Dog Days and Early Television

Dog Days and Early Television

 Early TV Set, 1946

Elkton Drive-in Theater advertisement

Certain times in life are especially memorable. Let me tell you about some of those times by taking you back to the early forties for a view of what life was like then. I won’t keep you long.

 One special evening on our farm near Chesapeake City stands out clearly in my mind. I was ten years old and was out under our huge, gnarled maple tree playing with Wiggsey, our family watchdog. I remember looking north, towards town, at old man Scriver’s line of trees and noticing that the sun’s light was still halfway down the trees. It was such a magical sight: the sun had set yet still asserted its power on the land. As time passed, the shadowy bottom part rose imperceptibly, gradually squeezing the light skyward, greedily dominating until it controlled the area entirely. Sure, you know how it is after the sun goes down yet the light still lingers, reluctant to admit defeat and surrender to its dark enemy.

Well, it was one of those early spring evenings, when the chill replaces the sun’s warm beams and you’re cold all of a sudden. Before running outside that evening I had been watching television for a while with my grandmother. The TV set was one of the first to come on the market. It was a large box, full of tubes the size of large salt shakers. The programs were all in black and white in those early days, and the screen, about 8 or 9 inches square, was always distorted in some way, usually with “snow” blurring your view. Every so often the screen image would start flipping vertically or, just as often, it would shift horizontally, displaying zigzagged bars across the screen. Then, of course, someone would jump up and fiddle with the knobs in an attempt to correct it. Then, every couple of weeks, when adjustments failed entirely, my father would take the back off, pull out most of the vacuum tubes, and take them to a shop in Elkton to be tested. If the tubes were not the problem, he would have to call the TV repairman, who usually took several days to show up.

          At any rate, we had had the set for about a year, and that evening my grandmother was seated on the edge of her rocker, with her body thrust forward from the left side of the set and her face six inches from the screen. She was watching “The Cisco Kid,” one of the first cowboy shows to air. Often she would comment on the action: “Watch out! There he is behind that tree. Be careful. Oh, he’s no account!” She was captured—taken prisoner—by those early shows.

          And that was a strange thing for my young mind to figure out, because a year earlier my grandmother would not even look at the TV set. It was a frightening oddity, a near impossibility to her who had lived so many years without it. At first she would go upstairs to her room whenever it was turned on. Then, one early evening, I saw her seated at the top of the stairs, peering across the room at the TV from under the banister railing, with her head up against the white banister posts. As the months went by I noticed that she would move closer and closer to the set until, finally, after about a year’s time, her eyes would be several inches from it.

          Now, as I started to tell you earlier before TV interrupted, I had run outside on that one special evening at sunset, that one special spring evening that still scurries around the halls of my brain, stops, and stamps its feet for my attention when I’m least expecting it. The sun had dropped below the trees in the west, yet patches of warm light still shone on parts of our hillside farm. Wiggsey and I played in it—moved with its warmth—until it dissolved into the ground, leaving us in the chilled shadow of evening. Looking farther up the hill towards the garden, I watched the last patch of its brilliance disappear.

          Even Wiggsey felt the loss. He was a big, Chesapeake Bay retriever, and when I looked back at him he had flopped himself down onto a bare area that he had scratched out next to his box. He lay, feet and tail folded under him, in a complete circle, a perfect curve to his body, with his muzzle resting on the trunk of his tail to form a blended oval. I was surprised that a dog’s spine could curl that much. He was a brown donut with eyes, a black-button nose, and floppy ears that twitched when I whistled through my teeth.

          As far as television was concerned, by the time I was a teenager it had not improved very much. A better form of entertainment was the great Elkton Drive-In Theater off Route 40. Drive-in theaters sprang up all around the country from the late forties until about the late seventies when they all closed down for various reasons.

But when I was a teenager—before I got my license and after—the drive-in was the place to be for fun. Before we boys—my friends in the area—started dating girls, we would get together with a guy who was old enough to have his licenses and access to a car. Then five or six of us would all pile into the car and head for the Elkton Drive-In. It was located where the first Elkton Wal-Mart used to be and, although altered somewhat, the road that led to it from Route 213, Whitehall Road, is still there, but at that time it was all dusty gravel.

           Well, we would swerve onto that road, sometimes fishtailing as we spun around the curves, and when we got to the edge of the drive-in area, the driver would stop and we would all get out. The outside edge of the drive-in area on the 213 side was a strip of land overgrown with saplings, bushes, and other undergrowth that hid the drive-in parking lot from view. Then the driver would go to the ticket booth, pay for his ticket, and go in and park with the other cars. In the meantime, we boys would sneak around the hidden boundary to the very back of the drive-in. From there, which was directly underneath the enormous white screen, we would enter into a small playground area, mingle with the legal patrons, and eventually find our buddy’s car so we could watch the movie in comfort.

          I know this sounds pretty easy, but there’s something I forgot to tell you. The owners knew, somehow, that some people were sneaking in, so they had a man in a jeep with a spotlight riding around the edge of that overgrown area looking for intruders. Many a time, as I snuck through the briars and honeysuckle, I saw that beam of light flashing. So I had to dive to the ground or jump behind a tree. It was sure scary, but that made it more fun and, of course, it made the free movie that much more enjoyable.

