00:00:02.860 - 00:00:18.360

But the maid cooked it for us. And that was six days a week. Of course, we worked six days a week during the war. It was $50 because this woman bored [room and board?] and

00:00:18.360 - 00:00:34.660

everything. And the maid--And the maid cooked delicious fried chicken, but she didn't know how to cook a steak. Where was she from? It was usually a black girl, a

00:00:34.660 - 00:00:47.680

poor black girl, who got paid next to nothing. I think it was about ten dollars a week or something. She may have been raised to fifteen a week after a while, for what they called part-time.

00:00:52.040 - 00:01:00.980

But anyway, Joe and I moved to, found an apartment in Fairlington. When did you get married then? What year did you get? 1944.

00:01:06.540 - 00:01:15.400

We got an apartment 1944. We got an apartment in the Fairlington because Fairlington was built by the government and it was open to the military.

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Half of it was military, half of it was Army officers, 25 percent naval officers, and 25 percent civilians who worked for the government. So that's why we got in.

00:01:36.040 - 00:01:48.020

I see. That was lucky. Yeah, I was very lucky. And so you stayed there until you moved there in the 70s?

00:01:48.360 - 00:01:57.880

Mm-hmm. And so we went looking for... Well, there weren't any houses being built during the war. Right.

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And for a few years afterwards. And a lot of people saw Bannockburn, and to them it was out in God's country. It was too far away from

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civilization. Far away from civilization. That was practically a town. I think Madeline said, when we

00:02:35.800 - 00:02:48.960

moved here, Bannockburn was the suburb of Washington and now it's the suburb of Bethesda. Bethesda was a small town. Yeah, I bet.

00:02:48.960 - 00:02:59.880

It was an intersection. Now Bethesda has more built up than Washington was when we came here. Wow.

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It's more built. I mean, when we came... Well, restaurants, of course, now are exceptional for any place. Isn't it amazing? I mean every time I go down there

00:03:09.520 - 00:03:23.780

every other week there's a new restaurant there We went last night for dinner and What closed and three open exactly exactly And when we first moved here, which really wasn't that long ago, we moved in '81, January of '81.

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The only skyscraper down there was the Air Rights Building. I mean that was it. That was just, you know, that's 12, 13 years ago.

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13 years ago. So I can imagine what it was like in the '40s. I feel like a storyteller.

00:03:39.680 - 00:03:45.780

Yeah, I mean, gee. But I know almost all the restaurants. Do you?

00:03:45.900 - 00:03:51.280

You get around, Wanda. I can tell. You get around. But you have to give me some

00:03:51.280 - 00:03:57.880

restaurant tips next time. You've probably been to more of them than I have. I know the restaurants of

00:03:57.880 - 00:04:05.300

Bethesda. We used to know every restaurant in the Washington area, including Virginia. But now we don't know them anymore.

00:04:06.380 - 00:04:17.140

But there are so many in Bethesda, it doesn't pay to go anywhere. Yeah, it's not worth it. And they're very, you know, they're good quality food, reasonably priced.

00:04:17.580 - 00:04:26.320

Mostly variety. Yeah, wow. Every bit as much variety as DC. So back to this, I want to try to

00:04:26.320 - 00:04:41.280

understand and capture this political sort of ethos a little bit more. So you were living there, so were people in the in the in the Fairlington housing area, what

00:04:41.280 - 00:04:58.900

were people's political persuasion there? When you lived in Virginia, you never voted for anything. You always voted against. Byrd was in control then, and he

00:04:58.900 - 00:05:12.080

controlled the whole state of Virginia. We worked for the Virginia. We worked for the schools then where the school board was directly or indirectly appointed

00:05:12.780 - 00:05:27.980

by the Byrd machine. So we voted, we worked to get an elected school board. We finally got an elected school

00:05:27.980 - 00:06:01.460

board, and the opposition found an old rule, or law rather, that said that The school board could not be made up, or rather people working for the government could not be members of the school board because all the members happened to be, they found out, happened to

00:06:01.460 - 00:06:10.120

be government employees. So in that way, they got what we had worked so hard to get. They got eliminated.

