Not long before we were married, my husband Dee, and I went to a “Fair” with my parents. It was held in the Grange Hall in Beltsville, Maryland. There were many booths, but I only remember one of them. In it was a lady who read Tarot Cards, to tell your future. We decided it would be fun to have her tell ours. There was only one thing she told Dee that I remember. She said he “would see lots of water”. She explained, that probably meant he would travel the ocean in a large ship. We were not surprised at that, he would be 21 on his next birthday, and he would be eligible for the draft, as it was at the beginning of World War II. Likewise, there was only one thing I remember from my reading. She said, I would always have enough money, but I would have to work for it. At that time neither of us realized how generic those prophesies were, or they would not have made such an impression on me that I would have remembered them this long.
My first job with the U.S. Government was in 1942, just 2 weeks before we were married. It was with the Army Finance Office, Allotment Division. Since it was shortly after the United States had entered into World War II, they were hiring as fast as they could. However, we were still working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, trying to keep up with the allotments for the steady stream of men joining the Army. This was not an easy job, and just a few months later it became much harder when I realized I was pregnant. This meant dealing with morning sickness while going to work. I was riding to work with several other employees, and a few times I had to ask the driver to please pull over and let me out of the car. He was happy to oblige, he certainly didn’t want me to throw up in his car.
About 6 months into my pregnancy my husband was drafted into the Army. He was sent for training, to Camp Croft, South Carolina. I knew I would have to give up our apartment, and didn’t know where I would be living, so I decided it was a good time to quit my job. I spent a couple of months with my sister in Baltimore, while my parents moved back to Hyattsville. They couldn’t continue driving back and forth to work from their home on the South River, due to the rationing of gasoline and tires. Once they were settled, I moved back home with them.
This “home” was a strange arrangement; they rented the first floor of a big old house, along with one room on the second floor for my Aunt’s bedroom. The elderly couple taking care of the house used the rest of the second floor. During the last months of my pregnancy, I spent many hours sitting in one of rocking chairs on the big front porch at night, because I couldn’t breathe while lying down. I had suffered with asthma since I was twelve, and my condition at that time made it much worse.
During our stay in this house, our first child was born; we named her Grace Louise, after my Mother. Dee was not able to be with me for her birth, but was able to get a 3 day pass to come to see us when she was 3 days old. In those days, new mothers were required to stay in bed for 10 days. But, I finally convinced my doctor to let me go home. Otherwise, Dee would have only been able to visit me in the hospital twice a day during visiting hours for those 3 days. The doctor did require me to get an ambulance to take me home, and stay in bed for the full 10 days. My Dad drove to Baltimore and brought my sister and her baby son back, so we would have someone to take care of us while Dee was home for that very short visit. Soon after Louise was born, my folks were able to find a house for us to move into. It was on the same street we had lived on when I was a teenager. Since it was on the bus route into Washington, Mom and Dad could ride the bus to work.
While we lived there, Dee received orders to join the 29th Division in Europe. After he was on the front lines for several months I received one of those dreaded telegrams from the army. I was relieved when I read that he was wounded, but it gave no indication as to how badly he was wounded. I finally started receiving mail from him. After several months he wrote that he was going back on duty, and was headed back to Germany. He was to manage a hotel that housed the USO entertainers as they traveled to entertain the troops.
About 6 months later, my mother and I were sitting in the living room. I was at my sewing machine altering some clothes, and mother was reading, when the front door was opened. Neither of us even looked up as we had heard the bus go by, and were expecting my Aunt to come home from work at that time. However, when no one came into the room, we both looked up and saw Dee standing there waiting for us to see him. Needless to say, both of us were extremely surprised! We had no idea that he was even on his way back.
Louise was still awake, since I had been going in and out of the bedroom, getting and putting away the clothes I had been altering. We went upstairs to see her. I was a bit apprehensive, I had heard so many stories of fathers returning home to children who did not remember them, or were even afraid of them, and he had been gone for more than a year. But, when she saw him the only worry I had was that she would collapse the crib she was jumping up and down in, and trying to climb out of at the same time. After we had calmed Louise down a bit, I asked Dee if he had had any dinner. “No,” he said, “I didn’t take time to even clean up or shave, much less eat. So we went to the kitchen and before I started to get some leftovers out to warm up, I turned to Louise and said, “Talk to Daddy and entertain him while I fix him something to eat. You didn’t even know how to talk, when he saw you the last time.” That was like pulling a plug. She started to talk, telling him everything she could think of to say.
Although it was after 10 o’clock by that time, Dee called his brother, Walter, on the phone to let him know he was back in the states. Walter told him that his son, Dick, was at Fort Meade and was to ship out in the morning. Next thing I knew, we were in the back seat of Walter’s car and were heading to Fort Meade, in Laurel, Maryland. Walter knew which barrack Dick was in so he went right to it. Dee got out and went into the barrack to find Dick. He came back in a few minutes, with Dick hobbling along beside him. Dick said, “I don’t think they gave me the right size shoes.” We all looked at his shoes, and realized as he fumbled in the dark trying to get them on quietly, he had managed to put them on the wrong feet. After a short visit with Dick and a quick “goodbye,” we hurried Dee to the barrack he had been assigned to when he got off of the bus earlier that day as he arrived in Fort Meade. He had thrown his duffle bag on a cot as he went out the back door, to catch the bus to take him home to us. In a few days Dee was mustered out, and home with us to stay.
