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I was born on July 4, 1916, in the late afternoon to Rosa and John W. Augustine in Tuxedo, Maryland, at home. My mother was barely 18 and my Dad was 22 or 23. Sometime between then and Sept. 6, 1917, my Dad served in the U.S. Navy in World War I, and we had moved to Seat Pleasant, Maryland, to be nearer relatives while our Dad was away. Then my brother John Leo (Bud) Augustine was born on that date.

We eventually moved to Kenilworth on Eastern Avenue. A small house with two bedrooms upstairs. And a parlor with good furniture that was never used unless we had special company. My sister was missing one time, and everyone looked high and low for her, and she was in the front parlor curled up asleep. While in that house, my folks had Francis Wales (Franie) Augustine, born December 6, 1919, and Theresa Myrle Augustine (Myrle Carden), born March 13, 1921. They had all four of us kids in five years! When I was about six or seven, my mother had a nervous breakdown and had to go to the hospital. My grandmother Mary Augustine came to stay with us kids. I had a little toy black iron cook stove, and decided to build a fire in it on the back porch. Scared my Grandma half to death, I almost set the house on fire. Being born on the Fourth of July, I thought everyone was celebrating my birthday when they shot off the fireworks in the evening. One year, my Dad bought me roller skates for my birthday. I tried to put them on my bare feet I was six.

We had pet parrots, rabbits and my Dad even had a red fox for awhile. He built a box kite and wanted to put my brother in it when he flew it but my mother stopped him; she really screamed at him.

I went to school first, being the oldest, and of course brought all the childhood diseases home for the others. We had them all, Chicken Pox, Measles, Mumps. When I got a little older my mother let me have the little front room at the top of the steps for my bedroom. It had no electricity, so she let me have a candle until I set fire to a doll and it flared up and almost started a fire. Then she took away my candles.

We visited out grandparents in Seat Pleasant, my father's parents. My Grandpop was a shoemaker, mostly he repaired shoes though; and we called him "Grandpop with the White Whiskers". For our grandparents down in Fort Foote, we used to say, "Our Grandpop Down the Country". He was a farmer. I remember visiting them every summer for our vacations.

We almost always went for a ride on Sunday's. My Dad built one of the first radios in the Washington D.C. area. I can remember getting our first car, a model A Ford. Before that my Dad rode a motorcycle to work. And we went places together on the street car. We went to Seat Pleasant, to St. Margaret's Church, on the street car. We went to Old Chesapeake Beach on the train that left from Seat Pleasant. We'd go for the day. There were bath houses, and little gift shops and games on a long Pier. (It finally got washed away about 1934.)

We lived in Kenilworth until I was in the fourth grade (for the second time). I was about ten, and my brother Bud caught up to me, and everyone thought we were twins because we were in the same grade in school.) Then the School Board decided our house was in Maryland and we could no longer go to school in the District (Washington, D.C.). So we had to move to Maryland, just over the line and go to school in Cheverly. But while we lived in Kenilworth, we did all kinds of things. Dad used to tow us with the car on sleds in the winter on the snow. We went to baseball games with Mom. She loved baseball and we'd ride the street car to the old Griffith Stadium. Mostly we went on Ladies Day so we could all go for free. We did a lot of things for recreation, we played games, skipped rope, played Hide and Go Seek, Run Sheep Run, and some others that I've forgotten the names of. I also jumped rope and played jacks. I always loved dolls, and always got one for Christmas.

Our Dad could decorate a tree at Christmas so pretty because he was artistic. We always hung up our stockings on Christmas Eve, but we did not see the tree until Christmas morning. It was one of our gifts that Dad put it up and decorated it over night while we slept, so we got it along with our other presents on Christmas morning.

