JOHN: My father, he bought a car once. He bought a Oakland.
INTERVIEWER: An Oakland?
JOHN: Oakland.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. I’ve never even heard of that which doesn’t mean a whole lot because I don’t know much about cars (laughter). At all.
JOHN: Well he bought an Oakland and he’d ride in second gear all the time (laughter). You know Robert Lee in Newark? Robert Lee he worked to the state store.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Yes. Alright. Alright now.
JOHN: His daddy is the one who sold it to him. His name was Will Smith. Now he was in the car business and so my father he used to after my mother died well then he started to after a while he started going around you know and doing his thing and so he got himself a car. And I’ve known (inaudible speech) teach how to run it. And from the mailbox out to the house that’s as far as he let me drive, from the mailbox up to the house. And if I can remember well I think not too many of the other kids even rode in it because they was afraid because I always, I always figured anything my father did was alright.
INTERVIEWER: If it hadn’t hurt him.
JOHN: It didn’t hurt him it wasn’t hurting me. So that’s the way I was brought up. So he finally bought one and. Mr (inaudible speech) owned the store, he bought one. I think they said at that time it was $750 (inaudible speech) and so they were good old days.
INTERVIEWER: Now would you, I know there was something in Public Landing called Forester’s Day or Farmer’s Day so like a big picnic down there. Could colored people go to Public Landing at any time or was there certain times?
JOHN: Well no they had, they had a special day.
INTERVIEWER: (Inaudible speech.)
JOHN: They had special days for that and then. Well I don’t even remember going myself but they had special days at Public Landing. Now like down in Ocean City they used to have Maryland Delaware and Virginia days, in Ocean City. Now at that time I was old enough then I was working in Ocean City.
INTERVIEWER: Alright when did you first start to work in Ocean City? About how old were you when you went there?
JOHN: Let’s see I don’t know I was; I was up in my 20s.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: I was up in my 20s. I was, first I went and got a job at the Hastings Hotel.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I know where that is.
JOHN: Miss Ludden.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, Miss Lilly Ludden.
JOHN: Which is Paul Jones’ sister.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Right.
JOHN: And I worked a week and everybody else come out and was going in the office and coming back and I seen them with mud in their hand. Like what is this and they said today’s pay day. I says where is the office? Just go right through that door there, she’s in there. So I went in there and (inaudible speech) today’s my pay day. She says you don’t get no pay yet. I say I don’t understand. She says you’re not an experience waiter. I says I waited on all the people that sits at the tables. I have two tables, four people there at the tables and I give them service. So I didn’t argue with her. So I went on back and where I slept down in the, I call it the basement. It was and in there and the sand crabs, you go down there at night and turn the lights on. You know what sand crab looks like?
INTERVIEWER: Those little tiny things with all those little legs.
JOHN: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: All over em. Yeah (laughter).
JOHN: They’d be all over your bed. They’d chase you out. So I said well I’m not gonna. I didn’t, I didn’t say nothing. I just didn’t, I didn’t have no clothes anyway. I just had a few clothes on my back and my shoes. She furnished the white coat and so I took and I went up on the boardwalk to a place we called Rickets. That was Rickets where you get all the nice crabs (inaudible speech) Rickets and I was sittin up there and I said well I’m down here and I don’t know what to do. I ain’t got no job, didn’t get no pay. I heard a man come from the Atlantic Hotel called Pop Taylor, a colored man. He was the one that was always hiring and I heard him holler to a boy. He said hey boy you want a job (inaudible speech) to the Rickets I was sitting up there on the bench and when I heard Pop Taylor ask this boy if he wanted a job and the boy said no. And so I got up and I went over there to him and I said I want a job. He said you do. He said what’s your name? I told him and he said come here, like that. And I went over to him and he said you know anything about running a dishwasher? I can run anything. So he said come on, like that. Over to the Atlantic hotel. And I went over there and I went to work right away.
INTERVIEWER: Did you figure out how to run a dishwasher?
JOHN: Well there wasn’t nothing to it. Put the dishes in there and pull the lever close the door and the steam done the work. And then after so much steam you turn the water on and another one and rinse them off and then the heat from that.
INTERVIEWER: Dried em.