00:06:12.440 - 00:06:23.160

Hatch. The Hatch Act. Well, the Hatch Act, you weren't allowed to work, you weren't allowed to do any political work.

00:06:23.860 - 00:06:30.520

Right. Oh, so that didn't include school board. It wasn't, it wasn't that. Now, this, these were, Now this

00:06:30.520 - 00:06:38.520

was a school board. I think it was different from the Hatch Act. This was some special law they

00:06:38.520 - 00:06:43.940

found in the Oval and the Oval Office. Wow. Well there are certainly a lot of them in Virginia.

00:06:44.440 - 00:06:58.580

Virginia, They're too smart. All right. But then it was the Democrats who controlled Virginia, but the very conservative, reactionary, I don't

00:06:58.580 - 00:07:07.240

know what you want to call them. It was unpleasant living there to some degree. The military in Fairlington, the

00:07:07.240 - 00:07:14.560

military tend to be unpolitical. Unpolitical? Apolitical? Apolitical? Uh-huh.

00:07:18.480 - 00:07:29.560

So that they didn't, I mean, they weren't involved. But I did find several more or less liberal thinking people I became friendly with.

00:07:33.060 - 00:07:46.000

But otherwise, Virginia would put up a Republican once in a while, and you would look for a Republican because the Democrats in that were pretty bad. But they never put up a decent

00:07:46.000 - 00:08:03.020

Republican. So you voted for him, but he wasn't any. Of course, he never got in.

00:08:03.440 - 00:08:13.780

I remember the, whether it was the janitors or I don't know, some group of workers tried to form a union. They weren't allowed to. It took, well, coming from the –

00:08:13.780 - 00:08:20.580

In the state or in your – In the area, but I think it was the whole state. This was northern Virginia, which was probably better than anywhere else.

00:08:22.660 - 00:08:49.660

Coming from New York, it was very unpleasant. The buses were, the blacks had to sit in the back. It was a very southern, it was to us a very southern town. And we didn't like it.

00:08:50.860 - 00:09:08.800

I remember we had a nurse for coming out to – she lived in the district coming out in the bus, and she was a, I think a semi-professional woman, and she had to sit in the back of the bus.

00:09:12.740 - 00:09:31.060

And that seemed not just unfair to us, it was just very unpleasant, unbearable. Joe tried sitting in the back of the bus, they wouldn't let him. And we would try to get out of Virginia.

00:09:31.980 - 00:09:47.460

And you didn't find that to be the case in New York at the time on buses? I mean buses were not segregated like that at all? Never. Oh no. Well coming down just to Washington, finding the separate

00:09:47.460 - 00:10:13.200

washrooms, separate drinking fountains for blacks. The whole atmosphere was unpleasant. But I guess we sort of got used to some of it. But Virginia was worse than the district, I guess, and somewhat

00:10:13.200 - 00:10:34.060

worse than Maryland. It's funny. We came down in 1981 and we felt the same thing. We came down from New York City in 1981 and felt the same thing?

00:10:34.760 - 00:10:52.160

There was probably, yeah. Well, when integration first took place and the blacks were allowed to eat in restaurants, or rather the same ones that birds [?] were allowed in.

00:10:52.200 - 00:11:07.320

We came in with a group of friends one time. There were blacks and whites in the group. We were sat in a table all the way in the back of the restaurant. They had to seat us, but they didn't like the idea.

00:11:13.860 - 00:11:25.180

So then you had Blacks among your work colleagues and friends? Yes, not many. The trouble is you don't associate with them.

00:11:26.820 - 00:11:42.800

But when I worked in Virginia, I worked with a group of black women and white. And for lunch we would go out and they would sit at the same table with us.

00:11:42.800 - 00:11:50.150

But one of the women had been born in Washington. A white woman had been born in Washington.

00:11:50.160 - 00:12:07.760

She didn't like the idea. She felt very uncomfortable with blacks at the same table. It's uncomfortable. It's difficult getting used to

00:12:07.900 - 00:12:14.000

people with ideas like that. That's why Bannockburn was a relief. I can see that.

