Saturday, March 8, 2025

Recollections from generations past. (Rodney Bounds- 3)

 


(Rodney Bounds 1892 - 1990)

TRANSCRIPT OF 1979 INTERVIEW (continued)

INTERVIEWER: Where’s Hungry Town?

RODNEY: Do you know where Hungry Town is?


INTERVIEWER: No I don’t, and somebody asked me that the other day and I

 said I don’t know. It’s up near Ironshire.

RODNEY: You know where Ironshire is?


INTERVIEWER: Yes, I know where Ironshire is.

RODNEY: Well you just turn there at Ironshire and go right toward the river.


INTERVIEWER: And that’s Hungry Town.

RODNEY: And that’s Hungry Town, and you turn on the other road, from

 where I lived when I got married you go the dirt around that way, and you

come in there, where the old race track used to be.


INTERVIEWER: No.

RODNEY: You know where……


INTERVIEWER: Yes I do too, I know where the race track was.

RODNEY: Well that road went right alongside the race track. Take that road

 and it would take you right by Hungry Town. Then you come down there

 between nearly to the Nine Pin Branch, the road would turn go over the river

 to Powellville. And the other one would turn left and come around to

 Queponco.


INTERVIEWER: Did Hungry Town have anything? Storewise or…..

RODNEY: Well it had 2 stores at the time and now then its got one store but

 its got a lot of chicken houses, and built up all around there. It’s got a church

 there. Newark, its got 2 churches, at that time it had Trinity Church. The

 church that I go to was down here at Basketswitch.


INTERVIEWER: Good, now they said that the church was near the tree at

 Basketswitch. Isn’t there a BiCentennial Tree?

RODNEY: Right there down by where the tree is at Basketswitch. There’s a

 cemetery there too. It’s got tombstones.


INTERVIEWER: I wanted to go by there, the other day, but there was too much

 snow and that’s a dirt road, and I didn’t get back there.

RODNEY: Well that was the old road that went by the front of the church, it

 went on around and come out yonder and cross the road. It come out at

 Bowen’s place, you know, that was sold the other day. That’s all new road.

 That’s all new road. The other went up into Newark. Then there’s another

 road that goes out from Newark, right out past the station, that would carry

 you out to…by Hickory Ridge, and that would carry you to Hungry Town

 road.


INTERVIEWER: Hickory Ridge, was that a town or just a place?

RODNEY: That’s just a farm.


INTERVIEWER: Just a farm. It’s between Newark and Hungry Town on that

 road that goes out there by the station.

RODNEY: Used to be a colored church there on the corner there. There’s a

 graveyard there now. But they moved that church out to near Ironshire and

 as you go from Ironshire across to Hungry Town, why you go by that.


INTERVIEWER: But it was moved.

RODNEY: When I moved up to Newark, why they had a building there they

 used as a Odd Fellows Building, I believe it was, and then they had about 4

 stores there. One down there by the station, and then there was one where

 the post office is now, and then a store where the bank is…


INTERVIEWER: There was a store there?

RODNEY: There’s a store across in front of that.


INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now was there an Inn, there? The building beside the

 bank or across from the bank?

RODNEY: The old building?


INTERVIEWER: Is that….

RODNEY: That was a store too, and a residence too. Dennis lived there and he

 raised his family and had a store building. I don’t know, he had 6 or 8

 children, I don’t remember. More than that I guess, because he had I think

 about 6 girls and 2 boys and then turn to your right between the store and

 the bank, why old man Harry Bowen lived in the first big house that was

 along there.


INTERVIEWER: On the right or the left.

RODNEY: On the right. And the second one, old man Charlie Richardson, I

 believe his name was, he and his wife, and his wife’s brother, his name was

 Jones, I forget what it was. That’s been a long time ago. And it’s been a long

 time ago since these stores and such as that had been there. But that’s how

 it was when we moved to Queponco.


INTERVIEWER: They had the 4 stores. Was there a blacksmith shop?

RODNEY: Ya. Old man Jim Adkins, had a blacksmith shop over to the left as

 you turn to go on that road right across. Built wagons, carts, and do iron

 work and such as that. You know Sidney Northam?


NTERVIEWER: Yes.

RODNEY: Sidney’s mother was raised there, old man Adkins daughter. Dave

 and Sidney’s mother was an Adkins. All of them are dead now. Adkins,

 Mumfords, John Mumford, he was, you probably heard of him. I don’t know,

 he had a brother named Charlie, older brother, and John and then Harvey.


INTERVIEWER: It sounds familiar. Now he………

RODNEY: Well there was a Mumford, I believe a John Mumford to Ocean City,

 too wasn’t it…


INTERVIEWER: Yes, I think that’s what I’m confusing it with.

RODNEY: I don’t know whether they were related or not.


INTERVIEWER: No, because there are Mumfords in Berlin too that aren’t related.


Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.

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