Photograph by Chiaki Kawajiri.
MARGARET 'MUGS' RYTTER
MR. BARRY:
I'm now with Margaret Rytter. It
is April 26th, 2006. The most important question is
everybody calls you Mugs. Why?
MS. RYTTER:
It's a childhood nickname. My
cousin couldn't say Margaret and he got out Muggy, and
eventually it's gone to Mugs.
MR. BARRY:
And it's been Mugs ever since?
MS. RYTTER:
Yes.
MR. BARRY:
Now, you grew up in Dundalk?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
What was it like? Where did you
grow up and what was it like?
MS. RYTTER:
On the other side of the park,
the second house, 3 Playfield, and safe as anything.
You could walk through that park midnight, people would
say hi, you say hi. Go get a soda, really nice. We
had little stores and the churches were all full. A
lot of people went to church then.
MR. BARRY:
Was pretty much everybody in the
area working at Bethlehem Steel?
MS. RYTTER:
Yes, there or Western Electric,
yeah.
MR. BARRY:
And so it was kind of a
community?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. I had a lot of the
Lynches and the Todds and the Marrows all came in to
school, so I went to school with a lot of them.
MR. BARRY:
And they were who for the people
who don't know? The Lynches and the Todds were who?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, I graduated with Morris
Todd.
MR. BARRY:
What was his father's position?
MS. RYTTER:
Farmer.
MR. BARRY:
He was a farmer, I see.
MS. RYTTER:
I think they all were.
MR. BARRY:
What was it like to see Dundalk
as a farming community?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, it really was. All the
______ went over there, there was a ball diamond when
I was a kid, the teams used to play, and we went right
straight down to snake hole, swimming beach. It was a
clear enough area, that was all.
MR. BARRY:
What did your father do?
MS. RYTTER:
He was a car inspector on the
railroad at the Point.
MR. BARRY:
So he had already worked at
Sparrows Point for quite awhile?
MS. RYTTER:
Yes.
MR. BARRY:
What was it like growing up in a
Sparrows Point family?
MS. RYTTER:
Well, let's see, I had relatives
down at Sparrows Point, my grandmother, grandfather and
aunts and uncles, so every weekend we would get on the
old 26 and ride down and spend the weekend with my
grandmother, and she would have all the things I like
to eat, and I knew a lot of the kids that I went to
school with down there, because we only had eight
grades over here. We had to go down to Sparrows Point.
MR. BARRY:
What was the town like at
Sparrows Point?
MS. RYTTER:
It was settled. You could say
that for it, the streets kind of would look empty
unless it was time for mothers to be going to the
grocery store or hanging their wash out, and I have a
lot of friends still from high school. In fact, her
walker [points to her dog] , Goldie Lispecter -- did you see The Eagle [Dundalk newspaper] this week?
MR. BARRY:
Not yet.
MS. RYTTER:
Because her picture is in there,
somebody wrote about her, so I'm using her as a walker, and
we have been good friends ever since high school.
MR. BARRY:
So did your dad have to work
shift work?
MS. RYTTER:
No, he worked all 7:00 to 3:00.
MR. BARRY:
So you had it a little bit easier
than a lot of the families that we hear about where the
kids had --
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, and we lived on Playfield,
which had two, four, six houses on it, so we all knew
one another and we all played together. Of course the
rest of them are Catholic, I was the only one Lutheran,
and I remember Mr. McCartney lived next door to us, he
would get out his fiddle and play These Golden Slippers. You could hear him all over the
neighborhood, and a lot of nice people.
MR. BARRY:
When did you start working?
MS. RYTTER:
I guess when I got out of high
school, went up to Hutzler's [main department store in
Baltimore City]and got a job.
MR. BARRY:
What year did you get out of high
school?
MS. RYTTER:
'38, and when my dad didn't
think $13 a week was enough, so he got me on down at
the Point, but I worked '40, '41 and up until September
of '42.
MR. BARRY:
And what did you do?
MS. RYTTER:
I flipped sheets of tin.
MR. BARRY:
Tell us a little bit about the
tin room. What was the tin used for?
