"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)
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January, 1942
Salisbury Times
January, 2004
The Somerset Herald (Princess Anne)
(Excerpt)
Construction on McCready ER expansion starts
Work on an expanded emergency room at Edward W. McCready Memorial Hospital will start in earnest with the new year.
Heavy equiprment rolled into place following a formal groundbreaking held Dec. 7.
The $252,000 expansion — which has been in the works for nearly two years — will include a chest pain evaluation unit and education center. The final regulatory hurdle was crossed late last month when the Crisfield board of Zoning Appeals unanimously approved a variance for the 1,400 sq. ft. addition.
July, 1910
The Washington Post
COMPLAIN OF RAILROADS
Eastern Shore Residents Say They Are Denied Proper Facilities
Pocomoke City, Md., July 27- A petition signed by 1,000 residents of the Eastern Shore, protesting against the facilities furnished by The Baltimore, Chesapeake, And Atlantic Railroad Company and The Maryland, Virginia, And Delaware Railway Company, in both freight and passenger service between Baltimore and Eastern Shore points, has been filed with the public service commission.
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has so arranged its time table that the people of the Eastern Shore, as far down as Crisfield, can go to Philadelphia and return in one day, with time to shop in the Quaker City, while the time tables of Baltimore are so arranged that a trip to Baltimore and return in one day is almost impossible.
Thus it is said that Eastern Shore trade is diverted from Baltimore to Philadelphia.
Who remembers Tru-Ade?
1957 Tru-Ade Ad..
(Text courtesy blog.retroplanet.com)
The beverage sold as Tru-Ade was actually a pasteurized, non-carbonated soft drink. It was made with concentrated fruit juice and was available in both orange and grape flavor. It was bottled in Washington, DC from 1942 to 1969, although they were headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. In 1947, after the sugar shortages of WWII were behind them, the management at Tru-Ade, Inc. decided to get into the cup vending business. They designed and had manufactured a vendor called the Tru-Ade Cup Dispenser. Tru-Ade seems to have gone out of business some time in the 1970s.
Tru-Ade is no longer available as far as I can determine, but there are an awful lot of people who’ve left posts all over the Internet asking where they can find some. It must have been a delicious drink!
August, 1887 (Time Machine archive)
The Denton Journal
(Excerpts)
Maryland Cooking
(Quoting a New York Times correspondent.)
In Maryland one of the roads to Paradise begins in the kitchen and ends in the dining-room. Nowhere in the world do people as a class live better. They are born to good eating, and the cultivation of the appetite becomes a second nature.
The choices things of life flourish here with a luxuriance that few, if any sections of the country can match.
... Cantaloupe, oysters, soft crabs, trout, rail birds, luscious peaches just plucked, and an indescribable watermelon fresh from the vine!
Good eating is so infectious in the State that it pervades politics. In one of the counties, Wicomico, the campaign is invariably opened in the spring by a great turtle dinner. All the candidates and politicians and district leaders come together in a love feast of turtle and politics. They sit around on stools and fences eating and talking and laughing booms and courting friendships. The affair lasts an entire day, and after it is over the candidates proceed to slaughter one another instead of turtle. Oyster roasts are features of all large campaigns. Several dozen bushels of oysters are roasted in one great fire and every man, equipped with an oyster knife, helps himself. Good dinners are also numerously used in a political way, and many a boom had its fruitful origin in well cooked food, flavored with rare old wines.
A year of so ago the best restaurant here, and all in all the best in the south, imported a staff of high-salaried New York cooks. The arrangement lasted less than a week. By that time the guests had asked for a return to Maryland dishes, for to a Marylander the subtle charm of home cooking is the greatest glory of the ages.
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!