I stayed at the Cavalier Hotel on 14th Street, the same one where your mother later worked in the beauty shop. The first place that Charlie and Betty lived was upstairs over a dentist's office. They had an apartment on Georgia Avenue - way out in the high point of the District of Columbia. The dentist and his wife lived downstairs and Betty and Charlie had the apartment upstairs. And as you know, we did a heck of a lot of drinking in those days.

What I mean is that every time we got together, we would always have to have a drink. Before we ate. We usually ate and all that. We would have anywhere from one to two to three to four drinks. It depended on how much we argued and discussed and talked. I didn't have any other ties in Washington to amount to at that time. I was staying downtown on New Hampshire and R Street - before I moved to Rhode Island. I was in and out of Washington still on jobs. But I spent a lot of time out with Betty and Charlie. At the office Charlie would say, "Jim, what are you doin' tonight? Why don't you come out?"

The main reason Charlie was there in Washington was when we closed down field operations, more or less it was my job to designate which one we were going to relieve and which one we were going to retain. Of course, we held meetings about it. It so happened that most of the guys that worked for me during that period of time, two and a half years, we gave them permanent jobs in Washington. Also, we got promoted from the Photogrammetric Unit to the Division of Cartography, so we started doing lots of kinds of mapping.

Well, Charlie and Red came, but Red didn't stay very long. Fitch, Weber, practically all the Chief of Parties, we kept them. And they all became leading men in our organization. All of them did. Ed Fitch outdid all of us.

As time went on in Charlie's job, we had what we call template lay-down work. From each aerial photograph over which we had control, we had a table that was originally on the floor. Later on we built it up waist high. An aerial photograph was about seven by nine inches in size and, you see, anywhere from two hundred to five hundred to seven hundred to a thousand photographs per project. And we also got into the county survey that made the project much larger.

All these field photographs were plotted on a geodetic grid, which had latitudes and longitudes, and those points were plotted by the geodetic position - latitude and longitude. And a template was made on cardboard - this was one of the jobs that Charlie worked on quite a bit - you take a photograph and you punch holes. These points were identified, they were the controlling points. But they had other points on the photograph, at least nine per photograph, transferred to each photograph. Photographs were in line with flights and it took many flights to assemble the whole area.

Well, each photograph had a template. And these holes were punched through the photograph onto the cardboard template. You put the cardboard down then the photograph on tip of it, and then you punch these holes in it, nine or twelve of these points and then you pick up the photograph and circle each one, each point, you see. Then you put the photograph aside, then take this cardboard with the prick points and you'd take it to the slotting machine and cut radial slots leading to the center of the photograph and punch a slot about two inches long and about a quarter of an inch wide.

There was a lot of labor and tedious work associated with it and Charlie could see good stereoscopically. That was the main thing Charlie did. From time to time we'd have a field job - Charlie, myself and two or three others would just go out and do the job - get out of town, so to speak. Charlie just loved to get out of town - and to get away from Betty. "Doggone, it sure does feel good to be out here and go to the hotel and have a dinner and not argue around with Betty about what you're doing. And, 'Charlie, you gotta do this and Charlie, you gotta do that'," he'd say. Oh, not too much, but from time to time. I'd listen to Betty's troubles, I'd listen to Charlie's troubles, and I'd talk in such a way to smooth it out, so to speak.

Now, I'm getting up to this point: Charlie was still working with the Soil Conservation Service, Division of Cartography, in the Printcraft Building on H Street - we'd moved away from 13th and E. But Charlie hated that job. He just hated what he was doing - he couldn't stand it. Well, anyhow, he endured. Then there came a time there when they went down to St. Augustine, and Betty was worried about Pearle. It was that period of time when Bill got killed and Pearle was kind of in a crisis.

Little Bill's grandfather had died prior to that, then the grandmother died, and that left Little Bill with his Uncle Jinks, which Pearle didn't want any part of, see? So she was fighting with Uncle Jinks over control of Little Bill. Finally, Charlie and Betty got the money together and Charlie went down to get Pearle and bring her back to live with them. That's when they had the apartment on Fort Stevens Drive. They had moved from the small apartment they had on Georgia Avenue, over to Fort Stevens Drive, which was a new apartment building, and they had a larger apartment down there. It was a ground apartment - I think there were four apartments there in that building.

Well, Charlie went down by train, you see, and they came back in Pearle's car, with Charlie and Little Bill. By that time, she had got guardianship of Little Bill over Jinks - in court. And the trust was more or less set up by Curty Cox. Pearle really liked Curty Cox - she really trusted him. See, he took care of all the finances while we were raising Bill to a mature age. Anyhow, Pearle and Bill had one room together - two beds - and Charlie and Betty had the other room, you see. And there was a small kitchenette and so forth.

Okay, when Pearle came to town, they had already been out to Fort Stevens Drive and gotten settled, and that evening I was told to meet them at a cafe -- a nice café across from the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue. And so, I delayed - I was on needles and pins - and I said, what the hell has Charlie gotten me into? Charlie had been talking to me more than Betty did about Pearle. I deliberately waited - I was supposed to be there at such and such a time, I guess 7:00 or whatever. And I walked in about 15 minutes late. They didn't tell me much about Pearle - I can't recall one word that Betty told me about her sister Pearle. If they had I guess I would have remembered.

Well, anyhow, I walked in and of course Charlie got up and met me before I came back to the table. There were Betty and Pearle sitting there at the table. I walked in and said, "Hello, Betty," then I looked over and said, "Hello" - and Pearle got up. "Hello, I'm Pearle. Are you Jimmie?" I said, "Honey, I sure am!" (Laughter) I looked at her and thought, what a beautiful woman! I sat there at the table and said, "Charlie, this is one of the best things you ever did in my life!" So that was that.

Things grew from there. And as time went on, I don't know - I was in and out of Washington. Meantime, I had left the hotel where I had an apartment, where later on, Pearle got the beauty shop job. Betty was working downtown - at the Department of Agriculture in the South building, and Charlie was working with the Soil Conservation Service, Division of Cartography, in the Printcraft Building. We had the whole building - and it was about three stories. We were a tremendous outfit. Along came the war and we got into wartime mapping, you see.

After we bought the house - maybe six months - less than a year - Pearle and I said, "Charlie and Betty, you don't have to live down there in your apartment. Come and live with us." So they left the apartment and lived with us.

Charlie was disgusted because he couldn't get a raise with the Division of Cartography. Well, he got annual raises, small amounts. And he got to drinking more than usual. Charlie and Betty were living in Silver Spring with us, they had the front bedroom. Little Bill had the one over the garage.

