Papas Fritas to Fois Gras: A Memoir

The Prince George’s County of My Youth

I   WAS BORN in 1932 at Washington D.C.’s Old Sibley Hospital because it was the nearest hospital to the community in which my parents lived. We lived in Riverdale Heights, MD, a bedroom community of blue collar workers who were employed in D. C. The community was within walking distance of the end of bus service and this tied us to what we called The District. Our community had only a small DGS grocery store and we did all other shopping along F Street, NW which we called downtown. F Street had the 5 and dime stores, department stores, furniture stores and 7 movie theaters, 2 of which had floor shows. We followed the Senators and the Redskins. We considered ourselves Washington ians.

We lived in Maryland and were also loyal to our state. Our schools and other social services were administered by the Prince George’s County government. In 1928 the Baltimore Sun took note of the suburban towns growing up along the rail and streetcar lines in the direction of Baltimore but concluded that Prince George’s County is primarily an agricultural county devoted to the cultivation of tobacco. I hope that the events of my life chronicled in this memoir show the evolution of P.G. County into a diverse economic county with 20th century values not controlled by rural ruling class.

I attended Riverdale Elementary School and in 1938 we were in the first group to have dental exams and free milk. Elementary schools were seven grades and high school four grades. During the summer between my seventh grade and high school the state mandated that public education be 12 years. In 1950 I was a member of the first class in PG County to graduate with 12 years of public education. It was also the first class to play inter-high contact football and we won the county championship. The teams competing were: Maryland Park, Mount Rainier, Bladensburg, Hyattsville, Greenbelt and Laurel. All of these schools were either adjacent to D.C. or along the rail and trolly lines in the direction of Baltimore. At the time I did not consider what might be happening in the rest of the county.

Our congressman from 1939 to 1952 was Lansdale G. Sasscer, an Upper Marlboro lawyer, certified don and head of the Democratic Party. It was said that he was the very embodiment of the seigniorial (feudal lord) system that ruled Maryland for generations. My father once wrote to Mr. Sasscer inquiring about the possibility of me being a congressional page. I do not recall the exact words of the reply but in essence it said who are you and who do you think you are? In the early 1950s Sasscer decided he wanted his son to be the state senator to the Maryland Legislature. The incumbent, H. Winship Wheatley was angered and started a reform group to challenge Sasscer, Sasscer lost his seat in congress and the reform group took over the Democratic Party. One notable member of the reformers was Gladys Spellman. In 1962 she became the first woman elected to the Prince George’s County Commissioners and later became the chairperson. She became the congressperson from the 5th congressional district in 1975 and served until 1981. A portion of the Baltimore Washington Parkway is named for her.

But for the Spanish American War

T HE WAR BETWEEN the United States and Spain in 1898 led indirectly to my parents meeting each other years later in Riverdale, Maryland. At the start of 1898 neither were born yet and their parents were separated by an ocean. The probability that my parents would ever meet was about the same as the chance that you might win the PowerBall or the Mega Millions Lot tery.

In the late 1800s my paternal grandfather, Frederich Julius Koch was a teenager living in Baltimore’s German community. His father had emigrated from Wiesbaden, Germany and his mother Pauline Junger, born in London to German parents because her father was on a work contract there also emigrated from Germany.

My paternal grandmother, Ella Barbara Klein, was seven in 1890 and also living in the German community in the western part of Baltimore. Her parents had immigrated from the cities of Darnstatt and Neuremberg, Germany.

My maternal grandfather, Ramon Granados Marquez, who I always called Abuelo was born in Aracena, Spain where his family had lived for five centuries. His father was the governor of Huelva Province and owned a large property with olive and chestnut trees. The properties came to the Granados family in the 13th century from the king, Alphonso X, the Wise, as a reward for helping to free nearby Frontera de Jerez from the Moors. From that time on it was documented that the family was noted as a lineage of warriors with a few priests thrown in. Abuelo was neither. He was a university student in Seville.

My maternal grandmother, Concepcion Rey Capdeville, was a teenager in her home town of Seville. Her family can be traced back several hundred years to the late 1700s. Some of her ancestors lived in Seville and others moved there from Sanluca de Barrameda on the Mediterranean. This town is noted for having held the earliest recorded horse races and the races were held along the nearby beach.

The Paths to Washington, D.C.

Grandfather Koch joined the Army during the Spanish-American war and served with the 8th Calvary. He never left the U.S., but after the war he was sent to the Southwest to ensure that the Indian population stayed on their reservation. He never had anything good to say about the Indians in Southwest U.S.

