Interviewer: Do you remember the fire? The Pocomoke fire?
Elmer: I was there.
Interviewer: You were there? What kind of damage…?
Elmer: It was in April the 19th, 1922. I had just caught the largest pike I had
even seen in the river. Brought it home and hadn’t eaten my dinner and the
fire whistle started to blow. I was off that day for some reason, I don’t know
what it was, why I had been off. At least for Monday, I guess, I’m not sure. So
then I went down…it was April 18 or 19, I don’t remember. Anyway, I went on
down to see where the fire was. I went down to the store where I worked, and
still worked part-time. My brother worked there, too, see. Mr. Vaughn had me
go up to the roof and brush the cinders off. And for a while it got hot and he
said, “You better come down.” And I did. I went up to where Paul Ewell had
an office and we were taking the stuff out of there and putting it across in
the firehouse which was in back of where the Sears sales are now, from
Willow Street side…So Mr, Ewell, I remember him saying…I picked up this big
glass from the desk, and he said, “Well, don’t take it if you’re not going to
take it right inside and put it down where it won’t get broke.” Well, we carried
all the stuff out of it and everything and that building burned before Mr.
Ewell’s office burned. Where we carried it. It was one of them jumping fires.
Interviewer: So this was on the side of Market Street that the Post Office is on
now? That burned?
Elmer: Not where the Post Office is now
Interviewer: Was it that side of the road that burned?
Elmer: Yeah, but not where the Post Office is. It didn’t burn back that far.
Interviewer: Oh, it didn’t come back that far? It was just the first couple
blocks?
Elmer: It burned where the Coffman-Fisher building is, the old
store, you know, across from Newberry’s.
Interviewer: OK.
Elmer: It burned all of Newberry’s. That was homes in there. Where the
Newberry’s are. Right straight down and then went…jumped over to Front
Street and burned around there. And down Market Street from Newberry’s all
the way to the Peninsula building, which it didn’t do any damage to. Just 2
blocks. It burned some of the buildings, just the tops of the buildings, on the
left. And the bank across from Newberry’s, where the Maryland National
bank is, all that was pretty well burned. And the second block, only the tops
were burned out.
Interviewer: OK, because we saw a picture of a bank and all that was left was
the front of the bank.
Elmer: Yeah, that’s right.
Interviewer: Which bank?
Elmer: The buildings on the left, across from Newberry’s, you know, on the
left side
Interviewer: What was the name of that?
Elmer: There were a few fronts left….
Interviewer: What was the name of that bank?
Elmer: Maryland National. The old Citizen’s Bank, which is now called
something else…Eastern Shore (?) that burned, too, and all stores in that
block on the right….2 blocks on the right, but it only burned the corners
because it was wooden buildings, some of them. It pretty well cleared that
out, but it didn’t get where the (audio not clear) fish market was. It didn’t get
that.
Interviewer: Was it a lot of panic or anything? People running around?
Elmer: Not panics, just…the wind was blowing a gale and the fireman couldn’t
operate enough to drench it, see. They would get going and they’d go catch a
fire over on the other side somewhere.
Interviewer: Was there just 1 group of firemen?
Elmer: Yeah, well, we had fireman from Salisbury, Princess Anne, Snow Hill…
yeah, they called all around. They always did that.
Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.
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