Well, Charlie quit. I forgot now where he went. I guess he went to Fort Meade? After Charlie left the Division of Cartography - he resigned in good standing - it must have been about 1941, because Pearle was pregnant with Joyce - Betty and Charlie knew they'd have to find another place to live. Charlie wasn't about to stay in Washington. He disliked Washington. I guess they went to Texas first? Went to Lufkin and stayed awhile.

Charlie knew a lot of men doing exploration in the oil industry - and it didn't take Charlie long to get acquainted with anybody. The huge drilling operations in Texas at that time were over. They were still finding oil wells in Texas, yes - but they had done most of the exploration work. Not all of it, no. And maybe Charlie got a job with exploration for a while. And maybe they lived with mother Mettauer. I can't remember exactly.

Then Charlie and Betty left and went to South America. Charlie got a job with an exploration company, you see, looking for oil in South America. First they went to Caracas, Venezuela where they had a headquarters office. Charlie did exploration work in the deep jungles of Venezuela. It was a pretty tough assignment - and pretty different from survey work.

What the exploration company did was this - they had to do some transit and chain traversing, They would drill a hole in the ground - motorized - and they'd put in these drill holes a charge of dynamite down inside of these holes at various depths. Most of them weren't very deep. And they would go to another place maybe several miles away and put another drill hole - sometimes several holes within a half a mile - maybe a dozen or more, depending on their intuition. They had to know the elevations of the ground, and that was part of the job in this survey party.

And then they would explode this dynamite and they had receivers which would see the echo waves coming out of the ground, you see. And they would record on these receivers. That's a crude explanation of exploration of oil. Due to the rebound in the earth with these recording instruments, they could guess whether there was oil down there or not.

My sister Sybil went down to Brazil. She was down there for a while, and then she came back and went to New York. Betty told a story of coming back by train with the girls from Texas, and crossing the river, maybe at Vicksburg, maybe at New Orleans, but that was a trying trip on Betty's part. I remember her talking about it.

She made it back to Ft. Meade from Texas. I can't remember why Charlie wasn't with them coming across Texas - maybe he went up to Carolina and got this job. I remember the company - it was Palmetto Quarry and something. It was a rock quarry in South Carolina, not too far out of Columbia. That lasted a short time - maybe two years, I don't know.

Across the street from the Printcraft Building was the Ebbitt Hotel, a two-story hotel to the west of our office. We used to look out our window and watch all the comings and goings at the hotel, and even look into the windows when the blinds were left open. (Laughter.) We had about 3 or 4 floors in the Printcraft building. It was designed originally for people in the printing business. This was where our second offices were.

H Street was bounded by 10th on one side and 11th on the other. They had a dining room in the Ebbitt Hotel and many times we had our lunch over at the Ebbitt Hotel. We sometimes stayed longer than we should. We'd be talking and then look and see it was one o'clock, here's two-o'clock coming up. One time we said, "Well, instead of going back to work, why don't we go over to the burleycue?" Magruder was in the crowd, Casper was in the crowd, maybe Brown was too. Ed Fitch was out on job somewhere. Anyhow, we called the office and told them we were taking annual leave. Didn't tell him where we were going, just that we were taking annual leave and doing some "touring of Washington." We didn't dare take off without reporting in, so we reported in. We went down to that burleycue. (Laughter) And then we came back to the office and went back to work.

And one other time, a group of us got together and went to the "burleycue." [What was it like?] Oh, it was the typical burleycue - vaudeville acts. They always had one guy, a comedian sort of guy, and he would introduce a girl and they would put on a skit. She would come out all dressed and they would get down to her bra and the other, you see. Not like what they do nowadays - even on television! They were burleycue girls and they had a certain routine and they stuck by it. Or so I was told. Nowadays they do all that gyrating and whatnot. But these girls were very nice. Seductive and all of that business, you know, but nice.

For entertainment, there were three theaters in town. Two had vaudeville shows and the third had more theatrical type of productions. It was behind the Mayflower Hotel on E street. That was the main theater and they always put on stage plays. I never went to that one. But I went to the other one. They had vaudeville and stage shows and motion pictures. There was the Earle Theater and Loews on F Street.

We went to theaters in Washington quite often for entertainment. I remember one time going there with Pearle before we were married. Sometimes I would go up to her apartment and get her and bring her into town. We'd go out to dinner somewhere and then go to the theater. That's when I first found out how quick she was to get up and leave. I could never catch her. (Laughter) She would go up that aisle going out and, boy, I mean she would head out! And I was tagging along behind every time trying to catch her. "Come on, Jimmie! Let's go!" Then I'd take her back to her apartment there on Fort Stevens Drive.

The Printcraft Building was at least five stories high and was designed and built for heavy duty printing and machinery. (Looking at map) Let's see, the streetcar tracks were on 7th then they'd wind up on Georgia Avenue going out to Maryland. Sometimes I'd take the streetcar and get off at New York Avenue then walk. So it was on the south side of H near 8th or 9th? I can't remember.

The main business area was on F Street. Our first office was 13th and E - the front part of the Mayflower was off F Street. The Earle Theater was across the street and it had vaudeville and motion pictures. We were there for several years. But we started getting more people so we needed more space, so they moved us over to the Printcraft Building.

There were a number of vacancies in that building when the printing people moved out, so the Government took over three or four floors there in the Printcraft Building. Then from there we moved to Beltsville, at the Agricultural Research Center. That's where we were when you children were growing up.

The Soil Conservation Service had a drafting unit in what we called the Standard Oil Building. The offices were on the upper floors. There was kind of a self-service station down below - they must have had six, maybe eight pumps down there. It was one of the most modern service stations in town. Soil Conservation had temporarily rented the space up above. That was drafting and whatever. So that outfit was moved to 13th and E. We already had people who could do good drafting, then we set up a field survey operation. Well, that's enough of that talk.

About twice a week we played softball after work. It was mainly teams from the Department of Agriculture. Our team was the Soil Conservation Service, Division of Cartography. The Cartographic Division had a softball club as well as a baseball club. And one year we won the Department championship. Maybe it was two years.

We had team shirts supplied by commercial people - can't remember who exactly. One year, it was guy who was in the ice business, produced block ice, crushed ice. He supplied hotels and restaurants in the area. He had a couple of plants scattered around town. The name of the firm was on the back of our shirts. The business people would help support the activity, just to get the advertising. During that time I wasn't in Washington continuously. But whenever I was in town, I was on the team. That was mainly when we were occupying the Printcraft Building.