As I said, I loved dolls and had a lot of them since I got them for Christmas every year. One year my brother broke all my dolls when I was about fourteen years old. He shoved the baby carriage they were in down the steps because he was mad about something or other. He had a terrible temper. One time he got mad at our mother and threw a phone book at her while she was crocheting with a fine needle and he drove it into her hand. She had to go to the doctor to get it removed.

When we moved to Maryland, we went to the Cheverly-Tuxedo School, which was two rooms. Grades 1, 2 & 3 were in one room, and 4, 5, & 6 in the other. About one row of each grade. We had an eleven year school plan back then. No junior high or middle school, just elementary for seven years and four years of High School. My teacher was Opal Smith who later became Mrs. Opal Thompson and lived here in Cheverly until about 1984 before she passed away. Before we left Kenilworth, another thing our Dad did was get us up about four am, sometime in the late spring, and go to Bennings to watch the Circus unload. That was a lot of fun. We'd go to the Circus parades, and after we moved to Cheverly, they'd let us get out of school so we could go to the Circus. There was no cafeteria at the two room school, so everyone took their lunches or went home to lunch. They had milk for us at school, however. My Mother used to bring our lunches to school some days. I can remember baked bean sandwiches . They were really good, I like them to this day.

We had something called Play Day when we had a big rally at College Park every year. I won my bonze, silver and gold medals in Elementary School and added two bars in 1933 and 1934 in High School. I still have my gold metal with one bar but don't know what happened to the others. I guess we did all the usual things kids in schools do. We played games, went sleigh riding in winter, to the beach in the summer. We had a big tent on a lot at a place called Sylvan Shores. We stayed about two weeks at a time. We took boat rides, and I learned to swim.

My Dad ran a gas station at the intersection of Landover Road and what is now Rt. 450. We lived in a little house behind the gas station. It was in 1927. Charles Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic Ocean, they were having a reception for him at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and they stopped to get gas at my Dad's station and Mom waited on them! Later my Dad added a Ford agency. My Mom learned to drive and gave driving lessons to anyone who bought a car and wanted to learn to drive.

When I was in my young teens, my Dad built us a tennis court in the side yard and we had a lot of fun playing tennis. My Dad also belonged to the Marine Reserves, they went on maneuvers for a couple of weeks every summer and we'd go down to visit him. I guess it was Quantico, but I'm not sure.

I graduated June of 1930 from Cheverly School. My dress had been my Aunt Nellie Ritchie Augustine's wedding dress when she married my favorite uncle, Francis (Uncle Frankie) Augustine, my father's brother.

My mother had three sisters: Julia, Anna and Grace. They are all gone now. Aunt Julia had four children who, too, are all deceased. Aunt Anna had three boys, Robert (Bobby), Elmer and Warner. Two are still living. Warner was shot and killed in his liquor store in Tuxedo in the 1960's. Aunt Grace had one daughter named Betty (Ritter), and Betty lives in Laurel, Md. I never see any of them anymore.

My Dad had three brothers and one sister. There was Fabian, Frankie, Gerard and Louise. Uncle Fabian had two daughters: Marie and Margie, and one son, who was killed in World War II. Marie, as far as I know, lives in Richmond, Virginia, and Margie in Ocean City, Maryland. I never see or hear from them either. Uncle Frankie had one son Ronnie but he died in 1984 from liver cancer. Aunt Louise was married several times. When she was first married she had a boy and a girl. But their father got them, because she wasn't a very good mother or didn't want them. Their names were Fabian and Marie. But their father renamed them Arthur and Eleanor. Their last name was Dove. I have no idea if they are still living or where they are now.

In September 1930, I went to the new high school (Bladensburg), we were the first class. The school later became a junior high. It was torn down a few years ago. They saved the big state seal off the front and put it on the new building there. We went to school there for two years, that's all there was there at the time. Then we went to the old Hyattsville High School for our Junior and Senior years. That building was remodeled a number of years ago. And they built Northwester High to replace it. I had a lot of friends. I have one today that I've had since I was in the forth grade: Jeanette Bellamy Moyer. She lives on a farm in Virginia now. We still stay in touch.

