White, Mary B (1904-1999) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Mary Bounds White (1904-1999) |
| Interviewer: |
Scott Kendall |
| Date of interview: |
1982 April |
| Length of interview: |
48 minutes |
| Transcribed by: |
Michelle Ernat |
| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
Church
Domestic Life
Pocomoke City (Md.)—History
Pocomoke City Fair
School
Transportation
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Pocomoke City (Md.)
Interview Begin
MARY: Bounds White. 68 years old. My birthday is January thirteenth, nineteen four. And my, I was a Bounds. My parents’ name was William E. Bounds and Lena Bounds. Before she was married she was a Holland. And my grandparents, my mother’s mother was a Hitch. My father’s mother was an Ent. I guess that’s all.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, so your child life you didn’t have many things to do. Well, you had a lot of things to do.
MARY: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: ‘Cause you had there were no sisters.
MARY: Well, I might just as well say that. I was the oldest of seven children and the only girl. So that took care of my chores *Laughing* and responsibilities and jobs outside the home which I didn’t need. And uh,
INTERVIEWER: Well, did your parents give you money?
MARY: No!
INTERVIEWER: Did you want to buy anything?
MARY: Nothing that I had to have.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, and you did, so your parents only got you just what you needed and you didn’t earn.
MARY: Yeah… You didn’t get a…a…amount every week, no, not like they do now. You got what you had to have and that’s what you got.
INTERVIEWER: So you didn’t have any other money when you were a child?
MARY: No.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, and school? See?
MARY: Um…ah…I graduated, I went to Pocomoke Elementary School, graduated High School. Uh, we went, I guess, we might say we went nine months of the year. I don’t think there were too many problems with discipline. Although there’s always some, you know. I mean in general. I don’t think they had. I know they didn’t have problems with as much problem discipline as they have now. In subjects I took the academic course.
INTERVIEWER: With your, you had your Latin II and Latin.
MARY: Hmm?
INTERVIEWER: You had Latin I and Latin II?
MARY: I had Latin, uh, two years and French 2 years.
INTERVIEWER: And French two years, and uh…
MARY: And Math and English, Science
INTERVIEWER: What grade did you go to? Did you go all the way?
MARY: Eleven. We didn’t have but eleven grades in high school then.
INTERVIEWER: So you never went to 12th grade?
MARY: No, they didn’t have it. I guess we got the same material in eleven years that you get in twelve now. I don’t know what else. I imagine that curriculum and subjects are entirely different anyway.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I think. Ok, do you remember any of the teachers?
MARY: Umm…Mr. Krabill is still living with uh *unintelligible conversation* but not much when I was there. And, umm, Mr. Fontaine was the principal. Clark Fontaine, Miss Ida Belle Wilson was the one I was talking about that, um, was in elementary school, high school and college. And um…
INTERVIEWER: Did he have a vice principal?
MARY: No, we just had a principal. I can’t think of that man’s name. Oh, I know who was principal when I went to school. It was Clark Fontaine. No, they didn’t have any vice principal that I know anything about.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, ‘cause like now the vice principal handles discipline.
MARY: Well, they just didn’t, they just didn’t need it then.
INTERVIEWER: They didn’t have him so they didn’t need him.
MARY: He also, the principal’s the one that taught us foreign language.
INTERVIEWER: So he doubled as the teacher?
MARY: Mmm hmm, He taught us French and Latin both. I mean both subjects. I can’t think who taught? I know it was a Mr. Carter that taught us Math. He’s dead now. He was from Snow Hill but he taught Math here at the school where I went.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have gym? Like?
MARY: I don’t remember them having gym like they’d had it now. I guess they had games but I didn’t participate in ‘em. I don’t remember much about ‘em.
INTERVIEWER: Mmm, okay. Uh… The Church. Where did you go to Church?
MARY: I went to Bethany Methodist Church. And we went to Sunday School. Church was in the morning. That was two hours and an hour at night. Well, we went more than that at night because then they had young folks meeting before church. And that was real active.
INTERVIEWER: Um hmm, so church was a lot more active?
MARY: Yeah, it was.
MARY: Well, you see there wasn’t much on the farm to do.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, so it was almost a thing to do.
MARY: Well they just didn’t think anything of it. You know…
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. There wasn’t much else to do, so they did that.
MARY: Uh huh… No, uh, I never did. After I was grown I used to go ice skating down at my grandfather’s.
INTERVIEWER: Did the pond freeze very much?
MARY: Huh?
INTERVIEWER: Did the pond freeze very much? Or just?
