Recollections From Generations Past (John Wesley Adkins - 8)

 (Transcript continues)

INTERVIEWER:  You were born right in Snow Hill?

HARRIET: Yes, in Snow Hill. They didn’t have the streets named back then but it’s called, now it’s called Mason Street.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

(Inaudible speech.)

INTERVIEWER: Okay so you were born in Snow Hill. What sort of work were your parents doing?

HARRIET: Well my father worked (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: What was your mother’s maiden name?

HARRIET: Bennett.

INTERVIEWER: Where did you go to school?

HARRIET: Here in.

INTERVIEWER: Alright was there a colored school here in Snow Hill?

HARRIET: Yes, the colored school used to be over here but they burned it down about 3 years ago.

INTERVIEWER: Over on (inaudible name) street.

INTERVIEWER: Over on (inaudible name) street.

HARRIET: No not (inaudible speech) Collins Street (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: Alright do you remember any of your teachers’ names?

HARRIET: Mr. Jackson (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: You had men teachers?

HARRIET: Men (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: Did you have chores to do since you were in town? Did you have your own garden?

HARRIET: We had chores to do. I always helped cook and the others after school they got the wood in (inaudible speech) get the eggs and shelled the corn to feed the chickens with (inaudible speech). Then they had their dinner. After dinner you got your bath. And then after your lessons you went to bed.

INTERVIEWER: Then it was time to get up the next morning and start all over again.  Were your parents very conscientious about seeing that you did your lessons and your homework? 

HARRIET: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: How long did you go to school? 

HARRIET: (Inaudible speech) that was as far as they went at the time.

INTERVIEWER: Where did you go to church?

HARRIET: Right here (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: Okay Ebenezer. Was your family active in church?

HARRIET: Well yes I used to (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: Oh you did.

HARRIET: (Inaudible speech) and I used to do a little substitute teaching. Just a little. (Inaudible speech.)

INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about downtown Snow Hill when you were growing up? You know the hotel was there. Was the hotel there?

HARRIET: Yes, hotel (inaudible speech) hotel was what it was called and Dryden’s store (inaudible speech) and (inaudible speech) Miss (inaudible name) had a store before him and Sanford’s Meat store. They don’t have that anymore.

INTERVIEWER: No. Was that where Mr. Herrick was?

HARRIET: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Cause didn’t they have a sausage recipe?

HARRIET: Yes, Sanford’s had.

INTERVIEWER: He had the sausage and then Mr. Herrick made some sausage after that.

HARRIET: He did but I don’t know whether he got Sanford’s because he wouldn’t do it anyway. I don’t know whether he got Sanford’s or not.

HARRIET: But I can remember. I know they used to carry Johnson’s sausage and there used to be that hotel down going across the bridge (inaudible speech). There was a hotel boarding house or something.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Since you worked in the hotel down here, you’d know the Purnell Hotel from when you were …

HARRIET: That’s where you were.

INTERVIEWER: Right, yeah. Did they have a saloon or anything in there or bar?

JOHN: They had a bar in the pool room.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

JOHN: It was in the pool room. Then they had a restaurant. Like a restaurant then a counter and you could sit to the counter or you could sit to the restaurant. All they served there was beer because I used to have to be there at 5:00 in the morning cleaning (inaudible word) doors solid brass and sweep the (inaudible word) off. I had a call sheet. Like a traveling salesman would come through, wanna get up early. The first thing I had to do when I went in there was look at the call sheet. See what time he wanted to get up and so that was my job. Then after I did that and got the (inaudible word) doors (inaudible speech) that was brass.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, that was brass.

JOHN: I had to do that and get everything all cleaned up in there. Then I had to go back in the kitchen cause I washed dishes and I did the shopping. Right to the, where the drugstore is now that was the A&P. That was the grocery store. Was it an A&P or … ?

HARRIET: Acme.

JOHN: Acme.

HARRIET: One was Acme, one was A&P.

JOHN: There were two, weren’t there?

HARRIET: Yes, there were. Acme and then A&P.

INTERVIEWER: A&P was where the Health Department used to be?

HARRIET: Yes, that was A&P.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, I remember a postcard. I remember that. (Laughter.)

JOHN: (Inaudible speech.) It got to the point every Thursday where the sheriff was supposed to be off and there wasn’t nobody to take his place. So Mr. Jack. We called him Jack. He says I want to teach you something. I say what. He says come out here and he showed me how to do this and how to do that. And he would do a ham and a leg of lamb and show me how to take the slices and everything and how to (inaudible speech).

NTERVIEWER: You make a sandwich.

(Inaudible speech.)

JOHN: And so every day he used to school me on that until I was able to do it. So one day Mr. (inaudible name) come in there.

INTERVIEWER: Now who was Mr. (inaudible name)?

JOHN: Mr. (inaudible name) was the owner. (Inaudible speech.)

INTERVIEWER: So this Mr. (inaudible speech), was her husband.

JOHN: Yes (inaudible speech). Said you ain’t had no time off. What you gonna do. He said I got somebody to replace you and he says who and he says John. He says John. (inaudible speech) And I had oh I had nerve then. (Laughter.) (Inaudible speech) Cause we had all those you know those caps they wear.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah those white hats and everything.

JOHN: His head’s a little bit bigger than mine (inaudible speech) Miss. (inaudible name) took a couple of them caps home and fixed em up to my size and (inaudible speech) and we got along fine. And it’s just something that you have to learn.

INTERVIEWER: Right, and you have to watch and do.

