towered over Baltimore Avenue and watching the cars and passersby on the street
below which was very busy since it led directly into Baltimore Street, Cumberland's
main drag. Our house was only two blocks from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
station, symbol of the city's status as an important transportation hub. When I was
quite young, my parents took advantage of having such an exciting place so close at
hand and took me there to watch the trains arrive and depart. I was even in the crowd
that gathered on August 1923 to honor the deceased United States President Warren
Harding when the train bearing his remains passed through the station.
I came to regard the third floor as the territory of my father and mother and
me. I was told that once when I was alone in the apartment in my bed, my
grandmother came up to our floor to one of the storage rooms and I called out, "Ma,
what are you bollixing around out there for." (Could I really have been so insolent.)
In 1925 we descended from the third to the second floor.
ii - The Big House Remembered
Impressions made during early childhood are said to be the most indelible. I
believe it. I can close my eyes today and see every feature of the big house and its
environs.
It was not an extraordinary house in comparison with other houses I came to
know or read about. Architecturally it was somewhat plain and boxy looking, large
but not huge. The interior was comfortably spacious and simply furnished but with
touches of elegance. It was a good solid house but not the mansion that the
newspaper seemed to predict.
Entering through the front door into the entrance hall, one had to be struck by
the gleam of the highly polished hardwood floors and staircase. On the left was a
ponderous piece of furniture (hall rack I believe it was called) that combined coat and
hat rack, umbrella keeper, storage box with hinged lid and a long vertical mirror in
which you could check your appearance on the way out. On the right sat an old
player piano (one that played music rolls, in case you have forgotten or never knew
about that ingenious invention).
Off the entrance hall was the living room, called the “front room." It was
dominated by a huge portrait of my great- grandmother, Catherine Webster Rohrer,
beneath which sat another player piano, dark and all but abandoned. There was a
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