Episode 2- Robert Barton, Jr.- Mom Ford's Family's Boarding House, Pop Rises to run the Electrical Department, Strikes, "Going Down The Neck"

In this episode Bob Barton talks about Mom Ford's Family's Boarding House, Pop's Rise to the top of the electrical department at Bethlehem Steel, going "down the neck" to see where the Speddens came from, Strikes at the plant, and more stories of his aunts, uncles, and parents.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello, and welcome to the Ford family stories podcast. This is cousin Mike Barton. The purpose of this podcast is to keep an oral history of all of our stories of growing up as members of the Ford family and all of our fond memories to share with each other and future generations. I encourage everyone in the family who is interested in participating to please do so. I have all the equipment necessary to record you, either in person or remotely. If you would like to do this, please contact me at(443) 600-0446. We're Barton mike@yahoo.com. I hope you enjoy listening to these trips down memory lane and as many people as possible come forward with fond stories to share. In this episode, my father, Bob talks about mom Ford's parents boardinghouse on Sparrow's point talks about pop forge rise to running the electrical department at Bethlehem steel, going down the neck and Cambridge to see where the spins came from. More stories of his aunts and uncles and his parents union strikes. And more. Now my mom Ford's family did come to Baltimore for looking for work. And her father first lived in the city and she lived in a number of different places before moving to sparrows point. And at sparrows point, her father had two jobs. Number one, he was the custodian of the elementary school and two, he operated a boarding house on his own and he had a few boarders come in and addition to his own family. And I'm trying to think how many kids he had him. I think he was at least six. Maybe it was just four, but he, he had his own family and he had borders and sure enough who came to stay as a border. But my grandfather, when he came up from Hopewell, he stayed at the boarding house and met my grandmother, who mom was in charge of serving the dinners and cleaning up the dishes and, and whatnot. Uh, so that's how they met. And I believe she was only 15 or 16 when they met. And they got, uh, she was a teen years when they got married, which was not all that unusual. Then what I find fascinating is mom told me one time how that, uh, on Saturdays, the family would, uh, get on the streetcar and go down town to get groceries for the week for the boarding house. And they would all get back on the street cars, carrying baskets, full of bread and groceries and whatnot all the way back on the street car and then carry it on into the house. That's how they got everything back to the house for the board of the house. And she and her sister liked to tell the story about how in their house they had a parlor and the parlor was only, there were only permitted to go in the parlor, uh, on Sundays after church and the, the furniture had the plastic covers on it so that they wouldn't get anything dirty. And, uh, the other place they could go on Sunday is that they could go out on the front porch, but they couldn't go in the yard while they still had their Sunday school clothes or church clothes on because they couldn't get them dirty and messed up. So it was a real regimen in those days as to how people lived in terms of, uh, uh, taking public transportation in terms of taking care of things, because money wasn't, uh, growing on trees, I've been, uh, speaking of asbestos point as a company town and how the, the company did do, uh, an awful lot for the employees in terms of recreation and activities and whatnot. But it wasn't always hunky Dory between labor and management. And it refers me to the matter of strikes when I started going to M employee meant, uh, parties and whatnot. I was a little bit startled to find out that everybody just talked and talked about work and this and that and the other, because when I was growing up, nobody talked about the steel plant on Sundays, when we were eating hamburgers and potato salad, it wasn't something people were happy to talk about. However, there was always conversation when there was discussions of whether or not there was going to be a strike, because that was very important. And there was all kinds of speculation as to what was going to happen. And it was very, very dramatic thing. First thing I learned was that there are different types of a strike and keep in mind that my grandfather was management. He was a supervisor and my father was labor for most of his career. And my grant, the, there was a thing called a lockout for logistical or strategic purposes. Uh, sometimes the company wanted to head off a strike so that they started out before the union went on strike and, uh, locked out all of the workers in order to do that. They had the lock, all of the Gates. So not to let the workers in, but they also locked in the workers. So my grandfather would be locked into the plan for two, three weeks a month, whatever it happened to be. And I also remember one time when there was a, a strike of a couple of months during the summer. And this was a big deal because not many people could go without money for a couple of months. Well, I was off school and I didn't like the strike because I had to, uh, help my father with household projects that he was doing well, he