Jonathan my oldest brother, had married Daisy Woodyard and was no longer living with us at this time. He and Daisy lived in Manassas. Also, Virginia, my oldest sister was not living at home now. She was in college in Fredericksburg, Va. Virginia would later marry Smith Garrison whom she had been dating. She and "Smitty" as we called him, attended high school together in Haymarket, Va.

My Uncle Fred, Mama's brother, moved our furniture and other belongings in his Model T Ford truck. We also had several head of stock, that we had accumulated at the farm in Buckland consisting of 4 horses called, Joe, Star, Nancy and a beautiful 1 or 2 year old, that I can't recall the name of, and 2 or 3 cows for milking. As I recall, it was a very cold day. In those days there weren't many vehicles that had heaters. We were all pretty cold we finally reached our new home.

The house we were moving into had no heat, so the stoves had to be put up and a fire built before we could get warm. After the fires were going and the stove was hot enough to cook on, Mama cooked a big pot of oatmeal. I'll never forget how good it tasted and how it warmed me up.

This place is where Uncle Joe passed away. One morning Mama sent my brother Robert to see why he hadn't got up yet and Robert found him dead in bed. Uncle Joe was buried in the Forestville, Virginia cemetery, where some of his kin folk had already been laid to rest and many more since that time.

There was Another sad thing that happened that year in 1938. Papa had made a deal with someone to buy the 1 or 2 year old horse for $100.00 which was quite a bit of money in 1938. On the day that the horse was to be picked up by the man that bought it, Papa put a rope around the horse's neck and tied it in a stall in the barn. When the buyer arrived, they found him laying in the stall dead. Apparently he had panicked and had reared up and struck his head on a beam. Losing that horse was a big blow to Papa, and he worried about it for along time.

During the time that we lived at Navy, we had to walk about a mile to catch the school bus. The school that we attended was Floris Elementary.

That summer of 1938, Robert, Jim, and I, dug out a swimming hole in a small creek that ran through the property. We used a horse drawn scoop to dig it out to the width and depth, that we wanted, then we built a dam of wood, stone, and mud. The water rose to 4 to 5 feet in some areas. The bottom had about 6 inches to a foot of mud in most places, but we sure had a lot of fun in that swimming hole that summer.

In late 1938 or early 1939 we moved from Navy Virginia to a 150 acre farm, near Vienna, Virginia. Papa rented this farm for 35.00 per month. The farmhouse was an old plantation type with big colonial doors, and a stairway that wound up to the second and third story. Two big chimneys on each end of the house provided for a fire place in most of the rooms. There was a cellar with rock walls, which seemed more like a dungeon. This cellar is where Mama kept her canned vegetables and fruits and blackberry wine.

There was no electricity or running water in the house. The well was about 50 feet from the house and had a pulley and chain with a bucket on each end of the chain. When you pulled up a bucket of water, it was ice cold even in the summer, the other bucket was let down ready for the next time. I can recall how cold it was on your hands in the wintertime pulling up a bucket of water. If you didn't wear gloves or mittens, your hands would literally stick to the chain.

All the water that was used for the house, including water for washing clothes had to be pulled up from the well. Some rain water was caught in barrels to help with washing clothes.

There were two graveyards located on the farm. One was the family graveyard for the people who had lived there many years before us and the other was a slave graveyard. The family graveyard was about a quarter of a mile up the driveway before you got to the house.

The slave graveyard set back a good distance from the house in a grove of big white pines and there were no markers on the graves. We used to like to go there and climb in those pine trees. It was kind of erie to hear the wind blow through these huge pine trees. It made a sort of mournful sound that made you think of the slaves that were buried there.

We had three horses that were born when we lived on the farm in Buckland. "Joe" a big strong gelding, was brown and "Star", a black mare with a star on her face were used as a team. They worked good together but didn'look anything alike as most two horse teams did.

The other horse was a little sorrel, (red in color) mare named Nancy, who was only about three years old. Nancy had not been trained (broken) yet to work or ride. Robert finally rode her for the first time.

