STORY SIX

KETTERING, HOLIDAY HOSTS INC. AND A NEW ADDITION, OR KEEPING BUSY AROUND THE CLOCK

We moved into our new house late fall 1969. It was a two story home with a large unfinished basement, which some five years later and together with about ten thousand dollars, Molly converted into a mother-in-law type of apartment; a plan that turned out to be very practical in years to come. The living room had a large bay window and there were wood floors throughout most of the house. It was spacious enough, and by the time we completed converting the basement, it had almost three thousand square feet of living space. Molly wasted none of it. No sooner had she completed her basement project, when she met someone who needed to have temporary quarters while working on a research paper for a local firm. She was from New England and her husband was teaching there, so he could not join her except at certain times and then only for short periods. She was our first guest in the new apartment, which was fully equipped with its kitchen and bathroom; it never would be empty again.

The neighbors, all newly moved into their homes were initially very genial. I say initially because over the years most of them moved out and the new owners were sort of a mixed bag. Some were just as nice and friendly, while others did not care either about their neighbors or their property, but that was many years later. Meanwhile everyone was paying attention to fixing up their lawns and homes. We dug large areas for flowers and planted many shrubs, roses, flowers and trees. I liked fir trees in particular, and we planted at least six types of firs which years later, got to be very big trees; but floral and grass seeds were not the only ones to be planted.

After a few years, our daughter pined for a sister, so after a brief discussion, we went back to the agency from which we had arranged our first adoption to prepare for the next one. Again there was a lot of paperwork and procedure, but this time we knew what to expect, and basically the process went very smoothly. Time came to select our next daughter and off we went to Doylestown once more. We agreed with the social staff and selected another school age girl who looked somewhat frailer and perhaps more scholarly than our first daughter. We finished our business, took a detour to Hershey Park to visit the Hershey chocolate factory and then drove home.

Some nine months later we waited at the same airport in New York for the passengers to deplane so that we could welcome our second daughter. She was slim, taller and very shy. She was also as cute as a doll. On the way back the two girls babbled constantly in the rear seat. When we asked our oldest what the new arrival had said, she replied, "Oh Nothing of Importance. " It turned out that our oldest had forgotten how to speak in her native tongue after just three years and was too embarrassed to tell us initially. We were afraid of that, but as mentioned, she steadfastly refused to talk to anyone in Korean. Well, we enrolled our newcomer in the local school (Kettering Elementary) and some six months later, her English was quite passable. We also learned our lesson from the first time around and almost immediately gave our second daughter her new first and middle name. You see, the first daughter was going to be equally treated to a first and middle name, but we wanted to wait a little until she was in school and her understanding of English was better. Then one day she came home all excited and pointing to herself exclaimed, "Me, Sally!" It was too late to change her name but we did manage to give her a middle name. At the end of the first year of elementary school she brought us home her first grade Primer and I immediately knew where she had gotten her name. We were very glad that she had not picked Puff or Ruff or some of the other names in the Primer.

Our youngest also turned out to be a good student and she had an advantage over our eldest daughter, in that she did not really have to study hard to learn. In other words, learning came easy to her. She also turned out very pretty and was much more preoccupied with herself and her looks than her sister. She would stand in front of a mirror for a long time and once wanted to know from her mother, why her left eyebrow was a shade different from her right one. Most people encouraged her vanity by acclaiming her good looks and remarking how doll like she looked. Later on, her looks facilitated her acceptance on the High School pompom Team. It also got her into trouble with some of the "He Men," such as the Captain of the Football Team, and one macho member of the Wrestling Team, who after having been too affectionate with her and having been "spoken to" by her adopted father, eventually married her.

When our oldest girl finished Largo Senior High, we enrolled her in a nursing school some two hours into Virginia not far from Richmond. She did not like the program and soon discovered that she was not interested in becoming a nurse. She came back, found a job and tried living on her own by moving in with a friend in a townhouse section of the same development, or in a manner of speaking, a stone's throw away from home.

Meanwhile our youngest always had a problem when she saw blood -- it did not really make any difference whether it was her blood or that of someone else, invariably she would turn a sickly green and faint on the spot. Once she hit her head on just such an occasion, on the top floor landing, incurring an injury so that we had to take her to the emergency room for some stitches. The surgeon after being reminded by mother, assured the injured party that he was making very small and close stitches that would leave no trace of any scar. With this type of history one would hardly believe that our daughter would go into nursing. Yet that is exactly what happened. We enrolled her after her graduation in the local Community College Nursing School where she easily completed the program, passed her State License and became a Registered Nurse at a large local hospital center.

This was also about the time that I had left the Interior Department for a position which was to head up a larger research and technical library for a local Department of Defense Agency. I was to continue in that job for some seventeen more years, or until my eventual retirement in mid 1985. Meanwhile, Molly was trying something new and different. She always had a number of foreign student contacts by hosting high school students from different countries such as Germany, Finland and Japan. Our oldest for example, took French in High School and after we hosted a French exchange student for a term, she was able to spend the next summer in France visiting with the young lady and her parents. Our daughter became quite familiar with French provincial life, where apparently a lot of bartering went on in the local village. The baker would trade with the butcher, and the cheese-maker would trade with both and so forth. Any excess food would be taken to a large city market for cash sales. In the evenings people would visit with each other, sit in front of their homes and play cards while enjoying the local wines.

A few years prior to Centennial 1975 (celebrating 200 years of the US), Molly got together with a couple of her friends and they decided to try an idea that she had put together, namely a Bed and Breakfast program for the Washington, D. C. Area. She thought quite logically that there would be a large infusion of foreign as well as American tourists into the Capital for the many activities and Centennial celebrations. They incorporated, and called themselves Holiday Hosts. Molly was very busy, not only with her job and the family, but also with her newly found business which included advertising, registering and inspecting homes that wished to participate, writing letters in response to queries and making local arrangements for both routine and emergency visitors, who sometimes either did not know about advance reservations, or called directly from airport, bus or train terminals. In such situations, she often used a spare bedroom in our own home to accommodate guests, so that over several years we had some very nice visitors to the Nation's Capital from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, The Union of South Africa, Japan and Canada as well as from various States. The business got bigger and more involved, but each year at tax time the Corporation failed to show much of a profit. It turned out that it was a good idea and a busy one, but the reward was hardly worth the effort. After some four years the ladies decided to drop the project. Someone else however, must have thought it was a good idea, because a year later a different group did much the same thing.

Meanwhile I was not exactly collecting dust either. I was always somewhat interested in philately and was told by an acquaintance that there was a part-time position open at the Philatelic Counter of a well known downtown department store. I applied with the manager and was hired. It was stimulating work although it did add some thirty extra hours to the week for me. I learned a great deal about the merchandising and selling of this material, price changes and other related business matters. Working with collectors, from the other side of the counter, was also an interesting experience since most collectors are unique in their hobby, or collection specialties. I also had a chance to attend numerous stamp shows and exhibits that again were very educational to me. Being in the downtown Washington area, we naturally had foreign customers, many also being avid collectors, or they had friends who were, and wanted to bring them a present. The staff was also very friendly and well experienced, a number of them having been with the Department for a long period of years. After about four years, I felt that I did not want to do any injustice to my primary job, so I took my departure from the part-time one to concentrate solely on my main job.

Well, having read a little more about life in and around the Capital, I am sure dear reader that the overall impact of it all has left you so suspended with awe and wonder, that you fell asleep long ago. You see how well I work with you. Perhaps you have caught up with me by now, so please turn to STORY SEVEN for more continuing excitement. Thank you.

©1990 Herbert Holzbauer

published @1997 edition S.p.N.LAUB

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