Saturday, March 15, 2025

Recollections from generations past. (Rodney Bounds- 4)

 


(Rodney Bounds 1892 - 1990)

TRANSCRIPT FROM 1979 INTERVIEW (CONTINUED)

INTERVIEWER: ............. Was there a post office? At Newark?

RODNEY: Yes, it was Newark Post Office and Queponco Railroad. And they

 were as close together as from here as down there to the fence.


INTERVIEWER: Somebody that day said, that if you wanted to send a

 telegram, if you were away and wanted to send a telegram, if you sent it to

 Newark, it wouldn’t go. You had to say Queponco, even though it was the

 same place.

RODNEY: And if you were in Philadelphia or somewhere in a strange place,

 that they didn’t know the place they asked for a ticket to Newark, well they

 wouldn’t know if it was Newark, Delaware or Newark, New Jersey. No,

 Newark, Maryland, well we got no place like that. So you had to tell them

 Queponco, before you could buy it. Of course, if they had been an agent for a

 long while, well they knew it, and they’d tell you you would have to have it for

 Queponco. They had enough stores, and they had a good Blacksmith, and all

 that in them days. Of course after the automobiles come around that

 changed things a little.


INTERVIEWER: Well you really didn’t have to go to Snow Hill for anything? Or

 did you?

RODNEY: Well for any county business, you would go to the courthouse.

 Such as that.


INTERVIEWER: But for food and supplies and things like that…..

RODNEY: No, no. And right across the river there was Whiton. That kept a big

 store, you know, and they kept anything and everything that was needed.

 Same way at Piney Grove.


INTERVIEWER: Is Piney Grove and….I think there are 2 places that are the

 same, I’m going to say Mt. Olive.

RODNEY: Now Mt. Olive and Piney Grove are right close together. Mt. Olive

 Church and Piney Grove, I don’t think Piney Grove Store was over a mile

 from there and the church is still there, but the store is gone. They’ve got two

 houses there now, right close by, there’s an old house across the road in the

 woods, now there at Piney Grove and you can go up in it. You can start out

 and go pretty near Snow Hill without getting out of the woods. I think on one

 side of the road, I mean.


INTERVIEWER: Did you ever go to Forester’s Day of Farmer’s Day, down at

 Public Landing?

RODNEY: Yes.


INTERVIEWER: I was talking to somebody in Salisbury and they said that they

 used to spend the night at Piney Grove and start the next morning, to make it

 a shorter trip.

RODNEY: Mt. Olive Church, why they would have 4 mule wagon load and stay

 there and go from there right on over. But I never went that way, but I lived on

 the road, they had to go right by the next morning. Several wagons would

 come. They’d get in Snow Hill, they didn’t want to get there too early, they

 wanted to wait till the bar open……That’s what they told me. I don’t know I

 wasn’t old enough to see any of that. But I used to go down there to Public

 Landing at Forester’s Day and we went, Sunday school would go down in a 4

 mule wagon load, from church, Bates Church, it is now……………..

RODNEY: We left Snow Hill, I went to Sunday School there and when we

 moved up there we went to here, where the church is tore down.


INTERVIEWER: Was that church torn down here? They couldn’t remember the

 other day if it burned or whether it was moved, the one here at Basketswitch.

 Is that the one you are talking about?

RODNEY: Well, I can’t tell you for sure, but I think it was torn down. Some

 people that lived around there, that opposed to moving it, they wanted to

 build a new church right there. But they had more backing for putting it in

 Newark, instead of building it right there. I don’t know just the year, but

 somewhere about 66 years ago. And that church has gone down and the

 house that set beside it there, and all of it is gone down. Tore up. A man

 named by the name of Richardson, old man, Mark Richardson, lived in the

 house beside of it. And the that went right on around in front of the Bowen

 Farm, that was sold the other week.


INTERVIEWER: What was there at Basketswitch or Basket Town or whatever

 one wants to call it when……….you say you moved from Queponco, you

 didn’t move to Basketswitch, you stayed at Queponco till you moved here.

 Do you remember any buildings or stores or anything at Basketswitch?

RODNEY: After the church burned down, was destroyed, I don’t know, tore

 down, I think it was, why this gum factory was put there. But that’s been

 recently you know. Maybe 20 years, something like that. No there wasn’t any

 buildings down there, but the house and church, at that time, besides farm

 buildings.


Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.


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