Star was a family pet from the time that she was born in Buckland. She had been raised on a bottle and stayed mostly around the yard, following us everywhere we went. Whenever we children played hide and seek, Star would follow along and give away our hiding places.

We hadn't lived on the farm in Vienna very long when Star was poisened by some type of plant, that she had ate, that caused her to go blind. The blindness frightened her so much, that she ran through fences and in and out of the barn, running into all kinds of things until she finally killed herself. That was a very sad time for us all.

Star was replaced by an older horse that Papa bought from another farm. This horse only lived about a year. It was summer time, I believe sometime in July, when he died and I'll never forget us boys dragging him out of the barn with our work horse Joe, then digging a grave for him. We had to dig the grave right beside him, so we could push him in. He started to smell before we could get the hole deep enough, so we tied hankerchiefs over our noses to cut down on the smell, which got pretty rank, before we finished.

Not long after we moved to Vienna, John Kidwell came to live with us. John was in his 70s and was looking for a home. The only income that he had was from any little odd jobs that he could get around town.

My brother Robert, went to town and saw John. John told him that he had to leave the place he had been living, and had nowhere to go.

Mama and Papa had known John for many years, so when they found out he needed a home, they asked him to move in with us.

John was in pretty good health and came in handy around the farm. He thought nothing of walking five to ten miles in single day. He loved to cut wood and work in the vegetable garden. He kept us well supplied with wood from trees he cut down, then cut into log lengths ready to be hauled to the house. He did most of this using a two man cross cut saw and an ax all by himself. He would spend a few days in the woods, then inform us boys that there was a wagon-load of logs ready to be hauled to the house.

After the logs were hauled in, we would all pitch in and cut the logs into stove lengths and split them for burning.

One of John's favorite sayings was, "Ah mean". He would say this sometimes whenever he started a sentence, or whenever he agreed with someone else.

One spring when we had company for dinner, one of the guest exclaimed how good the spring onions from the garden tasted. John spoke up and said, "Ah mean, they aughta be good, I really put the chicken manure to em." He had used chicken manure to fertilize with.

There was a lot of hard work to be done on the farm, planting, thinning corn and cultivating the corn with a double shovel plow drawn by one horse, cutting and shucking the corn in the fall, cutting and getting in hay, etc. Also feeding the animals and milking the cows each morning and night.

Papa had gone back to his old trade of building houses so, most of the work was done by Andy, Robert, Jim and myself. We also hired out to neighboring farms for thinning and replanting corn. The wages were .10 an hour.

Once Jim and I worked a whole week thinning corn, caught a bus to Glen Echo Amusement Park in Cabin John, Maryland and spent all our money in one day. Besides spending all our money, we wore the seat of our pants out sliding on the sliding board in the fun house. It was an embarrassing ride home on the bus that day.

There was a swimming hole in a creek about one mile from the house and whenever we got the chance we would go there and cool off. This was a big treat especially after we had worked hard all day in the fields on a hot day.

Our cousins from Arlington would come to visit in the summer, sometimes spending several weeks. Their ages would range from 3 years old to about our age.

One of my cousins, Ralph Bladen who was about 7 or 8 and was nicknamed "Skeeter", loved to ride a jersey cow that we called "Reds". He attempted to ride some of the other cows, but they would buck him off, but he would climb right back on again.

After "Skeeter" got old enough, he joined a rodeo, which didn't surprise any of us.

When we had the chance, we would go swimming in the creek, play baseball in the pasture, play hide and seek at night and have corn cob battles around the barnyard.

Our cousins were no match for us in these battles, since we knew where the most and the hardest corn cobs could be found. This was a lot of fun until you got hit in face with a corn cob that came out of the hog lot.

Robert, Jim and I built a small log cabin in the woods near the driveway coming in to the farm.

We cut small trees about 3 or 4 inches in diameter for the cabin and built it big enough for the three of us to get into it rather comfortably. I don't remember whether we ever camped out in it or not.

As far as I know it was still standing in the 1960s before the land was developed.

Jim and I taught ourselves to drive an automobile during this period that we lived on the farm in Vienna.