JOHN: Dried em. So all you had to do was stack em up. And then I worked there. And I worked there until they hired a, they had a man from Johns Hopkins Hospital (inaudible speech) out there and then the head waiter came out there and he wanted me to wait. Oh they had people there standing in line night and he said you want come on in he says and make you some extra money. Doing what? He says serving. (inaudible speech) people around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And then I didn’t have nothing else to do but sit out there on the bench. So I went in there and he says I tell you what I’ll get the order and bring it to you and all you have to do, the tables are numbered. And so I went in there and got their orders and served them and around about 15 people. And out of 15 people I served them and then when they got ready to leave that’s the first thing they do because if you don’t watch you’re out and somebody sees your people leave and put tip on there the other waiter will go over there and get it you know. So I was smart enough for that so I went in there and (inaudible speech) dishes. So I cleaned my table up carried my dishes off. Took my dish cloth and wiped the tables off and he would look up and I said no, no I didn’t get nothing. I didn’t get paid for it. I said I didn’t get (inaudible speech). He said if you’ll serve these it’s (inaudible speech) so he went and (inaudible speech) and gave me $10 you know. And then I says okay so I went and I served them then after that I would go in there and I’d take a chance you know. Sometime you don’t find a bunch of dollars. And sometimes you go in there and you find a bunch of young girls (inaudible speech) and they’d get to talking and I guess probably might have a drink or two and you’d come back and they be gone. (laughter) Food on the table. They wouldn’t come back. They wouldn’t even come back. And I stayed there the summer.
INTERVIEWER: Were the living conditions any better there?
JOHN: Oh yes it was good. I had my own room. But I didn’t wanna sleep with nobody. I didn’t wanna sneak in the room with nobody. So you had a single bed. So it was a bed here and another guy had to share another bed. But I mean it was two beds but you were two in a room, and I didn’t like the idea you know. So I asked Pop Taylor what we called him. I said isn’t there another room around here, new place I can find to sleep. I said I don’t wanna be in no room with nobody else. He said there aint but one room here, he said that’s the room off of the furnace. You gotta go through the furnace room he said it’s just like any other room. He said but it’s in the furnace room. I said well by the time I get in there, I said the furnace was gonna be off anyhow ain it. He said It’ll be cool though because after a certain time they’d cut the furnace.
INTERVIEWER: Alright they used it to heat the water didn’t they?
JOHN: Yes. To heat the water, and so I took that room and I made it alright. And I got another boy, a boy Ken Waters. His dad knew me and I got him a job. I got him a job there. I got him a job and I got Nick Mills a job there. I got Nick a job doing my work, the work that I was doing. Cause I was washing the dishes and I loved spinach (inaudible speech) and some of that spinach was coming back it was all fresh spinach.
INTERVIEWER: Wasn’t no canned stuff.
JOHN: No canned stuff. Was all fresh spinach.
INTERVIEWER: Oh nothing’s better than that.
JOHN: You see a man come up there with trucks loaded with fresh stuff and fowl and I used to help the boy to kill the fowl. Now when we kill turkeys we kill anywhere from 25 to 30 turkeys.
INTERVIEWER: Would you really!
JOHN: Yeah and you know how we killed them (inaudible speech) that wasn’t my idea but it was his so I had to follow through. He had a piece of wire about that long. (inaudible speech) and we took the turkeys out in the fence and I mean in the courtyard. And instead of grabbing the turkeys and fooling with them he’d just get down on his knees and he’d walk around and as he walked the turkeys would walk around he’d just take
that thing just like that and just.
INTERVIEWER: Snap the necks.
JOHN: And knock their heads right off. He’d just break their necks and down they’d go. And then we didn’t have to, we had a steam. Everything was done by steam and we’d put em in the steam pot. We had a steam pot right there. All we had to do, we had a thing that to hook over his leg and stick him down into the steam like that and then (inaudible speech) had a big table and then all we had to do was just take and pick em.
INTERVIEWER: Alright the steam would loosen up its feathers.
JOHN: Yeah clean down to the skin. (inaudible speech) I forget his last name but I knew him well as anything. And I worked there. I liked it. I liked hotel work.
(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)
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