Perdue, Nora Fooks (1892-1987) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
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Interviewee: |
Nora Fooks Perdue (1892-1987) |
| Interviewer: |
Katherine Fisher |
| Date of interview: |
1981 February 27 |
| Length of interview: |
1 hour |
| Transcribed by: |
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| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
Church
Domestic Life
Farming
School
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Furnace Town (Md.)
Long Ridge (Md.)
Piney Grove (Md.)
Interview Begin
INTERVIEWER: Today we’re talkin’ with Mrs. Gorman Perdue. Your first name is Nora?
NORA: Nora, ya.
INTERVIEWER: Nora and you were a, oh I know your maiden name and I can’t remember it.
NORA: Fooks.
INTERVIEWER: Fooks, that’s it.
NORA: I was Nora Fooks.
INTERVIEWER: Nora Fooks and we’re at her house on Washington Street.
NORA: I was raised at Long Ridge.
INTERVIEWER: At Long Ridge. How old are you, right now?
NORA: 89.
INTERVIEWER: My goodness, alright. Where, for the benefit for those who don’t know, is Long Ridge?
NORA: It’s between Snow Hill and Fruitland. It’s just off the Salisbury Road, just a little ways. I would say, I don’t know much about miles, but not more than one-eighth of a mile from the main highways, as it goes. Snow Hill to Salisbury Road. It was closer to the old road, the old road is growed up, most of it.
INTERVIEWER: Right. What did your parents do? Were they farmers or …..?
NORA: Well my father was, he, after he was married he build a little home on the, it was Fooks property then. The Fooks back in them days owned a lot of property. My father’s grandfather built and he had 2 sons. They were Benjamin Fooks and Irving Fooks and he left them right big tracts of land and my father build a home on his place. Well where he built a home, my sister later bought it. It was called Halfway Place, between Snow Hill and Salisbury. It was on the Old Stagecoach Road. It was the Stagecoach Road, and I heard my grandmother and my father too, speak of people that were drivin
the stagecoach, they had, of course they had horses and mules for everything then. They would stop there to my grandmother’s place and to water their horses because she had a well. Big well of water in her front yard, between the house and the road, and a, bein’ it was halfway, it was convenient for ‘em to stop and, of course they always had a watering trough there, in the yard full of water for the horses and they’d draw water from the well, you know in the bucket and then empty it over in the trough. Water their horses and a , maybe feed ‘em or maybe they might have their lunch or something and then sometimes there was a, I don’t know whether this is what you want or not, but they had, there was, they call ‘em pack peddlers, and they mostly come from the old country and I think they were mostly Jewish people, and a they’d go through there bein’ it was on the Stagecoach Road. It was sort of a mainway from Snow Hill to Salisbury. And they would stop there and sometimes if it was nearly night they’d stay all night.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes.
NORA: And there was one, I’ll tell ya this story. I don’t know whether you want to use it or not, but you’ve heard of Baltimore Bargain House?
INTERVIEWER: Yes I think.
NORA: Yes. Lots of people do. Well there was a fella, a young, he was a young man, ‘bout the same age as my father I guess, when my father was livin’ at home, ‘fore he was married, well he was a pack peddler that had come over here and they’d sell lace and buttons and thread and a embroidery and pretty things, they’d have in this pack. They’d unpack and lay it all out and a, to sell, and people could pick up something which you were glad to get, because there was nothing like the Salisbury Mall or nothing like that. You could go and walk around and find everything and anything you wanted and they were glad to look through these things and pick out some buttons and pretty lace and anything you wanted and a, then they’d get that packed up and they’d go on to Snow Hill then or Salisbury, or well maybe they’d stop along the road if they had time and they wanted to, and, but that was called the Old Stagecoach Road and later years, after my grandmother got old and after my grandfather died, my sister and her husband bought this place, and it’s still standin’ there and nobody livin’ in the house that they lived in now, but their grandson has built a new home right there between her house and the cemetery, the woods, the cemetery near the woods where my grandparents and my father and mother are buried out there in that cemetery. That’s on Long Ridge, this is part of a long hill and on downpast that hill to the east of it was a, a mile and a half or two miles, I guess, it was still on the Fooks property. But my father built a home, that’s where we children were born. Me and my sister and Albert and a child that died in birth. Stillborn. We were all born in this hose where he built a home or had it built after he and my mother were married and it was still on Long Ridge.
