The farm house on this farm was much more modern than we had been accustomed to with electricity and a telephone, but no running water or bath. We had a well with a hand pump. The owner of the farm lived in Falls Church, Va. He wanted Papa to remodel the house for him, but first we had to have another place to live. So he had Papa build a 3 bedroom house on the farm for us to live in while he was working on the other house. This new house also had electricity and telephone but no running water or bath. I believe we had to carry water from the farm house well for our use. Most of the farm work here was left up to Jim and I. Andy was still living at home but was working somewhere else. We still had our horses and cows and used the horses for farm work. We raised corn and made hay for winter feeding of the animals.

    It wasn't all work though, we had several close neighbors in the area who had children our ages. There were boys and girls both, who came over to the farm sometimes. I think this was the time that we both started to like girls. Although, we were still very bashful about it and didn't want to admit it. Getting on the school bus in the mornings, some of them would say, "I saved you a seat by me Eddie". I could feel my face burning. They did this just to embarrass me and make me blush. The more everyone laughed, the redder I got. When they came over to the farm we played games like baseball and hide and seek. We had corn cob battles even with the girls.

    We had two girls that we used to like to visit at night, that lived about a mile from us through a patch of woods. When we could, we sneaked the horses to ride when we went to see them, because Papa wouldn't let us take the horses out at night.

    One Halloween night, we hitched the team to the wagon and with some of the neighborhood boys went for a ride. The moon was shining bright, so we were able to see real good.

    Another wagon ride that we took was, when Papa wanted us to take one of our cows (this was the same cow "Reds" that my cousin "Skeeter" used to ride back on the farm in Vienna) to his brother, Uncle Oscar, who lived in Sterling, Va. about 10 or 15 miles away. We tied a rope around the cows neck and tied the rope to the back of the wagon and led her to Uncle Oscar's farm. We made this round trip of about 30 miles in one day.

    After my sixteenth birthday in 1943, I decided I would like to get a summer job in Washington, D.C. I obtained a work permit and a social security card and got a job working behind the soda fountain at a Peoples Drug store in Georgetown. I worked five and a half days a week. My salary was $19.00 per week.

    Because it was to far to commute home every day, I boarded with Papa's sister, Aunt Mary Studt, who lived in Rosslyn, Va. just across the Key Bridge and payed her $5.00 a week for board. I missed being home that summer and got very homesick for the country. I would hitch hike home most weekends.

    We moved back to our old home place in Pine Crest in the fall of 1943. The home that I was born in and the home that I had left to go into the hospital in 1933. We moved most of our belongings by horse and wagon. The distance was about 12 miles. Our livestock consisted of our team of horses, Joe and Nancy, and one cow for milking. Papa and Mama were happy to be back in their old home once more. The house needed a lot of repairs and we all pitched in to help.

    The house originally had brown cedar shingles on it, but now it had none. The renters who had lived there, had torn them off and used them for firewood. Once when I went with Papa to collect the rent, which was only $5.00 a month, they gave Papa a hard luck story and we came away without any money. I don't believe that he ever got any rent from these people. They also took a grand piano that we left in the house when we moved, and put it down in front of a side door to use as a stoop after using the original stoop for firewood.

    We had to install new siding and had a well dug and put in a hand pump. We also built a screened in front porch with a concrete floor. We mixed and poured the concrete by hand. There was a group of tall standing pines on the place that we cut down and used to build a log barn for the horses and cow. Later on we built a pig pen and obtained some little pigs to raise for meat.

     Jim and I hauled mash from the Sunset Hills whiskey distillery to feed to the hogs. This distillery is where they made the famous "Virginia Gentlemen" whiskey. We had several barrels that held about 50 gallons a piece. We loaded these onto the horse drawn wagon and took a dirt road that ran parallel to the railroad that was called, "The Fire Line", to Sunset Hills about 3 miles away. The men at the distillery would fill the barrels with mash, which was free, and we would head back home. Mr. Bauman the man that owned the distillery, also owned alot of acreage and ran a herd of beef cattle on his land. He fed his cattle on this mash also. They hauled it out to the fields in tanker trucks and poured it into big feed troughs. In warm weather the smell was pretty bad. When the school bus went through this area, the kids would often kid each other about putting their shoes back on because their feet smelled.

     Our horse Nancy, was a beautiful little sorrel mare who not only worked well along side Joe our other horse, but also was a nice smooth horse to ride. She had a really easy gait. I would saddle her up and go for a ride every once and a while.

