INTERVIEWER: Was there a store at Newark?
JOHN: Yes. Mr. Roman Jackson was the first man that I can remember that had a store. And after he, I don’t know whether he died or, but anyhow, Mr. Lev Connor taken over the store. That was a country store. That’s where everybody was at. That was the social gathering.
INTERVIEWER: Okay now where was this?
JOHN: When was this?
INTERVIEWER: Where?
JOHN: Where. Right at the railroad station down in Newark in town.
INTERVIEWER: Okay so it was. (Inaudible speech talking over each other)
INTERVIEWER: Its where Barbely’s …
JOHN: Barbely’s …
INTERVIEWER: That’s okay …
JOHN: Barbley’s store.
INTERVIEWER: That’s the same store. I don’t think it’s changed any.
JOHN: No (laughter). They still hang around there they still hang around there. You go right down there now you can find somebody sitting around there there’s always been on Saturday nights, there was no place no dance hall nothing like that. People just went there and they just talked and they sang. We had a quartet and we used to sing and we would get in the store and sing and everybody just had a great time till about 10:30 until the man got ready to close up then everybody would just go on home.
INTERVIEWER: Now you didn’t have much that you had to buy at the store. You grew and raised and your mother or someone canned and did all that kind of thing?
JOHN: We always canned, and canned everything mostly and all the things that we would have to buy was sugar oil and stuff like that.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, things like that. Was there a mill in Newark that you could have your wheat or flour ground out?
JOHN: Mr. Gordon Adkins he had a mill. But I don’t think it was. I’m trying to think whether it was a mill that you … I don’t think it was a mill that you … It must have been though, it had to be. It wasn’t a timber mill.
INTERVIEWER: Well, he … There was I think from something I talked to a couple of other people about Newark. Mr. um that name was familiar and there was a like a barrel or a timber, not a timber factory but a barrel mill or something.
JOHN: Barrel factory.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah something like that. But there was a flour mill there also. Wasn’t there another mill of some kind well down the road from where you lived by a pond? Let’s see there’s a name that goes with that mill.
JOHN: Oh a water mill.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah a water mill.
JOHN: That’s where we used to carry corn back there.
INTERVIEWER: That was a grist mill.
JOHN: That was a Joe Mitchell, that’s the Joe Mitchell …
INTERVIEWER: Good, I couldn’t think of that name.
JOHN: Mr. Charlie Mitchell, he used to run the gas business right out here. I think its Texaco but he owned that. That’s where we used to carry. The farmers they raised a certain amount of white corn and that’s where we got the meal you don’t make meal out of yellow corn (inaudible speech).
INTERVIEWER: Okay, then you make hominy out of that white corn too didn’t you.
JOHN: No, we made hominy. We made hominy, they had hominy meal.
JOHN: It was made from the white corn. But each family, didn’t everybody have one. But we had one. I don’t know whether my father made it. He must have made it, but I don’t remember him making it. But he must have made it, and they have one down to the museum. If you’ve ever been in there and they have a maul you put so much corn in there and you just stand there and beat it and crush it and you have to crush it up just like that and its made out of gum. You can’t use any other kind of wood except gum. See, gum doesn’t have a taste to it.
INTERVIEWER: Alright it doesn’t have a resin.
JOHN: A resin or nothing like that, it has a resin to it, but I mean it has to be thoroughly dry or you can’t taste it.
INTERVIEWER: Well that’s interesting.
JOHN: And then they made their own hominy.
INTERVIEWER: Did you. I’m thinking about the Mitchells and the pond down there. Did you go ice skating down there at all?
JOHN: No. Well some we used to go ice skating but it was always in the woods and like a low spot in the woods. It would freeze up right from our house across from a man name Mr. George Richard which used to catch muskrat. From his house to our house it was a low spot always water there and we used to go there and we skated. But we didn’t have skates though we just slid on the ice with our shoes you know.
INTERVIEWER: Right, you had just as much fun too.
JOHN: Yeah more fun and so that’s the way (audio not clear).
INTERVIEWER: Well it sounds like you really did have.
(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)
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