INTERVIEWER: Goodness that was a large property.
NORA: Oh yes it was. Well there was 2 brothers that owned it. My grandfather was Benjamin Fooks and his brother that owned a lot of property joining that, his name was Irving Fooks, and they, their father owned a lot of land and a, he had several children and of course grandchildren and a some of them were named for Uncle Irving, I mean my grandfather and Uncle Irving too, I guess. My great-grandfather’s name was Euriah Fooks. That was an old name.
INTERVIEWER: It, yes I’ve seen it in some of the old papers you know I read. Euriah.
NORA: Euriah. Well I named a child Euriah, a little boy, that I named that lived to be about eight months and a half, and he died. I name him Euriah.
INTERVIEWER: Now what was your mother’s maiden name?
NORA: Her name was Perdue, and I’m related to Gorman and I just as well tell ya to start with ‘cause everybody else knows it. You just as well know it too. We’re second cousins.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something. That’s unusual. That is. Where did you go to school?
NORA: Long Ridge School, that’s the only school I was ever in, ‘til after I was grown, married.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sake. Do you remember any of your teacher’s?
NORA: Yes. They were from Snow Hill, mostly. Ya my first teacher was, she was a Fooks. Mamie Fooks. Her name was Mamie. I suppose Mamie Fooks was my first teacher. And she was Gorman’s first teacher. Gorman and Blanche, they’re twins, and they went to school there their first year of school.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll be darned.
NORA: Ya, I remember. I remember mighty well the first time I ever got mad at him.
INTERVIEWER: You do?
NORA: Yes I do. And it wasn’t the last time, but, they went ‘cross the field. They took off. We had to go through right long piece of woods. Well they didn’t have to go through this woods, they cut off and went through this field where they lived in a house that his father was workin’, round the sawmill and when they turned off and left out road on the corner there, go to up where they lived, well we made a bargain one day in our life. We were goin’ home from school, whoever got out there to that corner first; there was a field come out there and it was on the corner and a, they went one way and this field was on the other, was gonna make a mark in the road or put a limb or somethin’ on the road so we’d know, so the others would know that they had already gone on. Well we come out there the next morning and I looked, I didn’t see no mark in the road or no sign where they had been, so I just supposed they hadn’t gone. I looked up the road and up the road a little ways there was another bend in the road that went towards the schoolhouse, and there was Blanche and Gorman running as hard as they could run, were just a, or their heels aflyin’. And I never forgot it. I was so nad with ‘em ‘cause they didn’t do what they were supposed to keep their word. If they promised to do something, they were supposed to do it. But they were runnin’ to get to school ahead of us, before we saw ‘em. They didn’t want us to see ‘em ‘fore they made that bend. We wouldn’t seen ‘em if they hadn’t, we’d thought they were still behind us.
INTERVIEWER: Were there, were there, how many children were in the school? Was it a one-room school?
NORA: Yes, it was a one-room school. Well…….
INTERVIEWER: Not exactly how many, but were there like 10, 20 or……..
NORA: They were more like 20. Between 20 and 30.
INTERVIEWER: Okay and all ages.
NORA: I have a picture here of the school.
INTERVIEWER: Right, I have a copy of it in the library. You loaned it to me several years ago. So I got a copy of that so we can use it, you know when we’re talkin’ about this.
NORA: Yes, yes. Well there was………..I think the time that picture was taken there must have been between 15 and 20 there.
INTERVIEWER: Yes there were.
NORA: In that picture, I have a brother and sister and myself and then of course the rest of ‘em. I knew all of ‘em then. I think I can name ‘em all now, maybe. When I look at it. They were neighbors.
INTERVIEWER: Did the teacher board with a family around there?
NORA: Yes, she usually did. They, one teacher we had was there, at two different times. She was Cousin Sally Coulbourne, and she, her father was a farmer lived over here by Mt. Zion. Mt. Zion Church, in back there where Shockley now lives. He was an uncle of ours. Cousin Sally that taught school there was a, she was my mother’s cousin, and a, she’s the one taught Virgie and myself music. We learned to play when we about 15-16 years old, I guess, somethin’ like it. My father got us an organ.