    We lived not to far from hundreds of acres of forest land. Over the years numerous Saw Mills worked there cutting and milling lumber. In this forest there were lots and lots of trails that were made by saw mill workers and their teams of horses while dragging logs to the mill. These were the trails that I rode Nancy down.

    You could spend hours just riding through this forest area. There were springs you could drink from along the trails. Some of them even had an old tin can to drink out of. The water seemed to taste better out of these old rusted tin cans. Nancy and I often stopped to get a drink.

    Once when I was on foot walking down a trail with my 22 rifle, I met a bobcat. We both stopped in our tracks and just looked at each other. Then the bobcat started to move toward me and I shot at him with my 22. He screamed and ran off. I believe I missed him, but a least it scared him off.

    Some Years later, Dean my brother Andy's Stepson, who also spent a lot of time in these woods, found an 1812 penny at one of the old springs. Who knows, It could have been Daniel Boone who lost that penny while getting a drink.

    Another place that I rode Nancy was a riding school about 6 or 7 miles from our home, owned by a family whose name was Money. The size of their farm was approximately 200 acres and had some nice riding trails with creeks and jumps. Nancy was also a pretty good jumper. My cousin Johnny Studt and I would often go here to ride horses. You could rent a horse for .75 an hour. I liked a horse called Redwing. I always preferred him when I went there to ride. On one or two occasions I rode horses that had never been ridden before and got bucked off a few times. These were all fun days that I will never forget.

    This is a funny story about myself and Papa. I liked this girl named Barbara that I went to school with who lived on a dairy farm about 5 miles away. I would often ride my bike over to see her in the evenings. One evening I was a little late getting started and it was getting dark.

    As I started down this hill in a wooded area, a skunk ran out into the road and I ran over him with my bike. Well, You have never really smelled a skunk until you have been sprayed by one. It was like somebody had put a rubber tire around me and set it on fire. That is how bad it smelled.

    I turned around and went back home. I entered the house and went to my bedroom to wash and change my clothes. Papa had gone to bed and was asleep in the next bedroom. I could hear him snoring as I changed my clothes. All of a sudden the loud snoring turned into snorts and other funny sounds and then he woke up yelling for Mama who was in the kitchen, "Ollie", he yelled, "What in the world is that smell in this house?"

    Mama knew what had happened to me, so she answered him and said, "Edward ran over a skunk on his bike and he is in his room changing his clothes." With that I heard Papa roll out of bed and come rushing to my room. He looked really upset and grabbed my clothes, went to the front door and threw them out into the yard.

    As he was walking back through the house I heard him say, "Anybody that would come in the house smelling like that ought to be horse whipped." Needless to say, I didn't get to see my girl friend that night. It was some time before my bike lost its skunk odor.

    After the 1943, 44 school year ended, I got another summer job working behind the meat counter at an Acme Food Store at Lee highway and Glebe road in Arlington, Va. In 1944 most grocery stores were self service except for the meat department. George, the meat manager was a heavy set man and reminded me of Papa. I learned a lot from George and liked him very much. The meat that was delivered to the store had to be cut into steaks and chops and displayed in the glass cases. Chickens were delivered whole and had to be cut up. Once while I was slicing ham steaks, I cut my hand pretty bad. Each customer had to be waited on in turn and some of them were not very nice to deal with. For instance they would want us to go to the bottom of a stack of steaks, because they thought that's where we put the best steaks. There was always a problem when it come to waiting on the next customer. Everybody thought they should be next.

    Along about the end of that summer, I was transferred to another store in Shirlington, Va. to help out in a new store that had just opened up. I was very sad to leave George. He had been really nice to me and I had learned so much from him.

    Jim also worked that summer of 1944 for the Safeway stores in Bethesda, Maryland.

    We both started back to high school that fall of 1944 to begin our senior year in high school. In November, due to Papa's bad health with a heart condition, I decided to drop out of school and go to work full time. Jim did the same and started back to work for Safeway in January 1945.

    Robert was working in George Town in Washington, D.C. for the Capital Transit Company purchasing department. He found out that there was an opening in the printing department and I applied and got the job. The annual salary was $1100.00. Robert and I shared a room in D.C. I believe it was somewhere around 18th or 19th and Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. There was a theater on the corner and a marquee that read "Eddie Canter now playing."