was on strike and didn't have picket dirty as it was. We were taking out the windows, knocking out all the window panes and putting big sheets of glass in the windows and redoing the windows, which was a job I didn't care for. But at the same time, uh, my mother was off working. She got a job and I forget there was a couple of different strikes. The first one, she got a job at Montgomery wards and the camera department, and it was over on South Monroe street in South Baltimore. And every morning she would get up transfer buses and go to work on Monroe street in the camera department. And then she would come home and fix dinner and whatever, whatever. And my mother, uh, working in the camera department, when she quit, before she quit, she got me a camera on it, uh, pull employee discount, and it was a box camera. It was black and it was a big rectangular thing. And it held a roll of film with eight pictures in it, eight photographs on the film. And I remember taking the box camera to the zoo and a school and trying to figure out how I was going to spend my eight pictures in the zoo. And the Eagle got a picture and the elephant got a picture and I used the eight photographs and they all turned out well, the second Drake, my mother worked at[inaudible], I think it might've been in the photography department also, but that turned out to be, or a part time job because my brother was getting into junior high school and he was old enough to come home by himself. So she worked that particular strike and kept going and ended up working for years and years at Hoshi cone and really enjoyed it. My grandfather known to us as pop was known in the plant as for probably because he changed his name, but that's what they, everybody called him. My grandmother always called him forward. So I had mentioned that Ford had a supervisory position. Well, he ended up in charge of the electrical department for the, or docs, the open hearth and another section of the plant that I can't remember at the moment. And these three sections each were divided. And when he retired and three people took over what his job was, but he was in charge of those. And then if you were listening carefully, you know, he had a fifth grade education and well, maybe that's the way it was. Then people worked their way up. But when he was in charge and I knew one of my neighbors knew him and he worked for him and I was talking to one of my neighbors, uh, about him on time or the neighbor was giving me an earful. But in any event, it turned out that for the last 10 years or so, my grandfather was working at the plant. He was supervising with a fifth grade education about a dozen or so electrical engineers. Most of them were from Lehigh and they went to school. There came down here to get in the lubers program. The loopers program was in order to become an electrical foreman. You had to go through the loop or work for so many months in the different plants areas of the plant. I'll tell you knew generally everything that was going on. So all of these electrical engineers come down and they find out that they have to report to my grandfather pop. Who's got a fifth grade education. Well, this, this caused some tension over a very long period of time. I asked my neighbor, asked me one time if he was my grandfather. And then I said, yes, and my neighbor had stories about both of my grandfathers, but my grandfather lasted in charge of all of these electrical engineers by just being tough and intimidating everybody, according to my neighbor, because he was one of them. He had an electrical engineering degree and he was subject to my grandfather. So whenever there was a meeting, for example, everyone would come in and sit down. My grandfather had his special seat and as somebody sat in his seat, he would come over and stare out of it until they eventually got up and moved out of the way. It was that sort of it thing. And I remember him coming home on Saturdays and he would shake his head and say, the college boys are going to get me. One of these days, the college breweries are after me. Well, they never got them, but it was a battle in any event, he was in charge and the[inaudible] are amazing that people tell my uncle because he didn't say much. My uncle Bob was telling me one time and that he didn't say much. It's just that if you put him in charge of something, everything dang work and was okay, and you never had it, the worry about it, but he never said much. So, and this might be a good lesson for many of us who can't keep her mouth shut is that sometimes that's the thing to do. But my uncle Bob, who ended up with a very good job in the engineering department, to the extent that one time they were adding and rejuvenating a major part of the plant, and they were having problems with the construction of the electrical work. And they just couldn't get those problems worked out so that they were having this meeting. And the meeting was being led by the second in command. The second in command happened to be an electrical engineer himself, although he was a result of all of that, but he was in it and all the construction people were there. And my uncle Bob was at the meeting and they were having this big discussion about whether they should do this or whether they should do that. And the vice president was there, the electrical engineer, and he put his 2 cents worth in. And somebody said for, do you have anything to say? And he stood up and said, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. And