Under and Up Again

by Edith Noordewier Foley

  Being part of the medical team was interesting. Dr. Blizzard sat down at my desk to discuss a trip. He had a needle in his arm and had dark circle under his eyes. “What is happening?” I asked. “I could not get hold of a volunteer,” he replied, then went on explaining his travel requirements.

  Baltimore prided itself, other than the “Block,” on being the home of the Gypsy princess. About ten Gypsies were sitting on the benches in the lobby for support when the princess needed to see a physician.

  A world conference was organized by Dr. Arnall Patz, the then director and chief of the ophthalmology department, Johns Hopkins being at the forefront of vision research. I went so far as to pick up three scientists from Dulles airport, who had arrived by the Concorde, a supersonic passenger plane. This superfast jet traveled over the ocean in three hours, rather than the usual seven hours by regular jet. I played the official pick-up service, dressed in a gray plisse skirt, white blouse, and blue blazer with the WAYE logo on it, high heels, and I think I had white gloves on too. My French was good enough to greet them. One professor was drunk. He was overcome by this form of transportation. It was his first time to go faster than Mach 2.

  Another conference was organized by the Population Dynamics of the School of Hygiene. I sent tickets to the attendees in Africa, where they were at home.

  That became exotic. I was told that there was no postal delivery. Somehow, a box on a tree was mentioned. I am still trying to work that idea out in my mind. Everyone arrived, however, and I had the pleasure of meeting elegant ladies, with their hair braided into a crown, in their long dresses of beautiful designs on the material. They walked in a special way—their heads held up high, very erect and straight, very elegant.

  Latin-American customers never ordered anything unless they had impressed on me first that they were personal friends of somebody important at home. It never failed, which makes me understand that in their countries, this is the only way you can get things done.

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  I sat at my desk when I heard a thud against the window; I looked up and saw three young, about eight years old, boys laughing. Then they threw a puppy against the window and scurried away. I went outside to investigate and found a beagle-type puppy on the ground.

  Another dog in trouble. We adopted her and called her Priscilla. She was so pretty, large brown eyes, silky long ears. Just one thing—we could not have her in an office setting. She was wild and undisciplined. We did our best to calm her, to no avail. She created mayhem when left alone at home. She was able to eat everything, and she did, and her digestion seemed to take care of whatever came along: nylon stockings, part of the stamp collection, books. A good friend of ours, a federal judge, whose photo had been swallowed by Priscilla, came out again not much worse for wear. It was an incredible joke in our circles. The judge loved it.

  I took her to see Dr. Sham on Falls Road, a sensible veterinarian. He looked her over and found a rubber band twisted around her toes and mentioned that her tail had been cut; it was shorter than the typical coonhound he decided she was. He also explained that, just as with humans, dogs could be mentally disturbed as well. “Not a thing you can do about it,” he declared. Priscilla could not be trusted at the front door; she wanted out. When she succeeded, we had to chase after her, sometimes by car, with a box of dog bones rattling in our hands, trying to entice her to come back to us.

  Mrs. Stout had invited us to dinner. Dick went ahead, with me to follow. Well, Priscilla managed to get out. No way could I catch her; she ran and she ran. At that point, I had had enough. If she was so anxious to leave us, let her go. Mrs. Stout could not be trifled with, and I proceeded to her house. Dick was appalled when I told him of what had happened. He stood up and left to look for her. After quite a while, he returned, and to everyone’s surprise, he had found her, way over close to the super Highway 83. She continued to be a curse to our existence. She finally made it to her final destination. When living in Chestertown, she got out and ran into the traffic on Route 20, was hit by a car, and died.

  The dogs in our lives. Of course, Lucy continued to be the lady, looking after us and enduring the other dogs.

  Johns Hopkins is located in a dangerous neighborhood, and driving to work, I paid attention to the surroundings. Here I was on a heavily traveled road, coming to a stop at a red light when, to my surprise, I saw a little creature trying to cross the road, progressing very slowly—a tiny dog.

