(Transcript continues)
INTERVIEWER: When you were working in Ocean City, did you work more than one summer there? Or did you go back? Or did you just do that one summer?
JOHN: I only did one summer there. Just one summer.
INTERVIEWER: What would you do for entertainment there? I don’t know if you had any time for entertainment.
JOHN: I didn’t do no entertainment. Cause I was a loner. You know I always been a little peculiar. I always been to myself you know. When I got my work done, we had an old a cat there a kitten and she was a (inaudible word) little thing. And when I got through, got my stomach full. We didn’t even have a radio and there wasn’t even, you couldn’t even hear nobody with a radio. Now all you can hear is the radio and tape player and all that. We didn’t even have a radio and I would be tired and I’d just go in and take me a shower. Everybody had a shower. They had shower stalls and you’d go in and take your shower and come on out and get in there. And there was no place to go you know and unless you go in there where they gamble. They gamble and shoot pool and I didn’t do that you know.
INTERVIEWER: They paid you for washing dishes?
JOHN: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: Alright and you took your chance on tips from …
JOHN: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: The waiting …
JOHN: Yeah …
INTERVIEWER: Part of it.
JOHN: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: And sometimes you were lucky, sometimes you weren’t.
JOHN: Yeah but I got along with (inaudible speech) that was her name and she was lovely and so was he.
INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard that said.
JOHN: (inaudible speech) Both of em was nice as they could be.
INTERVIEWER: Okay now let’s see. How did you get a job with the state roads or county roads?
JOHN: State road.
INTERVIEWER: State road. Now when did you get a job with them?
JOHN: I got a job with them after, after all this.
INTERVIEWER: Right that’s what I was figuring.
JOHN: I came back home and I can’t remember how it happened but (inaudible speech) my sister worked with Daniel Boone. He was the head of the state road and I said I want a job on the state road. And I said you (inaudible conversation). So she called him and he says tell him to come on down to the barn in the morning at 7:00 (inaudible speech).
INTERVIEWER: Is it still where it is now?
JOHN: Still in the same place right down here across from the mill pond. Well I didn’t have no way to get down there but walk. So I walked down there. Walking was just my way of getting around. So I went down there and told me, well he had called Mr. Hugh Pusey. And so he give me a job (inaudible speech).
INTERVIEWER: Oh my.
JOHN: The boys down the road today, they have it made, we had to we had to (inaudible word), everything was done on the state road except breaking up the shoulders. We had to do it by hand. Picks and shovels, chipping the roads like they chip the roads now. We had to deduct so much full wheel barrows of gravel just about every, I’ll say about every 30 feet. On this side and then on the other side. And then when we got ready to tar the road, we’d do that for a whole day. Two days. And then when the tar machine would come, the tar machine would come and put down the tar. And then we’d go and each one would I would take a heap and another boy would take a heap. I would throw it towards him and he would throw it towards me. Spreading the gravel on it. But we’d only use half of the heap. You understand what I mean?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
JOHN: Then we’d go to more heaps and do the same thing. Then when we did the other side of the road that’s when we do the other side of the road. Then the roller man he’d come along after we got started. He’d come along and he rolled it. And I learned how to run the steam roller. I learned how to run all the equipment out there, and then I worked out there till 1929. And I got sick and I had to go to Baltimore for a couple of years. And then I worked in the kitchen there at the hospital and I did the same thing I did in Ocean City. That’s what I did.
(Inaudible speech.)
JOHN: I went down in the kitchen and got the food cart and brought it up to the dining room. Up in the ward, and not the ward. But then the nurses would come there and then they’d take and tip me. They had that chrome lid to it, stainless steel. And then they’d put the patient’s food on it and I would push the cart as they.
INTERVIEWER: As they worked on it.
JOHN: As they worked on it. And then I’d take the dishes after they got through gather up the dishes and then I’d take and carry them right down to the big kitchen and then I took care of the floors (inaudible speech). I never did sleep on the inside.
INTERVIEWER: You didn’t?
JOHN: Never (inaudible speech). Well that’s the way it was there. The doctors, the doctors. That was a long time ago. And the doctors, the doctors didn’t give you x-ray there you know. They just looked at you and thought what was wrong with you and they said that I believe you need a (inaudible word). I believe you might have the TB. So he made preparations (inaudible speech) and when we got there they give me all these x-rays and (inaudible speech) He said did he take x-rays? I said what’s x-rays? Them things I put up against you to (inaudible speech) your chest (inaudible speech). I said no, no he never did that I said. He said he didn’t do nothing, didn’t tap you on the shoulder. I said no.
INTERVIEWER: He looked at you.
JOHN: Yeah the doctor did (inaudible speech) It didn’t cost me anything because (inaudible speech) I stayed there, I came home on vacation after a year. I come home. I stayed I think around 14 days then I went back (inaudible speech).
(Full interview is available for viewing at link below:) https://worcesterlibrary.libguides.com/Oral_History_Folklife/Adkins