The athletic field was on the side of the Reflecting Pool (near the Lincoln Memorial). We'd hit the ball and it would go in the Reflecting Pool and we'd have to go in the Reflecting Pool and get it. We also played near where the Jefferson Memorial is now. That area was all vacant. It was all surrounded by cherry trees, and when they built the memorial, they had to tear out this line of cherry trees (indicating on map).

One afternoon, we came out to play ball, and here were all these women chained around the cherry trees. The contractor had moved some of his equipment onto the grounds, but he hadn't started to work that particular afternoon. It was after 5:00 - we got off at 4:30 - so the contractor had gone. We hadn't heard any news about it. It had already hit the papers, but some way we didn't know about it. We were all surprised to see these women chained to the trees! They were some society or something - Garden Club of America? I can't recall. It took quite a few days to get those women to stop doing that.

We went over and talked to them, kidded them, I guess. Told them we were going to play some softball. I played the infield, but some of the outfielders were getting pretty distracted by the women. That was somewhere around 1938. Maybe '39.

[Note: The following was a special request from Susie Palas. She had asked Daddy to talk a little about her father, Charlie Mettauer.] Well, Susie, you have asked for me to talk about your father.

There are many things I can't remember, but I do know that your father went to the University of Arkansas, at least for a couple of years. Even though we talked about it a great deal, I cannot recall in great detail what your dad did there. I assume that he was in the College of Engineering in his freshman and sophomore year.

The first time I met him was six months after we had formed the Soil Conservation Service in Washington, DC, at 13th and E Streets, located across from the Earle Theater. I had left the Corps of Engineers in December of 1935, and reported to Soil Conservation before Christmas that same year. Charlie and Slocum were working out in the field at that time, somewhere near Cleveland. I've forgotten now where, maybe it was Zanesville, Ohio. It was the wintertime.

But I didn't meet Charlie until the spring of 1936, because he was out in the field during the first six months that I was there in Washington. Slocum was the chief of the outfit that Charlie worked on many different times. I think Slocum and Charlie had worked together for the Forest Service out from Lufkin somewhere. And I believe it was Slocum who was later responsible for bringing Charlie into Washington to work.

Slocum and Charlie had stuck it out there in Ohio during the cold weather that winter, and they were so happy to get their next assignment in Texas. So they came to Texas and the first job was out from Waco somewhere. By that time we had reorganized and had changed our headquarters, so at that time I was working out of Springfield, Missouri. I had spent a few months in the Carolinas and in Georgia, and in Alabama and Mississippi with the other Chiefs of Party.

I've forgotten now what month it was, but it was around summertime of 1936. I was bringing their paychecks to them. The party consisted of Slocum, Charlie and Red. Red was from Purdue University. He and Charlie were great friends. So that's when I first met Charlie. And I spent about a week with their survey party then I went elsewhere.

I guess it was the next year, 1937, when we had a big job in Waco mapping the Bosque River watershed. The Bosque comes into the Brazos a short distance down the river from Waco. Susie, you don't probably know, but our main job was controlling aerial photography for these different places that Soil Conservation wanted to map and publish soil surveys. Our main job was horizontal control, controlling the aerial photography, geodetic positions, latitude and longitude of each point on the photographs. The photographs were assembled in Washington. But in the field it took a lot of transit and traverse work, measuring angles back and forth, observing on the North Star for azimuth, night observations.

We operated under strict specifications doing our work for the government at that time and we had to do certain things with certain specifications. Some of it was real tough to meet. Computing up the traverse work, using calculators. We had one little Monroe calculator - hand crank - and Charlie was good with a calculator. And he was pretty good computing. A lot of times, Slocum would leave Charlie to do the computing while he and Red were out. We hired anywhere from two to three other people to form the rest of the party. Mainly the party consisted of five men: two rod men, two chain men and the instrument man. The instrument man was the Chief of Party. Well, so much for that.

And it was a lot of hard work. Difficult work. Working on highways. And I might say, we never did get anybody killed on the highways. Never. We never had a serious accident, because I preached safety control. In Vicksburg, I would have to deal with a safety engineer on all the operations of the Army engineers up and down the Mississippi River.

Well, at some point, Charlie left Waco and got married, but I've forgotten where. So when I came back to see the outfit, I hadn't yet met Charlie's new wife.

I first met Betty at a dance the guys had one night. There was Al Weber and his wife Kay, and Sam Hand and his wife, and Slocum and his wife, Sally. Ed Fitch was there too, but he wasn't married yet. And, of course, Charlie was there with his new wife. So I met Betty at the dance. She was so full of energy. I was very shy and not a good dancer. And your mother, Susie, got me out on the floor and made me dance!

So I guess that was in the fall of 1937, maybe '38. But before that job was completed, Ed Fitch was thinking about getting married. And Charlie kept bugging him to get married. He had already met Helen some way or another. She was from Savannah, Georgia. So Ed finally got engaged. Well, Charlie and I decided to take Ed into Fort Worth to help him pick out a suit of clothes. Bill Therell was with us too. Fort Worth was the nearest big city. At that time, most of the guys in the field only had one dress outfit. Well, we bought the suit of clothes for Ed to get married in and some other clothes too. And on the way back, we had a few drinks. To keep from getting arrested, we would pull off the highway and pass the bottle around. I'm not sure where we were, but we were pretty close back to Waco.

Ed wanted another drink, and Charlie wouldn't let him have one. Of course we had all had enough. We were in Ed's car. We had finally taken Ed away from the steering wheel. I think Bill Therell was driving at that point. Ed was leaving town the next morning, and we wanted to get into town some way that he could be sober by then. So we stopped at a culvert and kept Ed in the car, and Charlie threw the whiskey bottle underneath the culvert. Ed was hollering and carrying on. I guess we all drank too much in those days.

So Ed went back east to get married, and then Helen came back with him. Well, we finished the job in Waco. We had to fire some of the guys because we were ceasing a lot of the field operations. But most of the guys came into Washington and that's what Charlie did. Charlie and Betty had an apartment above a dentist on Georgia Avenue. During that period of time, we still did some fieldwork, and Charlie was always happy to go out with me. He was always ready to get out of town for a while.

During that time, me being a bachelor, many times Charlie would say, "Jim, how about coming out tonight?" He always called me Jim. Charlie and Betty were my main social contacts, you see. So I spent a fair amount of time at Charlie and Betty's apartment. Then they moved from Georgia Avenue to an apartment on Fort Stevens Drive, and I visited them there many times too. Charlie and I were buddies, so to speak.

We then moved our offices to the Printcraft Building on 10th and H Streets in Washington. And Charlie worked there too. But Charlie was becoming disgusted with the job that he was doing in the Printcraft Building - slotting templates and getting down on the floor for assembly of aerial photography and so forth. It was tough on the knees. Charlie was trying to get a better rating. I think he already had the highest rating as an engineering aide.