  The light would change very soon, and trucks were coming from the opposite direction. The dog was so little, the size of a rat almost. Not a chance that a truck would stop for it. While still waiting for the light to change, I jumped out of the car and grabbed the little thing and placed it on the passenger seat. I looked up and saw the driver of the truck next to me smiling and giving me the OK sign. I took this little thing to my office because that is where I was heading and placed it in a cardboard box.

  It needed to be washed badly; I noticed many varmints, and from his eyes, brown hardened hair reached down, preventing him to drink or eat. It was clear that we needed the vet again. He had to shave all his hair off and remove the ticks on his head. He was wearing a dog tag, and I suggested we get in touch with the vet mentioned on it. “No way,” said our vet, seeing how he had been mistreated. He found also that that the dog had had distemper at one time. So here was another dog in our life. This was a male, and he looked like a little bare cat, first with many black spots on his head where the tick heads were lodged. His hair began to grow, white and curly. He was a toy poodle. Now we were not small-dog people. Dick grew up with a Saint Bernard. But this little fellow was first, a total male, and secondly, very handsome and smart as is typical of poodles. He lived for three years with us and succumbed to heart disease. His previous life caught up to him. So there we were without a dog. Lucy had died of old age too. A terrible loss for us.

  I was asked, “Don’t you want another dog?” Following the intense dog experiences of the previous years, I was not too anxious. “The only kind of dog I would enjoy would be a beige toy poodle—but female,” I decided. Female because little Reginald had left his marks on all the chair feet, a thing males like to do, to show who is the boss, I learned.

  Some years went by, I received a call to announce the birth of toy poodles, beige, and there was a female available. Well, by now, we really wanted a puppy again, and Genevieve Mayerling Foley arrived. She was so small, I was afraid I would step on her. I carried her in the nape of my neck, holding her there with my left hand while preparing our meals with the right hand. A tiny lined basket stood on my desk in the office with her in it. How wonderful it was. Training her was easy, and she was cuddly and sweet, and when she was a bit more mature, she loved to run. For part of her exercise routine, I carried a long stick and swung it over the grass; she chased the tip of it.

  She went everywhere with us. Later when I had to commute to Baltimore, I bought a little car seat for her. When we started to drive, she curled up in it, and I could reach over to the passenger side and pat her. I had also made a leash for her in beige and extra long to give her the freedom to roam. During office hours in Chestertown, I walked her from Queen Street up High Street to the harbor and back two times a day. We were always stopped for a little chat by friends who sat on their front porch.

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  In Baltimore, my office was in the back, with the desks of the travel agents in the front facing the street. After Dick had died in 1986, I took his place, which necessitated my commuting on weekends and living during the week in the apartment Dick had occupied. The neighborhood there was marginally safe. Once, my car had been broken into by smashing a window and breaking the steering column. So I did not feel safe to walk Genny there at night. We developed a system: I put her on the extra long leash I had crocheted and lifted her out of the back window onto the lawn that reached up because I had a ground-floor apartment. That worked beautifully. She had lots of freedom to
roam. Whenever Genny needed to go out, she pointed to the window. Her presence kept me focused after Dick’s death. After all, she had been part of us both.

  In Baltimore, after Dick had died in 1986 and I took over the agencies, I had placed a soft pillow in a corner of my office where I could see her, and that was her spot. When she heard a voice in the front office that intrigued her, she would get up and walk out to investigate. I usually followed her to make sure that she was not bothering anybody. But there she was, cuddled up on somebody’s lap, both customer and dog perfectly happy. Genny lived with me until the ripe old dog age of sixteen. Her little paw imprints on wet paint are still on one of the wooden beams of my porch. She is buried in the woods behind my house here in Chestertown, with a little gravestone.

