And now for the rest of the family.

I have spent so much time talking about both sets of grandparents that I feel I have neglected the rest of my family. Mom and Dad still live in Catonsville in the very same house we grew up in on South Symington Avenue. One of the stories my sister Chris and I shared today was that after Mom and Dad married (we’re a blended family, my mother had four children, my stepfather had three) we were living in a small row home in Arbutus. We knew we were going to be moving to Catonsville at some point during the school year because we started school at Catonsville that year and not Arbutus. There were a total of seven kids in our family growing up and as you can imagine, managing a brood that large takes a lot of work. One day we got up for school on Elm Road in Arbutus and when we came out of school that day, our older brother and sister Steve and Chris were waiting for us. They actually walked us to our new house. We had no clue that we were moving that day. So we leave one house in the morning and come back to one that is brand new to us later that afternoon.

There were so many of us that when Mom needed to scold one of us, she would start at the top of the list of names - Steve, Chris, Charlotte, Barry, Tina, Chuck, and then finally Terry until she hit the one of us that she needed the immediate attention from.

It was a typical frame house for the era, one bathroom upstairs and three bedrooms, and in the basement was what couldn’t even be called euphemistically a half bath.

When talking with my sister Chris today she reminded me of two stories that are funny now but of course at the time ended up being pretty embarrassing. Once as we were driving to the Broadway market with Granddad we passed a building with a large tower. I asked what it was. I was told it was the morgue and that was where they brought dead people. A few weeks later we drove back again and there were children playing outside. I made the association from the previous trip about what the building was and made the comment to whoever else was with us that day, “Oh, look at the fixed-up dead people.” Everybody just laughed and laughed and laughed. It made perfect sense to me. The other story involves seeing meter maids emptying coins from the meters. I said to whoever was in the car, “We need to call the police, those people are stealing the money out of those meters.” Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. They said, “What are you talking about?” I have my own way of making things more difficult sometimes than they need to be. It made perfect sense to me that when you inserted a coin into a parking meter, it went down the pole to the sidewalk to this elaborate labyrinth of underground parking meter collection systems. They used to tease me to death about that.

Often when we were at the Belair Market, Granddad would take us over to place called the Four Aces which was in fact a bar. We would sit up on the stools, and we would all order beer. Miss Frances the bartender would actually serve us orange soda instead. But somehow we thought we were having a beer with Granddad.