A lot of changes to this property and to the Filla Family would take effect over the next 65 years.There was no indoor bathroom plumbing and only dirt basements when the property was bought. In the first couple of years they concreted the entire basement floor with my mother hand-mixing concrete in a wheelbarrel and having my brother Walter, who was 15 years old, helping and doing a lot of the concrete mixing, pouring, laying, and smoothing. When mama ordered you to do something or help with something, "NO" was not an answer. She worked hard and everyone else was expected to do the same. Indoor bathrooms were added shortly after also. There was a kitchen downstairs in the basement in the front part of the house on the 4426 side where my family lived, at least that is what I was told. This was before I came into the picture in August of 1930. Our apartment was heated by a coal furnace which supplied hot water to the radiators and gave our home a nice clean type of heat. It was wonderful to come inside in winter after playing in the snow and lay on the floor and prop my feet up on the nice warm radiator to take the chill out.

The other 3 apartments came with built-in tenants, two of which lived there for more than 30 years each. Mr. and Mrs. Mittendorf lived upstairs and he passed away in the early 1950's. I remember going upstairs to play pinocle with them when a niece came to visit and they needed a fourth player. None of us had phones so when they wanted something they would knock on the pipes, we'd step on the porch, open their door at the bottom of their stairs, and they'd be up at the top of the landing telling us what they wanted. Mrs. Mittendorf moved out in 1953 moving to a nursing home. My mother moved upstairs and I (6 months pregnant with my first baby) moved downstairs with Harold into my mothers apartment.

The other long standing tenants, The Tony & Josie Schott Family, lived there till sometime in the mid 1950's when they left after more than 30 years to move in with their daughter, Lillian. They had three children; Lillian, Roger, and Roy (who was about 2 years older than me).The Schotts lived downstairs on the 4424 side right next door to us. Above the Schotts were Mr. & Mrs. Clarence West. After them came Louie & Bernice (Kalinowska) Roberts, and then came my brother Len and his family.They moved in during the late 1940's and Harold and I moved in during the Spring of 1953.

This home meant everything to my mother and nothing could pry her away from it. Visits to Washington were almost always done without mama. Papa and I would take the Broadway streetcar downtown to the Greyhound bus depot to take the "Washington, Union, St. Louis" bus to Washington. Mama stayed home by her house. Anyone wanting to buy a single-family home was considered silly and extravagant. She thought that owning a 4-family flat and having the rent from the tenants help pay for it, was the only way to go. Maybe tenant rent helps pay for some homes but I have serious doubt that this happened with this property.I think what paid for the home was mama's frugality and her tight rein on the money. The rents were always low and very seldom raised. In fact, I know of only one time that the rent was raised during World War II. I think they went up from $15 per month to $20. At that time rents were "frozen" by the government. She worked out a deal with Mrs. Schott who would drop the CASH through the mail slot in our front door so nobody would find out.

These tenants were good people but never did anything on their own to help keep the inside of the property nice. I really think they were spoiled to a degree. They didn't turn a screw or use a paint brush. Roy Schott once told me he knew of no other landlord that would do what my parents did for their tenants. About every four years my mother would paint and wallpaper the inside of their apartments.Wallpaper was BIG in those days. She would let them pick out the wallpaper of their choice and then she would proceed to do all the work, even wallpapering the ceilings. She had a professional scaffold that stretched between ladders and slapped that wallpaper across the ceiling like a pro, which she was.

The downstairs apartments had back stairs to the yards facing in opposite directions toward each side of the house.There were no front stairs for the second story so they came and went by stairs leading directly down the middle of the building to the rear yard. All this was changed with my father tearing the small porches out and building new porches and having all four apartments come down a single wide set of stairs from the center of the back of the house. Then upstairs porches were built above the two downstairs. Next, they were all enclosed with windows.Our apartment had hardwood floors put in. My father did all of this work himself and never owned a single "power tool". Mama thought that was a waste of money. As always, my papa did whatever mama said was okay. He loved her. When my father passed away she did buy some power tools for herself, but knowing my father, that would have been okay with him and he would have thought she deserved them. He would not have been jealous or angry for not having had these same tools to use himself when he could have used them so badly.

While I was still younger than my teens, they decided that maybe a front entrance for the people upstairs would be nice. They took part of the living rooms and made them smaller all along the inside wall and put in two more front doors to this area which was awaiting stairs to the second level. This NEVER came to be but we did enjoy a nice long closet that had a front entrance to it. Roy Schott even had a rollaway bed in this area that he used as his private bedroom, so to speak. That's all that would fit into it was the bed. On the other hand, we had a nice closet and storage area.Also, it was a place where mama could peek out of that front closet door to oversee the goodnight kisses between Harold and Jeannette. We caught her doing some snooping on us instead of her catching us in some compromising position.

Papa hung out a lot down in the basement. He had a workbench, tools, and could smoke his cigars (RedDot 2 for a nickel) without mama complaining. He would smoke them down so low that he would insert a toothpick into the stub, holding it by the toothpick, and smoking it even more. Papa did more than smoke in the basement! After he passed away on December 17, 1951, mama was down in the basement cleaning and straightening up when she discovered something. There were a few opened and recorked partially filled wine bottles hidden behind cans of nails. Seems like papa enjoyed a few good slurps of wine with his cigars.

There weren't too many more changes to the physical appearance of the property. The yard, which had been divided into two separate yards, had the fence removed between them and became one big yard. The pear and plum trees were cut down. The ashpits were torn out, no longer needed because there was now trash collection by the city each week.

Those ashpits bring back a lot of memories. We would throw anything in them, sometimes even each other. Kids will be kids!When they filled up mama would stop an ashpit hauler cruising the alley looking for work. They would bicker over his price, come to terms, and the trash would be hauled away. The pits now were ready to be filled again starting the cycle all over. If mama happened to stop this same man again, he would definitely command a better price or he would refuse to do it. I even remember one man refusing to do it for any price. That's because mama had a way of filling up that area with at least twice as much as any of our neighbors. All tenants were instructed to remove the lids from both ends of cans and then smash them flat by stomping on them with their feet; of course, with their shoes on! Everything was consolidated and broken down thus a lot more could be put into the pit. A bonus came about by doing away with the ashpits-----those BIG UGLY RATS left and the ones that still hung around were easily eradicated.

The building has looked pretty much the same as it has from 1960 to the present time. Mama sold the flat to Len and Bee about 25 years ago and some of their children and grandchildren occupied some of the apartments in the building. The building was sold to one of the neighbors sometime around 1994 after Bee (Len's widow) remarried as she moved to her new husband's home on Liberty Street. The era of Pennsylvania Avenue lasted from 1926 to 1994, almost 70 years. A lot of Filla History evolved in this old homestead and the participants branched out in many directions; Pennsylvania, Alaska, and California to mention a few but I think our hearts are still rooted deep at that address.The Filla Family, a strong tree with deep roots, many branches, bearing abundant good fruit.

August 6, 2002