00:12:15.260 - 00:12:25.780

So a large measure of it was segregation. The whole southern house. And the southern, uh-huh. The whole southern house.

00:12:27.240 - 00:12:38.420

What would we call prejudices, whatever you want to call them. And then also this whole aspect of Jewishness too, of wanting...

00:12:38.420 - 00:12:54.100

Yes. So that was not important. Well, it was important, I guess. As I say, in New York, I grew up among Jews only.

00:12:59.580 - 00:13:28.760

But I didn't want my children growing up in a community without any Jews. And so you first heard about this from one of your colleagues at the apartment building?

00:13:29.020 - 00:13:43.340

Well, he spoke to us at a meeting and spoke to us about it. And so you came out then and looked the place over? Yeah. So that must have been around 1950

00:13:43.520 - 00:13:55.220

then, or was that still '51? Did the building go that fast? We signed our contract right after my daughter was born. That was in 1950. Well, it took about a year to

00:13:55.320 - 00:14:09.020

build the house. We signed the contract a year before the house was finished. The Merrimacks were already, I

00:14:09.020 - 00:14:21.000

think we might have been interested in one of the Merrimacks, but I think they were all signed up. They hadn't started building yet, but I think they had all, their lots were all sold.

00:14:21.540 - 00:14:35.040

So when you first found out about Bannockburn, how did you, how was it packaged to you, or how did you find out that this was the kind of place he wanted to live. I mean, was it just talking with one and then another?

00:14:35.040 - 00:14:50.280

I know it was connected with the housing, what is the name of the housing agency? The Group Housing Cooperative Group? Yeah. I had been to a meeting one time years in advance, so I sort of

00:14:50.280 - 00:15:01.680

knew a little bit about it. Uh-huh. And I don't know. I just liked the feeling when I

00:15:01.680 - 00:15:12.680

came out here. Whether I knew some of the people who were involved, I don't know. I really don't know.

00:15:15.280 - 00:15:33.300

Because I can see you're very articulate about what was important to you and why you wanted to get out of Virginia. So then I'm trying, and I think I understand now the way you talk, I understand what Madeline and Stan were saying a little bit more too.

00:15:33.740 - 00:15:46.820

And they expressed some of those same feelings. And then I'm just wondering how did people get the impression that this was in fact you had an ideal of the kind of place you wanted to live, at least knew where you didn't want to live.

00:15:47.360 - 00:16:00.520

And so how did you then match what you wanted with this place? Hoagy for example, gave me, I don't think I have it here, a, we liked the modern housing. Uh-huh.

00:16:02.180 - 00:16:18.160

We didn't like the traditional housing. And I don't know, maybe to me, modern housing went with liberal ideas. Maybe I'm wrong, but we connected

00:16:18.240 - 00:16:28.220

it. I'm saying a lot of these things may have been my prejudices about things, but there were a lot of little things.

00:16:30.060 - 00:16:40.680

We heard that the Maryland schools were the best schools. I don't think they were, but I think the reputation had been carried on from about 40 years

00:16:40.680 - 00:16:56.900

before that. Because Virginia afterwards got much better schools, But that was several years later. But at least they were decent schools.

00:16:58.380 - 00:17:18.160

But at the time, they were considered the best. I guess that was the schools were important. And it may have been also, I mean connected with the political idea, not just the schools in the sense of good, bad education, but that

00:17:18.160 - 00:17:29.640

kind of more liberal atmosphere? Yes. I mean, was there something about Montgomery County that also seemed more liberal at that time? Yeah, well Montgomery County, of course, not just Maryland.

00:17:34.200 - 00:17:45.800

And why, I mean, was it a democratic county at that time, very much so? I didn't know whether it was or not. It must have been.

00:17:45.800 - 00:18:02.320

I know now it is. But it's going the other way. So who were some of the first people you met then here? You talked with Ross about moving

00:18:02.320 - 00:18:17.680

here, and then you came out and looked at the place, and then when you had to buy your shares, did you meet with the cooperators? Or was that just done? No, we just found out who it was, whether we met him directly and paid him, or whether we paid

00:18:17.680 - 00:18:26.820

someone else. I don't know that detail. But we bought his, I think it's 201 or 210 shares, something like that.