We had no running water or inside plumbing in our house in Kenilworth. My mother had to do the washing by hand in a big wash tub and a scrub board. All our water was gotten up the block from us at a hydrant in a tub or water bucket. It took many trips the evening before wash day. My mother always bathed us and put on clean clothes before our Dad got home from work when we were little. We had a big screened porch on the front of the house with roll down shades and trundle beds (one nestled under the bigger ones) to sleep in the hot summer time. We had no fans or air conditioning in those days! I was kept back when I was in the forth grade, because I was a poor speller. My mother said I tried so hard, I even spelled in my sleep. But today I can spell well, except long complicated words, so I guess it was worth it. We had a wind-up Victrola (record player) for our music before radio. I think my brother Bud still has it, and maybe some of the old records.

We had ice boxes back then, where you put a big piece of ice in the top, and it had a drain pan underneath which you had to empty several times a day or you'd have a flooded kitchen from the ice melting. The ice man came everyday. You had a sign you put in a front window as to how big a piece of ice you wanted that day. He brought it into the house and put it in your ice box. In winter you could put some things outdoors if it was cold enough. The ice man used to give us kids chunks of ice we'd wrap in brown paper and lick on. I still like to eat ice. We also had hucksters that sold vegetables. A Hokey Pokey with a horse and wagon sold ice cream cones. He rang a bell when coming down the street. We had scissors and knife sharpeners, and a rag man that came around, too. He'd come into a neighborhood, saying "Any old rags or bottles today?" Our milk was also delivered door to door. In the winter, if it got left out too long, it froze and pushed the cream, which was at the top, out of the container. There was usually only a paper cap on the bottle. Now they homogenize milk and the cream doesn't rise to the top.

One of my brothers used to wet the bed almost every night. I remember the family had to get him new mattresses very often. (I guess now a days they have a cure for it.)

We saved the colored funny papers from the Sunday newspapers. There was Maggie and Juggs, Krazy Kat, Katzamjammer Kids and more that I've forgotten. We had put them together like a big book and stored it under my brother's bed. On rainy days we'd get it out and re-read them or look at the pictures.

We used to have to wear long underwear and long stockings in winter. The legs always got loose and we had to wrap them around our ankles and pull up our long stockings over them and safety pin them to our underpants. They made a big bulge and most girls hated them. Sometimes when we got older, we'd pull them up and shove them into our underpants. The one's the boys wore didn't show because mostly they wore long pants. But some wore knickers (short pants), but they didn't seem to mind.

My Dad bought me a little poodle puppy for one of my birthdays. She was white and fluffy. We called her "Poodles". She had puppies all the time, so eventually the folks took her down the country to my grandparent's farm. About two months later my mother heard a bark on the front steps. I heard her say, "Poodles, how did you get here?" Poodles had walked about 20 miles to get back to us. So we kept her this time.

At Christmas time, we went to Washington D.C. to see the decorations in the Department Store windows. Especially beautiful were Woodward and Lothrops; now after 115 years they are going out of business and selling to other companies. I don't remember having Trick or Treat, but we used to play tricks on people. We'd knock and run away. Or stick a straight pin in door bells so they'd stay on while we ran away. Easter we always had baskets filled with colored eggs. I can remember my mother ironing lots of clothes, after all of us were in bed at night. Lots of times when I was nine or ten, I'd get up and sit to keep her company, and put my hands between the warm clothes, it felt so good. My mother had long curly pretty hair and she used to let me brush it. My hair was always straight. It curled easy, though, and my mom would use long strips of old cotton socks to tie up my hair to make it curl. I slept on them all night. My head is still not sensitive.

We used to go to the movies at the old Apollo Theater on H Street in Northeast Washington every Saturday because they had serials. They always left the hero or heroine in some perilous situation, so we'd have to come back the next week to see what happened. Hoot Gibson was my favorite cowboy star. We had Tom Mix and several other cowboy stars I've forgotten. There was Perils of Pauline and other movies which I've also forgotten.

