TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS FROM 1982 INTERVIEW
(Continued from last week)
INTERVIEWER: …. Transportation. Did you all have cars? Everybody? Or …
MARAH: Yes, when I was a child, the first car that I remember we had in
Baltimore, was an Overland.
INTERVIEWER: (Laughs.)
MARAH: Loosely related to the Studebaker family.
INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh.
MARAH: When we moved down here. ‘Course, my father had died, he was
only 42. When we first moved down here, my Uncle Walbur, he came up in his
car, which I think was a Studebaker. But it was an open, what you would call
a touring car. And in the wintertime, you put curtains where we now have
windows.
INTERVIEWER: (Laughs.)
MARAH: You snapped the curtains up. And I remember coming from
Baltimore that real cold Christmas, and we had hot water bottles to keep our
feet warm. (Both laugh.) And it was cold. No car heaters.
INTERVIEWER: I don’t think my generation can even fathom …
MARAH: No, you can’t. You really can’t visualize that, I’m sure.
INTERVIEWER: How ’bout the train, did you ride the train?
MARAH: Yes, when I was in high school, rode the train. Then after high school
from here to Philadelphia. Then changed to go to Pittsburgh where my sister
was living. And we rode the train to Baltimore.
INTERVIEWER: How ’bout steamboats?
MARAH: In my mother’s day, there were steamboats on the river … And they
used to go to Baltimore from Pocomoke. When I graduated from high school
and I went to Towson to school, there was a steamer that left from Crisfield,
from Crisfield to Baltimore. And we went ... to Towson by that steamer.
Someone took us to Crisfield. It was probably Dr. Giddens because I lived
with his sister.
INTERVIEWER: Mhmm.
MARAH: Bob Giddens, his father.
INTERVIEWER: His father, right, he was the dentist.
MARAH: And I know the night that we were on, you had cabins, and you spent
the night going from Crisfield to Baltimore.
INTERVIEWER: (Laughs.)
MARAH: And that particular night, there was a small fire on the boat. It did
soon extinguish.
INTERVIEWER: I can imagine what it was like to be on when the boat was on fire, ugh. How about your first car, did you …
MARAH: It had roll-up windows, it wasn’t a snap-on ride.
INTERVIEWER: (Laughs) What year was it that you got this?
MARAH: That would be about 1933.
INTERVIEWER: Did many girls get cars, or did they …
MARAH: No, really, that was not my car, that was a family car. No, I didn’t have
a car of my own until, well, when I married, we first had a car.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Okay. Public Landing? How often did you go?
MARAH: Not too often, maybe two or three times during the summer for
picnics. We had several families that went on picnics together during the
summer. Dr. Sartorius, who’s now at Hartley Hall.
INTERVIEWER: Hartley Hall.
MARAH: Well, his son Norman.
INTERVIEWER: Mhmm.
MARAH: Was in my class in high school, and Bill the year ahead. And Rick
was a year older, and our families were close because our fathers and
mothers were close, and we always had picnics either at Public Landing or in
Ocean City. And then the Sunday school had their picnics at Public Landing.
And there was lots of fried chicken and salad and rolls …
INTERVIEWER: How ‘bout swimming?
MARAH: Swimming, for the ones who could swim …
INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh. It wasn’t like it is now.
MARAH: No.
INTERVIEWER: In the pictures, the women were all covered up with umbrellas.
MARAH: Right, right.
INTERVIEWER: Nobody would think of going to the beach with umbrellas now.
MARAH: Right. My first bathing suit when I was about nine years old had
sleeves to the elbows.
(Both laugh.)
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you ever go to Red Hill?
MARAH: Red Hill was (clears throat) a picnic area before Public Landing. And
I went several times, but I was very small, so I don’t remember much about it.
But at the time, churches had picnics down there too. But due to the harsh
terrain, it’s quite a long trip during the day.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever go to Assateague?
MARAH: No.
INTERVIEWER: Maryland?
MARAH: No. It was not open … to the public.
(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)
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