Helen Granger Boss - Special Collections - University of Baltimore
Helen Granger Boss - Special Collections - University of Baltimore
Helen Granger Boss - Special Collections - University of Baltimore
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tv '/ ( \!JOL!<br />
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BOSS; 056 I:2:l7<br />
I was a mean kid, an omery kid, a scrappy kid. I admit it. I've got a<br />
lot <strong>of</strong> penance before I ever leave this world. I hope the Lord will let<br />
me stay to do them. I really was somebody like that•••and rough as could<br />
be•••always down ar01,md the river and half the time my mother didn't know<br />
I was there. I take the children now" when I see them rnnnjng sort <strong>of</strong> wild•••<br />
One <strong>of</strong> them went up to the swimming pool a couple <strong>of</strong> summers ago and the<br />
screen around it was raised up from the bottom. He went up there with two<br />
brothers and crawled under that screen and was drowned. They say the mother<br />
was home in bed. Well, my mother wasn't home in bed. And my mother didn't<br />
drink, for that matter. I'm not bragging about it, I'm just saying she<br />
didn't know half the time when I was down the river.<br />
KupChyk: What did you do down at the river?<br />
<strong>Boss</strong>: Walk: around down there•••One moming, I remember to this day, it<br />
was on a Monday. MY mother was washing. She washed in the back yard with<br />
a tub and a board. This fellow that I knew that tended to the boatyard -<br />
he was my older brother's age and my brother was five or six years<br />
older than me. So I went down. The tide had come in and my brother's<br />
boat had been washed up. The bow was up on the wharf or on another boat<br />
or something. I called to him and said, "Charlie, look, that will dry<br />
out in the sun today." He said, "You stand on that back end and I'll<br />
hit this and we'll get it <strong>of</strong>f there." He did - me and that boat!<br />
Well, I wrung my clothes out. We only had to come up past those<br />
two big lots. I guess I didn't meet nobody until I might have got to<br />
that 2100 block that did have houses on it. We had a side gate, naturally,<br />
so I come up and gathered this dress up and wrung it out down there by<br />
the river. That's the kind <strong>of</strong> little girl I was.