Recollections from generations past. (Katherine S. Etchison- 2)

 

               

INTERVIEWER: Still on the church, what influence did it have on the community?

KATHERINE: The Presbyterian Church is one, of course, Rehobeth church is the mother of the Presbyterian faith in the United States, I guess. The first Presbyterian minister came over at the Rehobeth church.

INTERVIEWER: What kinds of things did you do for recreation?

KATHERINE: In the summer we had Chautauqua. It was an organization that traveled, and they put on programs. They even had Sousa’s band one time. And they were very, very lovely. They had a great deal of music and lectures and then of course they had hometown musicals and plays, and frequently in winter a stock company would come and put on a show every week. I remember one stock company had a woman in it with the name, they called her Stella May. Well, my mother’s name was Stella. But it wasn’t Stella May, of course. And some of her grands started calling her Stella May after that stock company was here and they called her Stella May all of the time. And then in summer we had excursions to Ocean City. And we had excursions to Red Hills. Now Red Hills is down near Sign Post. I don’t know whether you know where it is or not.

INTERVIEWER: I’ve been there a couple of times.

KATHERINE: We used to go down there on Sunday School picnics and take big baskets of fried chicken and all the things that went with it. And frequently when we were at Red Hills they would send a boat over from Chincoteague and would take us over to Chincoteague. They didn’t have the bridge then. There wasn’t any bridge to Chincoteague. The only way that people from Chincoteague could get off of it is by boat. The only way you could get there was by boat. We used to go over there from Red Hills on these Sunday School picnics. Many times, there were straw rides. Of course, with horses. And I remember one straw ride a girl was sitting up front driving the horse and she fell off. Both the wheels of the wagon went over her, but the road was so deep with sand and mud, and dirt that it didn’t hurt her very much. I mean, she wasn’t injured to any great degree. And then they used to have boat trips down the river, where they’d take the picnics. They used to go down to Williams Point. Well there wasn’t any Shad Landing. But they had a great many stops along the way. I think that’s enough of that. Some of the games we played, I wrote these down. Annie Over. Two sides and we’d throw the ball, we’d have a building between us, and we’d throw the ball over, and if they caught the ball then they could run over and catch you. If you were a prisoner, you had to go over on their side. Then we did a lot of roller skating. Somebody said, “Well where in the world did you skate?” Well there was only one place that had a cement sidewalk and that was the Citizens Bank. They had a cement sidewalk. All of the other sidewalks in Pocomoke were bricks. Of course, you can’t skate on brick walks very much, especially in those days because they were not level. But we used to go down to the bank and skate there. I remember that my roller skates were rather hard to put on. They had clips that clipped to the shoe, instead of straps. I used to hate to put them on and take them off because you had to have a key to work the roller skate. So, we always used tablecloths at our meals. And sometimes I would try to get in the house and get seated at the table so the tablecloth would hide my skates and I wouldn’t take them off. But my mother would always make me take them off if she saw me first. And then we played a game called Hopscotch. Do you know anything about hopscotch?

NTERVIEWER: Mm-uh.

KATHERINE: Well we used to play that an awful lot. And we used to hide our old thing that we used to throw. We’d get a good one that we could throw easy and you’d hide it sometimes. And we played Hit the Wicket, did you ever hear of that?

INTERVIEWER: No.

KATHERINE: Well that was you put a stick up against a tree and you had another stick that you hit it with. And if you were it, somebody else had to hit the wicket and then you had to run and get it, and while you were running to get it everybody else hid. And then it was like Hide-And-Seek. That person had to go look for them. And we had Prisoner’s Base. That was similar to Annie Over except the sides stood on opposite sidewalks. And Croquet of course. And throwing horseshoes. I used to be fairly good at throwing horseshoes. And then as a teenager we used to play tennis. We had one tennis court in Pocomoke.

INTERVIEWER: Where was that?

KATHERINE: At the high school when the high school was on Walnut Street. We’d have to get out really early in the morning if we wanted to play because somebody else would get it before we did. And then in wintertime we did a lot of ice skating. I remember the river was frozen over many times in my childhood. And people skated on the river. We used to coast. We didn’t have any hills around here. I remember very well that we used to take our sled and go to the Presbyterian Church. You know the steps are rather steep there. Well they were wooden steps, and we would coast down those steps and go all the way across the street, because there was a drive opposite the walk. Mrs. Costen, that lived in the Costen House, used to sit in her kitchen window, if she’d see us, she’d make us stop. We found out that she’d take a nap every afternoon, so our coasting was done while Mrs. Costen was taking her nap. Enough of that, I think.

(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)