MARY: Oh yes! And every Christmas we always went down to my grandfather’s down there at Christmas and we went on the train. And they always every Christmas and met us on a sleigh. It was snow on the ground every Christmas and we just never…Yeah, met us on that big sleigh.
INTERVIEWER: It was like you had more white Christmases then.
MARY: Yes. It was when we went out on the train down there it was always, he always me us on the sleigh. It was understood you had snow for Christmas.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Wow. You’re awful lucky now if you got snow on Christmas.
MARY: Yeah. And I guess that must have been when I went ice skating. And you know, be down there for Christmas and times like that. But we used to have good time. I couldn’t skate very much unless somebody held me up but coulda stayed there all day long, build a bonfire, you know, and we had a good time. Although I was never much of a skater. Now, I used to love to roller skate and I did get find a little time to roller skate.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you roller skate?
MARY: Right out on the sidewalk.
INTERVIEWER: The sidewalk? Okay, uh…
MARY: And I swim as I said like a brick bat. And I didn’t do much dating til I got out here to teach school. Then all you know when you had the new teacher come. I stayed over here next door where I room and boarded. At that time my father had horses but he didn’t have, I don’t know when he got a car. After I was through out here and I had to come out here in a taxi on Monday morning.
INTERVIEWER: So they had a taxi? To Pocomoke?
MARY: Oh yeah! Such as it was. They brought me here. I forgot how much they charged to bring me out here. But after Russell started going with now, I didn’t have, I had taxis come out and get me and take me home Friday afternoons but I started with Russell and he took me.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, so you saved some money there.
MARY: *Laughing* But, um, they used to play card games because there wasn’t any TV or anything like that. So all these young men around the neighborhood would come over here to Merrell’s night, every night. They’d gather there.
INTERVIEWER: But did they, like, have big parties?
MARY: No, the parties, they just come. In the neighborhood five or six of them would just come over and play cards.
INTERVIEWER: Did they have picnics sometimes? Like a big picnic? An annual?
MARY: No, that would come under down here at Public Landing, I guess.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well, we’ll go on the top here.
MARY: I haven’t talked about the community life, have I?
INTERVIEWER: No. Okay, we’ll just keep on going and start with that.
MARY: Well, I guess after I lived down here after I got married now, I guess you could call them major events, they used to have quilting parties. Great big crowds get together and quilting parties and make homemade ice cream and like that make a party out of it and men would come sit in one room and women in the other room quilting. We used to have a good time at those quilting parties. I guess you’d call them special occasions.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, anything like that.
MARY: At the church, they used to have, uh, socials. Strawberry socials out in the yard. And have strawberry ice cream and cake. Sell it, that way the church made money. They had what they called the Ladies Aid that put that on. In the Church...Now after that, I, uh, under church, after I was married, Russell was a Baptist at Hitch Creek Church and when we were first married, um, we he went with me one Sunday and I went with him one Sunday and part Sunday he didn’t go anywhere. And I found when I went with him I liked the Baptist better. Well, I was in a cast for, um, 2 years. I would have joined the Baptist church sooner but I couldn’t be baptized so then I joined the Baptist church but I never did belong here at Hitch Creek. They had a lot of trouble and they closed church up for a while. And we went in town, First Church.
INTERVIEWER: First Baptist…
MARY: First Baptist and that’s where I was baptized where I was a member. I was never a member here. And we’d been married, uh, six years. We don’t have but one daughter and we’d been married six years before we had her. And I was always glad when she was younger we took her. I took her to Sunday School at the Baptist church. Children did the training at the Methodist church like they did at the Baptist then. I was always glad I did change. I always like the Baptists better when I went with Russell. Nobody influenced me. He didn’t ever say anything or try to get me to change but I knew, uh, didn’t consider him changing because I knew better than that. *Laughs* But, um, well, businesses. They had millinery stores and more than one shoe store, grocery stores. They had home owned grocery stores. See, then they didn’t have chain stores.
INTERVIEWER: Hmmm. They were, like, small grocery stores.
MARY: Yeah, but home owned, one man. My daddy used to run a grocery store.
INTERVIEWER: And you could buy, you know, just about anything in those?
MARY: Yeah…
INTERVIEWER: It wasn’t, like just…
MARY: Oh no! And they had dry goods stores. That was separate from, you know, just buying material and buttons and things pertaining to that. And then, after a while, they had a great big store sold everything. Clothes, shoes, hats and everything, you know.
INTERVIEWER: What was the name of that?
MARY: It...that, they tore it down. That’s where Mini Park is. That was a *unintelligible* store, and uh, he sold everything. That was*unintelligible* that Mini Park. That took up that whole block, the length of the block. They tore it down where the parking lot is and Mini Park. That was Milton Geese’s store. That was a big thing when he built that. ‘Cause that’s the first time we had a store that sold everything like that. Anything you could call for.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any of the banks in town?