Well, one day, Charlie got mad as the devil. He got mad about something and he was going to quit. Kelsh was over us at that time. Kelsh called me in and said, "Your friend Charlie says he's going to quit." Kelsh and I talked about it for a while. Charlie was working under me. So I called Charlie in my office and said, "Kelsh tells me you had a little run-in. Come on - let's go across the street and you can tell me about it." We had a favorite little place not far from the office building. We got some coffee and Charlie told me all about it. Well, he said he was (pardon the language, Susie) "red-assed," meaning disgusted with his job.

So I said, "Charlie, we're all going to lose our jobs sometime soon. You cannot leave here like this, because you will not get a good recommendation when you leave." It would be 'discharged with prejudice' - that was a civil service term. "You're not gonna do that!" So Charlie stuck on. That was kind of funny - we laughed about it.

We finished our coffee and went back to the office. He went back over and apologized to whoever he had cussed out - someone working with him, I think. And he was back on the job and satisfied. So when Charlie left the Division of Cartography, he left without prejudice.

Oh, there were a lot of stories about Charlie. He was a great one to get the group together for dinner, a cookout, what not. He would get Ed, he would get Webber and he would get George Walker. By that time, George Walker was married and settled over in McLean. The Coxes were over there at that time. The Fitches were living over in Virginia at that time too - they left Greenbelt housing and moved over to Virginia, the three of them.

Charlie was always the leader in getting the group together. He was an organizer, you see. He'd tell 'em. "We're gonna do this, we're gonna do that."

In that realm of thinking, I go back to my brother Blevins. Blevins had married Jerry. Before that he had been living with Grandpa Blevins in Pasadena. He left Grandpa Blevins and lived with Lorene and Charlie Jones. And Betty Dean, daughter of Lorene by her first marriage.

Blevins depended on Charlie Jones a good deal and Blevins got a job with a fruit organization, Calavo. My first visit to California was to see Blevins. I remember going to the distribution plant. He was a shipping supervisor at that time, handling different kinds of fruit.

After they married, Blevins and Jerry eventually moved to Denver, Colorado. And I visited them there after their first child, Barbara, was born. Seemed like I was always coming to somebody to see "the new baby." I had been on some job for Soil Conservation somewhere in the Colorado basin - we were checking on Fairchild's mapping.

Blevins was in charge of all production west of the Mississippi, for Calavo. That didn't last too long. They came back to California. Eventually, Jerry and Blevins went to Cleveland - I think it was wartime. Blevins had gone to school to get his CPA. It was some point then that Blevins and Jerry came to visit us in Silver Spring.

Okay - leading up to Charlie. Without being invited, Charlie took Betty and they went to Cleveland to visit Jerry and Blevins. (Laughter) He had met them one time when they came to visit us. And Blevins and Charlie got along alright. They had a good time together.

In later years, Blevins would say, "Oh, that guy Charlie! You know what that guy Charlie did? He came to Cleveland with Betty uninvited. And we had to take him around different places in Cleveland. Here I am, busy as hell, getting my CPA, working." He was with that famous concern, Fisher Body. They had wartime contracts, building aircraft gun turrets. And Blevins at that time was in a pretty important job with this company.

You met Blevins, Susie, when he came to Ft. Meade for our 50th anniversary. While he was visiting us, Blevins said he wanted me to show him the town. I told him that wouldn't take long. (Laughter) So I drove him down to a recreation area on the Peace River. He wanted to see the river. Course I always talked a lot about rivers and the Army Corps of Engineers and so forth. Blevins and I were sitting there in the car - I drove to a place where they put in the canoes, to paddle up and down the Peace River, there down below the bridge.

We were sitting there talking about the past. We sat there for maybe half an hour or more. Reflecting on the past. And Blevins was remembering Charlie and Betty. Course Betty was there, you see, at the anniversary party. And he said, "How odd. Back in those days we never did dream that I'd see her again. Here is Betty Mettauer right here - she's living here in the same town." And he talked about Charlie. Course he had not seen Charlie since the 40's.

Then there came the time when Betty wanted her sister Pearle to come and live in Washington. Pearle's husband, William Owens, had been killed and she was still living in St. Augustine. Her husband had a son, Little Bill, whom we ended up raising in Silver Spring. Little Bill's mother had died shortly after childbirth and it was about two years or so later that Bill Sr. and Pearle were married. They hadn't been married very long when Bill Sr. was killed.

Well, Little Bill was living with his grandparents after his father's death. His grandfather was a well-respected man, a civil engineer in railroad construction and operations for the Flagler system in Florida. After the grandfather died, and then the grandmother died, Pearle wanted to get guardianship of Little Bill because she didn't want him to get under the control of his uncle. She felt he would be a bad influence on him. So she got legal guardianship of Little Bill.

Betty wanted Pearle to come to Washington and Pearle wanted to get away from St. Augustine, so the next thing you know, Charlie left Washington to go to St. Augustine. He went down by train and got Bill and Pearle and they drove back in Pearle's car. And she lived with them on Fort Stevens Drive in Washington DC.

Well, Charlie and Betty wanted Pearle to meet me. At that time I was living downtown, on Rhode Island Avenue - or maybe I had moved to my apartment out on Connecticut - I'm not sure. So they set it up. We met in a restaurant and I remember when I first saw Pearle I thought, "Oh boy, is she beautiful!"

Well, before long, we had to leave town. It came a time when the Navy, the Air Force and the Department of Agriculture came up with the idea of doing aerial photography with nine-lens cameras. So they photographed three counties in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. It was Dallam County in Texas, Cimarron County in Oklahoma, and Baca County in Colorado.

They all stacked up together north to south. And they were all in the Dust Bowl area. Well, they had to have horizontal control right quick, so they could analyze and research and decide about the nine-lens photography. So Kelsh and Snyder said, "Okay, Fondren, get ready to leave town. Who do you want to take with you?" I said, "Charlie."

I asked Charlie if he wanted to go. "Hell, yes. Betty's got Pearle to help her take care of the home front. Let's get going!" We took Red Watkins and Shorty Cosgrave. So it was the four of us. And I'm telling you, during that period of time, they were having some terrible dust storms in that area. It was bad, bad weather. We overcame though. We did the job real well, although there were a lot of hardships. It was a difficult assignment. It entailed a lot of ground work.

I came up with some ideas to reduce the amount of ground work. There were some railroads there and I wired in and had my office send us the plans of all the railroads and some of the general land surveys. I was able to use these to reduce the amount of time we had to spend on ground work. I wanted to get the heck out of there. I wanted to get back to Washington where Pearle was!