  So far, I covered a time span that stretched into 1986. Previously, I was working as manager of the Johns Hopkins Branch of Via Waye Travel at 550 Broadway, handling the travels of the medical community. That brought interesting persons into my life. My staff: a tiny woman with straight black hair and bangs reaching for her sparkling black eyes. Her ready smile showed her white regular teeth. She was of Mexican descent and a delight to be with. Everybody liked her friendliness and compassion. At lunchtime, she was embroidering in a fashion I had never seen before. She filled in little squares of red checkered material with bright-colored thread. Then there was the lady from India, the elegant wife of an Indian intern. She was beautiful with her oval face and light-colored skin, moving gracefully. I had to get used to her bobbing her head gently from side to side when agreeing with me. It looked more like a negative sign, which surprised me at first. Her family, obviously of some standing, lived in Bombay, and she went to visit them. That is when she contracted a rather serious tropical disease. It took quite a while for her to return to her husband and her job. She was a good friend.

  Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions were located in the poorest area of Baltimore, and security was an issue. Driving to work, I made sure the doors of the car were locked. I heard that a doctor had been stabbed in his car. Parking was behind the 550 Building, a fast, short walk to the main entrance. The lobby was glass enclosed, and there was a desk with someone in attendance. Carpeting was light blue, with leather benches along the windows. Our office had its glass door leading into this lobby, with the front wall facing the lobby made of glass also. I had my office enclosed behind the front part with its three desks and a small office to the side, also enclosed, and from there a door lead into the side hallway, very handy. I kept a keen eye on what was happening in the office at all times. Somebody had made it past the front desk; he was obviously out of place, making a nuisance out of himself. So I sneaked out of my office through the side office to alert the desk clerk about our problem, who then would put things in order again by removing the man.

  The pressure of becoming a physician overwhelmed some students. Fortunately, we did not witness a student taking his life by jumping out of the window of the dormitory located next to our building. Also, a student collapsed walking into the 550 lobby. He had no idea who he was or where he was. Working thirty-six hours at a stretch, as was part of the routine then, must have been overwhelming.

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  This was also where I was during the riots. They happened April 6-9, 1968, just after we had opened our office, with me as the only employee working there. Dick was escorting a group on a cruise as ombudsman, this being our style of service, and I heard about the riot activities on the radio. It turned out that Baltimore was one of the cities most affected. Chaos erupted on the streets, with rampant rioting and looting. Many buildings and structures were burned, as the streets of the inner city became engulfed in flames. Well, I would not allow anything to happen to my new beautiful office at 550 Broadway. I mean, we had just moved the new desk and the chairs there and the filing cabinet. Living in the north of the city, I usually had to drive through the area that was affected by the rioting; I as a white person would not have had a chance. I decided that the way to reach the office was to drive way down to the harbor then east to the Italian neighborhood and then north on Broadway. I arrived safely; when I entered the building, I noticed a car with four black males talking to some young boys. Shortly after that, the Acme food store, a block away, was on fire. It was a very scary time. Martin Luther King had been killed on April 4, and the city was home to a large African American population. SNNC chairman H. Rap Brown was enticing violence with speeches that were a call to arms. The governor established a curfew for all city residents, and the National Guard was called in to quell the riots and restore peace. Life would be different from then on.

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  The travel products we sold were top of the line, and we had to show good taste to the outside world. Dick’s clothing was conservative and stylish. We purchased his suits from a factory called Joseph Banks where the tailors made any adjustments necessary, and the price was reasonable. It was an insider’s address, and the diplomats from Washington would purchase their suits there too. His shoes came from Miller Brothers on Baltimore Street, right around the corner from Charles and cost $350, an incredible expense for that time.

  My wardrobe was self-made. I learned how to sew out of necessity. Dick brought rich-colored hand-loomed woolens from the Moiarity store in Donegal, Ireland, which inspired me to make my own suits. I made my own evening gowns too. I made bedroom curtains by cutting a sheet in half almost to the top where the flowered part became the overhang. Now the seam is sewn together again, and the sheets are still around.

