Hidden in the Woods (03-03)

Historical narrative

The year was 1959. His name was William. William, portrayed in the piece, was a Black day laborer who lived in a one-room, dilapidated cabin off Collington Road (Rt. 197) in Bowie, reached by an almost-hidden, deeply rutted dirt-and-mud road, more like a wide path, situated roughly across from Woodward Pond, portrayed in the previous watercolor in this collection. Steve would often ride with his father in the family's 1952 Studebaker 2R5 truck, which is also depicted in the piece, to pick up William for a day's work. Steve wondered from time to time if William might have been a descendant of freedom-seeking, escaped slaves who had lived in isolation in the “dense woodlands, swamps, and waterways” between the Patuxent and Potomac Rivers, including “areas near present-day Woodmore, Mitchellville, and Bowie.” The area around William's cabin certainly fits this description.

Watercolor

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