INTERVIEWER: He did?
NORA: Yes and that was the most wonderful thing we’d ever had, that ever happened to us. Well she was boardin’ there and she taught us music, taught us to play.
INTERVIEWER: Oh how nice.
NORA: Yes it was. And she told us we weren’t supposed to play anything except what she give us to play, our lessons, you know, we’re supposed to take of that and nothin’ of the hymns that I could play that I thought was prettier music, and I started playin’ ‘em. So one day when I got up she had come in from school, I had got home from school before she did. We lived right there in Long Ridge. Long Ridge farm. When we moved there, there was a store there and before that there was a post office.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my goodness.
NORA: Oh yes it was a post office when I used to remember. My father he bought that place when I was about 12 years old and we moved there, but he kept the store. It was a big brick store.
INTERVIEWER: Brick?????
NORA: He kept store there, but he never kept the post office, because it had been closed and at that time there was 5 post offices between Snow Hill and Salisbury, on that road. That was the main road, the Stagecoach Road, there was about 3 post offices. That was from Snow Hill to Salisbury. There was 3 on that road and 2 on the back road that went through the woods and on that back road was Piney Grove post office and Kelley post office.
INTERVIEWER: Oh well, I’ve never heard of Kelley.
NORA: You never heard of it?
INTERVIEWER: No. Now Piney Grove, I knew there was school, there was a school at Piney Grove, wasn’t there?
NORA: Ya there was a school, a store, lumber mill and………….
INTERVIEWER: How would I tell somebody where Piney Grove was?
NORA: What, you go pass Mt. Olive Church and, oh a quarter of a mile pass Piney Grove Church turn at the corner of the church grounds goin’ toward Salisbury, and it’s a, from Piney Grove, Mt. Olive Church. Mt. Olive Church was built in Piney Grove.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, so it’s right in that area. Now there’s nothing left of the store or anything now?
NORA: No, no there’s a farm there.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I know there’s a farm.
NORA: The people that used to own it are not there. Gorman’s uncle used to own Piney Grove and run store there.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sake. Now where, I’ll ask you another question……if you get tired or anything tell me ‘cause we can stop and I can come back again, alright. You be the judge of that. Where was Kelley’s Post Office?
NORA: Well it was on the Wood’s road. If you go to Salisbury from Piney Grove, back right on through, I’ll tell ya where you can, you can still use that road to go to Salisbury; and it’s just about as close as it is to keep on the main road, so when we go through there you come out up there, oh pretty well, getting’ pretty well up towards Salisbury, you wouldn’t know the places, I’ll tell ya the names where people lived along that road, but there’s a new development that comes out there. They call it, comes through that……..
INTERVIEWER: It comes out on the Salisbury Road, doesn’t it?
NORA: It comes out on the Salisbury Road after you get way up there.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, alright and if you take a road this way and you go into the development, this is the Salisbury Road and if you turn to your right you’re going in that new development?
NORA: Ya, you can go. There’s a new development, well there’s new developments everywhere, but before you get there, there’s a, you go through, well when you come out in site of the Salisbury Road, there’s a lot of new homes on each side, you come out on, sort of in between these new homes, and it’s……oh what is they call that section in there? I don’t know……I kepp, I forgot.
INTERVIEWER: It’s not Deer Harbor?
NORA: Um, um.
INTERVIEWER: No, it’s back toward Berlin more, from Deer Harbor? Right? It’s on the east side.
NORA: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, back in there. I’ll be darned, that’s neat.
NORA: Sometime when goin’ to Salisbury, if you wanted to, it wouldn’t be out of your way, it wouldn’t take up your time, just go through there, turn in there at the Mt. Olive Road and go past Mt. Olive, and when you get past Mt. Olive there’s a road goes this way…………….
INTERVIEWER: Yes, bears to your left.
NORA: Goes towards Salisbury, goes through Piney Grove was, of course nothing much there, Piney Grove now, but there’s some clear land and then there’s another road that’s left of the church goes out towards Powellville Road.
INTERVIEWER: Right that I know. I know that road. That’s good, I will do that sometime. Where did you all, your father farmed……….
NORA: Ya and kept store.
INTERVIEWER: And kept the store, so you really didn’t, would you go into Salisbury much for shoppin’ or anything when you were young?
