questions using simple English. I was afraid at first and then embarrassed at how well they did.

“Sergeant, your methods are unorthodox, probably making it up as you go along. You have no ESL training, probably haven’t even read a book on the subject. Yet somehow, you are doing a great job. If there were a school within reasonable distance, these children could all start in school next fall. Keep it up. You are doing a great job. I’ll see if I can gather up some books for the children and some teaching aids for you and ship them out to you.”

I thanked her and one of the mothers tugged at her arm, took her to her trailer, and fixed Mrs. Wallace a wonderful lunch with hot sweetened chai. When she was leaving, the mother hugged her.

All winter the men and women had been working in the crafts they had used in the cave. They had quite a collection of dolls, throw rugs, wood carvings (including Orthodox crosses), scarves, gloves, and other items. Some of the men put them all in bundles, and carried them on their backs. I went with them to talk to the storekeeper. I had made two copies of an inventory of all the goods. Beside each item was the name of the person who had made the craft.

When we reached the store, I explained to Mr. Harriman that they had some crafts that they would like to leave with him on consignment. Whatever he did not sell in three months we would take back and send it elsewhere to be sold. I asked him to check the inventory against the crafts they had brought with them and to sign one copy of it if it was correct. I would leave the other copy with him. He could sell the crafts for what he judged to be a fair price and then write the price beside the item on the inventory. In three months he would return the unsold crafts, total the amount of sales, keep 20% for himself and pay us 80%. He agreed those terms were fair.

The gardens were coming up. As with all first gardens they were flourishing and there was a minimum of weeds. However, some animals were discovering the gardens and foraging there. We had to drop everything and build fences to keep the wild animals out.

I sent for some books about the way native Alaskans fish for salmon. They would be running in August and September. We only had a couple months to learn to build the wheels and nets they use to catch the salmon. We also had to learn to smoke and preserve the salmon.

It was summer now. The days were long. The sun was warm. The dirt path out to Tuluksak was firm enough for a four-wheel drive vehicle to traverse. I asked Lorraine if she would like to come here for a visit. I would like to see Paul, who was now one year old, but bringing him might be too much for her to manage in these primitive conditions. She agreed with enthusiasm.

Next, I had to make arrangement through the Department of Interior office in Anchorage. They would have to arrange to fly her from Anchorage to Bethel and then for a Ranger to drive her from Bethel to the Shemyite community. I knew that I was asking a lot, but I figured that they owed me a lot.

I sent a letter to them with a copy to the Ranger at Bethel. The Ranger called Anchorage, read the letter to them. They agreed without hesitation. The Ranger answered me back by mail three days after I sent the letters. I promptly sent Lorraine a letter telling her that she had permission to come and I gave her the phone numbers of the office in Anchorage and the Ranger in Bethel.

Lorraine arrived the evening of the Fourth of July. Even though it was evening, it was still light as if it were afternoon. The people of the community all gathered around her and took turns hugging her. Tatyana was on the edge of the group and did not come up to greet her. She had a strange look in her eyes. While everyone was still greeting Lorraine, Tatyana walked away and went to her parents’ trailer.

Lorraine was very tired from her trip. I’m sure that she would have liked to take a shower. All I could offer was a washbasin into which I poured hot water from the tea kettle on the stove. I told her to save the water with which she washed so we could use it to flush the toilet.

We both had to sleep in my single bed. We didn’t sleep a whole lot. The next morning, I got up first and made coffee. I fixed her a fried egg and warmed the bread on top of the egg after I had turned it over. We went out and I showed her around the compound. There were already women and children working out in the gardens. Before long Lorraine was working alongside them.

She saw that some of the beans were pole beans but they were running along the ground. She went looking for some discarded tree branches and pushed them into the ground. “Go get me a hammer and some rags.” She hammered the poles in the ground and then picked the bean runners off the ground and tied them to the poles with strips from the rags. The women watched her and began doing the same.