MS. RYTTER:
Well, the tin made the cans.
Some orders we would know what cans they were making,
and other orders we didn't, and we would pile them up
and the director would come by and count them. He
would pile them up and give them to the crane. Those
women really worked, and we had Mrs. Alexander as our
boss, very sturdy straight woman, lived over in
Turner's Station, but she really enjoyed having her job
and always looked neat and precise, and she would tell
you about your mistakes if you made any. We got a
little lunch hour, about half hour lunch hour. Three
o'clock we were done.
MR. BARRY:
Did you have to apply for the job
or did you just --
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. Go down, put in an
application. Cy Loavecan, did you ever hear of him?
MR. BARRY:
No.
MS. RYTTER:
He worked down there in the
office. He's the one that I went to, and he's also the
one that filled my application when I quit.
MR. BARRY:
So you worked at Hutzler's for a
couple of years?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
Working where, which Hutzler's?
MS. RYTTER:
It's on Howard Street, and I
worked in the wrapping department.
MR. BARRY:
So you had to take the street car
downtown. What was it like going into Baltimore city
at that time?
MS. RYTTER:
Well, when I was a kid I used to
get real sick by the time I hit Baltimore Avenue, but
then as I was riding it every day to Hustlers I could
find somebody to talk to and it kind of eased it up,
but it was scary riding a street car, because there
are a lot of people you didn't know and not everybody
was friendly, but Hustlers was a nice place to work.
MR. BARRY:
So Dundalk was like a small
village at the time where you knew everybody?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
And then you had to go into town
and it was a bigger --
MS. RYTTER:
We had the Strand Movie, which
is now a Dollar Store. We had a bakery right next to
the Strand. We had an old five and ten next to them.
Then we had a police station, fire department, and then
I worked in the gift shop up there for fifteen years
and they had a gift shop and a hobby shop and the
restaurant, and it was just a nice community. Rundall
ice cream around the corner, and then the third
building was a restaurant and Duke's hardware store, he
was there for a long time. And you don't remember any
of that?
MR. BARRY:
No. So after two years your
father thought you could make more money down at the
Point?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, and I don't remember what
I made.
MR. BARRY:
Was the tin room already in
operation when you got there?
MS. RYTTER:
Was what?
MR. BARRY:
Was the tin room already
functioning when you got there?
MS. RYTTER:
Oh, yeah.
MR. BARRY:
About how many people, how many
women worked there; do you remember?
MS. RYTTER:
I wouldn't know. I wouldn't
know. Just seemed like everybody had like not a desk,
but we had a place where they put the piles of tin.
Another one there, another one there, there, and we
weren't supposed to talk to anybody. The directors
would get us in conversation once in awhile.
MR. BARRY:
So the way the work went is that
some -- were the sheets delivered by a crane to your
table?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, they would load them down,
and then we go sheet by sheet looking for the menders,
and then they come back and count them and hoist them
back up again.
MR. BARRY:
So you just did that all day
long?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
Did you get paid by the sheet or
did you get paid by the hour?
MS. RYTTER:
The hour.
MR. BARRY:
Was there any time when you went
out into the plant, or did you pretty much stay in the
tin room?
MS. RYTTER:
No, just the restroom, the
lunchroom.
MR. BARRY:
Was it a separate building?
MS. RYTTER:
No, it's all the same. Steps up
to the lunchroom.
MR. BARRY:
But the tin room was a separate
building?
MS. RYTTER:
Yes.
MR. BARRY:
It was all women?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, and then some men worked
in the office there, and the directors were all men.
MR. BARRY:
And You worked there from 1940
until '43?
MS. RYTTER:
Until September of '42.
MR. BARRY:
Until September of '42. And why
did you leave?
MS. RYTTER:
I was getting married. I was
getting married on the 12th, so I left three days
before that.
MR. BARRY:
Did your husband work at Sparrows
Point?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, he was a civil engineer.
MR. BARRY:
Did you meet him at the Point or
did you meet him in town? Did you meet him at work?
MS. RYTTER:
No, neighbors of mine knew him
because they all shot bows and arrows, and she thought
we ought to meet, so she had us for a blind date, we
kind of hit if off. He was from North Dakota, so he
didn't know too many people.
