Interviewer: Do you remember the Pocomoke (River) ever flooding?
Elmer: Yeah, when I was a boy and lived on Front Street. In 1915, I lived on
Front Street in Pocomoke, and the boats came right up by the house,
rowboats and things, could come right up by the house. That was the biggest
flood that I remember.
Interviewer: So it went up over Front Street?
Elmer: Yeah, over the street. Boats could come right up the street. Of course,
most of the vehicles then were horse and carriage. The horse would still go.
They didn’t like to go in the water, but they would.
Interviewer: Did you go to Public Landing?
Elmer: Yeah, that was mostly where we went for our summer parties and
things. It was outings for the day because it was safe swimming, and people
who couldn’t swim could still go in there. And also catch crabs. And it was
a...we didn’t have much money to spend and you could still have a good time
down there.
Interviewer: What kind of amusements did they have down there?
Elmer: They didn’t have very much; they had places you could buy
sandwiches and things like that. A restaurant or two. And then there was an
old hotel down there, but we didn’t go to that. We went out on the pier, got
sunburned, and bathed, and caught crabs, ate picnic lunches.
Interviewer: Did you ever go on the pier in Ocean City?
Elmer: Oh, yeah. You could fish from the pier. And then they had amusements
on this end. Still, I don’t know if it’s still there or not. You were allowed to fish
from it. It wasn’t really good fishing, not like the surf. You might catch one
now and then.
Interviewer: Did you go to Assateague?
Elmer: Well, at Assateague we fished on the beach for drum. And then, one
year we went deer hunting. There are only 2 of us left today that went on a
party. All the rest of them are dead. There were about 10 or 12. We went to
Public Landing and went across in a boat to Green Run Inlet, which was on
this end of Assateague then. There was another inlet was cut in there. And
we hunted deer all day over there, but we were not experienced in deer
hunting and they run ahead of us all the time. They cut around on the beach.
One of the Coast Guard told us that a deer ran up the beach, right aside of
you, and we looked and there were the footprints in the sand. And we
couldn’t see them because we were in the woods a little higher where they
run all the way back up. In other words, they run as far as the inlet and then
they could’ve jumped across and swam back across, but they knew we
couldn’t get down there and they run right back up the beach.
Interviewer: Do you remember Jake, an alligator in Ocean City? Or Snow Hill?
Elmer: No.
Interviewer: There was some guy who had an alligator he brought from
somewhere and had in a cage in Snow Hill.
Elmer: We had one at the fairgrounds for many, the old fairgrounds
Interviewer: an alligator?
Elmer: It may have escaped from the circus that was there or carnival, we
don’t know. But it was there for many years. I never saw him, but all the boys
seen him.
Interviewer: Where was he? He was in the wild?
Elmer: Right in the middle of the track. There was a low place down there and
they can bury in the mud. With the fauna and the type of vegetation we have,
we’re just like a swamp. We had alligators at one time.
Interviewer: When you were a child, what kind of home life did you have?
Elmer: Well, until I was 6 years old, we lived on a farm in Cokesbury. I went 6
months, the first half of the year, until Christmas, to the country school. Of
course, it was just a short distance and we walked. Church was right near the
school. The family went there on Sundays. We had just a crop and farm,
raising potatoes and corn.
Interviewer: What kind of chores did you have?
Elmer: Well, first thing we did was feed the chickens and pick up the eggs.
Bring the wood in and all that kind of stuff, firewood
Interviewer: Did you help plant?
Elmer: No, not then. But later on, when I moved in town, I was 6 years old, but
I spent 2 summers on my grandmother’s farm. And there I learned to do
everything. One summer when I was about 11, 11 or 12, I guess, I (learned) to
drive mules without cussing? and I (audio not clear) all day long, just like
everybody else. But the first year I was there, I was too small. They didn't let
me handle the team then.
(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye)
Anonymous said...To be capable of driving a team of mules without cursing is quite an accomplishment as mules do not respond to reins but to words. If you think herding cats is hard driving a team of mules is 10 times harder.
Your friend,
Slim
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