NORA: Not very often, no. My father did to get things for the store, ‘bout once or twice a week. He’d take the horses and we had a little farm wagon, we called it, or Durbin wagon, and he’d go in Salisbury about once or twice a week and get the groceries for the store.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, oh that’s neat. You said you had your organ, what else would you do as a young girl for entertainment? Would the neighbors get together for parties or anything?
NORA: We had taffy pullin’.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
NORA: Ya, we’d get together. We’d have visitors maybe from some other community, like when we were there we had cousins up around Parsonburg. They’d come down to spend the weekend with us, Saturday and Sunday, and maybe Saturday night we’d have some of the young people around there come over and we’d make taffy. Cook molasses ‘til it was just right, and pull it until it was right and a, cut it with a knife and make taffy. Put walnuts in it, if we had walnuts or hickory nuts or somethin’ or peanuts, maybe.
INTERVIEWER: Would you a, did you, was there a place around that you could go ice skating in the winter? Was there a pond nearby?
NORA: Well some of them did, but we didn’t. There was no place right close. Now there was a mill pond at Millville.
INTERVIEWER: Yes I know where that is. That’s right that was a little bit away from you.
NORA: Yes it was a little. And there was a right big pond there and a, people went ice skatin’ on this Millville pond. Well most, there used to be ponds all around, all through the country because they’d have a mill there grindin’ your corn and wheat sometimes. You know they’d grind wheat for flour and meal.
INTERVIEWER: Oh that’s neat. Do you remember, what can you remember about the Iron Furnace or some stories that people have told you about it?
NORA: I’ll start in by tellin’ you that the story that an older person, he was about my father’s age, I guess. He was right much older than I was. He knew some stories about the Old Furnace and of course I had heard stories about it. Gorman’s father worked there at the time Gorman and Blanche were small, when they were just babies. Blanche was tellin’ me today, I told her you were comin’ down here, I said what can I tell her about the Old Furnace, and she tried to tell me a little somethin’, but she, she never had been one to try to remember things like that too much. She said about all I know about it, she said Pop was workin’ there, loggin’ the mill and we were just babies, and a…..
INTERVIEWER: Well now how old is she now?
NORA: She’s 89.
INTERVIEWER: 89, okay.
NORA: She and Gorman were twins. They were just about seven months older than I am. We were in the first grade together at Long Ridge School.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, you all were. What were you going to tell me about the Iron Furnace?
NORA: Well I’ll tell ya a story that Mr. Willard Carmean, he’s a man that was about my father’s age. He was an older man, than I was and I told it several times, maybe I can get it straight. But the way he told it to me, that somebody told him, when the Old Furnace was runnin’, and you know it, they had, they had a lot of heat there, fire, flames that they burn coal and things. Well they had a bridge, you know, and Blanche told me that a while ago, I was gonna try to tell you that, they had a bridge that went from a hill, come down to the Furnace Stack, sort of a bridge and they had to use blind horses or blind mules to go on that bridge, because if it could see and see down below how high they were, they wouldn’t go. They’d back out.
INTERVIEWER: So they blinded them.