I have photographs of us on that job. We were at the intersection of the borders of New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. There was a monument there, a bronze tablet and with an inverted cone on the top. It so happened the weather was pretty good, the dust had subsided, so the pictures came out pretty good.

We were dressed in our work clothes - khakis. And we were brown. And I had on my old black hat I brought up from Vicksburg. And Charlie and Red Watkins and I took turns taking each other's pictures at this monument.

It was on this job that Charlie pulled another one of his pranks. Most of the time I made Charlie do the instrument work. On that job, there weren't any geographic positions to amount to anything, and on the tail end of the job, we had to run a chain of triangulations. It was difficult because sometimes we'd have to see as far apart as two to three miles - sometimes five miles apart - on triangulations.

Well I remember this place exactly. We were on this butte. And I'm on the last angled turn. In triangulation, you have to turn to three or four other stations, you see. So I set up the instrument and did this and did that and I got ready to observe. I set the setting on the plates and the transit, sighted the telescope by eye without looking through the end of it, and aimed the telescope toward the station. But when I looked through the eyepiece, I couldn't see a thing. I said, "What the hell's going on here. I can't see, Charlie. What's the matter here?"

Charlie said, "Maybe the sun's in your eyes. Put your dark glasses on."

"Charlie you know I can't see with those glasses on." I kept fussing around with the eyepiece.

Charlie came over and looked and said, "Well, Jim, I can see through it."

Red came over and looked through the eyepiece and said, "I can see through it. Maybe it's your eyes, Jimmie." Boy, was I getting frustrated. And then I detected something, a little grin, or a chuckle or something. So I looked through it again just one more time. "You guys have done something to this." "Well, Jim," Charlie said, "suppose I take out this potato chip and then maybe you can see!" Charlie had put a potato chip behind the eyepiece.

Boy, did I get mad! It took me quite a few minutes of cussing them out. Then I asked them why they did that. They said that because I never got mad, they were wondering what it would take to get me to lose my temper. I always tried to control myself, more or less. You know, back in those days, men working together, they'd cuss each other out. Sometimes really severe. When I left the Corps of Engineers, I left a lot of good friends. They hated to see me go from the Corps of Engineers. Tallulah, Louisiana was where I left from, across the river from Vicksburg. The whole outfit came in to say goodbye and pay their respects.

Well, anyway, that's the essence of that story - Red and Charlie dreamed that up to get Jimmie mad.

That was quite a job working out there on that butte. But we finally got the angles turned. That was the tail end of our so-called triangulation and it was a key to the entire operation more or less on that part of the job. Because it was tying in places where we had traversed and it was very important to what we had been doing for several weeks.

I guess it was on that job that I got more acquainted with Charlie. We had to do a lot of observations on the North Star for azimuth. We would set our sticks where we wanted observe, then come back at night and try to find the location. But it was hard to find at night because it was so dark. And there were very few buildings or landmarks of any kind. You could really get lost at night. But Charlie and I had a system of flags - red, white and blue - that we would tie on certain fence corners or stakes or whatever. That would guide us from one location to the next, and tell us where to make a turn and which way to go. And we finished without any difficulty.

Usually you spend about an hour observing on the North Star, but I cut it to about ten to fifteen minutes. I didn't turn as many angles. Sometimes when you look up with a telescope to try to find the North Star, it's difficult to find. But we knew the vertical angles to turn to make sure we were sighting on the star. On that job with Charlie and Red and myself, we made the most observations of the North Star of any party. Well, that was kind of history-making in the office. Charlie told everyone all about it.

Towards the tail end of completing this job, we had progressed up to Baca County, Colorado. We were staying in Springfield, the county seat. Still working out in dust storms and doing a lot of transit work. I stayed in town most of the time and let Shorty and Red and Charlie do the remaining field work. I had to do the computation work in the hotel.

Well, what happened was this. I got an assignment to go to Baker County, Oregon. I didn't get to come back to Washington with Shorty and Red and Charlie. So it was my last night in Colorado. Well, sometimes, Charlie could do some mischievous things. Here I am in my room at the hotel, which I used as an office. Charlie and Shorty were staying at private places, so they came by to see me at the hotel. It was kind of like a farewell, as I was supposed to leave the next morning to head to Oregon. I had all my work spread out there, and I was completing the last of the computations before I left town.

Although I didn't usually keep whiskey in the room, I did have a small bottle, a half pint or whatever. So we were having a drink or two before dinner. Well, all of a sudden, that damn Charlie and that damn Red Watkins took my computations that I hadn't completed and took my ink bottle and my notebooks and some of the photographs and threw them out the window down into the alley!

Boy was I mad. When I asked why the hell they did that, Charlie said, "We're throwing away all this stuff so we'll have to do it over. We don't want you to leave!" I guess that was their idea.

I said, "Charlie Y. Mettauer, get the hell out of here and go get that stuff and bring it back in here!" It happened to be dry, no rain of course at that time. Some of the india ink spilled on some of the stuff, but no serious damage. So we had dinner. And early the next morning, I left. They bid me farewell. And Shorty and Red and Charlie stayed there for less than a week and then went back into Washington.

It took nearly six months before I got back to Washington. At the time, Pearle was dating somebody else. She was dating a guy I shared an apartment with. He was a graduate of the University of Tennessee.

In 1940, Pearle and I were married in Charlie and Betty's apartment on Fort Stevens Drive, with a minister. A few friends came too - Slocum, Doc Henson, Chris Henson. And Little Bill was there too.

Pearle and I moved then to the house in Silver Spring. We still weren't making much money in those days, myself or Charlie. Of course, Betty was working down there at the Department of Agriculture. She always got a steno job somewhere, to help make ends meet. They had raised the rent on Fort Stevens Drive, so Betty and Charlie moved in with us in Silver Spring. I can't remember how long they lived with us, less than a year maybe? I think they must have been gone by the time Pearle was pregnant with Joyce, because it was about that time that Frances came to town, and she lived with us for a while too.

But I can say that if hadn't been for Charlie, I never would have married Pearle and I wouldn't have three daughters!

Well, as years went by, it came time to cut the payroll. We were reassigned to various things. I was determined to get Charlie a job. They were going to dismiss Charlie entirely, and Red also. Well, Red and Charlie were pretty good men, you see - damn good men. I laid the law down to Snyder, "All the hardship these two guys have gone through, they are important guys to me. These two guys have helped me help you get where you are today. How about you see if you can get these guys jobs?"