MARY: Umm, we didn’t have but two banks and at that time it was Citizen’s Bank and First National. Wasn’t called that, I forgot. They changed names about six times. I don’t know the name but they had two banks. They didn’t have a lot of banks like they have now. That had hardware stores.
INTERVIEWER: Um.. candy stores?
MARY: Huh?
INTERVIEWER: Ice cream parlors
MARY: Yup, um, ice cream parlors. The Stevenson’s ice cream parlor. They made their ice cream. Had a store to sell it in.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, uh, when you lived on your farm where did you go when you went into town? Did you go to all different kinds of stores or just everywhere?
MARY: Yeah, whatever you needed you went to that store. But now, before too long I think, the first chain store was the A&P store. Well then that came up and did most of our shopping there, ‘cause it’s like it is here. They can sell it for cheaper, you see, than the home owned ones. But that was some time after we’d been married. And finally Acme come. They were the only chain stores we had then. And the drug stores weren’t chain stores. They were home owned stores.
INTERVIEWER: So most of the businesses downtown were home owned?
MARY: Yeah…
INTERVIEWER: Private?
MARY: And they were all right uptown. Not outside like they are now. They were right up there.
INTERVIEWER: Where the old buildings are?
MARY: Yeah, hmmm
INTERVIEWER: Ok. Was the streets all paved? Have they always been paved down there?
MARY: Not all of them. I don’t remember when there was oyster shells on the street where we lived.
INTERVIEWER: Like on Market? Was Market? Has it always been paved?
MARY: No. None of them were paved then.
INTERVIEWER: Um, so they were oyster shell or dirt?
MARY: That’s what I remember. And the street we lived on was, where, uh, you know where the hotel is? What do you call it? That was a big thing too.
INTERVIEWER: Parker House?
MARY: Yeah, that was a big thing then. That hotel, not like it is now. Because they didn’t have motels then. See, the hotel was the main thing where everybody stayed. And, uh, that was the big thing, that hotel where we lived on that little short street. We had a big fire in ‘22 and it burnt our house down and the whole business section up. But, uh, Papa had a grocery store right nearly next to the hotel on Park Avenue. And I remember very well those oyster shells. Golly, my brother William was little and he was a mess. They dared him to roll a watermelon on them oyster shells. He’d do it. Those men dared him to do this and he’d tried anything. I remember rolling those watermelons on those oyster shells. Those oyster shells weren’t all cracked up either! Their oyster shells were all stuck up rough.
INTERVIEWER: So they were the whole thing?
MARY: And I remember I didn’t know I’d ever live out here then. Papa had a horse and carriage and he had a stable right up town then. Well, it was about where, um, somewhere near where on the other side of that parking lot, back there. And, ah, I remember Sunday afternoons, we thought this was a long drive from out here. We’d get half way out here, you’d get stuck. Horse couldn’t hardly pull your buggy through it.
INTERVIEWER: So you just had…
MARY: And then we first start had cars, it was red clay all that whole road and there was a certain place in it you’d get stuck. You just knew you were gonna get stuck before you head out.
INTERVIEWER: And when they first built the road it was just narrow enough for one car. You couldn’t meet on it. One little strip down here.
MARY: I don’t know what they did with that. When you met somebody but it was only for one car but we thought we had something ‘cause we were used to getting stuck in mud all the time. On the road. Finally they put that little strip of cement road down there. A little put pieces of that other kind on the sides of it to widen it so it was a long time it was a narrow road for a long time.
INTERVIEWER: They still have some of those now. Off the side roads.
INTERVIEWER: Um, did you have like a class structure? Like, you had some real high class people in town and some real low class?
MARY: Well, there’s money people and poor people. *Laughs* Yeah, there was.
INTERVIEWER: So the store owners and things were your high class people in town and you know, kind of controlled the town a little bit.
MARY: Did they what?
INTERVIEWER: Kind of controlled the town a little bit? You know, they knew everything going on?
MARY: I don’t know if I ought to say this or not, but it’s the truth. Milton Veasey, who was one who kinda like to show his influence. And there was others against but I know of him especially.
MARY: And he did the same thing in church. He went to Bethany Church. He practically carried that.
INTERVIEWER: What about law and order? Did you have many police officers and sheriffs and all of that?