he turned around and walked out of the meeting and everybody kind of looked okay. Somebody said to the person in charge of the minutes, well, Ford volunteered work on the problem. And that was the end of it. He took care of it. So that was the kind of person that he, he was, he was very tough minded. He didn't say much, but he got his job dark and he was very colorful. He had expression and I've written a whole bunch of them down. And I might say, well, I'm thinking about it, about him working in the police down in Hopewell at the DuPont plant with my other grandfather. He would tell stories after he had a couple of drinks, he would tell stories about being a policeman down in Virginia. And most of the stories were told on Saturday night at the poker games, the whoever, whatever family was there at sparrows point, they would have penny and a poker around the dining room table, and there'd be eight or nine people there playing poker. And my grandfather would be drinking old Overholt and, uh, sled spear. And, uh, he was having a happy time. And I got to sit on the corner of the table, the end of the table next to him. And I was in charge of his pot of pennies. And I was to put the pennies into the pot and take them out when he won. And they played a fairly tame game. They could play seven cards instead of five, but that didn't happen very often. And they did have wild cards, but it wasn't real elaborate like some poker games that I've seen recently. So I could keep up with the pennies and put the pennies to put the Annie in at the beginning and then rake it out. And they would bet here's your two and two more raise the pot. And it was a lot of fun, but he told stories about the shootouts that he supposed to. They was in down and about how the old captain who was in charge of him, they would be down in the bullets, would be ricocheting all around their heads and one wouldn't come close and they would all duck. And he was a, don't worry about it. If you can hear it, don't worry about it. It's the ones that you don't hear. That's what you worry about. So that was the mentality. Now how much of this was true or not, right. Considering the old overhaul and the terror of night. I'm not sure, but if somebody came in and asked how you doing pop, he would almost always say whether he was winning or losing, he would say, well, they're taking me like grant took Richmond. And if you're from Virginia, you know exactly what that means. So that was pop with his treasurer, sitting in the corner, talking about his days in policing, uh, with my grand other grand father down in Hopewell, Virginia. Now, aside from the mind gins who had a full house, well, before I came along, I was the oldest grandchild. And I came along before anybody else had children. And there were good things. And there were bad things about that. When Saturdays, as I mentioned, uncle rep and aunt live would take me down to the first bridge swimming. And I, I got taken places. I remember that my aunt Mitzi and uncle riff, used to have an apartment off of York way, right up from where I lived. And on Saturday mornings, I would run down there and they would turn the radio on. And this was before TV. And I would listen to the lone ranger on the radio. And my uncle rip had his part time job. Everybody had part time jobs, working, doing deliveries for the Dundalk furniture company, which was up next across the street from the police station and fire department. So we had a good time with my uncle Rick, and he helped me for years and years with jobs and this and that. And the other also with my God parents, uncle Bob and aunt Libby, and with them, all of their attention was a mixed blessing. I got taken to all sorts of places and went on all sorts of trips with everybody and with them. But they also tease me. Everybody teased me because that's what people did when they liked a little kid. They teased him. So I got teased an awful lot, but my uncle Bob was a master at it. One of the things he was good at was pulling pants now. And this was when I was little and I had short pants and I had an elastic around the pants. So he would, Hey, Bobby, come here and I'd walk over to him. And he'd say, what's that up there? And I'd look up in the air and head grabbed the bottom of my shorts and pull him down. That was one thing. And they used to tease me like crazy. One night we were come back and it was dark out. They hooked up some story and they stopped a street over on I street from H street and said that I had to get out. I forget what they made up as to why I had to get out. So, but I had to get out in the dark and run to eighth street home. Well, I shot like a bolt, a H street and beat him there. Uh, by the time they got around the corner and came back up. But that was the sort of trick that they played on me. Now, that was a mixed blessing because I got all kinds of teasing by them and other people also. And that was good because it never ever bothered me when somebody said the wrong thing to me, I never got upset when I started playing sports. If I got razzed in baseball or when we started playing the black players and they started trash talking, well, here I've been teased all my life. And it was just like water off of a Duck's back. So it didn't bother me. Then I got used to it. But at the, at the time it was happening, it was a, uh, a little bit more of an ordeal, but that went on for a while until I grew too big to get teased like that. And of course, I also got help