Water Resources
and Issues
We didn't have a telephone on that farm and I'll never forget the time-this is
one of my very early recollections-when Father didn't come home-we always
called him "Father." None of this "Daddy" stuff or "Pop." It was "Father."
He didn't come home. We didn't know what had happened, and it was maybe
two days before my mother got a letter from an aunt saying that he had
appendicitis and was in the hospital and operated on and was all right. It was
an emergency appendectomy, but we didn't have a telephone on the farm, so
we didn't know what had happened. We didn't have a telephone until sometime
later.
Anyway, in 1925 things got so bad that we had an auction of the farm
equipment and moved into town so the commuting wouldn't be so hard. My
father sold the farm to a family that wanted to move out there to give their
children more space to grow up. The farm had been financed with a Federal
Farm Loan Board mortgage, the nature of which was that my father was
responsible for that mortgage no matter what, so when he sold it, taking back
a second mortgage, he was still responsible. After selling the farm we moved
into the town of Reisterstown to a house that my father rented at 360 Main
Street. At that time, I was in the first grade. Later on, when I was in the
second grade, we moved to a house on a one acre lot at 22 Woodley Avenue
in Reisterstown. That's where we lived through the rest of my childhood, all
the way through high school for me.
One of the things I haven't mentioned yet happened in 1920; I was stricken
with polio which hit my right leg and damaged the muscles in the lower leg,
particularly in the foot. I had to wear a brace on my lower leg until I was six
years old. There are a lot of pictures of me with the brace and all, and I never
looked very happy. I don't know whether I should say this or not, but my
mother kept me with long curls until I was six years old. I had light blond hair
and many years later she always said, "My, you wet your hair too much. It's
getting dark.
And they always called me "Mac" because I had a cousin whose name was
Theodore-Theodore G.
that they called "Teddy'`-and my mother
didn't want me to be called "Little Teddy" because the family already had Aunt
Emma and Little Emma, and Uncle Harry and Little Harry, and my mother
didn't like that. My middle name was Mac Neeve and so they called me Mac,
and I went all the way through high school under the name of Mac and that's
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