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  Well, there I was, Dick was escorting a group to an exotic destination again. This activity was our moneymaker, and I understood. I was left with the management of the offices and felt left out and tired. Today, we would call it “burn out.”

  Out front stood the shiny dark green Buick we had purchased from our relative in Augusta, Georgia. We had worked our way up from the smallest Buick to the largest by exchanging each type at Christmas when we were visiting. That was considered a smart thing to do with financial advantages. But now, there it beckoned for me to roam. I simply had to get away. I packed Lucy into the car with a blanket, a pillow, a can opener, dog food, water and a can of beans. That was that, we drove to Colonial Williamsburg without a reservation at a hotel, nor did I have any money other than my household cash. It was wonderful; I took an interesting tour of the colonial town. Before I knew it, it was evening. Well, I had to be safe and looked for a place to park the car. The motel, part of the Williamsburg accommodation, was my choice. There were plenty of open spaces right at the doors to each unit, and I parked the car in one of them. Of course, we had to be invisible in the car. I talked to Lucy to be very still and not to bark, even when she heard persons outside. She was typically wonderful. She understood, and the two of us huddled under the blanket and had a peaceful sleep.

  This was the time before credit cards and cell phones, before home computers and spending money one did not have. Dick’s well-to-do family had lost all during the Depression—the estate in Pennsylvania, the private railroad car, the butler, and chauffeur with the Perciera car—and I had lost all dear to me during World War II. To us, making money was a sport and a necessity, working our way back to what we knew and grew up with.

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  Our comfortable townhouse in Ruxton was a rental. Not a good financial situation. The rental money should build equity, and a house needed to be bought. We looked in Ruxton and saw a place we would enjoy to live in, but it was in such bad shape that the outlay was too high. The mortgage available from banks was geared toward how much regular income one had, a certain percentage. The houses in Ruxton were really not a good investment for us. They were priced for their location, and old. We found a house at a dead-end, with the watershed woods behind it called Dogwood Hill Court just off the end of Providence Road. It was roomy and light, and we decided that this was going to be our new home. The neighbors were delightful, and we had much fun visiting with t
hem and enjoying their hospitality; the door was always open.

  At the back of our house, on the ground floor, was a terrace, and that is where we held many a dinner party, and all was well. A friend called; he was moving back to England and was selling his furniture. That is were we bought items to fill our new home and felt that two Persian rugs would be appropriate, and we found a reliable firm. What an experience to see Mr. Hanna flip through the high pile of rugs to see what type we would like. The red Heriz was easily decided on for the dining room, but the large one for the living room area was so pink. We were intrigued but unsure. “You may live with it for a while to see whether you like it,” suggested Mr. Hanna, and that is what we did. The rug is still with me and represents many other colors together, with the pink a joy to behold. Also, we felt that the business would be more effective in a neighborhood where most of our clientele was located and moved to Roland Park, to the second floor of a small mall on Roland Avenue. The business was going well. Dick’s style was appreciated.

  Mutti and Micaela came to visit. Micaela was working in Washington at the time because her friend had a position there.

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  It was 1952. Dick had just left home to escort a group when a hurricane struck. The rain was intense. A curtain, dense like a sheet of water, came down for days. Our street descending toward our house became a river. The foundation of our house could not withstand the pressure and let the water in. The basement, together with one room downstairs, filled with water. I think it receded finally by itself. We did not have central air-conditioning, and the house began to smell. Mildew! We lived with that for a while because on the floor above was the living and sleeping area, but we decided to purchase a house on Providence Road, a house so beautiful in a large garden richly landscaped. My dream house! It was a lot of work to sell the house on Dogwood Hill Court after the water damage. We had to get rid of mildewed rugs and upholstered furniture. The cellar walls had to be waterproofed with a special paint, and I hid Yardley’s lavender soap wherever possible to give the house a fresh smell. Of course, I did all of that myself. I loved a challenge. We needed to sell the place.