MARY: *Laughing* The jail was right next to our house! And, uh, the firehouse and jail was all in one building. There’s two cells in it. Yeah, they had problems with drunk people. I remember putting the drunk men in there and they’d holler at Papa. We lived next door. I remember still them yelling, “ Bill Bounds, I’m gonna come out a here!” He was drunk, he’d break out. That old deep thick door. And, uh, he’d come back the next day and fix the door. And when there was an election or anything there was a kind of a rough bunch around there. And it wasn’t anything but a cinder block coal ashes. We used coal a lot. And that’s the only yard we had. The driveway between the jail building and our house.
INTERVIEWER: So, what did they have many police then?
MARY: Not many, no. *Laughing* Yeah, I remember they used to lock us up, fool with us, lock us up in the jail. They keep the policemen a long time. Til they were older men. And they’d scare us to death, lock us and go away and leave us a little while. I don’t know, I remember there was Mr. Stroud way, way back there. I don’t think they had more than one really. I don’t remember but one at a time. Maybe two. But not always.
INTERVIEWER: Um, okay, uh, your transportation. Did you have a, did you, uh, really early did you use horses and carriages to get around?
MARY: Oh yes! My daddy now when he gets there. My daddy kept horses. One or two. And umm, he had, uh, they called ‘em surreys we both ride in. There were two seats and um, then he had a buggy too. Big enough for two people to sit in.
INTERVIEWER: So most everybody….
MARY: Yeah, everybody had, I say they were allowed to have stables in town then. And papa had his horses there. Several had their horses, you know, stables all together. That was right up town there.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, uh, did you ever ride the train that much?
MARY: Yeah, we had to. As I said, Christmastime when we left town that was the only way we had to leave. On the train.
INTERVIEWER: Ok. Did you ride to Ocean City?
MARY: I was talking about that the other night. I remember when you had, when you went on the train to Ocean City that we had a railroad track built over the water. You went by train before there was any way for you. That’s the only way to get on.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember much of the beach there?
MARY: Oh yes! It was completely different. That boardwalk where we used to go to get out of the sun. Oh, the boardwalk, was what, you know, from the sand up..
INTERVIEWER: So you used to go…
MARY: Up under it.
INTERVIEWER: So you used to go under the boardwalk alot?
MARY: Huh? Yeah, we...Now, that’s where you had your picnics where you ate and where, you know, had your fun under the boardwalk. ‘Cause the sand was way off and all that space.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Do you remember how the Assateague Island?
MARY: Well, I never did go to Assateague Island until later years.
INTERVIEWER: Like right there at Ocean City how it was all connected.
MARY: Well, I remember that. Before, you mean that inlet was cut through there? Oh yeah, I remember that. You know that end of Ocean City where the inlet is but at the time houses went clear far as you could see.
INTERVIEWER: They went on to Assateague?
MARY: On down that beach. Clear down, but see I didn’t know anything about Assateague but I knew the beach went and the houses were built through.
INTERVIEWER: How far north did it go? Did it go very far north? Real earlier than, like, before?
MARY: Well, don’t know much about the north, I guess I knew about was, uh…
INTERVIEWER: The southern part? Do you remember, like, the fishermen would take their boats out up from there?
MARY: They didn’t do that too much then as they do now. Now there may have been people that were in the business and the way they made their living but there wasn’t as much sport fishing. I mean, people made their living fishing but it wasn’t a sport like it is now. They just did it to make…
INTERVIEWER: Who did the roads? How were the roads in Ocean City?
MARY: Well, they were all but like this one was here, at first. Dirt roads.
INTERVIEWER: Clam shells and everything. Ok.
MARY: Some of ‘em weren’t so well off to have the shells. *laughing*
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any of the hotels?
MARY: Huh?
INTERVIEWER: The Ocean City? The hotels?
MARY: Uh, I never did go to the old hotels when I was younger. I never did go to the hotels ‘cause when we went out there we took a picnic lunch. Most people did. And they used to have something, a place on the boardwalk with tables in it so you could take your lunch and eat it on those tables. Um and it was somewhere in here about ropes out in the ocean. Yes, honey, I remember them. If they didn’t have those ropes I would never got in the water as it was holding on to the ropes waves were turning me upside down.
INTERVIEWER: So when you went out into the water you kind of hung onto a rope?
MARY: Oh yeah! They had those ropes all along. They didn’t have just one. You know, they had...I don’t know how they were fastened down, they went way out in the water. And when we went in the water we held onto that. That’s what we did, we hung onto the rope.
INTERVIEWER: The end of the rope was fastened into the water?
MARY: Fastened both ends, evidently.
INTERVIEWER: Also, was….
MARY: And we just held onto the rope and that’s what kept you from…
INTERVIEWER: So the rope was hooked onto the dry land somewhere?
