I was 6 years old in 1940. I lived in northeast Washington, DC, on the campus of Gallaudet College, the only college for the deaf in the world.  My father taught math there. My grandfather was president of the college at the time, and he and Grandma Hall lived on Faculty Row at #1 Kendall Green. I lived five houses away along a circular drive, at #6, with my parents, my younger twin sisters Linda and Nancy, and our cocker spaniel Taffy. On around the same circle were the Gym building, tennis courts, and College Hall, which held the main administrative offices of the college, as well as classrooms and the mens' dorm rooms. Completing the circle was a small home by the gate at 7th and Florida Avenue -- this was known as The Lodge. All the buildings were surrounded by beautiful lawns and stately old trees; the center of the circle (perhaps 5 acres) was mostly grass, with a few treed areas and a couple of formal gardens. This part of the campus was known as Kendall Green, and the campus maintenance department took care of all the lawns and trees;  mowing was not a part of our existence! In the fall, the men would rake huge leaf piles, and we'd sneak opportunities to jump in the piles before they were hauled away -- great fun for us, but extra raking for the ground keepers!

The Gallaudet campus extended north behind our house, with a hill up to the farm. Houses 7 and 8, a duplex, was halfway up the hill and #9, the farmhouse, was at the top. When I was young, there was a working farm, with two draft horses, Dave and Trim, who were used to pull the hay wagon and corn wagon. Sometimes we were allowed to ride on top of the cornstalks as they were cut and thrown into the wagon. That was a very special treat! The edges of the leaves were sharp and scratched us, and there were lots of bugs in the corn, but we still loved that exciting ride! We also loved to play in the hay barn, climbing on the bales of hay, swinging on a big rope, and climbing around on the horses' stalls. There were also a few hogs, chickens, and some dairy cows. Gallaudet residents drank raw milk, bottled at the farm, until the rules changed; then we had to switch to pasteurized milk from a commercial dairy.  I've never liked milk since then!  In the old days, though, the milk would come in quart bottles with necks that were slightly narrower than the rest of the bottle.  The cream rose to the top, so it was possible to pour the cream off into a pitcher for coffee, and have skim milk left over for drinking. 

Behind the farm was a strip of woods ending at Bladensburg Road, and just to the west was a large produce market and Bolgiano's seed company.  Still further to the west were the railroad yards leading into Union Station. The sound of train whistles was a part of my life, and I still love to hear them in the night.

There was another road coming down the far side of the "farm hill" which led past the football field and through the younger boys' dorm area, past the maintenance buildings and the womens' dorm and out the 8th Street gate. In the center of this cluster of buildings was Kendall School, which was the school for the deaf students from the District of Columbia. The campus is bordered to the east by West Virginia Avenue.

In the 40's, Florida Avenue and a few nearby streets had already become a black neighborhood (we used the words "colored" and "Negro" at the time), but it was still a nice modest neighborhood of well-maintained attached homes. It never occurred to me to feel nervous walking many blocks through this part of town (just as it would give me pause to do such a thing today!).  Back in the 40's the school system in D.C. was still segregated, so I attended all-white schools clear through high school.  I was usually the only white passenger on the streetcar that I often rode to high school, which I could catch just outside the main gate at 7th and Florida.

The major impact this location had on my life was that it forced me into being a loner.  There was only one faculty kid my age, and he moved away in the mid-40's. Although I knew the manual alphabet used by the deaf, I couldn't sign using ASL, so never got to know any of the deaf kids on campus; and wasn't very interested in playing with my sisters and their friends , since the 3 1/2-year age gap seemed huge at the time. So getting together with school friends involved a walk of at least a mile. I never minded being alone, though -- I had an imaginary friend when I was young, and once I could read, I was happy as a lark sitting in my rocker reading my library books.   In summer I loved to watch the thunderstorms rolling in from the west, with the trees whipping in the wind and the lightning bolts flashing across the sky.

My friend Billy Craig lived at #3. I called him Sonny, and we had special "challenge bike routes" laid out on campus. We would ride along our pre-ordained routes, sometimes talking, sometimes racing at breakneck speed. Of course the routes all included the farm hill, just to add the challenge of the uphill push (no gears in those days!) and the fun of the fast coast downhill with the wind whipping our clothes. We had options on a slope behind College Hall where we could choose either bumping down the wide steps, or riding on the four-inch-wide cement edge.

Sonny and I knew the best trees for climbing, and had "hideouts" in the summer under certain bushes with space under their long, curving branches. We played "spy" a lot, no doubt the influence of the war; one challenge was to trace a certain route around the campus on foot without being seen. The path we took involved going into some of the buildings, through the cloisters and the Chapel, and dropping down the high ivy-covered wall from the terrace. We tried smoking the pods of catalpa trees in the stairwell of the Gym, and spied on the sweethearts who used to hang out around the tennis courts.  I sometimes stopped at Dr. Gallaudet's statue when on my own, and climbed up to sit on his knee, next to Alice Cogswell, a student to whom he was teaching the manual alphabet.

We all had Flexible Flyer sleds, and when there was good snow for sledding (fairly rare in D.C.), we had wonderful times on the farm hill. Our parents would get us started, but it seems to me that we usually outlasted them. It was a great ride down, but a LONG trek back up, encumbered as we were with our winter clothes (in those days we wore "snowsuits" which had matching tops and pants, very bulky) and the sleds. Definitely worth it, though! And of course we built wonderful snowmen on the central campus.

In the summer, we had long, hot days to fill and played outside a lot -- we had roller skates and did a lot of skating on the smooth blacktop of the Kendall Green circle, and there were always hopscotch games drawn out. When it got too hot to be outside we played indoor games -- Monopoly, Canasta and Michigan Rummy were big favorites. There was no air conditioning then, and Washington summers were brutal with temperatures in the 90's and extremely high humidity, so every house had an established system of cooling by keeping shades and/or drapes closed and using window fans to best advantage. The best solution, of course, was to get out of town; we did manage several trips to the beach or the river each summer. In the evenings (remember, no TV!), all the neighbors would come outside to enjoy the cooler evening air, and croquet was the main activity -- a game was usually in progress either in front of #3 or #6. Adults and children participated, and if there were too many for the six colors, we played in teams. The kids also played elaborate games of hide and seek involving quite a large area that was considered in-bounds, and of course the darker it got, the greater the challenge! When it was too dark for games, we would sometimes fill jars with lightning bugs.

A major event on campus each November was the Sadie Hawkins Day Tug-O-War, between the freshmen men and the Preps (there was a pre-freshman year at Gallaudet to serve as orientation, and to bring the new students up to college level). This took place at a fire hydrant in mid-campus, and involved the two teams tugging at a heavy rope, trying to pull each other through the blast of water from a fire hose. They wore swim trunks no matter what the weather. It could be Indian Summer at that time, but it could be bitter cold. The Hall girls were always in the audience!

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