at one time or another by everybody. But the, the day after I graduated from high school, my uncle Bob got me a job working construction dare that Sparrow's point. And I worked second shift. And the first night I was there, I was in the middle of two lost time accidents. One guy fell on me from about 12 feet up in the air. And I spent a couple of months that summer as a carpenter's helper climbing up and down beams, but it was real good money. It was$2 and 40 cents an hour. And I got to collect my money in an envelope from the union representative. The union representative was a big, huge, uh, black man with a bigger black Buick. And he's leaned against the, a hood and handed out the envelopes with your money in it, less the union dues. But that was the job that my uncle Bob got me. I learned an awful lot about wearing helmets when a load of concrete came over my head and the gravel dumped all over my helmet. That was a very interesting experience. So my pop forward was very much in addition to the quality of his work was everything seemed to go fine all the time without any fuss and bother, uh, in addition to the quality of work, uh, and as part time job doing electricity, he started worked a while in local politics and he was a Republican, which was, I guess, good for the company. The company liked that. And at one time or another, he was a, a magistrate and was in charge of the court. Not, not very long, but he did that. And he was very, very much a company, man. And I noticed that both of his sons, they were very dedicated company men too. And he was in one of the, that was very important him, especially when he got the competition from all the college boys. But my grandfather had a million expression, like the expression, the taking me like grant tuck Richmond is expressions as to the work express his company, man, gloss, Sufi very much for one thing. I remember if one of his workers are giving him a problem or weren't very responsible, he would say the only thing he's interested in is payday and quitting. Todd is a chip off the block of my grandfather's expression because he had a mess of them. There was the taking me like grant took Richmond for playing card. He would say with respect to politicians, yeah. He almost broke his arm, padding himself on the back of that. I remember a number of times when he had a job to do, he would always take his gloves out and lay out the tolls. And it was always meticulous in doing the work around the house. And he would tell me if it's easy, you're doing it wrong. That meant if you're going to do it right. You have to be careful and go the extra mile to make sure the job's done right today. You have employees who get the employee of the month and there's a lot going on where they try and recognize the employees for their contribution. That was not my grandfather's philosophy. He always, one of his expressions was that if you want credit, go to the bank, we talked about Craigsville we'll Craigsville is in a bit North in Virginia of the natural bridge, natural bridge has been a state park or for years and years and years. And what it is is that a stream flowed underneath of a, a Ridge and it knocked a hole in it. So there is this big round opening underneath and on top, there was a, a big piece of clay, which look like a bridge and they called it the national bridge and they charged admission. And there were burger joints around. It was kind of a big deal, I guess it still is, but it was the natural bridge. And it was down the road from where he grew up. And if somebody ever mentioned, Oh, that's a Craigsville that's up the road from the natural bridge. My grandfather would say, yeah, I helped build that bridge. So he liked to have fun. And he was quick with his expressions. In addition, he had an expression that I remember he used all the time and connection with his two brother-in-laws, two of my, of mom, Ford's brothers. They were both very good at saving their money and not spending it, which didn't go unnoticed with my grandfather, whose expression was that he is so tight that he squeaks. Well, my aunt Livy, who was the younger sister, the baby of the family to my mother, they were pretty close after my aunt Helen left the family and started having her own family. When my aunt would be coming home from the downtown Spowers point, she had to cross the field or a street that cross the field where there was no G street, but just the big field. And she and my mother had a way of communicating with each other as to when she was going to get home. And that was a blood curdling yell. And it was more like a scream. I can't do it, but you would be out playing ball against the wall and I'd hear this blood curdling scream. And my mother would pop out on the back porch and answer it just the same way. And that's the way, one way that they communicated with each other. Now I've talked about my grandfather pop and my uncles I'd haven't mentioned my father. He of course, was my hero. He was the best athlete around then. I used to follow him around in different sports. And he was certainly the greatest aside from him. You might expect that that pop forward would be my hero figure and he was of sewer. But to me, the biggest hero that I had in the form family was mom for. And that occurred when I was going up and visiting there, she just took care of everything in the house. And she could have the whole family in and whip up a two sittings of dinner for Thanksgiving or for Christmas. And Sue said