Well, with me and Kelsh and Snyder requesting, they got Red Watkins a job in the Soil Conservation Service up in New York, and they got Charlie a job out in Colorado. I think it was Pueblo. And they were there for some time. Charlie was working with soil scientists at that time. He fit in quite well and got good recommendations from the project manager out there. It was still a temporary place. All these places in the Soil Conservation Service were temporary, you see. We were building up to the stage where all the states would take over all operations and form cartographic units in each of the state capitals. That's what we were leading up to.

Well, I guess the project was closed out in Colorado. I lost touch somewhat but I think Charlie and Betty went back to Fort Meade. And, maybe I'm wrong, but from there, they went to Venezuela. Charlie had gone over to Texas and, through some of his old buddies, he had gotten a job with an oil exploration survey outfit, which entailed a lot of traversing and control work. Everywhere there was oil exploration work, they would set off the dynamite charges. They had to know where to place the dynamite - some were close together, some were far apart. Usually the exploration people would have to go into the boondocks where nobody else had been before. It could be terrible.

I can't recall how long Charlie and Betty were down there. Charlie had good contacts with various oil and gas industries in Texas. It was no problem for Charlie to get around in that part of Texas. Anyhow, he took a job up in South Carolina, with a mining and quarry company. I think it was Palmetto. And of course, after Charlie and Betty divorced, I lost touch with Charlie. Betty never did say much of what she knew of his life after they split up. But I know he loved his two daughters. He loved his daughters.

Well, that's about all, I guess, Susie.

Oh, one more thing. Here's another story that's related to you in a distant way. One time Pearle and I went to Houston to visit Merle and Suzanne, and Betty went with us. We were all staying with my Merle and Wylie, at 2115 Pelham Drive in River Oaks in Houston. I loved and respected Wylie a great deal. I just couldn't wait to be around him sometimes. We'd go out together sometimes - Wylie wrote leases, oil leases - get a landowner to sign up to drill oil in the future. Course he was still coaching football.

During that visit to Houston, we took a trip up to Lufkin to see Charlie's mother and her sisters. Was Charlie's mother's name Ada? Mrs. Mettauer's sister was Mrs. Johnson (I can't recall her first name) and she was married to a wealthy man. He was the president of a paper manufacturing company. Mrs. Johnson had planned a big luncheon for us, with her sisters, in a big downtown hotel. Afterwards, we went back to Mrs. Johnson's home there in Lufkin. Perhaps you have been there, Susie. Well, I was the only man. In this room of the Johnson's palatial home in Lufkin, there was big desk with a big leather chair.

Mrs. Johnson said, "Mr. Fondren, why don't you have a seat in Mr. Johnson's chair over here." After I was seated, she said, "The reason I wanted you to sit there was that a few days ago, one of your relatives was sitting in that chair." As it turns out, Walter Fondren III had been to visit them! He had gone out to the manufacturing sights and timberlands with Mr. Johnson. We had tried to visit Walter in Houston and found that he was out of town. And it turns out he was up there in Lufkin with the Johnsons! So it was that the Fondrens and the Mettauers did entwine, so to speak. Well, that's about it, Susie.

Even though we didn't see Walter III that trip, Pearle and I did go over to see his home. I had mentioned to Suzanne, "How about calling up to see if Walter's in town? I would love to see him." She did, and she talked to his wife and she invited us to come out. Suzanne was with us. Their home was near where Suzanne lived. He had a home on his grandfather's track of land - it was being developed out there. Walter Sr. had a big cattle ranch a short distance out of Houston. Course it was since built up into suburbs. The wife was very cordial - she was quite pleased we had come out to see her. She explained Walter was out of town.

Walter Sr., you know, wanted me to come down to Houston, on two occasions. The first time was when I was still in school. The other time I had already gone to work for the Corps of Engineers. I had taken leave, I think for a week or ten days - the most amount of time I had ever taken leave for. By that time I had a car.

Charlie met Betty in Texas. Betty was living with an aunt. Remember Aunt Belle? She had a son who lived up on Georgia Avenue. She came to see us in Silver Spring one time (in that big, black car). Belle was a daughter of one of the Clements.

My father and mother came to Washington for a visit several times. Daddy had a big time. He had lunch down at Congress. I guess Mother was wondering where he was. He was supposed to be back for dinner at the house you see. He didn't show, but he called. He never did say what he was doing.

My effort didn't amount to much, but I was so proud of the fact that I had worked in the Quartermaster General's office during the war for a period of time. That was when I was with the Bureau of Reclamation and deciding whether I was going to Denver or not. Well, we were doing a lot for the war effort before we declared war. And they were having difficulty at the time keeping me in Washington, at the Washington office. About every few weeks I'd get called into the senior engineer's office.

"Well, Fondren, would you mind going to Denver? We've got a lot of things out there we hope you can start up. The question is getting you out there." They kept prodding me.

Finally, I said, "I'm not going. I'll resign." I didn't want to leave Silver Spring and my new home and my new wife. Well, they were having difficulty keeping me in the Interior office, you see, which was strictly administrative. All the engineers were out west in Denver. So I was assigned to the Army and put in the Quartermaster General's Division of the Army. It was a four-story building between the Capitol and the Agriculture Building. Anyhow, I was thrown into the thicket, with these renowned civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, architects, you name it. The building was just loaded with them.

Man, it was getting busy. This was a prime assignment, to be in that new office building. They took it over completely. It was mainly all types of engineering, and I was in the civil engineering department of it. And some were the professors I had read about in books - some were from Cal Tech and some from MIT - they were the best in the country, you know. Some were getting up in years. They were mainly there just to ride herd over the young ones, I suppose. And my job was to check over temporary and final plans. They would send it to different people who know something about the country, or maybe how far it was to civic centers, or know something about topography, know something about surveying, about the shape of the land, could they build here, could they build there.

That was the way I was brought into it. So I stayed busy for - I guess it was about three or four months there. Well, I gained a lot of knowledge down there. It was quite an effort. And that was not wasted effort either. Most of it was building new bases in this country to house the military and train them before they ship them overseas. And of course, there was quite a bit about building landing strips in the Pacific. Quite a bit about that. It was quite an effort.

I got to know some of these old-time engineers, whose entire careers were with the Bureau of Reclamation. Did I get a history about the Bureau of Reclamation! How the West was developed. The Bureau of Reclamation was one of the main things in the development of the West - irrigation-wise, farming, reclamation, whatever. One of those old-timers lived out here in Silver Spring. We shared driving to and from the office for a while.

I took a job with the Bureau of Reclamation because the Division of Cartography ran out of funds and was cut down to a bare skeleton force. So we had to find jobs elsewhere. Some got jobs with Geological Survey, some elsewhere in Washington. One reproduction section was kept. We had a pretty good-size reproduction and photographic section. I had a choice of assignments, without losing my rating. I had an Assistant Civil Engineer rating - it was considered damn good in those days.

