truck and I drove that thing, and this guy actually leaned over and was asleep
and I drove all the way over to Washington. I, of course, was a competent
driver because my brother had taught me how to drive when I was 12 years old
but-as a matter of fact, I didn't even have a car of my own at the time. So I
was really scared and drove very carefully.
We came in New York Avenue, and I got so scared of the heavy traffic that I
pulled over and woke him up and I said, "Well, this is as far as I'm going. I'm
going to have to get out here." This was on New York Avenue, probably
Bladensburg or something?
A: Well, a little bit farther in than that-about 17th Street, N.E. Anyway, I got
out even though I didn't realize how far it was to Colonel Anderson's office
because I was in northeast and I had the address 15th and and here we were
around, I don't know, the 1700 or 1800 block of New York Avenue, and I
thought I was nearly there. But it turned out I was in northeast-I had to walk
all the way over to northwest Washington.
But anyway, they hired me. I went down to start work in La Plata as a member
of the crew, and we were surveying in Accokeek, right near the southern tip
of Prince George's County, I got all over southern Maryland that summer. I
worked the first few weeks for a week and got car expenses of 3 cents a
mile. My grandmother loaned me the money to buy a Model A Ford and the
interesting thing was, I could make money at 3 cents a mile with a Model A
Ford-not paying for the
of course.
After three or four weeks, somebody else quit, and I became a party chief at
a salary of 0 a month, which was munificent in 1937. In fact, my mother,
when I told her, said, "Maybe you ought to just drop out of school for a year
and hang on to that good job." And thank God, I didn't do that. But anyway,
it was nice to be making a little bit of money. And that was maybe one reason
why I gave up working for Abel that last year, because after working during
the summer after my junior year, I was able to save some money and I just felt
that the time was more important than the little bit of money I could make on
the NYA job.
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