MARY: Um hmm, it was affixed from the shore and I don’t know how it was fixed in the water. I don’t know how far out. Too far further out than I wanted to go.*laughing*
INTERVIEWER: So, well, did a lot of people just kind of lay there in the water and let the waves kind of get ‘em?
MARY: They used the ropes more. They didn’t go and swim through the breakers like they do now. Some did. But most of ‘em did like I did. No, they didn’t go out like they do now. You held onto those ropes.
INTERVIEWER: And they just kind of...Or they….
MARY: It depended. They depended on that. Yeah…
INTERVIEWER: They just let the water just kind of come up to them and they just kind of sit there?
MARY: Yeah, uh huh…
INTERVIEWER: Not really swim…
MARY: Of course, it was like it is now. Some had more nerve to go out further than others. But, I remember the ropes very well because I was never too crazy about the water. Well, I used to go down to Public Landing. I never could swim but, um, I’d never gone into the ocean if I couldn’t a held onto the ropes. *laughing* The nicest place I ever went on the train was to Princess Anne. Now when I went to, um, Towson, children now go back and forth nearly every weekend. When I went to Towson I couldn’t even get home Thanksgiving. Couldn’t afford to. I had to stay there.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go by boat?
MARY: And we had to go. Now, some people then had cars. We didn’t have...and when we came home there was four, five from Pocomoke, girls that went there then. And I don’t remember how we come home, if we come home, but we went back by steamboat and somebody had to carry us to Crisfield to get on. And, uh, we could have longer home because we went down there and we rode all night on the steamboat, see, to get to Baltimore. And then we got there real early in the morning and we got off and had to get a streetcar and ride it eight miles to Towson school.
INTERVIEWER: Ok. Uh, did you ride the steamboats on the Pocomoke any?
MARY: Not too much. I didn’t.
INTERVIEWER: Did you see them very much any?
MARY: I remember there was a lot of steamboats to Mt. Vernon where my grandparents lived. They had a wharf down there that steamboats come right usually. That’s the way they carried all the things that were carried. You know the stores and everything they had to have they used those boats for transportation then to carry things. Boats were used more.
INTERVIEWER: Uh, what was the first car your family had? You don’t know kinds?
MARY: Well, papa didn’t get a car, I don’t get, Papa had a car much before I was married. And, I think when we married, Russell had a Model T Ford. We were married ‘28. And I remember his, he thought he had something. His was one of those kinds with the curtains flapped, you know. And it *unintelligible* glass they called it. That’d usually get cracked. Well, his step-mother when we lived here with them, they gave a car away in Pocomoke, I don’t remember the occasion, but she won it. It was a sedan and enclosed car, which was very rare then. And it was all Russell would want to take me, you know, this was before we were married she had it. And to get that she’d make him wash clothes and wash dishes. He did everything to get to use that sedan and take me in place of his car with his flapping curtains. *laughing*
INTERVIEWER: That was a real, I mean nice, nice car!
MARY: Oh yes sir! That was a really, um! You were a *unintelligible* if you had one of them! She won it, I don’t remember who was giving it away. Something in Pocomoke. It was the town or what. She won it. And I think she won also one of the first radios that were just on a board, you know, and you had to have ear pieces.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, my dad…
MARY: And when they had fights, you know, all the men wanted to hear it. Not many people had the radio. Miss Rose won that. Russell’s won, his step-mother. And I remember people coming and they had to take turns putting those ear pieces up over their ears, take turns listening to the fight. *laughing*
INTERVIEWER: It was, I think, my dad almost bought one of those about that long…
MARY: It was just a board…
INTERVIEWER: And a lot of tubes coming off…
MARY: On the board. Now I don’t know but I wouldn’t know how to find it. I kinda have an idea that thing might be up in my attic but there’s so much up in my attic of my brother’s and sister, you ought to look up there. See if that thing’s up there. I can’t remember if Miss Rose did away with it. Well, um, Public Landing. Well, that was the big place too. You’ve been there?
INTERVIEWER: Once…
MARY: You know there’s that, um, pier?
INTERVIEWER: That pier that goes out, yeah…
MARY: Well, they used to have, uh, that was a big meeting place. They had another pier way out and at the end of it they had a bowling alley and a merry-go-round and they used to have square dances out there. It was a big thing. But one of them storms, I think it must have been the storm of ‘33 tore it all down.
INTERVIEWER: I think ‘32 is the one that…
MARY: Was it? ‘32 or ‘33…
INTERVIEWER: That tore the inlet.
MARY: Well maybe that was the same year. You know, we had bad storms there two, three years in a row. We had a storm, I don’t know which one of those storms it was that tore our garage down. Russell was raising hens in. It tore, we’d go from window to window and every window we went to was another building going down.
