I was very lucky to have both sets of grandparents still alive and living near me when I was a child.  Visiting Grandpa and Grandma Hall was easy, because we could walk to their house!  Visiting Grandpa and Grandma Black was limited to weekends, since we had to drive across Washington.  It probably took about 45 minutes to get to their house, which was very close to Bethesda.

Grandma and Grandpa Black lived at 4112 Garrison Street, which was in the group of 3-syllable streets in alphabetical order -- a wonderful system of street naming in Washington which made it so easy to identify general locations of streets!  It went Emerson, Fessenden, Garrison, Harrison...  Their home was a brown brick duplex, across the porch railing from the Barkers, a couple about the same age.  The house was one room wide, 2 stories with basement.  The dining room was furnished with a massive oak table and a buffet.  That table was the scene of many wonderful family dinners.  Grandma was a marvelous cook, the kind who never measured anything!  She was famous for her lemon meringue pie.  For Sunday breakfast, we would be treated to another of her specialties -- crumb cake.  I still have the recipe!  In the living room were two special glass-front bookcases.  Grandpa had the full set of the old McGuffey readers, and liked me to read to him from those strange-looking books.  He called me "his little scholar". 

Grandpa had moved his family from Ohio to work for Senator Pomerene, and besides being interested in politics, was very active in the Lutheran Church.  Grandma was busy with baking, ironing and gardening.  She had an E-shaped rose bed out back that was perfectly tended, and grew other flowers, including lily-of-the-valley, around the edge of the house.  Grandpa died when I was 10, so most of my memories are of visits to Grandma, who lived there alone for several years after his death.  She loved to play cards with me -- Go Fish, Old Maid and War were our favorites.  She also let me help her with baking, which was great fun.  There were no clothes dryers in those days -- her basement was like ours, equipped with laundry tubs with a wringer that you fed the clothes through to get most of the water out, then it was outside to hang the clothes to dry.  Such a treat to sleep between those wonderful-smelling line-dried sheets!!  She ironed in the basement, too, and Grandpa's dress shirts were always perfectly starched and ironed.  I was allowed to iron his handkerchiefs.

She had no car, so used the streetcar which ran on nearby Wisconsin Avenue; but groceries were bought at a nearby store.  We walked over, with a little wheeled cart in which we brought the groceries home.  For a special dinner treat, we would occasionally walk over to Howard Johnson's where we would always order the same meal -- scallops.  And pistachio ice cream for dessert.  Some weekends were made extra-special because my cousins Jane and Richard French came up from Lynchburg, Virginia to visit Grandma too, which made for a very lively household!

Grandma and Grandpa Hall lived a very different kind of life.  Their home was huge, 3 stories and many rooms.  The living room had a grand piano in it, and Mother would play Gilbert and Sullivan songs which Grandpa loved to sing -- he knew all the words by heart.  The next room back was the library, with several shelves of books and a wonderful Delft tile fireplace.  Grandpa loved to read me fairy tales, and I usually chose from either Grimm's or The Blue Fairy Book.  "The Bronze Ring" was my very favorite story.  Across the hall from the living room was the parlor, where there was a couch in the center of the room and a Victrola.  We would wind it up, put on the Beer Barrel Polka, and polka wildly in circles around the couch, while the rest of the family sat in the chairs against the wall as the audience!  The next room back was the large dining room, with room for 10 or 12 at the large table.  Grandpa and Grandma did a lot of entertaining in connection with his being president of the college.

Grandma Hall was deaf, and had been deaf since she was a child.  Grandpa fell in love with her when she came to Gallaudet as a student, and they were married on the day she graduated.  She was an excellent lip-reader, and although I could spell to her if I had to, she could usually read my lips.  Grandma did a lot of gardening in the huge perennial beds in the garden, and let me come out and help her weed and taught me the names of the flowers.  Her bedroom upstairs smelled of camphor.  She kept large rolls of brown paper in one of her cedar chests, and loved to entertain me by cutting a long strip of paper maybe 6" x 36", folding it accordion-style, making a few quick snips with huge scissors, then with a merry smile on her face, she would open it up and there would be a string of children holding hands!  Grandma had a white poodle named Rags, and for some reason it fascinated me to watch her put eardrops in Rags' ears for what must have been a chronic condition. 

In a little wing of the house behind the dining room were the kitchen and pantry.  We girls were allowed to go with Grandpa to the pantry in mid-afternoon to raid the refrigerator.  He would fix us a fizzing drink made of ginger ale and grape juice, pouring it with a great flourish into small glasses.  Their Negro cook Florence ran the kitchen.  She was deaf too, and couldn't speak, but with her grunts and gestures she got across the message easily:  It could be "Help yourself to a cookie" or "Stay out of my way!"

Up on the 3rd floor was a separate apartment with outdoor access, but on the wide landing was a large dollhouse where I sometimes played.  This was one of my few concessions to girl-type activities!  Our uncle Jonny kept his fencing gear in a nook in the first-floor hallway, and we girls were allowed to put on the masks and special protective tunics and pretend we were swashbucklers fighting for our lives up and down the long hallway!  I'll have to admit I found that much more entertaining than playing with the dollhouse!

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