Evening star., 1942-09-10

FIrSt center to be singled out by
the local Office of Civilian Defense
as a possible refuge for evacuated
District residents is an air-condi-
toned, sound -proofed Colonial cot
tage 20 miles out of Washington at
Ashton, Md.
Patted on the back in an OCD
press release is DR.. L. T. Bussler,
one-time aviator and Army physi-
clan, who started out to build a re-
search laboratory beside his re-
stored old home on the Colesville
pike and ended up with a center
where, he figures, $50 people could
be fed and 100 housed.
What DR.. Bussler does in the lab
oratory is strictly hush-hush, but it
has to do with tropical medicine re-
search for the Government and
methods of treating burns of sailors
who must swim through seas of
flaming oil.
All he needed for his laboratory
was four walls and roof, but Mrs.
Bussler took up canteen work, the
county Red Cross organization
mentioned that it should have a
place to feed evacuees and one
thing led to another.
Wel1-Stocked Kitchen.
DR.. Bussler lined the walls of the
laboratory building with knotty pine
and the ceiling with sound-proofing
material. One of the rooms of the
place he had built became a kitchen
and there he installed an oil stove,
an electric stove and an old field
stove, which he bought from a
circus, where wood or coal could
be burned. The baker wouldn't
make his regular deliveries, should
disaster strike, he figured, and the
women could cook their own bread
IN the old stove.
The walls of the kitchen are lined
with supplies-cocoa, coffee, chew
ing gum, salmon, cigarettes, choco-
late, pipe tobacco and II different
kinds Of baby food because mothers
might come with their babies. An
other food source is 1000 quarts of
vegetables canned by Mrs. Bussler.
All the food would be free, he said.
The long front room has an aper-
ture through which dishes of food
could be slid from the kitchen bv
Mrs. Bussler and her crew of trained
canteen workers. A long counter
extends more than half the length
OF the room and the food would be
placed there.
Using cafeteria style, the refu-
gees would pick up their food and
take it to the window seats or the
lowest shelf Of the many on the
walls. There are enough chairs for
all OF them to sit down, facing the
wall.
Weighs Contingencies.
A man to face every contingency,
DR.. Bussler has installed two coffee
urns he picked up at sale-one for
gas, the other for electricity. One
OF the two wells outside is manually
operated in case the electricity
should go.
Still filling the shelf spaces of
the long room is chemical equip
ment and drug store supplies. DR..
Bussler recently bought out a drug
store. The actual laboratory, how
ever, is in an inside room off the
kitchen with a no trespassing sign
on the door
Velvet draperies somebody once
gave the Busslers have been fash
ioned into blackout curtains and
forming a comfortable wall seat at
one end of the room are the leather
cushions from the big car DR.. Buss-
ler no longer uses.
At the top of a flight of bright red
stairs is the still unfinished sleeping
quarters where evacuees could
spend the night on straw-filled,
Army-style mattresses. He figures
he can house 100 at time that way.
Prepared for Chance.
Actually, there has been no plan
ming done here for systematic evac-
uation and no indication that Ash