MR. BARRY:
How did he happen to get to
Sparrows Point?
MS. RYTTER:
Well, he left North Dakota
because they had a drought of seven years, and he rode
the rails to Idaho and he worked in the gold mines in
Idaho. The only way in or out was snow shoes or skis
he said. Then he hoboed to Ohio. He drove a cab.
Then his sister lived in Washington, D.C. and she was hired
on with General Spatz of World War II to watch his
children. So she said there were opportunities for him
to come there, and his brother Henry had already moved
to Virginia, he was a carpenter. So he came to
Washington and went to a technical school, got a job
down at the Point. He lived over in Dundalk at
Mrs. Slimmy's on Baltimore Avenue.
MR. BARRY:
One of the rooming houses? Was
it a rooming house?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. She had about three
roomers I think.
MR. BARRY:
Well, in the time then in the end
of September of '41 the union came into Sparrows Point.
Do you remember anything about that?
MS. RYTTER:
No, other than going down to see
my grandparents and going into the kindergarten once in
awhile and the movie, and I think Dr. Elder down there
was the one that delivered me, and I just had a lot
friends down there so I would go spend weekends with
him.
MR. BARRY:
I'm talking about at the plant
there was an election in September of 1941 for the
steelworkers to come in. Do you remember anything
about that? Were the women involved in that at all?
MS. RYTTER:
No.
MR. BARRY:
And then after you got married
then you stopped work?
MS. RYTTER:
Hmm-hmm. Yes.
MR. BARRY:
Did you ever have a temptation to
go back and be a Rosy?
MS. RYTTER:
No, never did. I wanted a
family, so we had three boys, and then ten years later
we had two girls, and we lived in the apartments on
Liberty Parkway, and we bought down at York Way and we
bought down Watersedge. My house is still at Watersedge
My daughter and her husband have it now.
MR. BARRY:
So you have never been much out
of Dundalk?
MS. RYTTER:
Uh-uh.
MR. BARRY:
Except on vacations?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
What do you like about Dundalk?
MS. RYTTER:
The people. You can go to any
store and buy anything and everybody knew you. Walk in
a drugstore and Cal Hunter, the pharmacist, "Hi, Mugs."
Walk into Rundall, "Hi, Mugs. It was nice.
MR. BARRY:
Well, tell us a little bit then
before we finish about the tin room. Did you have to
wear gloves?
MS. RYTTER:
Oh, yeah, and the tin would cut
our gloves lots of times, but we could always get a new
pair. Had to wear uniforms that wrapped around.
MR. BARRY:
And did the company provide those
uniforms for you?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
And Were there requirements about
how you had to dress and talk?
MS. RYTTER:
Only that the uniform you had to
have and it had to be starched a little bit, and the
gloves.
MR. BARRY:
So that every day before you went
to work you had to put on a starched uniform?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
Now, did you ride to work with
your dad?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, I did, because he dropped
me off at the tin mill and then he would go over to the
railroad.
MR. BARRY:
And then picked you up on the way
home?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, like on the street car.
MR. BARRY:
What was it like riding the
street car?
MS. RYTTER:
Swinging and swaying.
MR. BARRY:
Lots of people though?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. It was a nice old street
car.
MR. BARRY:
Did you ever get a sense of how
big it was down there at the Point?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. You go outside and wait
for the street car or wait for somebody to pick you up
and it was just vast, all over the place. You just
knew there was something over there because they were
building something there because there were buildings,
just huge, look at it now.
MR. BARRY:
So you never collected a pension
or anything from -- never worked there long enough to
get that?
MS. RYTTER:
No.
MR. BARRY:
Did you ever go back to work
after your kids were older?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. When Bob was -- I guess
he was nine or ten. Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hackman in
the gift shop on Dundalk, they asked me to come work
for them. Of course I had known them since I was a
little kid. So I went up to work for them 9:00 to 1:00
every day, and I enjoyed that too because a lot of
people came in. Sold cards and gifts. It was a good
town, and the hobby shop was right next door, and they
moved over to Saint Helena, and I don't know what's up
there now, a day care center or something. Cigarette
store is what the gift shop is.
