TIME MACHINE ... He was a "local landmark" of Pocomoke City's Market Street.

　

(Reader-friendly viewing of newspaper archives material)

　
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 　
　
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, a Holiday memory? 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!