The old fellow that owned the farm would come out from D.C. on weekends or for vacations. He had a 1938 Buick that had a switch on the steering column that would turn the ignition on without a key. He would sometime take a nap during the day in a little house that was located a good distance from the farm house that we lived in. When we were sure that he was asleep, we would get in his car and take turns driving all over the farm.

We were lucky that we never got caught, since no one in our family knew about it.

We also sneaked our older brother's cars out for a drive, whenever they forgot and left their keys in the ignition.

My brother Robert had a paper route serving "The Evening Star" a Washington, D.C. daily newspaper. He was hired by Lesley Thompson, father of our brother-in-law Russell (Bud) Thompson who was married to our sister Irene.

We were all glad when Robert finally received his new bicycle, that he had ordered from Montgomery Ward, to run his paper route with. Sometimes when he was going into town for something, he would let me ride on the handle bars.

We had two buggies on the farm and when the weather was bad, or on Sunday morning when the papers were heavy, we would hitch up a horse to one of them to deliver the papers. I painted the name "The Evening Star" on both sides of the buggy in white letters using the same fancy print type that was on the paper. This attracted a lot of attention as we rode through town delivering the papers.

Jim and I took turns helping Lesley Thompson each evening serving the car route he drove. He would pick us up at school and we would ride with him and punch papers in the boxes. We loved doing this, and besides he would pay us a quarter for helping, which is probably equivalent to about 3 or 4 dollars today.

Another memorable thing that happened was a rain that we had that lasted for a almost two weeks. It poured down every day without let up.

Mama needed some things at the store, but the lane to the farm was so bad it was impossible to get out with the car. We were about three quarters of a mile from the main road.

My sister Irene and Bud Thompson hadn't been married to long, and were staying with us for a while until they could find a place of there own. My brother Andy and brother-in-law Bud, decided that they would put the two horse wagon in the shed and build a shelter over the seat, so they could hitch the horses to the wagon and go to the store. So they spent one day building the shelter over the wagon and the next day, with the rain still pouring down, took off for the store in Oakton.

It would have been closer to go to Vienna but Andy was ashamed to be seen riding on the wagon in their makeshift shelter, and Oakton could be reached by the back roads.

They were gone most of the day but succeeded in their endeavor, without getting wet, getting the few grocery staples that Mama needed. Bud said when they finally arrived at the store, Andy wouldn't get out of the wagon because he was ashamed of the way it looked. So Bud went in and did the shopping.

The first funeral that I attended was for my maternal grandmother Bladen, who died in 1939 while we were living in Vienna. She was the only grand parent that I had ever seen. Grandfather Bladen and my paternal grand parents had already died years before I was born.

Grandmother Bladen would come visit us every so often, for several weeks at a time, as she did all her other children. We loved her very much and always looked forward to her visits. I remember her as not being very well. She lived more permanently with my mothers sister Aunt Inez and Uncle Ezekial Testerman near Rockville, Maryland, where she died of pneumonia when she was in her 80s

Robert graduated from high school in 1941 and went to work for the Capital Transit Company in Washington D.C. as a stock clerk and came home on weekends, whenever possible.

An awful thing happened to Robert one early morning when he reported to work. The front door was locked to the building that he worked in so he thought maybe the back door would be open. To get to the back door he had to leap over a wire fence that surrounded the back of the building. He placed his left hand on top of the fence, then did a "hand spring", as we used to call it on the farm when we jumped a fence. When he placed his left hand on the fence his finger with his high school ring got caught in the wire. When he came down on the other side of the fence, he pulled his ring finger loose from the main joint and left it hanging on the fence.

He said when he looked up and saw his finger hanging up there, gleaming in the early morning sunlight, he fainted right there. He came too in a few minutes and was sent to the hospital. If this had happened a few years later his finger probably could have been put back on.

The war in Europe had started and the United States had started to draft young men for duty in the armed forces. When Robert was called to go take his physical for the draft he was turned down because of the loss of his finger. Who knows what might have been if he had been drafted at that time.

So many young men the same age and some he went to school with were killed in the next four years in the war in Europe.

Andy was also called up for the draft but was turned down. He was born with a heart defect and did not pass the physical. He eventually died of a heart attack after reporting to work one morning in August 1966.