So the Bureau of Reclamation took me on assignment but with the option when I signed up that I would go to Denver, Colorado. I signed the option all right but with the provision that I would give them one month notice before I resigned from them. I was supposed to go to Denver right off the bat. But I didn't want to leave Silver Spring and a new home and a baby about to be born.

So to keep from going to Denver, I resigned from the Bureau of Reclamation. Joyce was born in March '42, so it was June 1941 when I resigned from the government. And I took a job with Aerial Service Corporation in Philadelphia. The reason why, there were two guys I knew in Vicksburg, Ed Shuck and Harvey Wheeler, who enticed me. They sent me telegrams and offered me a job with Aerial Service before I resigned. I didn't resign cold turkey, but I resigned in a few days and went to Philadelphia and took this job.

It was still surveying and mapping. First I went to Texarkana. Pearle was pregnant with Joyce, so I left Pearle in the good hands of my mother in Searcy, Arkansas. The hot months of July and August 1941. I was there for three or four weeks in Texarkana. I would come home every weekend to Searcy - pick up soldiers on the way.

Instead of coming on back into Philadelphia, I had another assignment up in Illinois. I did the same kind of job as I did down in Texarkana. Pearle went back to Silver Spring. Charlie and Betty were living in the house. She came in on the B&O to the Silver Spring station. They had quite a good passenger service back in those days.

As it turned out, that job had no real future. I was promised a tremendous raise - two hundred a month. After I finished the job in Illinois, I did some work south of New York, in New Jersey I think it was, and did all these jobs quickly, thoroughly efficiently, and the boss would not give me a raise. We had contracts to map the Atlantic coast - Aerial Services did - and he would not give me a raise. So I resigned. I turned in my papers, told Shuck and Wheeler and Louis Magruder goodbye, and took my little suitcase and went back to Washington.

Well, in the meantime, Soil Conservation Service, Division of Cartography, began to build up again and they agreed to take me back. When the war started, jobs came in from everywhere. I got reappointed at the same title that I had when I left, as Assistant Civil Engineer. Later on they changed it over to Cartographic Engineer. So from then on, it was stay put in Silver Spring. I knew that if the Division of Cartography folded up or whatever, I could get jobs elsewhere in Washington.

So that was the crisis, and how you grew up in Silver Spring. If it hadn't been for those decisions, it could have been elsewhere.

When Pearl Harbor happened, I was at Griffith stadium with Doc Henson. We didn't know what was going on. During the game they were calling high ranking military people. We knew something was going on but we didn't know what. A lot of people were leaving. We left the stadium and went down to the parking lot to Doc's car because he had a radio in his car and that's where we heard about it.

All I can remember was Doc and I standing there listening to all these events that are going on about Pearl Harbor being struck. And they were starting to describe it by that time, not too much, because it had just happened. But here we are listening to Pearl Harbor being destroyed and part of the Navy being destroyed, and they had all the facts mixed up - it was some time, maybe days, before they got all the information together. But we just couldn't believe it, we just couldn't believe it.

Chris and Doc Henson had a nice home in the Hyde Park area of Tampa. At the time, that was the richest part of Tampa, Hyde Park, one of the nicest residential areas. Still is. Doc had a drug store and he had a liquor store adjoining. And they made money, they made money. I think it was as much money as Doc had ever made in his life. Doc was a pharmacist, and had never owned a drugstore until he moved to Tampa. The Agees helped him get set up there at first. Doc and Chris had sold their house in Maryland for twice what they paid for it, and that was a nest egg for them to get started down here. Doc always wanted to get his own drugstore, but he never could get enough money. He worked for every drugstore chain that existed in the Washington area (laughter).

We knew Chris and Ginny's mother, Ethel Agee, and her husband. He divorced and married a rich widow. He was associated with Marshall, the owner of the Redskins. Agee was the son of a national manufacturer of laundry and dry cleaning equipment. That's where he got his start. I don't know how he got associated with Marshall - he probably sold Marshall all the equipment. See, Marshall had one big plant in the Washington area, dry cleaning, and another one mainly for laundry. He had practically all the laundry and dry cleaning business in the Washington area. And he set up these retail pickup places all around Washington. Man, he was making money going and coming, that Marshall. He became a rich man. I think he owned the Redskins when they were up in Boston, before he brought them down here. Then he married this actress, and they were the wealthiest people in the Washington area. What was her name? She was the author of the Redskin fight song. She was an actress in Hollywood and on Broadway - and a well-respected woman too.

Well, the senior Agee came down to Florida first and put in the first major laundry and dry cleaning firm in south Tampa. And it grew. That's when he talked Chris and Doc into coming down to Tampa and set up a business, the drugstore. Well, Doc died suddenly of a heart attack, as I recall. And Chris carried on the business for quite awhile.

During the war, we were doing wartime mapping. In Beltsville, we were under close security and we had to be cleared by the FBI. Well, I had been arrested in Vicksburg. Disorderly. I had had too much to drink. I never did have to go to court. I think I did pay a $25 fine. I can't recall exactly. [Before taping: Daddy told us he had not disclosed this fact when he filled out his employment papers, but the FBI found it when they did their background check]

I had to go downtown with my boss to the main Department of Agriculture Personnel Office. And he pleaded my case. It helped me that I had a distinguished career with the Army Corps of Engineers. That helped me. And an outstanding career with the Soil Conservation Service, so to speak. And I was cleared.

The FBI questioned me for about 2 hours in a room, going over my past. And at that time, you see, I had left the Soil Conservation Service, Division of Cartography, and I had worked with the Bureau of Reclamations, Department of the Interior and I had worked with Aerial Service Corporation in Philadelphia, then after I resigned from Aerial Service Corporation, I went back to Soil Conservation, Division of Cartography - and had a few important assignments before wartime.

In other words, I had worked many different places. I didn't lose any day's pay over it - no. But it was called to the attention of the head of personnel for the entire Department of Agriculture that I had committed a terrible, terrible sin. It was a terrible thing to lie. A little white lie - that I didn't want anybody to know about. So I was cleared. Bennett stood by me all the way.

I remember at that particular time, I was making a survey of the landing strip of the Beltsville Research Center. Navy planes and Air Force planes were practicing out there and they wanted a survey because there was a lot of erosion. I had made a terrific survey of the entire area of Beltsville for the Air Force and Navy. Completed the entire charting of it. They had started filling in the places at the side of the runway where it was eroding and repairing the strip and all that seemed important. One time he came out there to see what the hell I was doing. He up and died. He and his secretary were coming back to the College Park area and he had a flat tire. He was changing the tire and he had a heart attack. I can't remember if he died at the scene or later.

