Earlier I wrote of living in Baltimore, Md. Those were the years of being a home maker and early parenting. Many of our family activities took place in the Baltimore, D.C., Annapolis area.
My husband and I came to this new area as he had taken a job teaching in a high school in Salisbury. it was all part of our Five Year Plan. We decided early on to work, save money, for him go to graduate school, then in five years time we would start our family. Being on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was almost culture shock, in a positive way. We had left family and friends and gone into the unknown.
Our first friends were Phyllis and Russ Cooper. Phyllis worked for the Dept. of Education and invited us, being newcomers to their home, for a duck dinner. Russ was the ultimate outdoorsman. He hunted and fished and we were often treated to wild game dinners. We hit it off as couples and thus began the forming of a nucleus of couples who met and visited and had many happy evenings together.
As we settled into living in the very nice town of Salisbury I found a job teaching a class of three year old children in a Day Care called Tiny Tots. I did not want to sign a contract for a teaching job in the public schools as we had our Five Year Plan to follow. The Nursery was owned by a Mrs. Moore. She was a good business woman and her business thrived. Thinking of those years I remember one little girl who had a phenomenal voice. At Christmas she performed in our little program. She sang "I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus". She had a strong clear voice and was right on key. She would have been out on You Tube if it had been available then.
We found an upstairs apartment with the retired Police Chief of Salisbury. This man and his wife had no children and rented out the top floor of their home. She once gave us a large bowl of beef/vegetable soup. It was simply wonderful and I remember it after 50 years,but have never been able to duplicate it. When we learned we would be a family of three we found other lodgings and this couple was quite upset with us for leaving.
We made friends with Bill Conrad, basketball coach at Wicomoco High School, where my husband taught. Every Saturday morning he came over to our apartment and I made oatmeal for him. His wife's name was Georgia and she worked at a bank. She did not like to make oatmeal. Oatmeal was a regular item at our morning table and we looked forward to his visits.
The manual arts teacher, Nick Guilanio and his wife Faye became friends also. Nick was from New York and if he drank beer he got terrible headaches. Nick helped us select our first dining room set. We used it for over forty years. I loved it as it had a modern design and was made of maple. It was made in Denmark, I think. Nick said it was well built and on his okay we paid $600 for it. A lot of money for us at that time. Thirty years later when my son bought our home in Decatur that furniture went with the house.
Another teacher, ED Manus and his wife, both from Tennessee, became our fast friends. They had three little girls and our friendship with them was a bit different as their girls dictated their social life. Most often we visited in their home in the evenings when the girls were in bed. We played cards a lot and had many meals at their home. We really had a lot of fun with them and the other couples also.
Those were carefree days in 1951 and 1952. We had not started a family, and living in apartments, no yard to maintain. We had time to explore the area around us and eventually bought a lot across the Chesapeake Bay, with an eye to built there one day. That never happened but we had many happy week-ends on Love Point swimming and enjoying the water. My husband bought a runabout type boat which we sometimes used to reach this property. There was a huge fig tree near the clubhouse and I delighted in the fruit of that tree. The first time I had tasted a fresh fig was in Corpus Christi, Texas. I was intrigued with this fruit. The pink interior, which is actually the bloom, is pollinated by a particular wasp.
By the time we had children, and they were old enough to take out in this boat we would cross the bay and spend the day there. Once on the way home we were in the middle of the bay when a squall came up quite suddenly. It was a scary situation. The wind was very forceful and the rain was pelting down. My husband told me and the children to huddle down in the prow to protect us from the biting rain. He, however was right in the line of fire, and navigated us out of the squall and home safely. Only later did I realize what a dangerous situation we were in.
I was reminded of this trip many years later when I was in a boat with my son-in-law Jim, my daughter and their young son. We had been to see the fire works display at Lake Lanier Islands on the night of July fourth. When we left it was dark and Jim discovered that he did not have running lights on his boat. He had to cross the lake northward and get back to my dock with only the light he could see from the shore line. We made it safely but it was a tense ride.
Many memories come back to me of our time living on the eastern shore of Maryland, but this is enough for mow.
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