00:18:27.120 - 00:18:34.300

We had to buy it that time. And then we paid for the lots. Then we paid the builder separately.

00:18:34.820 - 00:18:54.280

The builder was not working with the co-op, the builder was separate. Someone on the block had arranged to get this builder. So that would be, meaning this block here, more or less, Latter

00:18:54.280 - 00:19:00.200

Rock? McCourt and, Wilson Lake was the block. Uh-huh. Block four.

00:19:02.220 - 00:19:15.220

And so did one builder have all of Black Fork? All except three lots that were individually owned. They didn't want to build with

00:19:15.220 - 00:19:32.520

this builder. Mary Ellen Sayre brought in Mr. Cook to build her house with her plans. Mr. Cook bought the lot next door and built his own house.

00:19:35.660 - 00:19:56.820

I mean his own, he built the house himself and then sold it. And there was another lot over there, the one that had the one tree on the block, beautiful old oak, the shares were owned by someone else.

00:19:57.620 - 00:20:18.820

And Mr. Cook, they didn't know whether they wanted a bill then or not. Mr. Cook said he was going to build a house, and if they wanted to, they could take it.

00:20:18.820 - 00:20:29.440

If not, they didn't have to. So he built the house and then they decided not to, so Mr. Cook sold it to someone else. So who owned the lot?

00:20:30.020 - 00:20:49.060

Did they own it or him? No, the, I can't think of their name anyway, someone who had the shares owned the lot. I guess they planned with Mr. Cook ahead of time that when he would build it, they would have the option to buy it.

00:20:49.400 - 00:21:03.340

So what deal they had about the lot, I don't know. Whether they sold it to cook in the first place, I don't know. It must have been something, I mean, if he was going to improve the lot and then they could get the house at a good deal, and then

00:21:03.340 - 00:21:18.600

if he was going to share, maybe they'd sell, they'd get to sell their land at a better deal since it was in danger. I don't know what the option, he built with the option, he may have bought the lot, I assume, He must have bought the lot and then just

00:21:18.600 - 00:21:29.360

offered them the option to buy it when he finished. As a matter of fact, they decided they moved into Merrimack afterwards. Not the Bannockburn Merrimacks,

00:21:31.460 - 00:21:41.880

the Merrimack Park up there. The Merrimack Park, the new development, isn't it? Oh, the brand new one, Is that what it's going to be called? You may be right.

00:21:43.080 - 00:21:50.720

Oh, gee, then we're really going to get confused, aren't we? Keep recycling these old names. They don't realize they have a history.

00:21:51.040 - 00:22:00.060

No, but they're going to build some cheap houses there, beginning at $600,000. Have to see the pictures of them. They've got five houses up

00:22:00.060 - 00:22:08.260

already. Oh, they have? Oh, my son walked home from school the other day with some friends who live over on Bar Road, and they walked through the

00:22:08.260 - 00:22:20.700

development. There are five houses up now. There are these enormous, they're these track brick mansions, you know, snd really tall and big, and there's at least three stories.

00:22:21.040 - 00:22:30.340

And the way that you look at the lots, they're really going to be close to each other. The big houses filling the hot lots, yeah.

00:22:31.120 - 00:22:47.860

So they've left trees in the center and some parts of it they've left trees around the perimeter, but other parts of it like up at the head of what's that, Binalder, the woman that's putting her house for sale there,

00:22:47.860 - 00:22:57.220

They just took the trees out like right up to it. So she has nothing now. She had this wonderful wooded little tiny little lot with this cute little house.

00:22:57.440 - 00:23:09.820

And now it just has this enormous bear side with all this mudslide coming down. It's awful. Well, actually I have to go to get my daughter now, but I wonder if

00:23:09.820 - 00:23:23.500

we can take this up again sometime. Oh, mud. We moved in so that, and that summer there were loads of these heavy rainstorms so that the

00:23:23.500 - 00:23:36.360

street was covered. Anyway, there was, especially the house next door was mud because it hadn't been built on. And one day I went out and some kid was stuck in the mud.

