1512 McHenry Street

1512 McHenry Street was built in 1834 according to a map in Baltimore’s Peale Museum. It was the last of a group of row houses which ran from behind the store at 238 South Stricker Street to Parrish Alley. It was originally a three story house with two rooms on each floor. Subsequent owners built a large kitchen on the first floor, two bedrooms, a bath and a back porch on the second floor and partitioned one of the bedrooms on the third floor to form a bedroom, kitchen and bath. There was an outhouse in the back yard. In the kitchen, there was a large fireplace which we converted into a pantry. There were no improvements to the property in many years so Momma and I got to work. We would close the store at seven o’clock, have dinner and get the five children into bed. Then we would get to work. We laid asphalt tile in the kitchen, dining room and up the stairs into the second floor hall. Asphalt tile is not flexible but is hard. It is cut by scoring it and snapping each end, hoping that is breaks at the scored line. A black adhesive is spread on the floor and the tiles are placed on the adhesive. The adhesive is not water soluble and must be cleaned up with paint thinner or turpentine. It can make a real mess. It is not difficult to lay the tiles. You measure to the exact center of the room and make a cross. You put one tile in each part of the cross and go from there. When you get to the edge of the room, the tiles must be cut to fit. The kitchen was tin; the walls and the ceiling were tin. It was not a smooth surface and had small bubbles all over it. It was very time consuming to paint. There were no rollers then; only paint brushes. We hung paper in the living room and laid wall to wall carpet. We converted the back bedroom on the second floor to a laundry room and installed a washer and a dryer. The drain line ran down the outside of the house. One winter the drain line froze and the water backed up and overflowed. It ran through the floor into the kitchen and into all the cabinets. What a mess!

We enclosed the back yard with a cinder block fence and the children played there. It was here that our only broken bone happened. Larry was walking on top of the fence and fell off, breaking his arm. Prior to that, Larry decided to test our admonition about running into the street. He was struck by a vehicle and had his upper lip torn open and his two front teeth knocked out. But Molli married him anyway! During the summer we would turn on the hose and the neighborhood children had a grand time playing in Parrish Alley. Vehicular traffic was practically non-existent in Parrish Alley. There was a row of houses which ran down Parrish Alley inhabited by blacks. Old Lady Sadie lived behind our house and was always hollering at the children playing in the alley.

We had help in the house from the time Larry and Arnold were born until we moved to Merville Avenue. Mitch was with us for two weeks from the birth of the first set of twins. Then came a succession until we found Delores. She worked five days per week and was paid $20.00 per week. She lived on Carey Street and I would frequently pick her up and take her home. We lived on McHenry Street until 1959 when we moved to 5601 Merville Avenue.