          I think now of the changes: my grandmother is gone, Wiggsey is gone, the drive-in theater is gone, and the unreliable televisions are gone. My girlfriend and I still watch TV, distorted now by drowsiness instead of faulty tubes. And the sun still descends on special evenings, leaving us bereft of light, just as it did so many years ago, when Wiggsey coiled within himself to mourn the loss of its warmth.

Captain Ed and the Midnight Ride

Captain Ed and the Midnight Ride

Gotham Pilot Capt. Ed Sheridan, 1948

The Gotham crossing canal to North Side in 1945

Captain Edward O. Sheridan was my best friend’s father and a distant cousin of mine. He also happened to be the best ferryboat pilot we ever had during the seven years the Gotham ferry served our town. If our country had had a king or queen, The Captain, as our family and others called him, would certainly have been knighted for the quality of his long, competent service. Sir Edward has a fine ring to it, an appellation that befits his abilities as a master who could pilot any vessel that sailed the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Old timers still tell a story about how he got his job as captain of the Gotham. When they first brought the ferry to Chesapeake City from New York, men were running it back and forth across the canal, giving it test runs, you see. Well, Ed had his tug boat tied up at Rees’ Wharf (now Pell Gardens), and was standing there watching the ferry go across and back, and during that particular that day the wind and current were especially bad. In fact, during most days, when vessels would go out of the Basin—out into the canal into that current—they didn’t know whether they were going to wind up far to the east in Bethel or far to the west, near the boat yard.

 At any rate, on that day, Ed was watching them struggle with the ferry, and one time as it was coming over from the North Side to the South Side, cutting all kinds of capers, our Ed hollered at the captain: “What the hail’s the matter with you that you can’t handle that thing any better than that?” And the fellow yelled back: “If you can do any better than this then come the hail over here.” So Ed went around to the ferry slip, went up into the pilot house, and took her across and showed them how to do it. So … they hired him right then and there. And The Captain piloted that ferry for the whole length of time she ran, till the bridge was finished in 1949. After that he was the pilot of the Port Welcome, a large touring boat which ran out of Baltimore.

Aside from these remarkable skills, The Captain was one of the most colorful characters I’ve ever known. He was a guy whom you just liked to be around because you never knew when one of his off-beat quips would make you shake with laughter. Townspeople relish tales about The Captain and his antics. One story they tell is when he was a Chesapeake City High School student. Years ago, all of the schools in the county would get together for Rally Day, which was a track and field event held in Elkton. They held the event near Railroad Avenue and the Armory.

The kids competed in all kinds of sports: sprint racing, distance runs, broad jumping, high jumping, and all kinds of other activities. Anyway, Ed was in one of those races, one of the sprints, and he ran it and broke the county record. He didn't have any track shoes or sneakers so, believe it or not, he ran on that cinder track in his bare feet. I didn't see the race, but Cousin John Sager did, and he told me that Ed would have run even faster if he hadn't stopped and turned around to see who was shot when the gun went off.

     The referee came up to him and said, “Son, you’ve just broken the county record!” And Ed, still panting from the race, said, “Well, my gosh, I certainly am sorry; I didn’t mean to do it! How much do I owe you? My pop’ll pay for it”

Now, years later, a few years after our lift bridge was destroyed, The Captain’s son, Dick, and I, as teenagers, used to stay overnight at each other’s houses. After hours of basketball practice until dark, and after strutting around on Postell’s corner, we would eventually get to bed, where we’d talk and listen to radio music long into the night.

Well, one night, when we had finally drifted off to sleep (after midnight as I recall), The Captain came in from work and yelled up the stairs: “Get on down here boys; get on down here.” So Dick and I trudged on down, so tired that we could hardly keep our eyes open. We stood there in a daze and Ed looked at me and said, “What’s the matter, Wheeeezle?” He pretended to have a speech defect: my name, “Hazel,” came out, “Weasel.” “Now get out there boys; let’s go,” he demanded. Fully awake now, Dick and I went out and got into the back of Ed’s old Chevy.

“What’s up?” I asked Dick.

“Sharptown,” he said. “Mom’s down there and we have to go pick her up.”

“At this hour?” I asked, astonished. Sharptown is on the lower Eastern Shore, about 100 miles away. Then, our Ed got into the car, fired her up, and took off down George Street. He hung a left on Saint Augustine Road, motored past my farm, swung around old man Mc’Natt’s curve, and headed towards Sam Caldwell’s S turn.

It was at this S turn that it started: Ed couldn’t keep the car on the road. He’d swerve off to the right onto the grass, wake up from the jolt, keep her straight for a while, and then swerve off to the left and wake up again. I’ll tell you, Dick and I were afraid we were going to die. But Ed kept going, and somewhere past Middletown he plowed into a ditch and got stuck. After the three of us pushed the car back onto the road, Ed said, “Weasel, can you drive?”

“Sure,” I was quick to answer. I was 15 and thought I could do anything. I didn’t have a license and I had never driven on the highway before. I had driven my Model A around the farm a good bit, but that was a far cry from driving at high speed in traffic.

