Harmonica Bob

Harmonica Bob... What can I say... Kate and Bert's house. Not long before we moved across the road because the table is on the far wall and that happened when we opened the wall into the little room behind the formal parlor...oh wait, it must have been earlier because when we opened the wall we made the little room into a dining area with half a wall...memory...

Anyway... It was in the old house which was Tony Walter's when he allowed us to live there for the upkeep. It is in the kitchen. Kate is in the high chair with her back to us. Joan and Joe are facing the camera. I'm guessing that your mother took the picture. My harmonica playing was a good accompaniment to the strumming of your mother and Jim Martin who played guitar. We sat around that table many days sipping 'golden glow' and singing and eating and just having a great time. I haven't played harmonica in many years. This has to be late 1972 because I don't think kate was in the high chair much longer than that.

Moving to Cape Breton was the result of trauma for both your mother and I. For her it was a down cycle in her ups and downs. For me it was the aftermath of the tragic deaths of Eddie Woodriffe and his partner that I alluded to before. The trauma was because when the call came to respond to a bank robbery (as all agents were supposed to do) I had a lot of paperwork and turned my car over to Ed who was waiting on the steps of the old post office (where our office was). He then took the call to go to the apartment of the former wife of the bank robber/escapee from Lorton Pennitentiary and it was there that the shooting took place.

According to the third agent on the scene, Ed and his partner were on either side of the door. Ed knocked and buddy inside pulled open the door to the length of the chain and shot Ed in the head. Partner came across and was shot in the chest. Door slammed and third man shot into it but it was metal. Bad guy went out the window, down a tree and across an open area before hiding in the attic of an apartment building across the way. He was apprehended later that night.

My trauma was that I was not there... so what you say? Well maybe things would have been different if I had done what I was supposed to do. Maybe I wouldn't have been suspicious when the guy opened the door. Maybe I would have had my gun out because I was more suspicious. Who knows. Bottom line a good buddy got killed, I was confined to the office for three days because I was a good buddy...then I was assigned to guard Eddie's house. The main job was to keep the media away because this was the first time that two agents had been shot in the line of duty and the first time that a "BLACK" agent had been killed. Eddie goes down in history.

I never knew until years afterward how much it affected me. The Washington Post and Washington other newspaper made formal complaints about the agents guarding the house of Ella and her kids because all they wanted was a story and we told them to get the f... out of there or we would do nasty things to their private parts. Years later I found out about post traumatic syndrome - nobody talked about it then... you guys had to endure it in the trip to CB. Thank goodness it turned out alright...Or is that a question I should pose to the three of you???

So I played the harmonica. Do you ever remember me actually playing???