MR. BARRY:
I know you are still active, you
go to the Historical Society.
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, I go there every Thursday,
and I go to the laundromat on Mondays, and I go to
Bible study down at St. Timothy's on Tuesday, and we
have senior club down at my church on Wednesday, and
Thursday I'm up to the Historical Society.
MR. BARRY:
How do you pack all this activity
in?
MS. RYTTER:
Well, I am blessed with very
good friends that pick me up.
MR. BARRY:
Good.
MS. RYTTER:
Because I'm past the time I
could walk up there.
MR. BARRY:
Did you ever drive?
MS. RYTTER:
No.
MR. BARRY:
Never had a driver's license?
MS. RYTTER:
Never did. I had five kids that
towed me around and a husband.
MR. BARRY:
Okay, great. Any other memories
of Sparrows Point? Do you ever see any of the other
women still around from there?
MS. RYTTER:
The old company store we used to
go over there and buy stuff.
MR. BARRY:
What was that like?
MS. RYTTER:
It was a great big place, and
they had the meat and the groceries and they had
something else over here you could get shoes upstairs,
and my mother's cousin worked there so she always saw
that I got waited on, and other than that I don't
remember too much about it.
MR. BARRY:
Now, did your dad shop at the
company store most of the time, or did he shop up here
in town?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, sometimes he did. My mom
did, not him. I remember the B Street clubhouse and
the drugstore was down on the corner, and there's
another drug store further on down D Street and Eddie's
Supermarket.
MR. BARRY:
Well, was the town segregated at
that time?
MS. RYTTER:
Oh, yeah. D, E and F were all
white. And over on H -- no, I, J and H were black, but
they didn't come into the town itself proper too much,
maybe for grocery shopping and they were likeable.
MR. BARRY:
Must have been hard to see that
town torn down?
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah, especially at Bagan Beach,
because we used to go down there and swim all the time.
Yeah, things change. Look at Dundalk, all the little
stores we used to have, nothing.
MR. BARRY:
Well, everybody who lives here
loves it.
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah.
MR. BARRY:
And Feels very defensive about
how people --
MS. RYTTER:
People are coming back and
buying houses.
MR. BARRY:
Sure. I think it's an area
that's going to come back.
MS. RYTTER:
I wish my kids would come back,
but they won't. They like big houses. I don't, never
did.
MR. BARRY:
Well, any other stories about the
Point that you can remember? When you worked down
there, did you have parties? Did you girls go out at
all?
MS. RYTTER:
We saw the girls at work, maybe
on the street car going home, but we didn't mesh with
them.
MR. BARRY:
Were any of them married or were
they pretty much all single women?
MS. RYTTER:
Huh?
MR. BARRY:
Were the women in the tin room
pretty much all single?
MS. RYTTER:
No, there were quite of them
that were married. The ones that lived in Highlandtown
were all married, and the ones that lived in Turner's
were all married, but we just didn't congregate except
at the lunch hour, that's about the only time.
MR. BARRY:
So if there were people there
from Turner's Station, the tin room had blacks and
whites working together?
MS. RYTTER:
No, they were all white.
MR. BARRY:
All white?
MS. RYTTER:
All white. We call it White
Turner's.
MR. BARRY:
I see. I didn't know there was
such a place. I always thought Turner's Station was a
black community.
MS. RYTTER:
No, there's on old part of
Dundalk that divides to the highway. That side is all
white, this side is all black.
MR. BARRY:
I see. And was the bridge there
then so they could walk across?
MS. RYTTER:
The street car bridge and a
railroad bridge, but they tore them both down I guess.
MR. BARRY:
All right. Okay. Well, I
appreciate your time. Any other memories of living in
Dundalk?
MS. RYTTER:
I can't think of anything, Bill.
MR. BARRY:
Okay, good.
MS. RYTTER:
It was so long ago, you kind of
forget.
MR. BARRY:
And you weren't there that long.
MS. RYTTER:
Yeah. I appreciate you coming
and showing interest.