He and Fitch were real buddies. They drove together to Beltsville. He was well known with the top soil scientists - he was a soil scientist. He was well known throughout the country. It goes back to the days when the entire Soil Conservation Service was formed by Roosevelt. Hugh H. Bennett - he was the top dog - the first one to head the Soil Conservation Service.

So much for that.

We had already done our system of mapping for the War Department when this came up. I think the FBI was reinvestigating us supervisors. We were doing the basic charts for the long range navigation, LORAN. In the Pacific mainly. The Navy hydrographic office and the Air Force had proven that LORAN could be used in navigation across the Atlantic. But they hadn't done anything about extending LORAN in the Pacific. Maybe into Hawaii.

So we produced back in those days all the LORAN charts covering the Pacific. It was mainly plotting the waves of Mercator projection of these different stations, the 'masters' and the 'slaves.' The master sent out the electronic radar waves and the slaves would send it back. The slaves were many miles away from the signal from the master station. Our reproduction section could photograph our charts before they were sent and lithographed. That was high secrecy.

I can't remember what year it was that Henley Hayes died. Henley had gone back to Japan on an assignment. See, the first time, after the war was over, he took the family. After they returned, he went back to Japan on another assignment. The Korea business was going on and the military sent him back to Japan. He had to go. And that's when he was killed - not by the military but by a Japanese fruit truck. They were coming back at night to the base, and I don't know if the truck ran into them or they ran into the truck, I don't know which.

It was a sad occasion. Margaret had joined the same Methodist Church that we belonged to, the one there on Georgia Avenue. The minister of the church, Dr. Rogers, was the minister at the funeral instead of the Army chaplain. Margaret asked him to be the minister of the service. I have a strong visual picture of him I never will forget. The service was held at the chapel at Ft. Meyers, and there were two carriages. There were two bodies - they were both killed together, both buried together. They both had the rank of major, I believe.

He was from Pennsylvania I think. The visual image I remember was Dr. Rogers. He walked ahead of the white horses on the way to the internment. We were in these limousines, and when we come around a curve at different elevations, I could see him up there. White-haired minister walking ahead of the white horses. And it was snowing. A light snow came down on the procession from the chapel over to the grave site. It was cold - he had a topcoat on, but he didn't have a hat on. I'll always remember that image.

Pearle and I got engaged at the Roosevelt Hotel in St. Augustine, in the lounge. After we had had a drink. Or maybe it was our second. (Laughter) We used to drink martinis in those days. That's when I put the ring on her finger, and that's where we kissed and hugged. (Laughter) It was the Roosevelt Hotel. It was a plush lounge, I remember that.

Pearle had lived in St. Augustine, and she had worked there in a beauty shop. Her first marriage didn't last long, I don't know if it was a year or what. Bill Owens's first wife had died in childbirth. Little Bill's mother.

Pearle was a beautiful woman. And Bill Owens was pretty well-off in town. He had a tire agency, as I recall. And he was well-born, you see. He was killed in a car accident, he and another fellow, in Jacksonville. I can't remember the year he died. But I have a copy of his death certificate somewhere in the files. When I was retiring, I got it to make sure Pearle could get survivorship in my annuity. It would be tied up if I didn't prove the death of William D. Owens.

There were four Clements brothers, all in the saw mill, lumber and timber business together in Ray City. Of course the business declined and they sold out. Uncle Bill kept his little bit of whatever they owned at the time. He bought some more land here and there and he became quite an owner of timberland. Up until the day he died.

Uncle Bill had worked in a bank in Madison, Florida, as a bank clerk. He was so proud of having graduated from a community college of some sort. He talked about that several times. There was an article written by someone connected with that bank in Madison. He was quite a well-known man around town.

And Lucius and Eugenia came to Florida, looking for work because the business closed. That happened to a lot of mill towns. They came because of the phosphate business which was attractive at that time.

I don't know much about Eugenia's life in Ray City. Well, I guess she was busy raising children. Lucius, he would go around the timberland and decide which tree to buy and which tree to cut and bring into the mill and so forth. That was his main job. Ray City was a nice looking little town. Some of Pearle's aunts still lived in Ray City and she wanted to visit them. We didn't know exactly where one aunt lived, but we knocked on the door of a house that Pearle thought might be hers.

Her aunt came to the door dressed in a house dress and do you know what they were doing? They were shelling peanuts and pecans. (Laughter) She was embarrassed that she was dressed so poorly. It wasn't much of a house, but it was a frame house. Livable, you know. Fireplace and mantle. Of course, she had pictures of her children there. One of her sons lived over in Jacksonville. He was doing fairly well. He was at one of the reunions one time. Nice looking young man, he and his wife. I remember Pearle's aunt saying, "Now next time you come, honey, you want to let me know in advance. So I'll be dressed for you!" It tickled me.

I always complained to Pearle every time we came to Florida since she was always talking about her relatives in Ray City -- I kept prodding, you know, "Pearle, I want to stop by there and see some of your relatives." Oh, she had some aunts in the Atlanta area. One lived in southwest Atlanta. She had two sons. Very nice woman - very prim-like. She was a smart woman too. And the other aunt lived in Decatur. I think you went to see her one time.

We knew Pearle's Uncle Bill lived in the town of Sirmans, Florida. But we couldn't find Sirmans, even though we followed Ralph's directions. So we pulled off the road and stopped at a small store. We went in and asked the man behind the counter for directions. The man said, "Lady, I've been here all my life, and I don't know anything about this town of Sirmans you're talking about. Who'd you say you're looking for?"

Pearle said, "William Clements. William Grove Clements." She pulled the full name on him, you see. "Sorry. I don't think I ever met the gentleman." With a straight face. And I'm looking at this guy, and I knew what Ralph had told us had to be right. And I knew my maps. So I'm starting to think maybe this guy was lying some way or another. Something's gotta give here... I looked at the man and said, "I know I looked this town up on the map and I know Sirmans has to be right about here where we're standing. And I think you know something about this place."

And again he denied knowing anything. Pearle butted in and said, "Mister, you must be lying. Where is my Uncle Bill?" "Oh, why didn't you say he was your uncle? He lives just behind the store here." Bill used to own the store and his house was right in back of the store! (Laughter)

Pearle was mad as she could be. She wanted to jump over that counter and let him have it. You remember how your mother used to do with her pocketbook? She drew that pocketbook back at that man. She wanted to hit him! I don't know why that man played possum.