Riding the Honeysuckle Horse: Growing up in Annapolis in 40'S and Early 50'S

By Dave Brashears

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 4, 2005
• ISBN: 9781469119168

Dave Brashears

After you read this book, you will know the author, at least my life through the formative first twelve years. Polio, World War II, the marvel of television, and my early and close affinity to the Chesapeake Bay set the stage for a glimpse of a unique time and place. This book will hopefully provide the key to unlock many of your fond childhood memories- triggered by relating to the events and experiences during this special time. For a decade or two this story welled up and finally poured forth like a torrent unleashed. I hope you enjoy it!

Book preview

Contents

Forward

Family

The Yard

Outings

The Times

Friends

The Bay

Making Money

Paper Route

Hangouts

Weather

School

Forward

What you hold in your hands is my love and appreciation for a time and a place. Something so special you must proceed to make it your own. This is a vignette of a life and age never again to return. By picking up this book you step back to the Forties and early Fifties; a period of history punctuated by World War II, polio, the end of the era of radio and countless subtle shifts in the forces and fabric of the this unique time. In retrospect, much of what there was still exists in an altered and subverted form, but the innocence of the age has been consumed.

Life began in Eastport, Maryland, a peninsula of land bounded by bodies of tidal waters of the Chesapeake Bay and connected to Annapolis by an old wooden, manually cranked bridge. The whole Annapolis region was oriented to and strongly influenced by the Bay. At the time, Eastport was a particular beehive of maritime activity with numerous boat building and repair facilities, crab and oyster processing buildings, the infancy of a power boat and pleasure sailing industry, plus a multitude of Waterman’s houses, barges, boats, nets and associated essentials. It was mostly a blue-collar community and workers lived in houses that were of weather beaten wood, constructed in a variety of two-story designs. Many were side by side duplexes, and the rest were single homes, mostly on 25-50 foot lots. All in all a great place to begin life.

Family

Mother was the leader of our family in most respects, a firm disciplinarian, who strictly controlled our early childhood. Our, because I was the youngest of three. The oldest by three years was my brother Charles and by two, my sister, Jean. My parents lost their first son at the age of nine months to an unknown sudden death. This fact, I am sure, set the stage for the level of protectiveness we endured. She had the daunting task of trying to balance the ever-increasing needs with the never too plentiful dollars. The Depression was barely over and the memory of my Father’s ten per cent pay cuts for three years in a row just to keep his job, was still a fresh experience in their minds.

Mother was sweet talked into marriage by my Father in her last year of nursing school, a fact that would haunt her through life. She had a propensity to endure the travails of life without complaint and without passing the burden on to her children. She was always fair-minded and I, being the youngest, had the luxury of a certain laxity and attendant privileges. That irked my siblings. They did wreak their revenge.

My father worked as a surveyor at the Naval Academy and was steady, hard-working and dependable. He would gladly do without if the sacrifice meant funding a vacation or other outings. He was the cultural leader of the family much to our juvenile chagrin as we endured the annual trek to the Naval Academy’s production of the Messiah, theatrical events and concerts. His great imaginative bedtime stories were a real treat, after which he would fluff up my pillow. I tell you, it felt so cool and soft that I was asleep before I completely compressed the feathers.

When his all-too seldom stint at corporal punishment befell him, his solution was to slap his thigh while we pretended to cry. Not much got past Mother, but she never interceded. He sought our love and acceptance but we were too dumb to properly reciprocate—too bad. His principal outside outlet, other than a couple of memorable stoppings off with the boys after work, was his tenor singing with St. Anne’s choir. Again, not getting his family’s full due. He was responsible for my interest in music, which continues to give pleasure. He taught me little tricks and games, with which I still manage to amaze myself. Little surprises were also his forte, as when he brought home turtles in his lunch box for us, which we kept for a while and then released then into the yard, or little tin boxes from Lord knows where. Whatever it was, we were pleased and enjoyed it. A cross word was a rare word, very rare.

Growing up with a brother and sister was, for the most part, a pleasurable experience. There were moments. It was the little things, like my toys and bears, that they, being bigger and older, entitled them to possess at will. When I was really young, my mother found a temporary solution by putting the playpen upside down over me, so they could not attack my stuff; a sanctuary of limited duration.

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My Life Begins

A memory of death is always vivid, especially if it happens to be your own. Once, after being encouraged to eat a wild strawberry, they waited until I had swallowed to tell me it was poisonous. Instant tragedy! They let me cry for a while before confessing they didn’t really think they were deadly. Another day while casting about for something to drink, I drained the last tainted drops of juice from an empty tin can of orange juice that had sat around for a day or two too long. Well, I died again in a puddle of tears on the kitchen floor as they informed me of my sad mistake. The capper was a day when I just had to go swimming but Mother said not until the temperature reached 75 degrees, which at the time was 5 degrees short. Growing inpatient, I started to think, sometimes a regrettable thing. The thermometer was mounted outside the kitchen window, so I proceeded to snitch some matches, climb upon an upside down laundry tub and place a lit match under the bulb of the thermometer. With, I might add, the full support of my siblings. Well, it shot past 75, zoomed past 120 and exploded in a shower of red all over me. Mercury! they cried and You are going to die! I should have known better by now, but they loved my tears and crying, so I did not disappoint them. This also I survived.

Charles tended to be somewhat reserved and introverted, perhaps because of being overly protected growing up in the shadow of the firstborn’s tragic death. We tended to be opposites in many ways, he being studious and non-athletic. Harem-scarem was the word Mother used to describe me, whatever it meant, I guess I was the living definition of the word.

Jean was my ally in many of my misadventures, although she wasn’t above egging me on into some trouble and then standing by, with some glee, as Mother would go to my apple tree, select a switch, and give my legs and bottom a good licking. I danced and jumped like a flea on a hot griddle. Jean had a similar temperament to my own and as time went by we seemed to become closer in age, since we shared similar interests.

But boy, could the three us produce if we put our collective minds to it. Often when company was in the house it wasn’t long before we retreated to the cellar. There our creative energies melded into an event resembling something between Halloween, a circus, vaudeville and a ragtag band. We would come clomping up the steps and make a noisy circuit of the living and dining rooms and scamper back down to our delight and amusement. Fortunately our antics were usually received in the spirit in which they were given.

The cellar also provided endless hours of pre TV play. We roller skated dizzily around the rink, which in actuality was about 12 feet in diameter, circling the huge coal furnace with its gargantuan air ducts. But we had fun and skated until the cement dust we raised made a thin choking fog.