The Pocomoke Public Eye: 9/22/24

Mrs. Flossie B. Douglas (1897-1990)

From interview recorded January, 1972.

(obituary excerpt)

FLOSSIE: ...in later years they built Ross Street School, which was the county high school. After building the new high school, we were transferred to the Ross Street School... Ross Street Elementary School, a new building with classrooms with electricity and plenty of blackboard space, a special closet for coats and hats, bathrooms for the girls and boys. We even had a school cafeteria. Well they had that you know when the high school was there, then later when they added on that new addition, they made a larger cafeteria. But the first one was in the old building and was small then they added those new buildings you know, on the outside, an office for the principal, a library for students, of course that was in there and they used it, and a central heating system. What a change. I can’t believe it. I spent 11 years at Ross Street and retired in 1960. There were buses coming in from many areas. You see they brought in the buses then from different areas you see, and they’d picked them up at Ross Street and take them on out to Worcester High School.

INTERVIEWER: ... are there any, just sort of special experiences you remember as a young teacher or that stand out in your mind. You know like little anecdotes that happened or any special..
FLOSSIE: (Laughs)
INTERVIEWER: But don’t mention names.
FLOSSIE: Well there was one at Box Iron. I’ll tell you (laughs). The only way you could get rid of those mosquitos, they were like yellow nippers. Oh, they were the largest. I don’t know if you were here at that time, they were the largest mosquitos. And from my section of the country we didn’t know what a mosquito was.
INTERVIEWER: Out in Missouri you didn’t have?
FLOSSIE: Oh no. We didn’t have, no, we didn’t have screened in porches.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, I think this summer I will go to Missouri.
FLOSSIE: (Laughs) Those mosquitos would set me crazy. So, the lady where I was boarding, she said, “Well you have to make a smother.” And I said, “Well what is a smother?” She said, “You take a large bucket, put some rags in it, and papers, rags and paper, and put plenty of rags you know. I forget, I think it was a little sulfur. It was real comical, but I would go up and down the road with a long stick under the handle of the bucket to keep the mosquitos from biting me. They would just drive me crazy. So, one day, we kept, then we always kept a smother in front of our building.
I told a boy, one of the boys, I don’t know what he was thinking, to empty the smother. I think it was getting near closing time.
INTERVIEWER: Mm-mm.
FLOSSIE: And I told him to empty the smother. And instead of emptying the smother in the spot that we had always emptied it, he goes out into this man’s woodland and sets the woods on fire. (The men) they came from everywhere. If they hadn’t, I would have been in trouble.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something.
FLOSSIE: That would have burned up the woodlands. Oh, it was blazing. It was a good day for fire to burn.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my gosh.
FLOSSIE: Oh, and the children didn’t know what to do, but those men they were wonderful. They came in trucks. One, seems like, notified the other, and they put that fire out.

INTERVIEWER: What were your salaries?
FLOSSIE: Well at that time, now when I first came, I was getting only a $70 a month. And later they raised me, according to my qualifications, to 80, and of course they kept going up.

INTERVIEWER: Now, you paid for room and board?
FLOSSIE: Oh yes. You had to pay. Yes, yes you paid for your room and board.

INTERVIEWER: oh my. That didn’t leave much, did it?
FLOSSIE: Oh no indeed you didn’t get very far (laughs).

INTERVIEWER: Were you able to be married and teach when you came here?
FLOSSIE: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: I remember earlier you couldn’t be married.
FLOSSIE: But you could when I came. Uh-huh. You could be married.
INTERVIEWER: When you were teaching at the one room schools did you have supervisors come visit?
FLOSSIE: Yes, we had supervisors. We had state supervisor’s and all.
INTERVIEWER: State supervisors.
FLOSSIE: Oh yea. Mr. J. Walter Hovington was the state supervisor and later of course his nephew took it over, younger man. ...J. Walter Hovington. He used to smoke a pipe. Everybody remembers him.
NTERVIEWER: ... Let’s go back to Box Iron. The seafood industry was oysters and clams?
FLOSSIE: And crabbing.
INTERVIEWER: And crabs.
FLOSSIE: Course crabbing was more in the spring. That’s when they did their crabbing.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, now did the blacks as well as the whites?
FLOSSIE: Oh yes. My husband had his own boat. He was in the business.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
FLOSSIE: Had his own boat. Now there weren’t too many blacks. Maybe one or two. Not a large number. Most of them were white. Mr. Levi Truitt, I don’t know whether you know him, he was one of them that worked. He lives on the road that goes to Public Landing in that big yellow house.
INTERVIEWER: Oh yea.
FLOSSIE: That’s Mr. Levi Truitt.
INTERVIEWER: Now the boats, I mean the trucks from Crisfield came..
FLOSSIE: Came to buy their seafood products.
INTERVIEWER: Came to buy.
INTERVIEWER: I didn’t know that.
FLOSSIE: They were sold to them.
INTERVIEWER: Did you um, was there any recreational boating during the summertime?
FLOSSIE: Well, yes, if anyone wanted to you know, go out in their boats they could and individuals would take them out in their boats. Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go out?
FLOSSIE: Oh yes, I used to go out quite often. Then there was some of them now, Mr. Scott, who is dead now and lived at Scott’s Landing for years, He had his own big houseboat, where you could, they had bunks and all on there and we used to go down there and stay on the boat.
INTERVIEWER: Did you really?
FLOSSIE: Oh, it was a lot of fun. He had a big houseboat there. You know the had a Boy Scout building down there.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I remember that.
FLOSSIE: Well he had a big houseboat there. I don’t know where that boat is now.
INTERVIEWER: It’s probably fallen apart.
FLOSSIE: Yes, I’m sure it’s fallen apart by now. It had a kitchen on it and everything. It was a lovely boat. He lived right near the landing, Scott’s Landing.
INTERVIEWER: Right near. Did you go over to Assateague for beach?
FLOSSIE: Yes, you could go to Ocean City, you could go to any of those places. And then of course you could go to George Island Landing in Stockton too you know. And there’s a landing at a, oh what’s that one at Girdletree? (audio not clear) school there but instead of going straight to your right you go to your left, and go right on in. It was right beside the church. I think they’re using that, part of that school building now for a recreation room for the church.
INTERVIEWER: ... were there any black businesses in Snow Hill in the 30’s or anywhere like that?
FLOSSIE: No. no, I don’t remember anything no.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. I was going through some things on Pocomoke and there was a black, I forget his name, had a bicycle repair shop.
FLOSSIE: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Sold inner tubes and things.
FLOSSIE: And then there was a black shoe shop I think at one time in Pocomoke.
INTERVIEWER: Yea.
FLOSSIE: Yea
INTERVIEWER: And I wondered if it was any...
FLOSSIE: (In Snow Hill) No, we didn’t have any. We didn’t even have a black restaurant at that time. You know of course know Miss Beulah Davis had a restaurant at one time before Evelyn opened hers around there near the library.
(Series continues next Saturday with the recollections of Mary Dryden.)