NORA: They used a blind horse to work on that bridge and they’d go from, the bridge would go from the hill down this road to the Furnace Stack, and a, with the mules high up. It still is. The hill’s still there. And a, well he was, what Mr. Carmean told me was the people used to go from there, people that lived there and worked at the Old Furnace. It took a lot of help to keep that fire goin’, keep your wood goin’ and keep that fire goin’, keep the wood dumped up in there. So there was a lot of people lived there, and a, there was, well I can remember when some of the houses there. There was one big house, they said that was the hotel and people would go in there. I did and a lot of other people too, Sunday afternoons. People would gather up Sunday afternoons and go down there at the Old Furnace, and there was a time that there was an old man from somewhere around the community that used to go there and preach in the afternoons. He was a Mr. Burns, I believe, from around Whitesburg. He used to go down there and preach. We went to hear him preach. I and Gorman, when Gladys was a baby and other people went too. We’d stop the horses out there in that clearin’ or sort of a groove and a, they’d hitch their horse if they wanted to or maybe the horse would stand without hitchin’ and a we listened to preachin’ before we left, while he was there. I remember one time we was there and there was another couple drivin’ a horse and buggy. We had never met them before, but we met them down there and they had a baby too, and a so we all sit there in the buggy and listen to this man preach. He had some kind of, a makeshift pulpit or somethin’, stand behind and, well anyway when people lived there they’d come to Snow Hill, they’d get their pay, maybe Friday night or Saturday morning, they’d come to Snow Hill and get their groceries and go back out there. Well there was a grocery store there too, I think, one time. But anyway there was a man was drivin’ a horse and buggy……..I think maybe there was 2 of ‘em, horse and wagon or somethin’ and they, somebody had been to Snow Hill and got something to drink, ‘course that was next thing to do, and they got where they could get a drink and he got too much, and he, it was real cold, and he laid down alongside the road and went to sleep, layin’ there. So these two men come along with the wagon, they saw him layin’ there, and they said well I guess we’ll load him up and carry him somewhere. We’ll carry up there to the Old Furnace. Said we can’t leave him there loaded him on the wagon and carried him up there to the Old Furnace and he was so drunk he didn’t know what they were doin’ to him. When they got him up there and unloaded him in front of that Old Furnace stack and that fire and you know, goin’ up that flue, chimney, and a he began to get to burnin’ alongside, next to that fire. He was sorta burnin’ and he woke up and looked around, and one of the men asked him, says what your name, who are you? He says well they call me Jim Brown down where I come from but Mr. Devil you can call me whatever you please. He thought he had reached his final destination.
INTERVIEWER: Yes he did.
NORA: Ya, he saw all that fire roarin’ up there, and was burnin’……….
INTERVIEWER: And he thought he was there.
NORA: He thought he had already got there.
INTERVIEWER: That’s good.
NORA: So they, I don’t know what they did with him then. I guess they moved him off a little bit from the heat.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll be darned. Do you remember either Mr. Carmean or any other old people mentioning the names of any people…………..
INTERVIEWER: See it just goes along and we can just talk. The Dickerson family…….
NORA: Well yes and a, let’s see, well I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: Well it seems to be pretty much of a mystery, you know what happened to the people. Ever hear of anybody say what happened to all the people, you know that lived out there, when the furnace shut down.
NORA: When the furnace shut down and wasn’t workin’?
INTERVIEWER: Uhum.
NORA: I guess they went back to their farms to work, I guess.
INTERVIEWER: They must have.
NORA: Do farm work.
INTERVIEWER: They would do that. Where did you go to church when you were living at Long Ridge?
NORA: The Old School Baptist Church, Old Nassango Church, and it’s still standin’ there, it’s on the right hand side of the road, as you go to Salisbury, sort of enclosed there, in the woods layin’ around it, and my, not much of a cemetery there. There is a little fenced………….
INTERVIEWER: Ya a little tiny cemetery. Alright.
NORA: That’s Old Nassango, and it wasn’t Nassawango. There was a Nassawango up here along the Nassawango Creek, but it had a “W” in it. Nassawango. Methodist Church and yes that church was going for, oh for a long time, that??????? Gorman’s twin sister and her husband. They’d been there, back of the Old Furnace.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I know where that, where there’s just a graveyard there now, right?
NORA: Yes, there’s just a graveyard. They moved the church up there to the Old Furnace. Moved the church’s up there and a………
INTERVIEWER: Alright now the church you went to Long Ridge was Naseango.
NORA: Yes there was no “W” in it.
INTERVIEWER: No “W” in it.
NORA: It was Naseango, and a, it was an Old School Baptist Church. You know there’s not too many Old School Baptists anymore.
INTERVIEWER: There’s, there’s, we have one here on Washington Street, an Old School Baptist.
NORA: Ya I know we do. Ya.
INTERVIEWER: But they’ve not…….now did you, on Sunday’s did you spend a lot of time in church?
NORA: No.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
NORA: The Methodist, the Old School Baptist people, they didn’t have meetings as much, well they do get together now adays. They didn’t used to much, but in different homes, and have singin’, people singin’. They didn’t used to do that. Well I’ll tell you one thing we did do. Young people would get together Sunday afternoons, of course some of the times some of the children would play ball or something like that, and a we would go through the woods out towards Whitesburg. There was an old man lived in there, old, uh, Mr. Chatham, Mr. Sam Chatham, lived alone in there. We girls used to love go in there to see him, talk to him.