JOHN: You have to watch. Lots of things people think is hard to do (inaudible speech), but it’s the idea of getting the hang of it. Seeing how it operates. How it’s done.

INTERVIEWER: And be willing to take the chance.

JOHN: That’s right.

(Full interview can be viewed at link below:)

https://worcesterlibrary.libguides.com/Oral_History_Folklife/

Recollections From Generations Past (John Wesley Adkins - 7)

 

(Transcript continues)

INTERVIEWER: When you were working in Ocean City, did you work more than one summer there? Or did you go back? Or did you just do that one summer?

JOHN: I only did one summer there. Just one summer.

INTERVIEWER: What would you do for entertainment there? I don’t know if you had any time for entertainment.

JOHN: I didn’t do no entertainment. Cause I was a loner. You know I always been a little peculiar. I always been to myself you know. When I got my work done, we had an old a cat there a kitten and she was a (inaudible word) little thing. And when I got through, got my stomach full. We didn’t even have a radio and there wasn’t even, you couldn’t even hear nobody with a radio. Now all you can hear is the radio and tape player and all that. We didn’t even have a radio and I would be tired and I’d just go in and take me a shower. Everybody had a shower. They had shower stalls and you’d go in and take your shower and come on out and get in there. And there was no place to go you know and unless you go in there where they gamble. They gamble and shoot pool and I didn’t do that you know.

INTERVIEWER: They paid you for washing dishes?

JOHN: Oh yes.

INTERVIEWER: Alright and you took your chance on tips from …

JOHN: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: The waiting …

JOHN: Yeah …

INTERVIEWER: Part of it.

JOHN: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: And sometimes you were lucky, sometimes you weren’t.

JOHN: Yeah but I got along with (inaudible speech) that was her name and she was lovely and so was he.

INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard that said.

JOHN: (inaudible speech) Both of em was nice as they could be.

INTERVIEWER: Okay now let’s see. How did you get a job with the state roads or county roads?

JOHN: State road.

INTERVIEWER: State road. Now when did you get a job with them?

JOHN: I got a job with them after, after all this.

INTERVIEWER: Right that’s what I was figuring.

JOHN: I came back home and I can’t remember how it happened but (inaudible speech) my sister worked with Daniel Boone. He was the head of the state road and I said I want a job on the state road. And I said you (inaudible conversation). So she called him and he says tell him to come on down to the barn in the morning at 7:00 (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: Is it still where it is now?

JOHN: Still in the same place right down here across from the mill pond. Well I didn’t have no way to get down there but walk. So I walked down there. Walking was just my way of getting around. So I went down there and told me, well he had called Mr. Hugh Pusey. And so he give me a job (inaudible speech).

INTERVIEWER: Oh my.

JOHN: The boys down the road today, they have it made, we had to we had to (inaudible word), everything was done on the state road except breaking up the shoulders. We had to do it by hand. Picks and shovels, chipping the roads like they chip the roads now. We had to deduct so much full wheel barrows of gravel just about every, I’ll say about every 30 feet. On this side and then on the other side. And then when we got ready to tar the road, we’d do that for a whole day. Two days. And then when the tar machine would come, the tar machine would come and put down the tar. And then we’d go and each one would I would take a heap and another boy would take a heap. I would throw it towards him and he would throw it towards me. Spreading the gravel on it. But we’d only use half of the heap. You understand what I mean?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

JOHN: Then we’d go to more heaps and do the same thing. Then when we did the other side of the road that’s when we do the other side of the road. Then the roller man he’d come along after we got started. He’d come along and he rolled it. And I learned how to run the steam roller. I learned how to run all the equipment out there, and then I worked out there till 1929. And I got sick and I had to go to Baltimore for a couple of years. And then I worked in the kitchen there at the hospital and I did the same thing I did in Ocean City. That’s what I did.

(Inaudible speech.)

JOHN: I went down in the kitchen and got the food cart and brought it up to the dining room. Up in the ward, and not the ward. But then the nurses would come there and then they’d take and tip me. They had that chrome lid to it, stainless steel. And then they’d put the patient’s food on it and I would push the cart as they.

INTERVIEWER: As they worked on it.

JOHN: As they worked on it. And then I’d take the dishes after they got through gather up the dishes and then I’d take and carry them right down to the big kitchen and then I took care of the floors (inaudible speech). I never did sleep on the inside.

INTERVIEWER: You didn’t?

JOHN: Never (inaudible speech). Well that’s the way it was there. The doctors, the doctors. That was a long time ago. And the doctors, the doctors didn’t give you x-ray there you know. They just looked at you and thought what was wrong with you and they said that I believe you need a (inaudible word). I believe you might have the TB. So he made preparations (inaudible speech) and when we got there they give me all these x-rays and (inaudible speech) He said did he take x-rays? I said what’s x-rays? Them things I put up against you to (inaudible speech) your chest (inaudible speech). I said no, no he never did that I said. He said he didn’t do nothing, didn’t tap you on the shoulder. I said no.

INTERVIEWER: He looked at you.

JOHN: Yeah the doctor did (inaudible speech) It didn’t cost me anything because (inaudible speech) I stayed there, I came home on vacation after a year. I come home. I stayed I think around 14 days then I went back (inaudible speech).

(Full interview is available for viewing at link below:)    https://worcesterlibrary.libguides.com/Oral_History_Folklife/Adkins

Recollections From Generations Past (John Wesley Adkins - 6)

 

(Transcript continues)

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.)