Sunday, February 15, 2015

TIME MACHINE ... 1899, 1996, 1904, 1965, Mid 50's/Early 60's.

"Friendliest Town On The Eastern Shore."  Our tradition runs deep.  Excerpt from a letter to the editor from a visitor to Newtown, (former name of Pocomoke City) published in the Baltimore Sun, April 28,1847.

This place (Newtown) is a pretty snug little village, containing about 500 clever and hospitable inhabitants; it has good wide streets, quite clear of that "eye sore," known mostly over the Peninsula by the name of "deep sand"; the houses, though built of frame, are generally built substantially and with some discretion and taste; there are two neat, new, and quite handsome frame churches in it; as for the merchants of the place, suffice it to state that they are very clever and hospitable.  F. Mezick, Esq., the landlord with whom I stopped, and his very obliging and jolly assistant, are richly deserving of a passing notice, for the good treatment and the extension of the many civilities to "the stranger."

(Reader-friendly viewing of news archives/historical archives material)

February, 1899
The Washington Times (Washington, D.C.)

Pocomoke River Shut Up.

Pocomoke City, Md., Feb 11.-  The Pocomoke River is frozen over with ice one and a half inches thick at Pocomoke City. Navigation is blocked. Telegraph and telephone communication has been greatly impaired owing to the wires being covered with ice and the weight causing them to break. The thermometer was 5 degrees below zero at 7 o'clock  yesterday morning. At noon it was eight degrees above, and at 7 o'clock last night the mercury dropped to 3 degrees below. 


November, 1996
The Capital (Annapolis, Md.)

Court evacuated over 'dummy grenade'

SALISBURY- Nearly 450 state workers were evacuated in downtown Salisbury after state fire officials learned that a lawyer brought a hand grenade as evidence to use as evidence in District Court.  

Police cordened off downtown streets surrounding the W. Paul Martin Multi-Service Center for more than four hours at 9:50 a.m. yesterday after defense attorney Robert Spery told a prosecutor he had a "dummy grenade" in a car parked 50 feet from the building.

Mr. Spery said authorities over-reacted over a grenade that was inoperable.

Deputy State Fire Marshal Ruxton Bramble said authorities needed to examine the device before being certain it was safe.

Mr. Spery said he intended to use the grenade in court to help clear a client charged with threatening to blow up his house and family with a similar device.


August, 1904
The Washington Post

TRIED TO RESCUE PRISONERS

Mob Attacks Sheriff and Deupties at Snow Hill.

Special to the Washington Post.

Snow Hill, Md., Aug.23.-  A mob here today made an effort to take prisoners from the custody of Sheriff Lankford on the way from Magistrate Rowndes' office to the county jail. The prisoners had been sentenced to ten days in jail for refusing to work on the public road or to pay the seventy-five cents which the local road law provides must be paid by the person summoned to labor if he does not do the work.

Eight white men and four colored men are in jail.  Sheriff Lankford and his deputies by prompt and vigorous action put down the threatened riot, but not without hard work. The crowd surged about the officers and fought clear to the prison doors.

February, 1965
The Daily Mail (Hagerstown, Md.)

Pocomoke City Ponders Hiring Town Manager

POCOMOKE CITY, MD. (AP)-  Three organizations have recommended that Pocomoke City adopt the city manager form of government and reduce its five-man council to three persons.

The recommendations came from the Economic Development Committee, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce. The issue will probably be decided at a meeting Monday night.

The proposal includes raising the mayor's salary from $200 to $800 a year, and that of the councilmen from $100 to $600 a year. Reducing the number of councilmen would finance the increases.


1956...





When I was growing up an item of interest to me was an audio tape recorder..a reel-to-reel tape machine similar to the one pictured, and I was fortunate enough to acquire one.  Over the years hours of miscellaneous audio were recorded on many reels of tape. The machine itself had been long gone when I came across the tapes about twenty years ago but I was lucky to have access to an old professional reel tape player that a co-worker let me borrow. 

So what was on the tapes? Some was just silly stuff by me and a cousin. But there was also a treasure of audio from those decades earlier such as: New Year's Eve family get-togethers; family recordings exchanged with an uncle's family in Ohio; "conversations" with a 2-year-old niece (now a mother of grown children); comments from family members regarding the coming 1960 presidential election; audio "letters" from my cousin in Pocomoke when I was away at school, telling me about news of the day from Pocomoke High, etc.; the audio from WBOC-TV's "High School Challenge" program in which Pocomoke High students participated; TV audio from election night 1960 with Walter Cronkite (and an early computer projection that Nixon would defeat Kennedy); miscellaneous audio recorded from Pocomoke's WDMV radio in the late 1950's and early 1960's.

The audio from the tapes is now preserved in digital form. Even though the tapes will probably never be played again, I still hold on to them.

The reel-to-reel tape machines lost favor to the much smaller audio cassette recorder/players which first became available during the 1960's. -tk



Do you have a local memory to share with PPE readers.. such as a big snow storm, a favorite school teacher, a local happening, something of interest your parents or grandparents told you about?  It can be just a line or two, or more if you wish. Send to tkforppe@yahoo.com and watch for it on a future TIME MACHINE posting!



PPE remembers JMMB.

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