INTERVIEWER: When you had those big storms, did you, was there much flooding around Pocomoke? Like did the river come up? Maybe into town?
MARY: I think the wind did more harm than the rain. I mean, just blowing down.
INTERVIEWER: A lot of wind…
MARY: It, you know, some time now you have big rain and some of those streets in Pocomoke are flooded then they did then. But it wasn’t, I don’t remember it being any great big problem. But the wind and the rain, oh it was awful! I remember it, I know it was in ‘33 a bad storm they had that I went down. I had my tonsils out down in Accomack. A doctor down there took them out in his home. And we had that storm at night. He kept you over night. And the next morning, the next day when they brought me home, there was telephone poles all along the road and trees. The greatest miss, like we never got home. It was awful. And Russell, when we got home, Russell had forgotten to put the kitchen window down in the bungalow we lived in and that was afloat. Water where he had left the window. *laughs* Oh, it was awful. Tore everything down.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go over Farmer’s Day?
MARY: Oh yeah, we usually. In those days, nowadays, farmers don’t have any time off much because if they’re not, well, crops that they raise keep the year around things, the chickens. But at that time, August was an off month for farmers. And they went to Public Landing and Farmers Day and picnics. And they had them at Red Hills and we took in all them because that was a farmer’s day off.
INTERVIEWER: Where was Red Hills?
MARY: It’s in Virginia. Did you ever hear of a place called Sign Post? Well, it’s you go on, it’s near that. It’s exactly across from Chincoteague Island. I mean on this side. You can barely… And they had this merry-go-round. Roland Culp was telling me the other day about that. I remember that red, I thought maybe it was too long ago for Roland to remember. I don’t know how old Roland is but he remembers that merry-go-round. Must have not been very big. And he said his uncle run it. And he said he also in those days he knew they made whiskey. Anywhere in the woods around. His uncle made whiskey. *laughs* And he ran the merry-go-round.
INTERVIEWER: Same time?
MARY: Yeah. And he said one time he remembered, I wasn’t down there then, but Roland said he heard him tell it, his uncle kept going to the woods to get more to drink and he drank too much and got that merry-go-round and it went faster and faster and faster and faster. *laughing* And he said the music he played nearly stopped. It was just the same thing over and over flying. And finally, the thing, I don’t know if it turned over or did something but nobody was hurt. His uncle was too drunk to attend to it, you know. But that was a big day at Red Hills. Everybody took their picnic lunch and spread it out. And it, the bathing down there. There was some sandy bottom but there was a lot of red goo and mud. But I don’t think there’s much to it now.
INTERVIEWER: Could you get out to Assateague Island? Like, everybody goes to the beach over there now.
MARY: I don’t know. I hadn’t heard of Assateague Island going like they go now, until the late later years. They go to the big thing. Now I said people didn’t go down there but it wasn’t a resort.
INTERVIEWER: Was it harder? Did you ever go out there at all?
MARY: No, I didn’t. Not until, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Until later.
MARY: In the last few years. And I don’t go much now. Now, when Faye was home, she went. The Pocomoke river, course, that’s the widest. That’s the deepest river in the world for it’s width.
INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard that.
MARY: And it’s dangerous. Um, when we were at First Church, old George Young used to take my brother’s daughter, used to come down here and for some reason George Young took a liking to her. She’s little. And he’d take us out in his boat every summer. Fishing trip. Well, I could never do much fishing but we took a picnic lunch and I enjoyed that but I didn’t like, I still don’t want to go on the Pocomoke river unless I go with somebody who knows what they’re doing. George could tell the storm was coming up and he knew what to do when or not to do. I wouldn’t want to go with some of these people got boats now on the Pocomoke river. ‘Cause I don’t think they know enough about it. But he knew it. And it used to be fun.
INTERVIEWER: Were there a lot of people that took their boats in the river?
MARY: Um, right many had their own boat.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember, uh…?
MARY: Not many as do now ‘cause everybody and his brother has a boat now. Right many people have. But I think there were more older people and people that were used to the water. It wasn’t like everybody just getting a boat nowadays and knowing nothing about it.
INTERVIEWER: Do you know Elmer Brittingham?
MARY: Hmm hmm
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember him? And his boat?
MARY: I don’t remember his boat. I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: He had a boat.
MARY: I know Elmer and he had a twin sister. I think she’s dead. She’s not? She don’t live in Pocomoke. Do you know where his parents used to live?
INTERVIEWER: No.
