Times of Uncle Ernest - Chesapeake City and Beyond– Bill Chapter 5

Times of Uncle Ernest -

Chesapeake City and Beyond– Bill

Chapter 5

Then, Nina, that old Bill started rummaging around in his box of junk, so I ran over to the fence to watch Babe as she grazed. She had a buzzing flock of flies and gnats pestering her, and all of a sudden a black horse fly about two inches long and as thick as a man's thumb landed on her shank. Babe kept grazing but quivered and rippled her skin just where that ugly fly was. The shiver didn't do any good so she swished her tail with a quick slash and knocked the bugger off. He wasn't fazed though, because he landed on her again, forward, just out of the tail's reach. Babe shivered again and again and stamped her hooves hard a few times—no good. That thing had dug in, clung tight, and buried its head into Babe's hide. So I slid under the fence rail, ran over, and smacked the sucker as hard as I could. Babe jumped and moved ahead a little, and I saw the smashed fly embedded into her side. Then I looked at my hand. The palm was sopped with rich, bright blood—sticky and glistening in the sun—an oozing mess extending even in between my fingers.

"Come away from that horse now, boy, and get over here," Bill shouted, so I ran on over to his pump trough, washed off the mess, dried my hands in the grass, and sat down next to Bill again. "Think of the craftsmanship it took to build this arch, boy," he said, showing me the photo. "Why, she'll be there till doomsday. But, you know, they stopped building those arches, even though they had hundreds of stones that they got from the quarry and dressed them for use. They ended up using the stones to build the iron railroad bridge over the Big Elk Creek in 1876."

"But what happened to the old feeder canal?"

"Well, they ran out of money, and there was still a lot of bellyaching about where to locate the main canal. But they did run water into the feeder and test it with some small barges. The feeder went from the Elk Mills forge to an area about a mile west of Glasgow, to the reservoir I told you about earlier. The feeder actually passed within two miles of Elkton. Parts of it can still be seen near the Maryland-Delaware line, on both sides of Old Baltimore Pike. Now, Boy, the real reason why that whole project didn't work is this. This is what an old timer told me about it when I was a young'n about your age. This is the real story that most people have never heard.

       "They dug that feeder with shovels, picks, and scoops. Most of the workers were Irishmen—good workers but a hard, rowdy tribe. The feeder was pretty near completed when this incident took place, and this happening killed the feeder scheme for good. There was an ugly riot between the Irish laborers and some colored men in the area. And, boy, they started killing each other. Several lives were lost—colored and Irish."

       "Geez, Bill, right here in Cecil County? How did it happen?"

       "Well, boy, the villain was whiskey, mostly. The men were gulping it down like water that day. Some merchants had a license to sell the booze that day when the workers were off, probably on a Sunday. Horse racing was as popular then as it is now, but it was not such a big deal—just a few horses galloping around a dirt track and men wagering on them. Anyhow, the track was in a field near Gilpin Bridge, southwest of the Big Elk River, and a lot of the Irish who were digging the feeder were there—drinking and betting on the horses. Well, a colored man was there, and he was running a gambling game called treeket the loop."

       "What the heck is that, Bill?" I said, swatting at a cattle fly that was buzzing around my head. "Did you ever play the game?"

       "Nonsense, boy, do you want to hear what happened, or should I send you home so I can get some work done around here?"

       "Aw, tell me about the riot," I whined

       "Now, treeket the loop was a game of chance that the colored man ran to make himself some money. He drove a stake in the ground in the center of a small pit that was about a foot and a half in diameter. The colored man put a nickel on top of the stake, and the person playing the game would stand several yards away and try to knock the coin off with a small club. If he knocked it off and out of the pit he got to keep it. But if he missed the stake or if the coin fell into the pit—which happened almost all the time—he had to give the colored man a nickel."

       "Could we try doing that sometime, Bill? I mean, just for fun?"

       "Hush!" Bill hissed, spitting juice off to the side with contempt. "One of the Irishmen, all liquored up, began playing the game, and for some reason a heated argument started. Then a fistfight broke out and the colored man killed the Irishman—fractured his skull. That started the riot. The Irish went after the colored men who were at the racetrack—beating them up, trying to kill them for revenge. The Irishmen chased them back to Elkton, where they killed several colored people. The riot lasted for a good while, until a respected doctor named Evans was somehow able to control the furious Irishmen."

       "Golly, Elkton has been pretty quiet ever since. Most of the good fights happen in the Hole-in-the-Wall, right here in Chesapeake City."

       "That's right, boy, but we don't have the killing that took place that day in 1803. That riot, as well as financial problems, ended the attempt to dig a canal from Welsh's Point to the Christina River." [To be continued Tuesday, 5/22/2012]