INTERVIEWER: Did you really?
NORA: Yes we get out and walk in there, walk through the woods you know and we’d pick flowers along and pick teaberries. We’d go in and sit and talk to him.
INTERVIEWER: Was he an older gentleman?
NORA: Yes, he was an old man. He was a Civil War, well he didn’t fight in the Civil War, but he stayed hid in the woods, you see.
INTERVIEWER: He did?
NORA: Yes people did do that, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Oh well I’ve heard that they did, but I never knew that anybody really hid.
NORA: Yes I knew him.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sake.
NORA: Ya and he used to tell we girls, he said, well girls, he said, marry while you’re young, when you get old like me nobody won’t want ya.
INTERVIEWER: I bet you did enjoy him. How did you go about courting or dating when you were young? Did you do group parties and meet people that way?
NORA: Yes, well, different girls would have a different party times. We’d have a party at our house and our cousins and the neighbors would come. Play games. I’ll tell ya the games would play was, well old rusty iron and skip to my loo, and then they’d have a party and we’d go there, and they’d have their friends and neighbors.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, so you got to meet different people.
NORA: Different, from different communities.
INTERVIEWER: Right. When did you, you knew Mr. Perdue in the first grade, but did you know him right straight on through?
NORA: Well not very well. We, he had sisters and we used to visit in his home once in a while. His sisters, and they’d come to our house, and well I think maybe Gorman come a time or two and spend a weekend, and his sisters.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, alright. When did you get married?
NORA: Where?
INTERVIEWER: When and where?
NORA: Yes in Salisbury. A cousin of mine that was married just about 3 weeks before we were, I guess, 2 or 3 weeks, we heard. We were all friends and went around together. Well this fella, his name was Barry Morris, he married my cousin, lived up there towards Parsonburg, and after we heard they were married, well we went to visit their home, her mother’s home, Uncle Irwin Gordy and Aunt Mamie Gordy, in between our house where we lived in Salisbury, and a, they told, of course they told us that they went ahead and got married ‘bout couple weeks before, maybe, something like it. So he made arrangements for us to get married and he would take us, ‘cause he had a car. The rest of us didn’t have a car. We had a horse and buggy so he took Gorman and myself to Salisbury one Saturday afternoon. Well we went to this same home. We went to Mamie Gordy’s to spend the night and go have supper there. She fixed supper for all of us. She fixed supper for Gorman, myself and ???? Barry and her family and a, I think she had one daughter that was married yet. She had one that was married before we were and a, Barry come with his car, after, no he come for supper. He didn’t wait till after supper, he was there for supper, I think, then he took us to Salisbury. The same preacher that married him, and we were married in Salisbury, and the preacher’s name was Franklin Carey. He preached at the Methodist Church in Salisbury.
INTERVIEWER: What year was that?
NORA: 1913.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, my goodness that’s a long time ago.
NORA: Ya well I and Gorman lived together 66 years, well 66 and a half years.
INTERVIEWER: Well that’s a long time. Now where did you two set up housekeeping?
NORA: Up there in, in the Mt. Olive neighborhood.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, so you were still right in Worcester County down here. Were you, was Mr. Perdue a farmer?
NORA: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
NORA: Ya Gorman’s mother owned a place, small farm that was her father’s and a, so when we were married the house was getting’ run down. It had been rented out. Colored people lived in it, and different people had lived in it. We got a carpenter. His name was Lawrence Dennis. He was a carpenter and he came there. He and Gorman worked together and fixed the place up and I went over there and helped them. My father lived right close by.
INTERVIEWER: What do you remember as being the most difficult thing, getting your household going? You’d been used to probably cooking and cleaning and, you’d done that around your house. Right?
NORA: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: You’d always had to help out. Was there anything you remembered as being hard to get used to doing when you were out on your own?
NORA: Well I don’t know of anything.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
NORA: Well I guess probably so. But, see we weren’t used to havin’ everything, no way. We didn’t have no indoor plumbing! We had outdoor toilet and that’s where we went of a night, after supper. If it was raining, that’s where you had to go.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my, or if it were cold, or snowing. My.
NORA: You know what we used to do, girls, my sister and me and my, our cousins, different ones come to visit. We had little secrets that we didn’t want to talk before the older people, we’d go out to the toilet and sit out there. Nobody bothered us.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I guess not.