After the war he worked for the railroad in Baltimore. He married Ella Klein and they later moved to Washington, D.C. because he had taken a job at the Naval Gun Factory in Southeast D.C. In 1908 my father, Charles H. Koch was born in D.C., the fourth of seven children. They lived in a row house at 1509 G St., S.E. Washington, D.C. The house was only a few blocks from the famous Congressional Cemetery where eighteen past congressmen, twelve senior Civil War officers and many other famous people are buried. Two of these other famous people were John Philip Sousa (died 1932) and more recently, J. Edgar Hoover (died 1972).

Beyond the cemetery to the east is the Anacostia River which at that time was a flowing clear water river before developments upstream began in the 1950s. These developments caused considerable sedimentation that silted up the river and caused its present tan coloration. It was along the river that my father learned to hunt, fish and trap fur bearing animals. In the process he also acquired respect for wildlife and a love of the outdoors.

Early in the 1900s and perhaps because he had served in the U.S. Army with men who considered themselves Americans without regards to their ancestry, my grandfather anglicized his name to Cook. My father is shown as Charles Cook through the fifth grade by the D.C. Public Schools but after that time as Charles Koch. It seems that his father was teased at the Naval Gun Factory for having changed the spelling of his name. At that time all things German were reviled, even sauerkraut which was called victory cabbage. In defiance of the prevailing public opinions, Grandfather Koch changed the spelling back to Koch but not the pronunciation.

When Spain lost the Spanish American War, one form of reparation extracted was that Spain would provide teachers to Cuba which had a very high illiteracy rate. My maternal grandfather, Abuelo to me, had a master’s degree from Seville University and went to Cuba to teach. In 1903, my grandmother (Abuela) married her brother by proxy in Spain for the purpose of traveling to Cuba to marry my grandfather Ramon Granados Marquez. As a well bred Spanish lady she could not travel as an unmarried woman. My grandparents married in 1903 in Vinales, Pinar del Rio, Cuba by a priest. Their first child, Luis, was born in Cuba a year later. The next three children were born in Seville, the last of which was my mother, Clara Granados.

Abuelo impressed the U.S. powers in Cuba with his abilities. One individual in particular was General Leonard Wood, the Military Governor of Cuba. General Wood encouraged Abuelo to go to Washington D.C. to teach government officials the Spanish Language. He opened the Spanish School of Washington in 1911. He also taught on occasion at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and St. John’s College in Annapolis.

He occasionally worked for Naval Intelligence during World War I. Several fact finding trips to South America to gather information for the Department of Navy were taken. During World War I he put put up maps of Europe at various D. C. hotels including the Willard and Old Shoreham. Each day he received information by cable from New York regarding the latest action on the war front. He would then go to each hotel and move pins on the map to show the latest advance of the armies. He was paid by the hotels for this service.

In July, 1911 Abuela arrived in New York with four children. Luis, age 7, Concepcion, age 5, Rosario, age 3 and my mother Clara, age 2. The family settled in a house at 14th and K Street, N.W. A fifth child, Ramon was born in D.C. but was of poor health. It was because of Ramon’s poor health that they moved out of Washington. The family lived briefly in Mt. Ranier, MD where a sixth and seventh children were born, Maria and Delores. Another child was born there, Angelina who lived a mere 11 days.

On To Riverdale

The Granados family moved to Riverdale, Maryland in 1918. The house was a large Victorian house on the left bank of the eastern branch of the Anacostia River. The house was separated from the water by reeds and had a large backyard with a garden, chicken coop, rabbit hutch and a grape arbor. Three more children were born in Riverdale: Juan, Mercedes, called Beeno by family and friends and Antonio. Abuelo commuted to his Spanish language school by a streetcar named Mt. Pleasant which he boarded just four blocks away.

The Koch family moved to Riverdale in the early 1920s. The children attended nearby Riverdale Elementary School as did some of the Granados children. Later my siblings and I attended this same school which had been enlarged. My mother remembers that her teacher died during the influenza epidemic of World War I.

Grandfather Koch initially set up a blacksmith shop primarily to shoe horses. It is problematic how he learned this trade, perhaps he shod horses when he was with the 8th Calvary and he may have shod horses at the Naval Gun Factory since they undoubtedly used large horses like the Percherons or Clydesdales to move the large naval cannon from one work area to another. In any event, increased use of the automobile caused the demise of his blacksmith business. By the early 1930s he had begun selling life insurance policies for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. During the depression these policies were often small (one or two hundred dollars)—just enough life insurance to put you in the ground.

Neither of my parents went to school beyond the seventh grade. My father became a union printer and spent his early years operating a Linotype machine. He taught himself to play the guitar and banjo. On weekends during the summer months he played banjo in a dance band in Chesapeake Beach. In those days there was a railroad from D.C.