February, 1976
(The Salisbury Times)
Pocomoke Man At Soda Parlor For Four Decades
By Dick Fleming
Of The Times Staff
POCOMOKE CITY- George Reid sauntered down the length of the counter in the
small soda parlor and newsstand to greet the customer coming in the front door.
Leaning forward across the counter between the fountain and the candy displays,
the ever-present unlit cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, he
inquired, "Can I help ya?"
"How much are them gloves up there?"
"Ninety cents . . . isn't that somethin' . . . I sold many' a pair of them at
fifteen cents."
With the obvious exception of prices, few things have changed at the Marva
Soda Parlor in the 41 years Mr. Reid has been there, including Mr. Reid himself,
known in Pocomoke as something of a "local landmark."
And well he should be. For the first few years after he bought the soda
parlor, which is located on Main St. (Market Street), next door to the Marva
movie theater, he kept the place open 6a.m. until midnight daily. In the
following years, he continued operating the business from 6a.m. to 11p.m. seven
days a week. In 37 years of owning the parlor, he closed early only twice.
Mr. Reid sold out the business in 1972. It was "on account of my age," he
insisted, "not the business. I hated to get out, but when a man gets to be 70,
he don't feel like all that foolishness."
Mr. Reid is now 74.
When he sold the business four years ago, his announced plan for retirement
was to "sit home evenings and enjoy myself like other folks."
But when you've been running a business for 37 years, as he had at the time,
you apparently don't just sit home and enjoy yourself. It didn't take him long
to realize that and he was soon back to work under the new management. He is
putting in 28 hours a week now.
"I've been around people all my life," he said. "That's why I come in and
work with these boys. You take everything away from a man and he'll just sit
down and die."
Mr. Reid grew up in the small milling community of Welbourne, near Stockton,
about a mile away from his wife of 55 years, Virgie. The couple has three
children now, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
Welbourne is little more now than a memory in the back of Mr. Reid's mind,
although he said the milling operations once there put the community on the map,
"no buts or maybe's about it."
"It's not what it was when I was a boy." he said. "There used to be quite a
little town there. There was a steam mill and a lot of little huts and houses
and even a post office."
There was also a little county store. Mr. Reid's father ran the now extinct
business and it was there that he got his first taste of the business.
He worked in the store with his father until he got married, Mr. Reid
recalled, then he took up farming for the next 15 years. After finding that "I
wasn't a farmer," he sold the farm and bought into the soda parlor business.
The Marva (soda parlor) had first been opened in 1927, and had seen "four or
five or six" owners come and go before Mr. Reid. When he came to the business in
April of 1935, it was at the height of the depression and it was generally
assumed that "I wouldn't last 30 days."
Forty-one years later the memory brings a wide grin to the old man's
face.
"It was a bad time to get into a business," he recalled. "At home we never
bought nothing we didn't need. I've been lucky enough to have a wife who didn't
nag you for things. She just saved her money and bought the things we had to
have."
Meanwhile, in the store, she helped out during the heavy times, as she would
continue to do over the years. When their children grew up, they too helped out
in the soda parlor.
It was a struggle for the first five years or so of the business, but the
Reids managed to stick it out. Years later, he said, "I took in as much on a
Saturday as I did the first thirty days I was here."
"If you didn't see the depression," he concluded, "you can't imagine what it
was like."
"Do you ever watch the Waltons? That's typical . . . it's really
typical."
Meeting people is one of the things Mr. Reid recalls most fondly about his
many years at the soda parlor. And in Pocomoke City, the Marva (soda parlor) has
always been as good a place as any to do that.
"I've met thousands and thousands of people here . . . can't remember their
first names . . . I'm good on faces, not names."
After the first five years, he said, it was seldom that there wasn't somebody
around in the store.
Over the years there were countless people who gathered daily at the little
Main St. (Market St.) business. ". . . like old Grover Powell. He was retired
and used to come to town every day and walk the streets. He'd stay in here a
good part of his time."
The soda shop, he said, "was a place to come and find out what's going on
around town. Sometimes it wasn't always told true, but there was always a lot
told."
One of the people Mr. Reid best remembers is Melvin Merritt, who still lives
in Pocomoke. Mr. Merritt worked with Mr. Reid for nearly 25 years. "If we ever
had an argument or a cross word between us, I never knew it."
"I guess we've all got a few enemies," he added. "But I couldn't name either
one."
If there is one thing about Mr. Reid that could be considered his trademark,
it is that unlit cigarette. He quit smoking back in 1946 following a doctor's
warning about cancer. He said he was later told he could resume, but didn't want
to. He had no taste for cigars, so he took up "chewing cigarettes."
He regularly pulls out a non-filter cigarette, pops it into his mouth and
lets it dangle there as he slowly chews it down.
"Lord knows, I've chewed up many a pack. Why? I don't know," he said.
He figured he chews up about five packs a week.
Despite his being privy to the town's scuttlebutt and a firsthand witness to
the coming and going of businesses in the community, he never took much interest
in local politics, at least as far as becoming involved himself.
" I never thought about politics because I didn't have the education," he
explained. "I quit school in the eighth grade."
"My father told me he'd send me to any school in the country, and he was able
to do it. I just didn't want to go."
However, he has never regretted discontinuing his education, he said.
"I can't see the sense in regretting or worrying about something you didn't
do. It's my own fault, and nobody elses."
Running his soda fountain, he said, required some business savvy and a lot of
common sense. He paid somebody else to maintain the books.
Despite quitting school when he did, however, Mr. Reid said he has been an
avid reader all his life.
"I can remember when I was a little boy reading continued stories in the
Saturday Evening Post. It would come on Thursday and I thought Thursday would
never come."
Now, he said, he still reads up to seven books a week, mostly westerns. "I
spect I've got 500 books at home."
"I've read about everything on Maryland and the Eastern Shore I could get,"
he added.
There have been very few changes in the soda parlor over the years, Mr. Reid
said. The most notable one is prices, which have at least doubled, he said.
He also noted the great changes in the type of magazine materials
distributors send down to the news stand now. "Like those nudes and stuff over
by the door," he gestured. "It was against the law to sell all that stuff in
those days."
The Reids have lived in Pocomoke now since 1937, having moved from Stockton
after deciding the business was going to make it.
On the few occasions the Reids were ever away from their business (it) was to
travel, the couples favorite pastime. They have visited "up and down the East
Coast," into the midwest and to Florida for the first opening of Disney World.
Mrs. Reid now has arthritis and the couple is unable to travel he said.
Except for reading, Mr. Reid said he has no hobbies. "If I did, he said, it
wouldn't be so bad. But I don't."
"It's like an old fellow told me once. 'I got time to play but I don't know
how.' "
All in all, he said, meeting people has been the greatest part of his
experience at the soda parlor.
"Yesser," he concluded, "I really do enjoy being here."
FOOTNOTE: Recalling other soda counters in Pocomoke City (1950's): Pocomoke
Pharmacy and Clarke's Drug Store..side by side on the east side of Market Street
between Clarke Avenue and Second Street; the new J.J. Newberry's at the
northeast corner of Market Street and Second Street; Flax's confectionary on the
east side of Willow Street between Clarke Avenue and Front Street; Sam's (Roth)
Market on the north side of Clarke Avenue, near Walnut Street. -tk