MARY: Do you know where Peaches Butler’s got her beauty parlor? Across from the funeral home? Well, you wouldn’t know that’s the same place. That’s where Elmer Brittingham’s mother and father lived. You’d never know it was the same place.
INTERVIEWER: Why? Did they change it alot?
MARY: Oh! Peaches and Frank. You just wouldn’t know it was the same place. That old house they’ve changed everything about it. Everything. Don’t look like they fixed it up. It was kinda getting ramshackled because his father died and his mother lived some there some time and she took in roomers. But you couldn’t hardly believe it if you’d seen it when Miss Brittingham lived there.
INTERVIEWER: Hmm. See, ah. Were there many legends or superstitions or something? About maybe the river or the woods nearby? Like, I know one I’ve heard. The river will take one every year. A life every year. Or if it doesn’t the next year it will take two?
MARY: I guess the reason I don’t know much about that, I’m not very, I don’t believe in that stuff.
INTERVIEWER: Don’t believe in ‘em?
MARY: I’m not superstitious. I was born on the 13th. There’s no use being superstitious when you’re born on the 13th. Now, this neighbor of mine, everything he did was a sign of something. When I stayed over there and taught school, it was bad luck if you put your umbrella up in the hangers. Well, every morning it’d rain and I put my umbrella up in the kitchen, well he got so he didn’t *unintelligible conversation*. I don’t go along with that stuff so maybe that’s the reason I don’t…
INTERVIEWER: Well, did you hear any stories, like a legend or something? About different things? Like somebody on the river or something?
MARY: If I do, I don’t remember.
INTERVIEWER: Well, what about...did you ever see any hangings?
MARY: Huh?
INTERVIEWER: The hangings they used to have?
MARY: Oh no, not around Pocomoke but down near Vernon. My mother and father, my grandmother and grandfather, they had alms houses for older people and needy people and they attended to it. And they had a scaffold there where they hung people.
INTERVIEWER: So they did that…
MARY: Somerset County
INTERVIEWER: So they did that..
MARY: And I was never down there ‘cause they’d wouldn’t never let me gone anyway. We children when they weren’t looking would go down to that old scaffold years afterwards and crawl all up on it. You know that trap door they used to drop down and we used to crawl up on it.
INTERVIEWER: Do you know if it’s still there?
MARY: I imagine it’s fallen down at this point now. But Grandmother and Grandfather had that and she made clothes. When they were sick she doctored them when they broke a bone *unintelligible* did their clothes, all kinds of fowl. Everything and she had to set those eggs under a hen. So they raised practically what those people ate. Course, some of ‘em could help with it. But they have it one house, called it a crazy house, insane people in it. They even had that there.
INTERVIEWER: Around here?
MARY: Right down in Mt. Vernon. And some rich people bought the place now and fixed it up but the house is all real, real old and pretty brick house. And that, uh, where they had the crazy people that house is gone, but it used to be little houses these people lived in all around there. Separate, four in each house.
INTERVIEWER: Were there any big snow storms? Like real bad ones?
MARY: Oh yeah. Well, we had bad snow storms up at my daughter’s. She’s 47. And we had snow storms and she was big enough to play in ‘em when this hedge was taller than it is now. And that would be completely covered with snow. Faye, I guess, was four or five years old we had big snows.
INTERVIEWER: Didn’t think you had much snow then.
MARY: We used to have a lot of snow because it was just you didn’t think anything about it being snow in the ground for Christmas time. When we were children.
INTERVIEWER: What kind of music did you listen to then?
MARY: We had a pump organ at home. I took music lessons on a piano and the teacher had a piano. I practiced on the pump organ. I’d still like to have one. I’ve had a little electric organ but I’d still like to have an old pump one. But they have bellows and you can’t get new bellows for them. They go bad.
MARY: Well, they used to have home talent shows too. People from away would come put them on and everybody and their brother, oh they were big! They were real good!
INTERVIEWER: Did they have bands in town? Like different people would get a band together, like a brass band?
MARY: Yeah, they had some kind of band ‘cause James Vincent Jewelry store, it was a big family, these Vincents, every one of them played something. I don’t remember having it in school and I don’t remember who was the head of it. But they had it, evidently every one of the Vincents played and all the Vincents sang. They went to Salem Methodist church. Course, Paul and James are the only ones left, I guess.
INTERVIEWER: Well, did you listen to music, like big bands?
MARY: Well, there wasn’t anything to listen to when I was younger.
INTERVIEWER: So you didn’t…
MARY: You didn’t have radios, now people that could afford it had, what is it called?
INTERVIEWER: Phonograph?
