Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Congratulations PHS Class of 2025!
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
(UPDATE) Feds pull out of flood mitigation funding for Crisfield.
Updating original posting to include article from Maryland Matters:
FEMA cancels $1 billion for flood prevention projects in Chesapeake Bay region - Maryland Matters
(Earlier post:)
(delmarvanow.com)
- Crisfield had been promised $36 million in FEMA funding for a flood mitigation project.
- FEMA terminated the BRIC program, citing it as "wasteful and ineffective," and rescinded the promised funds.
- Crisfield officials argue the project was essential for the city's flood resilience and would have yielded significant returns in avoided disaster losses.
The city of Crisfield says the loss of FEMA funds from a program that has been terminated will be "a particularly acute blow" for the city as it strives for flood resilience innovation.
*(View news story:)
Crisfield says flood project key, but FEMA terminated 'wasteful funds
*(Note: delmarvanow.com/The Salisbury Daily Times may limit access to its online material.)
Monday, May 26, 2025
Memorial Day crash on OC Route 90 Bridge--
5/27/25 Note: There were no media follow-ups to this news item.
(WBOC)
(View news story:)
UPDATE: Crash Shuts Down Ocean City's Route 90 Bridge | Latest News | wboc.com
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Time Machine: 100 years ago this week in Pocomoke's newspaper; Businesses humming on mid-century Willow Street;
(excerpts)
Mid 1940's - Mid 1960's
Willow Street businesses were humming.
Pocomoke City's first self-service food market-
A shopper at Peoples Food Market on Willow Street.
In the mid-1940's William (Bill) Kleger relocated his grocery store from Clarke Avenue to a larger location on the northeast block of Willow Street. The well-stocked Peoples Food Market was Pocomoke City's first self-service market for grocery items and featured a choice selection of fresh meats plus specialty selections from the meat case of interest to the African American Community. Not long after the store opened it invited customers to come see fresh donuts being made in their Downy Flake donut machine. The donuts were available in plain, cinnamon, and sugar, and were 29-cents a dozen.
Following renovations in 1960 the store was rebranded as Bill's Foodland, continuing under the operation of William Kleger until his passing in 1964.
(Wikipedia)
Ethel Ernestine Harper was Aunt Jemima during the 1950s in person, in print and in media. She was the first Aunt Jemima to be depicted on TV and the final "living person" basis for the Aunt Jemima image until it was changed to a composite in the 1960s. She worked as a traveling "Aunt Jemima" on behalf of the Quaker company, giving presentations at schools, churches and other organizations. Prior to assuming the role, Harper graduated from college at the age of 17 and became a teacher.
Numerous businesses occupied Willow Street between Front Street and Clarke Avenue. Recalling the scene during the 1950's: on the east side of the street next to People's Food Market was the Flax Confectionery Store, the WBOC Pocomoke City radio studio, and the County Liquor Dispensary on the corner (Clarke & Willow) with the telephone company office and operators on the second floor; across the street on the west side of Willow Street was Creath Appliances, Gladding Brothers (Buick-Pontiac) automobile dealership, Lewis Laundry And Dry Cleaners Plant, and the J. Scott Porter (Studebaker) automobile dealership. The Peacock Hotel and restaurant occupied the southwest corner of Willow and Clarke with numerous small businesses between Clarke Avenue and Second Street. Prior to the opening of the new J.J. Newberry's on the corner of Market and Second Street, rear access to the original Newberry's was on Willow Street.
I can't seem to remember Peoples Food Market, but I do recall John Lee Taylor's grocery store on Second Street between Market and Willow. Back when we were in high school we would go frogging every spring and sell the frog legs to Johnny to retail out. I think we charged maybe a dollar a pound or so, but it was good spending money for a teenager. Of course, that would not be allowed today with current food safety laws and government inspectors.
I do remember well Dawson Clarke's WBOC studio, the liquor dispensary and the telephone switchboard and I knew some of the telephone operators. I always wondered why Marion Station got dial tone at least a year before Pocomoke City.
Your friend,
Slim
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Chincoteague Town Hall Meeting-
(WBOC)
CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. -- Virginia's senior U.S. Senator Mark Warner met with local leaders and neighbors on Chincoteague on Friday afternoon. While local issues got some attention, most of the comments focused on national topics.
(View news story:)
Recollections From Generations Past (John Wesley Adkins - 7)
(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
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