Kimmels Mountain

In Dundalk there was an airport, Logan Field, that had been a military airport during World War One. It was a place where many Sunday afternoons were spent watching airplanes take off and land. The military training planes were busy seven days a week. They were painted blue and yellow and stood out from the commercial and private planes that set all around the field. It was here that my Father put me on a Ford Tri-motor passenger plane for a tour around Baltimore for about 20 minutes. He would not put out the two dollars it would have cost for himself to go, but they had a couple empty seats and the Pilot let me go for a quarter. Two dollars was a lot of money.

The field was too small for the new airliners that were now in service and these new DC 3 airliners were struggling to take off and to clear the nearby houses that were encroaching on its glide path and at the end of the runways.

There was a terminal where the China Clippers were landing in the Baltimore harbor. These huge seaplanes were carrying passengers back and fourth from South America, the Caribbean and Florida. Baltimore thought this was the future of air travel, and so, the city decided to build an airport in the harbor where DC3's could land as well as seaplanes. Kimmel's Mountain was the place to get the dirt to fill a section of the harbor for the airport. Kimmel's Mountain was a beautiful place. It was a huge stand of hardwood trees--oak, ash, gum and other trees with different nut bearing trees in the mix. Around its edges it had grown up in blackberries and raspberries, as well as strawberries and goose berries with an occasional wild cherry tree. During the summer, some of the local families would search there for the variety of berries and nuts. By Christmas every dining table in every house was filled with nuts. Paths criss-crossed through the woods and were a favorite place for family walks. The only danger there was that of walking up on unaware lovers. In the early 1930's they began digging up the hill and hauling it away by the dump truck load. They started on the other side of the hill from our house and for years they dug away at the hill. Early on, there were three huge shovels and maybe fifty dump trucks working. After awhile they were down to one really huge shovel. It was a true steam shovel with a shovel so big a full grown man could stand up inside of it. Two of its shovels would fill the biggest Mack "chain-drive" dump truck they had. The sight of that huge shovel digging only about a hundred and fifty yards a way was kind of frightening. I remember my sister Madge saying it scared her and how she hated that thing. It was kind of like a huge earth eating monster chomping ever closer day by day and there was no stopping it.

Steam shovels and dump trucks were all that filled mine and the other kids minds at that time. I got my bottom switched several times for sneaking away to go up and watch that shovel work. We all played steam shovel as small kids. We would squat down and use a tin can while pretending we were steam shovels digging in the dirt and making steam shovel noises all the while. A large coffee can, because of its size, could be traded for a cap pistol any time. We dug a hole at least 10 feet in diameter and 5 feet deep. We covered it up with a wooden roof a rug and a layer of dirt. My dog used it for a dog house, as it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. On a hot day it was hard to get him to come out.

Kimmel's Mountain was actually a sand dune that had been left there about a hundred thousand years before when the Atlantic coast was along that area. In March or during a good thunderstorm the wind would pick up clouds of sand and blow them all over the neighborhood. I remember Mom stuffing rags under the door once in a storm. The front porch had an inch of sand on it and everything in the house a layer of dust.

Growing up Dundalk

Robinwood Rd. Dundalk, MD

As stated this will be the writing of a book If you follow along from day to day you will experience it as written. You will read it with bad punctuation, spelling and all it's other wart's and then you will see it as it is edited. You will see what I keep and what I throw away. You will be able to see it through to completion and then buy it from a print on demand publisher online. I expect this writing to take at least a year and maybe two. Know this! I am not a teacher and not only that I have almost no education. This would not be the way to write a book by almost anyone's standards. However it is my way so take my methods for what they're worth or don't take them at all. I would like to propose a toast to all of us and our completion of a book about Dundalk and it's folks. To "Dundalk and it's folks", it's success or failure.
These first posts will lay some groundwork by way of identifying some people, places and times and then we will begin the telling of a story. I have no idea what we will write but from experience I have every confidence it will all come together. Certainly not without numerous hitches.
The above picture is of The Pollard home place. My parents, Fred and Ruby, had four children Charlie, Dot, Madge, and Dougie (that's me). Charlie and I both had a lot of friends and the girls were beautiful so there was never a shortage of young men hanging around with rapidly beating hearts.
I'm only slightly kidding when I say I remember everything. I remember most everything. I was born on Robinwood Rd. in Dundalk Farms in 1934. My family had moved to Baltimore from Georgia in the 1920's so we weren't native Marylanders. I think they held Baltimore and it's people a little in awe. My father and older brother built our house as did most of the neighbors at the time. The neighboring fields were farmland grown over with broom straw. There were houses speckled here and there along gravel roads. Most houses were built on one acre lots of land with only a few having bought two acres.
At age two, I remember my diapers hanging on a makeshift clothesline which stretched from our pot bellied stove which supplied our heat to the chimney that was at the end of the four room house. I had asthma so I spent a fair amount of time lying on the wicker sofa where I could see everyone. I would catch a cold and do my death defying act of continuing to breath. I lay there a great deal of the time from December through March when I would perk up and make up for lost time.
Our house was under construction as were most of the homes on our road. We had sheet rock up on the interior walls with asphalt shingles on the outside the first winter. We walked on sub-floors covered with second hand carpets. A sudden gust of March wind would sometimes raise the carpets off the floor in some places. Sounds kind of hard nowadays but the world was slowly recovering from the depression and my father worked two days a week at a good job. We were better off than many.
Most of our neighbors built the same way my parents did. They would not borrow a nickle to build. They were all too well aware of what would happen if the depression got bad again. Any of them could be made to shudder by the mere mention of the word mortgage. Otts M^cClelland next door was a railroad fireman. He fired a steam Locomotive at Sparrows Point all night and worked on his house all day. Otto Walter, from across the street, was a tool and die maker at Glen L. Martin co., where they built airplanes. My father, Fred Pollard, was a machinist at Western Electric co., on Broning Highway. In those times a highly skilled tradesman who worked for a good company could afford to live in a neighborhood and rub elbows with Steel mill management and other executives.