In a few weeks Dee had accepted a position as a clerk with the Internal Revenue Service. This was the beginning of his 33 year career with the U.S. Government. We then started the job of hunting for the first house for us to live in. That took longer than we expected it would, but we finally found one that we liked. It was in Landover Hills, Maryland. Shortly after we moved in, our first Son was born (our baby boomer). We named him Robert Lawrence. When Dee was taking me to the hospital, he stopped at a card shop and bought a package of Baby Announcements saying that we had a son. He was so sure this would be the son he wanted.
When Bobby was three, we decided that if we could hire a live-in babysitter, it was time for me to go back to work. I heard the Bureau of Mines was looking for help at their offices housed in one of the buildings on the campus of the University of Maryland. This was closer than having to go back into Washington, and it wouldn’t take me away from home quite as long each day. I decided I would try it. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that it wasn’t going to work out. The job was in the key punch section. By the time I had learned what I was to do, and how to do it, I had also learned it was not a job I wanted to do. It was way too boring and monotonous to suit me. Furthermore, the basement just under our office was being used to raise chickens for experiments. This was before the days when all big offices were air conditioned, and it was summertime. The odor coming from the windows just below ours, and blowing right back into ours, was more than I could live with. I began immediately to search the postings of other job openings I could transfer to. I found a listing for jobs available in the Navel Ordinance Laboratory, housed at their new building complex in Silver Springs, Maryland.
This was great, the building I was in was air conditioned, and the work was interesting. It was here that I first learned to transcribe: letters, memos, reports, etc., from little green plastic discs. But wouldn’t you know. In less than a year I was pregnant again. We were having trouble at home also. We had to fire our latest baby sitter. When she came in from the country, she brought a suitcase full of bed bugs with her. We didn’t know this right away, but by the time we found out, the bedroom she was using was full of them. We discovered this the hard way. My 10-year-old niece, Millie, came from Baltimore to visit with Louise. The only bed available for her use was the other half of the studio couch in the room the baby sitter was using. Millie spent a very uncomfortable night, and when she got up, she was covered with red itchy welts.
After Millie was taken care of, Dee took the day off from work. He carried all the furniture from the room down to the back yard. There he soaked it with bug killer. He then sprayed the room. We learned that although they were called “Bed Bugs,” they didn’t confine their habitat to the beds. He even found them on the backs of the pictures hanging on the wall.
All things being considered, it was decided that perhaps it was time for me to resign from this job, and stay at home.
Our third child was born in 1950, we named her Rebecca. When she was 2 years old Dee was transferred to Raleigh, North Carolina. This was quite an experience for all of us. We missed being in close contact with the rest of my family. I had lived in Maryland all of my life. It was a new experience for Dee also. This new job required him to be on the road at least 3 or 4 days a week.
We had only been living in North Carolina a couple of years when our second son was born in 1954. This son we named Theodore. The day after we came home from the hospital, Hurricane Hazel came in from the ocean and headed north right through our area. We were 4 days without power, and had to prepare Ted’s formula in the fireplace. This was no easy task, but thankfully he was strong enough to survive.
By the time Ted started school we had been transferred once again. This time we moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Louise, our oldest Daughter, was going to college in North Georgia, and I had found a good maid. We decided it was time for me to join the work force once again.
My fourth job with the government was in the Department of Agriculture. I was the receptionist for a room full of women who took care of the office needs for the State’s Veterinarians. This was an interesting job and I liked the people I was working with, especially at Christmas time when the Veterinarian from Southwest Georgia always came into the office with a large suit box full of spiced pecan halves his wife had sent to us. They were so good they never lasted very long.
After a few years, the Internal Revenue Service opened a Regional office in Chamblee, a suburb of Atlanta. They sent out a plea for tax examiners to staff the office. It was an opportunity for a step up with an increase in salary, so I decided to give it a try. I left the Agriculture Department with the assurance that I could return if I decided, after one tax season, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. The work wasn’t too hard, and we were trained well. We were trained to work fast, and had a quota that we had to complete each day. Because of this, we were told to not worry about accuracy, just turn them out. This was so against all I had been taught, such as, “A job worth doing is worth doing well,” or, “If you don’t do it right the first time, you’ll have to do I over.” Also, we didn’t have desks to use; we sat at long tables, 2 or 3 to a table. We could not leave our seats at any time, for anything, even to go to the rest room, except during our 15-minute break or 30-minute lunch time. When the tax season was over, that was enough for me, I returned to the job at the Agriculture Department.
I was happy to be back, and became best friends with one of the women working in the Records Department, where I was assigned this time. Some years later a friend of ours, who was the Chief Personnel Officer at the Center for Disease Control, was trying to convince me, and my friend, to transfer to the Center. We finally took a couple hours off from work and went to talk with him. We were both offered a better job and decided to transfer to the Center for Disease Control.
I was to be trained for a travel Clerk’s position. It was a very interesting job, although I had to learn the job without the help of the girl who was supposed to be training me. She was leaving to get married, and that was all she had on her mind. Every time I would ask why something was done a certain way, her stock answer was, “I don’t know, we just always do it that way.” I thoroughly enjoyed this job, Instead of working with Veterinarians; I was now working with Medical Doctors. They did a lot of traveling, and the Travel Clerk was an important part of their job experience.
Even going to the cafeteria was interesting, you never knew who or what you would see there. There were usually several ladies from India dressed in their beautiful Saris, who were taking courses in the Labs. One day we saw an African Chief, I can’t really describe his outfit, except to say that it left no doubt in our minds that he was an important Chief. This was, without a doubt, the best job I had ever had. I worked there for quite a few years. My final job there was as a Staff Assistant in the Venereal Disease Division. The job really kept me busy; however, when an opportunity came along for an early retirement, I took it. I retired from this, my last job, in 1982.
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