MARY: Phonograph, yes. You know they had those round records and you could get those blank ones and when my mother’s people had some money down in Mt. Vernon, the Bounds were poorest folks but mama’s family had money, and they had one of those phonographs, I think they called it, had round records and they could get them and they could record on them. And every time the family got together they’d have everybody say something foolish or sing a little piece or say a little speech. It was fun and the phonograph was mama’s sister’s. And before her brother died he tried his sister’s sold that to some colored person just for what she could get out of it. But Nora and her brother had these old records and he tried his best to get one of those old phonographs to play them on but he couldn’t find one. People didn’t think anything about them. Just like things we had we didn’t want. We’d just give it to colored people down here like people who were collecting bottles and cans. I’ll bet those colored houses down there worked for Russell *unintelligible* and enough of that kind of stuff out of those houses if you just knew where they were because they couldn’t use all those cans and bottles we didn’t know what to do with them and we give ‘em to them. Anything we didn’t want we give it to them. You got through with a wood stove you give it to ‘em. And when we got electric lights we were so tickled to get electric lights, the lamps went. We kept them, we liked to have them but we were glad to get rid of them and we gave them to the colored people. *Laughs* But I’ll bet you, I told some people that bottles, I’m not much for that. There’s some old things that are coming, I’m going to keep them but I don’t go out hunting them. But, I’ve told people, I said, if you just go back to those colored people’s houses in the woods back there and dig deep enough, I’ll bet you’ll find some of these old cans and bottles and stuff.
INTERVIEWER: Well, all right, I heard once that there was a beer company or something in Pocomoke that made bottles. I saw it in the paper one time. Have you ever heard of anything like that?
MARY: I don’t remember.
INTERVIEWER: They made bottles, I think.
MARY: I don’t remember that.
INTERVIEWER: Hmm, I’m not sure that’s true or not.
MARY: I don’t remember that. I don’t say they didn’t but I don’t remember it.
MARY: Now back here, this farm, this is my farm that I own now was two farms and a house way out there as far as you could see. And people, I’ve got some Indian arrows there two of them in that other room that Russell that found over there.
INTERVIEWER: Um, did you ever go to the fairgrounds?
MARY: Oh yes! That was a big time. All Mama’s relatives and Papa’s relatives, we lived uptown and we always had a lot of company fair week. Did anybody tell you about, I nearly forgot what it was like. Chautauqua. Did they tell you about Chautauqua? Well, that was a big tent, they put it on the high school grounds. And you paid so much for a season ticket. And they had shows. All kinds of shows and entertainment coming from away. That was a big thing in Pocomoke too. They’d buy season tickets and it was a big tent.
INTERVIEWER: Almost like a circus tent?
MARY: Yeah, yeah. And they’d have all kinds of entertainment.
INTERVIEWER: Like singers?
MARY: They’d have classical music or they’d have barber shoppers. They had a mixture of everything. They’d put on plays. I don’t know if that lasted a week or two weeks or something. *unintelligible* brother nearly went. You could go but most people bought season tickets. But, what did you ask me about before that?
INTERVIEWER: The fairgrounds…
MARY: Oh yeah! I remember the fairground. That was a big time too.
INTERVIEWER: Did they have a lot of events?
MARY: Side shows. Old big fat women; paid to go look at her. See enough of ‘em on the streets you don’t have to pay to go see…*laughs* And all kinds of snakes and pits and all that kind of mess.
INTERVIEWER: A lot of just freaks…
MARY: And they had a mess of people selling everything in the world for souvenirs. And of course that stuff are antiques that are in demand. They used to have, you know, those glass cups that were red, they had a kind of etching machine that put your name on it or Pocomoke on it or something. Oh, they sold all kind of stuff like that. Pennants and flags. Oh, you could walk around there you met somebody that had a little bit of everything. Of course they sold balloons and popcorn and everything. And you walk around and round and round. Promenade around where those side shows were and people selling stuff. Walk around and around…
INTERVIEWER: Did they have the fights? And different things like that? At the fairgrounds?
MARY: Oh yeah! Wrestling or whatever you call it. You had to pay to go into those side shows and those different ones.
INTERVIEWER: Did they have the horse races there?
MARY: Oh yeah! They had a big grand stand. Yeah…
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever see any of the horse races?
MARY: Umm hmm. I didn’t know much about it but I could all the fun I got out of it was pick one I thought would come out first. But it was fun. Yeah, they used to have horse races. And then we didn’t have any race in Pocomoke. They kept on having one down in Virginia we used to go to.
MARY: And years ago we used to go clear up to Harrington to the fair. They still have that, I think. I don’t know if many people from Pocomoke go but we used to go.
INTERVIEWER: I think of anything else. Well…
MARY: I believe we’ve covered all.