The families in the community paired up in hosting us each evening for supper. It was heartwarming to me to see the genuine affection the women displayed to her. She oohed and aahed over the food, played with the children, admired the carvings or tapestries on the walls. They may have expected her to treat them with the lack of respect and dignity that other city people had displayed toward them. She admired their crafts, their homes, their children, and their food. They could not have loved her any more.

When we went to the home of Tatyana’s uncle, Tatyana’s parents and the other children were there. They said Tatyana was not feeling well. There was a stiffness in Tatyana’s mother’s manner to us. The uncle’s wife noticed it and frowned. When the meal was over, she excused herself and left the trailer. Tatyana’s father looked puzzled but he stayed. Lorraine helped the uncle’s wife clean up after supper. When the wife started washing the dishes, Lorraine picked up a tea towel and started drying. The wife talked softly to Lorraine. She couldn’t understand the words, but the meaning was one of friendship. When we left, the wife hugged Lorraine a long time with tears in her eyes.

Lorraine was supposed to leave the next day. She was ready in the morning. I walked down to the general store with her, carrying her suitcase. She hadn’t been able to pack all of her own things because many of the women had gifts for her. There was a doll for Andrew, an elaborately carved Orthodox cross, a necklace, wooden toys for Paul, a scarf and other mementos of her visit.

We waited until 3 pm. Then I called the Ranger station. The Ranger who had been coming for Lorraine had run off the road and was taken to the hospital. They were sending her home tomorrow, but she wouldn’t be able to work for a while. That left only one Ranger at the station so he couldn’t leave the station to go out to Tuluksak and back. He would have to make some other arrangement. He said to call him back in a couple days and he’d let us know what he had arranged.

When I called Ranger Thompson a couple days later, he said, “I made arrangements with a man here in town. He is on his way out there now. I hurried back to the trailer and got Lorraine and her suitcase. We hurried back to the general store. When we got back to the store, the storekeeper said, “This man said the Ranger sent him out here to take your wife back to Bethel…But I don’t know…”

The man was drunk, very drunk. I said, “I’m sorry but she has changed her mind.”

“Wha’s wrong. Ain’t I good enough to drive the prin..cess?”

“No, you are not. Thank you.”

“Whad’da ‘bout the money Ranger Thompson promised me?”

“You see Ranger Thompson about that.”

After he left, I called Ranger Thompson and told him,

“The man you sent to drive Lorraine to Bethel arrived here very drunk. She still needs a ride to Bethel.”

“I’m sorry. He was sober when he left here. Look I’ve got more important things than to find taxis for you.”

With that he hung up.

Lorraine started to cry. I remembered that Mrs. Wallace had given me her card when she left. I looked in my wallet for it. It had her home telephone number on it. I called her,

“Mrs. Wallace? This is Sergeant Pritt out at the Shemyite community near Tuluksak. My wife came from Baltimore to visit me. The Ranger brought her here from Bethel. When she was ready to return, the Ranger had a vehicle accident on her way out here. Ranger Thompson made arrangements with some man to pick up Lorraine today. When the man arrived, he was very drunk, so we sent him back. Then I called Ranger Thompson several minutes ago and he was angry and said that he had better things to do than be my taxi service.

“Lorraine is stranded here. If you can find someone who will pick her up and take here to Bethel, I can pay them $30.”

“Tell your wife that someone will be there in three hours. I will call Ranger Thompson and straighten him out.”

Three hours later Mrs. Wallace herself arrived driving a four-wheel drive Dodge truck. I found out later that she took Lorraine to her own house, called Ranger Thompson and told him that she had Lorraine at her home and she would expect a call from him the next day telling her what time to expect the plane to fly Lorraine to Anchorage. She fixed a delicious supper for Lorraine and her own family – a husband and two teenage children.

The next day a plane arrived to fly Lorraine to Anchorage. She was met by a very apologetic secretary from the Department of Interior office. She made all the arrangements for changing Lorraine’s reservations to Baltimore. Lorraine discovered her seats had been changed to First Class!