Joan & Dad - '67

The picture which I am now trying to load is J and Dad 1967. This is again in Oxon Hill Maryland, in the 2 br apartment with a patio outside, set in the woods south of the beltway near Washington D.C. I chose to talk about this picture because as you will notice, I am wearing a red baseball cap and shirt. Now, this is the same shirt that I am wearing in the picture where I was building the log house. I may go back and try to see what it says on the front of the shirt but for now I note that at the time I was playing slow pitch softball for a team in a league in Greenbelt Maryland.

Greenbelt is (was?) a designed community about fifteen minutes from the edge of Washington D.C. The town centered on the center which, as the name implies, was a green area. There was a large park like area which included baseball fields with industry and business surrounding the center homes and park area.

I can't remember how I ended up playing on a team in the league in greenbelt, only that I did. It was once a week and your mother used to bring you to the field and watch the game while chatting with other wives/mothers. Because I was at the language school in Fort Meade Maryland at the time, I may have met someone there who also played and got invited. I'm not sure.

Joan was not very old in this picture, less than one year or perhaps just past one. Seems there is another picture about with Joan on my lap with a birthday cake with one candle in it but I'm not sure.

We were living in the apartment in Oxon Hill because I was told that I was to be assigned to language school at the Annacostia Naval Base which would have been just across the beltway toward the city. It would have been a five - ten minute drive for me to get to work. Alas, after I arrived in D.C. and found the place in Oxon Hill, they changed my language school to Fort Meade, MD., which is just outside of Baltimore. It was a 45 minute drive at 70 MPH - not kilometers, miles per hour. It was harrowing every morning and evening. The traffic was abominable on the Baltimore Washington Turnpike. One day a plane from Andrews air force base (which is along side the turnpike) crashed on takeoff. Andrews is where the president's plane usually comes and goes from. Anyway, I was lucky to be along about ten minutes after the crash and able to get off the exit before and make my way home without the long delay that tied up traffic almost six hours.

Fort Meade, Maryland is where the National Security Agency (NSA) was located at the time. They did most of the satellite monitoring and international phone tapping etc. They were mainly electronic surveillance. They also had a language school and at the time the Middle East was in turmoil because of Suez Canal problem, Israel and the Arab nations and all the things that still are problems there today except that there was no significant Palestinian force as yet. I was assigned to study Hebrew (Modern Israeli Hebrew) because that was the diplomatic language of the state of Israel. Israel did not keep the US informed of its plans with regard to the unrest in the area and so the FBI agents were directed to listen to the diplomatic traffic from the embassy and UN consulate of the Israelis. Interestingly, because Israel was technically a "friendly" nation, the fact that the FBI had people studying their language in order to eavesdrop was considered "Top Secret". I was not allowed to tell anyone where I was going to work every day or what I was doing. Nor could I name the course of study in any communication. It was foreign language studies....

All this from a baseball shirt and hat. That was, despite the secrecy, a happy time. I was doing what I thought was important. We had a comfortable place to live and a sporty red MGB parked out front of the apartment. The McLeans upstairs became friends and we shared our baby with them, especially Clara, the mother because she had only the one child, Harry, and couldn't have any more and loved playing grandma for Joan. I looked forward to coming home and playing with Joan who enjoyed nothing more than pulling all the books out of the bookcase and crawling around in them. Finally we moved all our books up and put Joan's books in the bottom shelf so she could choose which ever she wished for me to read when I got home from work.