00:23:36.580 - 00:23:51.500

Oh, and I pulled him out. The boots were left in the mud. That's actually happened to my son before. Oh, boy.

00:23:51.780 - 00:23:59.200

Well, there are a bunch of funny little things around here. Yeah, yeah. We moved in and we couldn't get telephones.

00:24:00.140 - 00:24:09.380

So there was one telephone booth in the court. Oh, you're kidding. So I had, any time a phone call came, I had to go and call people.

00:24:10.160 - 00:24:18.460

I was pretty close. I was, again, one of the closest. You were the telephone operator for the court here? Oh, funny.

00:24:18.480 - 00:24:28.380

Oh, wow. We moved in. We signed our contract before the Korean War. Wow, yeah.

00:24:30.260 - 00:24:54.860

And it was, that's why a lot of the things we were expecting, the builder said he couldn't get for our houses, he was short of material, short of metals. Well, maybe next time we could get together and go from sort of like

00:24:54.860 - 00:25:08.720

when you moved in on and talk about those first years. This has really helped me a lot because it's helped me. I'm starting to get a better feel for the time. And you know people sort of say snippets about what's important to

00:25:08.720 - 00:25:23.040

them, but you don't, until you hear it several times, it helps you characterize the time and the feeling. And when you just hear one isolated person after another, you don't get a feeling of the whole place until you start to connect

00:25:23.040 - 00:25:31.780

that thought together. And this really helped me a lot, connect that thought together. Moving in with having the same

00:25:31.780 - 00:25:46.720

problem of no telephones and the mud. The builder built a concrete walk, I think two feet from the doorway or something of the sort. And that was all, the rest was

00:25:46.720 - 00:26:01.020

mud. So that each family had the problem of having to put a walk-in. So a lot of the men got together and ordered a concrete mix, sort

00:26:01.020 - 00:26:08.940

of, you know, deliverable. So that alone, each one couldn't do it, but several of them had got together and helped each other with his walkway.

00:26:10.520 - 00:26:33.420

And of course, we all had the same problems moving in, is why we became very close, I guess. And of course, the Sitters Club made it a close community. And of course, we were all stuck with only one car, so we had to

00:26:33.420 - 00:26:58.620

help each other in driving someone to the store or whatever else we needed. I guess that makes a very big difference, characterizes a really big difference between moving in

00:26:58.620 - 00:27:05.500

now and moving in then. I mean if you're all sharing that experience, what an enormous impact. We had to work together.

00:27:05.500 - 00:27:22.100

You couldn't work alone. Well, that applies to a larger degree if you move into a new community with everyone new, anywheres. Here we had, I don't know, more problems than anywheres else, or

00:27:23.400 - 00:27:42.600

more in common with our neighbors, which made it a closer community. We all moved in with children, so there were about 14 children in the court. And they all played together

00:27:42.600 - 00:27:50.440

beautifully. For a long time there were no children here. Two children just moved in next

00:27:50.440 - 00:28:04.860

door. And next door to that were two little ones, I think about two and four or five, who had no children. And now all of a sudden they have these two big children to play

00:28:04.860 - 00:28:11.260

with. They're so happy. Their whole world has changed. They're children.

00:28:11.360 - 00:28:31.400

They never had any before. Who was it? Harry Greenspan was saying, I remember he said at that meeting in April that at one point there had been 50 children, I think he

00:28:31.400 - 00:28:38.680

said, on East Halbert. East Talbert was, yeah. On the hook. Well, they had a couple of four

00:28:38.680 - 00:28:46.860

children and a family and five children. They never had that here. So here we had only about, I think it was 12, 13, I don't know.

00:28:48.260 - 00:29:00.150

This was just in the court. OK, you better go. Yeah, I do have to get my daughter to the soccer.

00:29:00.150 - 00:29:09.220

The soccer starts now. To where? Soccer. They're all into this. It's become this craze in this

00:29:09.220 - 00:29:15.560

county, my daughter and my son. Your daughter playing soccer? No, playing. The Girls.