We always had books. Both Mom and Dad like to read, so we get our liking for books honestly. We had Bobbsey Twins, Uncle Wiggley and I still have a big book of Fairy Tales. I guess it is at least 65 years old. My mother read us a chapter of some book every night when we were all in bed. Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and probably lots more. Groceries were much cheaper when I was a child, bread was only about 7cents a loaf, butter 25 cents a pound. We had penny candy. Some you got more than one for a penny. Soft drinks were 5 cents and Nehigh was a popular one. It came in lots of flavors.

We had coal furnaces before oil or gas. They brought the coal and put a ramp or coal shute into the basement window of the houses to dump the coal into the coal bin. If we needed some coal for an upstairs stove, we used a coal scuttle. It had a big lip like a creamer pitcher and it was used to dump coal into the stove. My mother and I am sure my grandmother, cooked on a big stove called a range, that burned coal. You could bank it at night and keep it going. Some of the best toast I ever ate was toasted over the heat from one of the holes in the stove with the lid off. We always had hot water because it had a deep place for water. Also, before we had electricity, we heated our irons on the stoves for ironing. We always had at least two, so one could be getting hot while we ironed with the other one.

Even though we weren't rich, we had plenty. We had food and clothes and a roof over our heads. I had a happy childhood. We lived in a gentler, more carefree time. The 20th Century has been a very vital and interesting time to live. There have been such great strides made in medicine, transportation, communications, so many new ways and inventions in these 79 years I've lived than any other time in history.

I haven't gone into anything much after 1930. I got married in 1938 to John E. Clarke. His name was Eddie and we call him Ed now for his middle name Edward. We had two children Sandra Elizabeth (Sandy Hamilton, Hoffman, now Schairer) and Theodore Jay Clarke, called Teddy or Teddy Jay when he was little, and now Ted. I have six grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. I wish all my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren a happy life, a productive life and have healthy bodies and minds.

Elizabeth R. Clarke

CHANGES 1934 - 1995

We've seen so many changes in our lifetimes. We saw cars improved by having starters, instead of cranking the engine to start. Gradually the roads improved from mud and dirt to paved with six or eight lanes across. To airplanes that are so sophisticated they can make Europe in a couple of hours. And space travel to the moon and other places in space. The telephone instead of dots and dashes and under the ocean cables to England and Europe. More advancement in medicine, to eliminate a lot of diseases that had been around for years.

In 1934, I graduated from Hyattsville High School. We've had several reunions over the years. Also twice we had reunions with some of the people we went to Cheverly School with. It was a a lot of fun to see how some of us changed so much and others didn't. I had lots of friends, both boys and girls. Dated some really nice boys.

We had a dance club and met at each others homes. The moms always had a big spread for us to eat. We had a lot of fun. We moved a lot when we were growing up. The folks only rented. I still don't know why we did move so much. My brother and I have discussed it several times. Finally the Government paid a Bonus to veterans from Word War I and the folks had money to put down on a house. My dad had been a builder in our younger days and erected a lot of the existing houses in Cheverly. Some were pre-fab ones from Sears Roebuck. There are several in Cheverly yet, Bellamy's house is one. The house styles all had names, and Bellamy's was called "The Alhambra". I went back up to the High School the June after we graduated to see some of the people I knew. Ed Clarke was there visiting too, this was 1935. I was working at a drug store for Dr. Waldman in Hyattsville. Anyway, Ed called me that evening and we started dating. We went together the rest of 1935 and 36 and on my birthday July 4, 1937, he gave me an engagement ring and we planned to get married. We did get married 57 years ago on February 25, 1938. We lived in Hyattsville, rented houses and apartments. The country went to war in December, 1941. My Dad and both brothers were in the Marines and went to war in the Pacific. I was working at the switchboard at Washington Navy Yard.