NORA: Go out there and sit and talk.
INTERVIEWER: Now when you and Mr. Perdue got settled on the farm, did you raise chickens and cows and……
NORA: Yes, we had chickens. We had some chickens given to us when we were married. That was one of customs. When a couple got married, they didn’t have anything much. Somebody that had ‘em maybe would give ‘em a pig. Somebody would give ‘em a settin’ hen or a brood of baby chicks, and we, we only had chickens. Everybody was supposed to have chickens.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, did you plant a garden?
NORA: Oh yes, I remember mighty well the first garden that I and Gorman planted. And he had never planted a garden and I had never planted a garden, and we workin’ a horse, a colt that had never worked in the garden. And of course the colt was pretty well broke, and a, didn’t mind and I ‘pect, well he got the garden plowed and run up the rows and, we got our seeds and I guess my mother found us some garden seeds. We, yes we had a garden. We had everything in it, just about. It didn’t, it didn’t turn out too bad.
INTERVIEWER: Did you, you already knew how to can and preserve things?
NORA: Well yes I learned. I learned. I didn’t know too much about it. Yes, we had to learn to can.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now how, just for the benefit of people listening, ‘cause I think I know, how many children did you and Mr. Perdue have?
NORA: We had 9.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, and…..now….you started, once you lived in that area, did you start to go to Mt. Olive Church, then?
NORA: Gorman started going there when he was 12 years old.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, so it was his church?
NORA: His mother already belonged there. His father and mother were married there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh how nice.
NORA: Ya, and he always belonged to Mt. Olive Church from the time 12 years old and when I married him, well I joined Mt. Olive Church, and I had. I never went to Methodist Church and I was raised Old School Baptist. So when I had to join church there with him, I had to be baptized. But you didn’t, you know newer way of baptism, they just put their wet hand on your head. Well that didn’t look like baptism to me ‘cause I was raised Old School Baptist, and all the baptism that I knew anything about, had read anything about in the Bible, it looked like immersion.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
NORA: So I told our preacher, we had a young preacher. Somewhere’s about Gorman’s age I guess, and I told him I believed baptism by immersion. He says well I can baptize you either way. Says I’ll baptize you by immersion or by just layin’ hands on, so we made arrangements for next Sunday, next preachy Sunday. I was baptized down there in the creek.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sake.
NORA: So I was baptized. I was the only one that was ever baptized in that creek that I know of, but we made arrangements and some of the church people went down there after the church service. Gorman’s father and mother, few of the others, I was baptized down there in that creek, there by the right cross from the bridge. By this Methodist preacher, young man baptized me.
INTERVIEWER: Well how nice. Now where did, were you on that farm for a long time?
NORA: No. The farm where we went when we fixed up the house?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, that one.
NORA: Well that fall we left there, and we went, moved down Piney Grove. Gorman’s uncle had died, that lived there. Jimmy Dickerson, and then that fall, after we were married, Jimmy Dickerson’s widow died, and I’ll tell ya who she was. I don’t believe you know her or not, she was Grace Dickerson’s mother. Do you know Grace Dickerson….
INTERVIEWER: The name is familiar, but I’m not sure….
NORA: Ya, she married George Moore, and George is still livin’, and she passed away about a year ago.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, so then your children……..
NORA: She was a teacher.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
NORA: Grace was.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. So your children went to school at Piney Grove?
NORA: Ya they did, for a right good while. I mean they did ‘til they started the high school, and then they come in to their grandmother’s and grandfather Perdue had moved here in town out there on the Berlin Road, up on the hill there, and they’d come in here and a, I mean come in here and stay at nights during the week and go home Friday nights.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. ‘Cause that was, there was no bus service.
NORA: Well no, exceptin’ there was on this road that comes, from the, by the fire towers comin’ into Snow Hill, there was a Mr. Warren. You’ve heard of them?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes I know Mr. Warren. Yes.
NORA: Mr. Frank Warren, well he had a son named Frank too. Well he drove the school bus for a long time. But he would take Gladys, but he didn’t much want to do it, didn’t like to do it. I think he told her one time that it cost him seven cents every time he stopped. Well he didn’t much like it, to have to stop and pick her up when he wasn’t…..She lived back a couple of miles. She lived back close to Mt. Olive Church, and would walk out there to the road. Well Grace did, Clarence did too. Well Clarence did too. Well Clarence didn’t go very long. He started to high school, but he never liked school.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, so he didn’t stay.
