INTERVIEWER: Were you in Snow Hill or near Snow Hill when the Steamboats
were still coming in?
RODNEY: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Can you remember anything about them. I was going to talk to
you about Newark. I didn’t know you were from Snow Hill, so we’ll talk about
that too.
RODNEY: You would hear that whistle blow on the old boat, going home from
school across that way. You know where Bill Price lives?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
RODNEY: Well that’s where the old school ground was at that time.
INTERVIEWER: I’m glad you said that. Because they always said the old
school ground was on Federal Street but nobody would tell me where it was.
RODNEY: That was on Federal, and then down on the other end of Federal
there was a schoolhouse too. But it wasn’t there when I was going to school
in Snow Hill, I went to this other one. It taken in that block pretty well, and the
school yard was out behind it. There is a little street that goes through, well
one each side of where Bill lives, but the one on this side of it, it’s kinda the
colored section there…..
INTERVIEWER: It’s Gunby Alley, I think isn’t it?
RODNEY: I think it is, I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever ride on the Steamboat?
RODNEY: Yes. But I never got any further than Pocomoke.
INTERVIEWER: Well that’s going somewhere.
RODNEY: Used to go down there on a little bale boat, from Snow Hill, go to
the fair you know, the Pocomoke Fair.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. That was in August, or in the summer sometime.
RODNEY: I think it was in August.
INTERVIEWER: When you were going to the fair, did they still have the horse races?
RODNEY: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: I’ve seen some postcards of that showing the horse races.
RODNEY: They had a Model T race there one time, it kicked up a lot of dust
and dirt. It kinda got me so I didn’t care much about automobile races. I don’t
think I ever went out on a boat but once, my grandfather and I went. We were
living up in Queponco then, he was staying with us, we drove down to Snow
Hill and put the horses up and went on down to Pocomoke, to the Fair. Well
he knew a lot of people down there, and I was just a youngster, about 16, and
so I wanted to get around the others and see what was going on, it didn’t
take much in them days, but I fooled around there, they had the big gambling
places, and pitching rings, or something or other in there, and this here
fellow would come up every once and awhile and he would win you know,
every time. Come on you’ll win next time. I stand around there and spent
everything I had, but when I come to my senses I had 7 cents.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my no, and did you win?
RODNEY: No, I didn’t win either time. But that broke me of it, I don’t fool with
it anymore. But that night, my grandfather said now if I don’t see you time get
ready time to go home, well you meet me down at the boat. Well I went down
to the boat, all the way down there they had bananas hanging up, I think a
cent a piece, so I bought me maybe 5 of them and I eat them and come on
back and I didn’t anything else till I got home, and the next day I was sick.
INTERVIEWER: I bet you were. You remembered the trip.
RODNEY: It broke me from fooling with them chances.
INTERVIEWER: Pocomoke seems to have been a pretty wild town, sometimes,
down around the boats and with the Fair too.
RODNEY: Ya, I reckon there was more racketeering going on down there, than
there was up this way. During Moonshine days, liquor, I guess there is
enough of it scattered around.
INTERVIEWER: Now when you moved up to Queponco, you were how old
then?
RODNEY: 14
INTERVIEWER: 14. Okay. Where was or do you still have the farm, there?
RODNEY: No. I stayed with my father til I was 22 years old, and then I got
married and he had another place across the branch, and he built a home on
it for me. And I stayed there a couple of years, and my other brothers, one of
them wasn’t big enough to do much farming, and the one to Ocean City, why
he wanted the garage business and machine shop. He didn’t like farming so
my father sold that farm, and after I’ve been to that farm a couple years, why
it wasn’t a very big farm, my neighbor there wanted to sell his farm. He had 3
girls, that were getting too old to go to the country school, were getting too
far advance, I mean, and he wanted to give them an education. He wanted to
sell that farm, he didn’t have any boys, and his hired help was hard to get, so
he wanted to sell that. I bought that off him, and moved there and then sold
the other one a couple of years later to a man from Arkansas. I lived there
until our youngest boy…………
INTERVIEWER: You bought the farm next to it…Now this was all out……
RODNEY: You know where the factory is out there, the cannin factory? Or
where it used to be, it’s not there…..5 of us built the factory and……
INTERVIEWER: Alright. If I go out Newark and head toward Whiton, aren’t I
going toward Queponcc?
RODNEY: Ya, you go out through Queponco.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. That’s what I thought, but it’s bee
RODNEY: And you took the road up here a mile and a half, turn and go
thataway. The road forks, run together out there. You go right through my
places if you go straight. Instead of comin back to the Newark road, but you
go to the Newark road then you got that road that crooks around, you know,
and it’s the, the home farm is the last place before you get to the woods,
before you get to the Old Mill Branch. Up in the field. And my oldest boy lives
in the farm right beside of it. That I bought off of Mr. Holloway, that lived in
that neighborhood. He owned most of the land, right in that neighborhood. At
that time. You know Will Holloway.
INTERVIEWER: Oh yes.
RODNEY: Well, Will could tell you as much about Newark, as anybody. He was
born there and he is just about a year younger than I am.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, I love to talk to people, so I’ll talk to him too. Alright,
good. At least I can picture where they are. Did Queponco have anything
other than houses? Was there a store or anything like that?
RODNEY: There was a schoolhouse right down there in front of the factory.
That’s where….I went there a couple of winters, but I passed, they only
taught to the 7th grade, and so I was in the 7th grade when I left Snow Hill,
and so they just let me go out there and review the same lessons, you might
say, for a couple of winters and when the weather broke up and so you could
go plowing, then I went plowing and such as that.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember anything special about school there? The
school is not still there is it?
RODNEY: No, it burned down.
INTERVIEWER: It burned? And it was there where the new factory………..
RODNEY: Right there in front of the factory, that’s where that was. That was
the farm that my father bought, there where the factory is. But a couple year,
three years after I got married, I lived there on a place he give me, two years
and then moved over there and I bought that place, he sold his farm and
moved to Berlin. On the Ocean City road, just before you get to the English
Grill on the right, big square house. I think a family of Eshams right across
the front. Then he died when he was living up there, and that left the rest of
that farm, 100 and some acres farm there on the farm that he give me. So I
bought that off of my mother a year or 2 after that. I had 582 acres I believe
there was in that block of land, and then I let the boys have that, after the
youngest got married. After Roland did.
INTERVIEWER: That was a lot. Did you farm it all?
RODNEY: Well that was woodland too.
INTERVIEWER: Good. Because that is a lot of work.
RODNEY: Of course, at that time I had just about all I could till with teams, but
they till about 12 hundred acres now.
INTERVIEWER: Now they have things that are huge. They’ve got the
equipment for it.
RODNEY: Well when I left the farm I had 3 combines, and they were pull type,
pull them with tractors, and I had more land than that. I had a place on the
bay 300 and some acres in that. And then another place up there in Hungry
Town.
Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.
