Letter to my brother Jesse on my 89th birthday

Dear Jesse,

Many times I go down memory lane, I remember you, me, Francis, and Joe (later Billy) helping our Dad build a nice cottage at North Beach.

Few people during the great depression could afford the luxury of a nice cottage on The Chesapeake Bay.

Our Dad had a dream, as one Sunday he took Joe and me on our first train ride to the Chesapeake Beach and put a $5.00 deposit on a beach lot and gave our Mom a shock "that he was going to build a beach cottage for our family".

Dad gave us 100% as he knew how to give us the very best life possible. Mom went all the way with her 2 years of cooking in Irish schools as we had the best of foods.

In closing, I enjoy our Thursday chats.

John

North Beach

This is my father Champy, my youngest brother Billy, my brother Jesse on the left and I am to the right, building the cottage at North Beach.

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How it Began...

My father told Joe, Lord of Mercy, and myself "I’ll take you all to Chesapeake Beach." We had never been on a steam train. So we went down on the steam train, the first big train we had been on. Champy had decided he could get a lot to build a cottage

This woman sold him a lot for $5 down. We would help him on the week-ends to build the cottage. We would work all day. On the way back, we would stop at the Dixie Pig BBQ and we would get a sandwich for 15 cents. They just called it a BBQ sandwich and put it on a regular roll and it was very delicious.