NORA: No.
INTERVIEWER: No.
NORA: He went to school for a while. He told me one day he was gonna quit school. He really didn’t like school. He was gonna quit, and of course I didn’t want him to do it and a, he says I had rather stay home and work in the plowed field by myself and go to school, and I knew that he had. He just didn’t care much for school.
INTERVIEWER: You’re right if he’d rather work in the field.
NORA: Rather work in the field by hisself, than go to school. So I said alright, if that’s the way you feel about it, so in a day or two after that, when Gorman come from his work, Clarence went to him and told him, Pop he says I’ve handed in my books today, I’ve quit school…He says what you’d do that for? Clarence says well Mom says I could.
INTERVIEWER: Kids are smart, aren’t they?
NORA: Ya. Gorman went up on me then. What you tell him he could stop school for. And I told him what Clarence said…..ERASED… (About minutes….personal)
INTERVIEWER: I declare. Do you remember riding on the train when you were young?
NORA: Oh yes, I do. When we lived in Parsonburg one year, we moved from Long Ridge, my father sold out there and went to live in Parsonburg and went in the store business, partnership with a nephew, and a, while we lived to Parsonburg we’d go to Ocean City. Most any Sunday.
INTERVIEWER: Would you really?
NORA: And a most every Saturday, especially if it was payday. We’d get on the train and go to Salisbury.
INTERVIEWER: You would? Ohhhh.
NORA: Saturday afternoon, spend, get our check, cashed and spend the money. Come home that night and on the train there’d be a lot of men on there drinkin’.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my.
NORA: Yes. Just out for a big time. And I carried my grandmother to Ocean City one Sunday. She come to see us when we were at Parsonburg and she had never been to Ocean City. She’d never seen the ocean. She’d been to the bay, but she’d never been to the ocean.
INTERVIEWER: What did she think of that?
NORA: I don’t remember now whether she said too much about it or not. But I had a picture taken of her. I wasn’t with her. I should a had my picture with her I expect, but I didn’t. I just wanted a picture of her and I got, I got here somewhere, a picture of my grandmother taken over Ocean City the first time she ever went, and it was her last time she ever went.
INTERVIEWER: Oh goodness. Did you all ever go to Public Landing much?
NORA: Well yes, people out in that section, they called it Forester’s Day. It was a day they come to, what they’d do would be come to Mt. Olive picnic on the way. Let’s see, I know our picnic was on a, be on a Wednesday night, I guess, well anyway they come there to the picnic, and go on to Public Landing, leave from the picnic, go on drivin’ horse and buggy, and they’d get over, get over Public Landing about light.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sake.
NORA: Drivin’, well people that had mules and horses would take a wagon load. Get a wagon load together and go to Public Landing. Get there about light, and go bathing if they wanted to, and spend the day over there and go home before night, maybe.
INTERVIEWER: Would you pack lots of food to take with you?
NORA: Yes, they’d always carry a lunch, you know, a big dinner. Fried chicken and a, biscuits, and different things to eat.
INTERVIEWER: Now back in your early days, chicken wasn’t something you had everyday, was it? Was it plentiful?
NORA: What?
INTERVIEWER: Chicken. Was friend chicken a treat?
NORA: No, ‘cause you couldn’t get chicken in the stores.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
NORA: You had to raise ‘em.
INTERVIEWER: And you could only, you only killed yours at certain times, right?
NORA: Well when we need them.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
NORA: Maybe Saturday night, have some for Sunday dinner.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, ‘cause that, you know, now we don’t think of chicken as a treat.
NORA: No, ‘cause that’s something we can have anytime we want, take a notion. Well was another thing that a, Gorman and Blanche were twins and they were the oldest, well she had a child that was older, that died. But they were the oldet and a, so when Gorman and Blanche’s birthday went home, and she expected everybody to be there for Gorman and Blanche birthday. Just like Christmas, and they’d have fried chicken. You couldn’t go to the store and buy it, but she have an incubator in the house. She’d set some eggs in that incubator……..