<Begin Segment 3>

JB: And could you tell us a little bit about the neighborhood that you grew up in? I know you mentioned that you moved.

JF: Well, it's kind of embarrassing, but we'd -- I can remember when we lived in rows, row streets in Balt-, row houses in Baltimore. And we had -- when you lived in a row house in, in Baltimore, you had a spec-, very specific amount of space. And we had a fence, fenced-in backyard with a gate out into an alley. And there was, it was something like chicken wire between. It wasn't a wooden fence. The rest of the, the rest of the houses that I've been associated with in the row houses all had wooden fences, vertical slats of wood about five inches. And one day -- there was a family lived next to us that had an older boy. He was probably ten. And one day I was out in the yard, doing I don't know what, but I remember this. I was about three and he urinated on me. And my father was very upset to say the least. And not soon after, not long after that, why, we moved out into what city folks called the country. But I remember several things about living there in that row house.

JB: Did you move because of that incident?

JF: I don't think so.

JB: Oh.

JF: But I mean, it was, just happened to be coincidence, and very happy one, because my father would have nothing to do with the next-door neighbors after that, and they'd been pretty good friends before. But, at any rate, I remember that we had a -- all the houses were exactly the same formation inside, and we had this, our living room was very, always kept closed. They had sliding doors, but it was always kept closed unless we had company, and they would sit in there. But it was very dark. My father had, at that time was painting oils and sort of following the old Dutch painters where he used a lot of dark colors. And so here's this dark room and all these dark paintings. I remember that. And I also remember that when we moved my father rolled all those paintings up, took them out of the frames and rolled them all up, and later he just threw them away. He just cut them all up, which is kind of a sad thing because I would like to have seen some of his earlier work. But I remember that. And I remember that apparently that they were changing the outhouses to -- in that part of Baltimore -- to sewer lines because I remember walking through these huge pipes with my grandmother. She was always, seemed to be always with me -- my Irish grandmother. And then, but I -- apparently that's what they were doing. It was about 1920 because we moved when I was three. We moved out into the outskirts of Baltimore.

JB: And what was that neighborhood like?

JF: Oh, it was beautiful. We, we lived on top of a hill, and we had a 50 x 150 lot, and lots of grass and trees. And, and there was woods in back of, across the street from us, and a big old abandoned -- well, it wasn't abandoned at that time -- but it was a big farm, and lots of trees and woods. And there were several empty lots which we could go through to get to the wooded area, and had a, just a trail for it called the Sandy Road. And it was a great place to grow up. I had some friends, established friends, friendships there with a, particularly one fellow who lived up the street about five houses or so. His name was Hughes, and he and I are still close friends. We still, we've known one another since I was six and he was five, so seventy, seventy-one years. His family was, his family was English, and they'd been in Maryland for a long time, on the eastern shore of Maryland. Hughes family. And then next to him was another English family named Mills. And then there were three, three German families, then our house, and three more German families, a German family across the street. And so there were a lot of German people in there. But no, no small, no small boys to play with except, well the one, Freddie (Balk). He was older than I was.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.