(Note: I buried my father at Arlington
National Cemetery in January, 2005. Since I had a little time to spend before
catching my plane back to California, I decided to make a short side trip to
Hillcrest Heights, Maryland, where my family first lived upon moving to the
Washington, D.C. area. It was still there, and very much as I remembered it.
When I got home, I wrote a letter to the current residents. I never received an
answer, so I don’t know if they even read it. I found it again, ten years
later, and thought I would share it with you. I’ve updated it slightly. And,
yes, I’m sending another copy to the current residents.)
June 23, 2015
To the
residents of 2740 Keating Street:
Sixty
years ago, I lived in your house. That is our only connection, besides this
letter. I drove by your house ten years
ago and wanted to stop and knock on the door, but I had a plane to catch, and
it was too cold to wait around, anyway. I wanted to let the residents know that
their house has a history behind it, and that it meant a lot to me then, and
still means something to me now. That’s why I’m writing this letter. You are
probably not the same people who lived there ten years ago, but it’s your
house, too.
I am sixty-seven years old now. My family moved into the
house in 1952, when I was four. It is the first house of which I have clear
memories … memories that I know are my own, and not the result of stories I
have been told about my childhood. The memories I have are the memories of a
little boy, and probably won’t make much of an impression on you. (For example,
I remember the heater vent at the bottom of the stairs, and how nice it was to
sit by it and change from my pajamas to my daytime clothes. I could do this in
the three-minute cycle when the furnace was blowing hot air. That was very
important for a four-year-old-boy on a cold morning. Is that hot air register
still there, warming cold children who still dress in a hurry?)
The neighborhood was a bit different then. The houses across
the street were being built, and the shopping center didn’t exist at all. There
were just woods there. Keating Street ended just on the other side of 28th
Street. There was a pile of dirt there, left over from construction. It was
maybe ten or fifteen feet high. To a five-year-old boy, it looked like Mount
Everest. I see that it is gone now, and Keating Street has been connected to
the shopping center. But what surprised me is how many of the landmarks of the
neighborhood are still the same … the parking lot behind the building, the apartment
house up the block, and so on. They look incredibly small now, seen from a
grown man’s height, but I would still recognize them.
The neighborhood was integrated then. I don’t know what it’s
like now, but in the early Fifties there were an equal number of black and
white families on the block. I am forever grateful for that, because it spared
me from most of the poison of racial prejudice. We kids played together more or
less peacefully, creating the usual number of friends and enemies, but the
relationships were always personal, never racial. (Much later, I found out how
unusual this was for Maryland, and for suburban Washington in general.) Of
course, I heard the racial epithets that kids always pick up and throw at each
other, and I asked my father what they meant. He told me that they were just
the words of stupid, thoughtless people and that they didn’t mean anything. And
I could look around the neighborhood and see for myself that this was true.
That is not the worst way to raise a young boy.
Here is a picture of my parents in front of the door:
I think
this picture was taken when they moved in, in 1952. My father had taken a job
with the US government and moved down from his hometown of Syracuse, New York.
He was fresh out of college, but was 36 years old, because he had been in the
Civilian Conservation Corps and then had fought in World War II before he was
able to go to college on the GI Bill. He died in 2004, on the day before Thanksgiving,
and we buried him at Arlington National Cemetery on January 14th. (That was why
I was in town.) He is buried next to my mother, who died in1994, and a brother
I never knew, because he was stillborn.
Except
for the ironwork added the door, the house looks pretty much the same as it
does today. I also have a picture of my father with me and my brother Joe. I
think it was taken around 1953, judging from how small I was.
I
have one more picture:
It’s dated September 1955, so I’m a
little taller. That tree is probably the very same one that’s still in front of
your door almost sixty years later. I am glad that it survived. About a year
after that picture was taken, we moved out of Keating Street to the first of
several houses in several cities, wherever my father’s job would send him.
There are many more memories I have of 2740 Keating Street:
of sitting on the stairs while my father taught me how to tie my shoes; of my
father laying on the floor with an injured back; of losing a small statue of a
saint and praying to Saint Anthony to help get it back; of buying loaves of
bread wrapped in waxed paper for a quarter from the “grocery bus” that went by
the house, in the days before the 7-11; of helping my father paint his car in
the parking lot out back (I painted the wheels bright red); of walking to
Hillcrest Heights Elementary school along with other kids my age, paraded in a
row like ducklings by the older “safety patrol” children; of smashing caps with
a rock against the back step, leaving little gunpowder smudges that made my
mother mad at me…
But every family leaves memories like this. Yours will, too.
They will echo through the house, with your voices added to those of everyone
else who’s lived there.
Thanks for your attention, if you’ve made it this far. I’m
really not expecting an answer to this letter, but would be happy to read
anything you have to say on what the house means to you. I hope that it will
leave you with a few memories as happy as mine have been.
I do have one favor to ask of you. When you move out of the
house, please leave this letter where the next residents can find it … maybe
taped to the inside of a cupboard door. Maybe you could add your own to it, to
let the new residents know what sort of people have been living there in the
past.
Sincerely yours,
John LaTorre
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