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From Grandma's Album... Take It Easy! Our Chesapeake Cottage
We needed a place for our two 28-foot boats, that had been moored in the next creek at the Aurora Club, our social club's shore place. They also needed money. Fortunately, Pennsylvania Transmission lines needed a big site for its new electrical transmission towers. Aurora rejoiced at the offer, disbanded and sold. We had to move; we did, and then began to build. At first a boat shed was all we thought of, but then my folks suddenly realized that a tiny kitchen and two even tinier bedrooms would make a place for us to vacation during the summer months. There was space for vegetables and ducks and that would help us get through the hard times. But . . . how could we start with no money coming in? Daddy said, "Piece by piece, one step at a time, take it easy!" and so we did. Of course, the first step was to clear a space for the foundation. The weeds were taller than we! The concrete blocks cost ten cents apiece and we needed many. Gracious! Daddy said, "As many as we can each week . . . just a few. Take it easy." Next step: the stout beams to rest on the blocks, then upright stout joists –, then –. Once again, good fortune smiled on us. The Pennsylvania Power people needed their new property cleared of clubhouse and outbuildings. They hired locals, cheaply, those who were unemployed (and who wasn’t!), young men to dismantle the buildings and dispose of the wreckage. Daddy gave the drivers the munificent amount of a WHOLE QUARTER to dump on our new site the next creek over. Free beams and joists -- a bonanza! Brother, Mother and I learned how to crowbar out the many nails and held the pieces straight while Daddy built. In between loads of wood and when we didn't have nails to pull, we carted wheelbarrow loads of good dirt to our garden patch from the woods next door. Next Daddy sawed up the remaining planks, varied but good, and up went the walls! Muscles, good health, good will, and time we had, and fun. Our family pride centered on ten-year-old Charles who had climbed to the peak of the roof and nailed the highest timber. "Piece by piece, take it easy!" Our cottage was taking shape. Then we bought a duck, and a neighbor gave us a chicken and we children pounded together a small shed out of scraps and splintered pieces of wood for them to live in and raise families. Eggs! Windows next, of course; but how and where? Ah, ha! Baltimore City was dismantling slums – a place to scavenge for good "double-hungs". We did and found nine, unmatched, but still good. Inside the floors were made of good reused planks from the Aurora club. This was good and sturdy, despite our having to pull all those nails out of it. Linoleum was our choice to cover up the floor, so we didn't have to look at the holes, and was long-wearing. There was another bonanza for the interior walls. In '33, the captured WWI ships were being dismantled in Baltimore Harbor. They were being broken up, both to make space and to provide fuel for winter heat for the many, many unemployed in the city and could be had for the cost of hauling the wood away, the usual fee of a quarter. The German ship Kaiser Wilhelm had good quality tongue-in-groove paneling in the officer quarters and we spent hours nailing until Daddy came home from work. Repeatedly, I was warned not to hammer too hard, in my zest to prove a girl could do the job, so that they were straight. We painted the kitchen pale green and the bedroom pale pink, very pretty. It wasn't yet time yet for permanent covering of the outer walls, "taking it easy" meant that we had to wait for that, but tar paper was cheap and kept out the weather. We could afford the heavy stuff for the roof and bought thinner for the sides. Why not? The spring of 1933 saw our black cottage up and "right & tight" and we had a wonderful place with garden and chickens and cool breezes from the water when the city was too hot. One disappointment we experienced was the twilight when we first, proudly, turned on the lights. Electricity was being run to the areas surrounding Baltimore City in the early 1930’s, one of the CCC projects. We had not thought of electricity at all, but a neighbor needed a fourth family to bring it in, so we scraped up our share of the costs. The problem was that our little cottage had been more open than we thought, since we couldn‘t afford screens yet. We flipped the switch to turn on the lights and promptly fled the hundreds of wood beetles lining our ceiling! Obviously, we closed up, burned an insect bomb and headed to our city home till the next weekend. Finally, in 1934, 23 months after getting laid off, Daddy was back at work and we could afford to finish the outside. We went shingle-shopping. Our choice was hexagonal forest green. Soon we could afford screens and shelves and cupboards. My job was the family painter, since that was my passion. I did the trim in pale cream: windows, doors, frames, roof line -- very pretty and neat (not garish) as the song stipulated, skromnou (tidy). "One step at a time, take it easy!" We could see that we were nearly done! Now a bedroom for the brother in 1934, Bonanza number three! A dismantled rail coach provided seven free windows that Daddy nailed long sturdy straps to so that we could lower them into a well to open them. Now we had a beautiful sunroom facing the water with a davenport from home which opened for sleeping at night and Mother’s rocker for our evening songfest and story hour. Nase chaloupka, our tidy, little cottage by the water was finished at last.
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Vystavim si skromnou chaloupku!
(I shall build myself a tidy little cottage.) We sang happily as we built our own special cottage in the fall of
1932 when we rented a thirty foot piece of Lynch Cove property on which to build! The site was really a sixty-foot
lot, but we could only afford half. The cash-strapped owner needed our dollar-a-foot rent and happily agreed
to a smaller parcel. Times were tough. It was the Depression. Daddy had been laid off from his B&O railroad
job for twenty-three months.