everybody and was just a whiz. And she was from her family was from the Eastern shore. She was, uh, a Methodist. And, uh, the Eastern shore was just full of Methodist. And she was a Methodist. And my mother turned and Libby's Methodist. The two boys, uncle bill, and uncle were both married Catholics. So the family had Catholics and they had Methodist. I was a Methodist and I went, my mother taught Sunday school at the Dundalk Methodist church. And then later when we moved, I was a member of the Patapsco neck Methodist church, one time retook mom in the van, down to the Eastern shore to see if we could find where someone live and her directions to me then was that we go down to Cambridge and then we go down the net and that's where her family was from. So we did it, put the kids in the van and mom Ford. And we went down to Cambridge and I had the map out. And from Cambridge, if you go toward the Bay, there is a real long neck. And there is individual decks all the way out. So we were started down the neck, made a left and went down to the neck. That way it came back and she didn't recognize anything. She recognized a lot of names on the post offices. So we were up the neck, back to the main road, down the neck, back to the main road all the way out to the end of the main road. And we came to the greater neck area, volunteer fire department. And it was at the turn where the neck turn. So I thought this is down the neck. This looks like we're getting close. And another quarter of a mile down the road, lo and behold, on the left, there is a church and it was the spending United Methodist church. It was paydirt. My mother, we stopped. And mom Ford was out of the van like a bullet. And she was talking to the, uh, caretakers, uh, takers who were working in the garden and they opened it up for, we went in and there were spends on plaques all over the walls. Veterans, just everywhere. We went out in the middle of a corn field and there was, uh, a cemetery out there. And there were spends all in this cemetery. There were other names also, but we finally found the neck area as to where she was from. And it was just fill the spins and the church was named after her. So that was our trip to Cambridge, with mom for, and she is the one who brought the Methodism from the Eastern shore to Sparrow's point. I remember years before that, I went down when I was just a little kid and we went to visit a relative down there who had a farm and we stayed overnight. And I remember they let me milk the cow for a couple of minutes. And I remember getting up the next morning and I had the, the best breakfast out ever had with grits and gravy and eggs. And it was a late breakfast and it was like the world's greatest brunch. And there was an outhouse that was my first outhouse that I'd ever been to. And as far as the outhouse is concerned, my cousin and my uncle and uncle rib told the story about when they visited Craigsville and my grandfather's old house, they were put upstairs and this was like the Christmas season and it was cold as it could be. And they woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom. And they were looking out at the, the freezing snow blowing and the ice and everything, and decided that they were not going to go to the outhouse. And my uncle bill suggested that they pull the window open and they could go out the window. So it was so cold out. They thought, well, this was the idea, but right below the window, there was a roof over the back door and the roof was metal. So when they both started going out the window and started landing on the sheet metal roof and woke everybody up. So that's the story about outhouses in Craigsville on the Eastern shore? Uh, I learned what an owl house was. I remember one time, this was when I was still a little, there was an anniversary, mom and pop are having an anniversary. I forget which one it was at the time, aunt Fran and uncle Dale had an apartment on park Heights Avenue. And it was a nice supple apartment. Uh, they didn't have any children yet, and it was a surprise party. So everybody probably called into cars and refound the place on park Heights Avenue. We went in and I remember, uh, there was a lookout and everyone was real quiet and mom and pop walked in. And there again, I was little, but I knew that I had to be quiet and everyone yelled surprise. And there was a big party. Are you on park Heights Avenue and getting out the park Heights Avenue then was someplace that I had never been before. And we went out, I believe with uncle above man live. So that is the, and I bring that up because it reminds me of all the social events that people had. And I had mentioned that bill and rib had both married Catholics. So when we went out, whenever we went to a C and Fran and uncle bill during the Christmas season, Hilda and, and Mary were there and father herb was there. The other herb was Hilda and Mary's brother and aunt Franz brother, who was a priest in big church out in Frederick, Maryland. And I mentioned this because father herb father Jordan played the piano and he would always play the Christmas carols or at the piano. I don't know, remember whether he was at the anniversary or not. Uh, but at Christmas season he would always play the Christmas carols. And by the same token, other Catholic family, aunt Mitzi, and, uh, aunt Clem, uh, played the piano. And whenever we would go to, uh, the, the Fords, somebody would be playing the, the piano and we'd all be singing and having a good time.