When they finally built the Cheverly Hospital, I quit the government job and went to work at the Hospital on the switchboard. We bought our house and moved in on July 4th week-end holiday in 1944. We've been here ever since. We had Sandra Elizabeth (Sandy) on June 3, 1945. Dr. Francis Warren, OB, and his nurse Gae Harper were so nice and kind. I had a hard time during labor, but the doctor stayed right with me. We had Theodore Jay (Ted) on March 3, 1947, two years later.

We've had a great life here and enjoyed raising our kids and having grandchildren and great grandchildren. The rest is History.
 

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June 1995

Dear Billy,

Well, you wanted me to write you a letter. I don't have much to write about, but here goes. Mostly your Grandma and Grandpop are growing old and achy. We don't do very much except to go to the Doctors and to the store to buy food. We got ourselves a new big 31 inch TV. It's nice to see a nice big picture. Is there a swimming pool near you? I remember going to one when my brothers and sister and I were kids. It was called "Rosedale Pool". We had to ride a "street car" to get there. But it was free to get in the pool. We used to take a picnic lunch and stay all day.

"Street cars" were fun. In the summer there were open air ones, with no sides on the cars. If it rained they had roll-down sides. The seats felt cool because they were made of a material called "cane" and the air could circulate through them.

Also my mother, your great grandma used to take us kids to Big League Ball Games. The old Washington Senators.

We used to go to a beach, too. By train. We took the street car to Seat Pleasant, then the train to Chesapeake Beach.

I'm the oldest of four kids. I had one sister Myrle and two brothers Buddy and Franny. My sister died in 1988. My sister had seven kids and my brother Bud had five kids and Franny had one son, so I have lots of nieces and nephews; and some of them are already granparents! Thor is a nephew, a cousin to your Mom. He's a grandpa already. He's going to Canada on business and hopes to stop by and see your Uncle Ted in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Your great-grandma Augustine used to teach people to drive. My dad, your great grandpa, had a service station and a Ford agency. Anyone who bought a car from him got lessons on how to drive. Great-grandma taught them.

Your great grandpa built us a nice tennis court and we could have all the ice cream we wanted to eat at his service station.

We used to go to the beach with Great grandma for two weeks every summer. Friends had a nice boat and we swam in South River.

We had a paper route. It took in most of Tuxedo and all of Cheverly. We all helped. The area wasn't as big and built up then as it is now.

In winter we would sleigh ride on Cheverly Avenue. If a bus came we would grab on and the bus towed us back up the hill. When we got too cold or felt like something hot to drink, we went into our house, there at the side door right into the kitchen. Great-grandma would have hot chocolate and a big fire in the fireplace.

When we finished the 7th grade there were 13 of us in the class. We went to a new school, called High School back then. Only two years, then went to Hyattsville for the last two years. We had play days. I learned to pay the harmonica. We had games and won badges: Bronze, silver and gold.

We had school dances. They had some at the Armory in Hyattsville because the school didn't have a big room for dances.

I never learned to drive a car back them. I guess your Mom was about seven years old before I learned to drive.

I worked in a drug store when I first got out of school. Met some girls from the phone company. They were hiring. I went there and stayed about 5 or 6 years. Then a war came and I went to work at the Navy Yard, in Washington DC. You remember we visited there when you were here for a visit one time.

Then after the war I worked as switchboard operator at the new hospital in Cheverly. Your grandpa and I bought our house in 1944 and your mom was born in 1945. Your Uncle Ted was born in 1947. We've lived here ever since. That's 50 years ago last July. We've been married since 1938. Our neighbors had a lunch for us last July to celebrate our being in our house 50 years.

Write back.

Love, Grandma Clarke

This was written by:
Elizabeth R. Clarke, "Libbie"
Born: July 4, 1916
Died: July 7, 1997

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