“Get in there then, Weasel,” Ed said, so we took off with Dick next to me and Ed stretched out on the back seat. I realized later that he had not slept for 24 hours or more. Now, you might imagine how excited I was, steering on down Route 13 at 65 with my nervous buddy next to me. And do you know, I almost crashed into the back of a slow-moving dump truck. Dick yelled, “Geez, slow down for crap sake; slow down!” But from the back seat I just heard a long sleepy moan. From then on I kept that old car at about 50.

Something else happened that morning that I’ll never forget. That 1940 Chevy had a metal rim running around the inside of the steering wheel. It was the horn, and I was driving with both hands at the top of the wheel. Well, at every red light my arm would sound that horn accidentally, and every time Ed would wake up from the back seat and say something like, “My God, what was that.” Then he’d moan for a while and fall back to sleep.

          At any rate, that’s the way we finally got to Sharptown. My first driving experience at 15 was a 100-mile night drive on a major highway, with no license. Later the next day, at a baseball game we attended, The Captain was full of jokes and having fun, and at one point he asked us: “What makes you boys so danged droopy-eyed today, anyhow?” We knew . . . but were too tired to say.

The Elkton Drive-In Theater - 1952

The Elkton Drive-In Theater - 1952

Some of my favorite memories came from the Elkton Drive-In Theater, which was on the corner of Route 40 and Whitehall Road. I went to the drive-in many times as a teenager. How can I explain the enchantment of that theater? I wish everyone could have experienced it. As you steered your car up next to the ticket booth, you could hear the music from the loudspeaker and see the suspended screen high in the distance. You’d then cruise around the lot, checking things out and looking for a good place to park, not too close nor too far from the screen and fairly close to the refreshment building. You’d pull into your spot close enough to the pole that held a small, metal speaker. You’d hang the speaker on the door, adjust the volume, settle back, and wait for the show that darkness would bring.

You had the whole evening ahead of you in the privacy of your car—entertainment in comfort and seclusion. There you were, out-of-doors with the windows down, and maybe a breeze would stir through your car, cooling you and making you feel as if you were on top of the world. Then, abruptly, the show would begin: first an ad about the available food and drink, then the coming attractions, then the cartoon, and finally the movie. Time would go by so fast that soon you’d start your engine, turn on your lights, and get in line to begin what seemed like a long exit.

I took my date—my wife-to-be—there many times. And, of course, I was always interested in watching the movies. I remember one terrific movie called “The Hand,” about a murderer’s severed hand that came alive and started strangling people.

Anyway, as I said, I wanted to watch the shows but, do you know, all my date wanted to do was smooch. That’s right, and it was awfully hard on me. Man, the windshield would get all steamed up so that I couldn’t see the screen. I recall wiping off the inside of the windshield with the palm of my hand. But it was no good; it would fog up again in no time. In fact, all of the windows would steam up from her romancing. The only break I got was at intermission, when I could stumble out to catch my breath and visit the refreshment shack to load up on hot-dogs, French fries, and sodas. Then the movie would resume and it all started again. I don’t know how I ever survived! What do you think?

“I went to the Elkton Drive-In many a time,” recalled Freddy Rhoades of Chesapeake City. “One time my girl and I fell asleep while the movie was running, and when we woke up the place was deserted and the screen was blank. Then the car wouldn’t start because the battery had run down. But Jimmy Simmons, the guy who ran the place, was still there, so he gave us a jump. And it’s a good thing he was there, because we’d have been in big trouble.”

The Tale of Piggy and his friends

The Tale of Piggy and his friends, Eel, Snake, and Birdy

Old C&D Canal when Aunt Skinny came through in 1921. Note: Steamer Penn and tow path for mules at right

Birdy Battersby with the crane he jumped from in 1949 (2003 photo)

Once you get a nickname it’s almost impossible to get rid of it. These alternate names are applied for various reasons, usually when the recipient is very young. Sometimes they’re given to highlight certain physical characteristics, slim or shorty for example. Sometimes given names or surnames are corrupted for humorous effect, or because the original names are long or hard to pronounce. But, as I recall, most of the nicknames that were tacked on and stuck to people in Chesapeake City were done so because of something the recipient did or said that was especially unusual. Over the years, our town has had an abundance of colorful characters, and many of them have had even more colorful nicknames.

Known to her nieces and nephews as “Aunt Skinny,” Miriam Ohrel, who sailed to Chesapeake City from Philadelphia on a barge in 1921, received her nickname because of her thinness as a young woman. Beloved by her extended family, she grew to be an average-sized 91-year-old who lived a productive life on the North Side.

Ellison Ireland became stuck with “Eel” because of a shortened corruption of his first name. He was “Eel” for the rest of his life. For a while, in school, I was called “Huzzle” because it was a quirky substitute for “Hazel.” Thank goodness it didn’t stick.

“Snake” was given to Robert Johnson because, while attending Town Point’s one-room schoolhouse, he put a dead snake under the hood of his teacher’s car so that he could pull it out later (with all the kids and teacher looking on) and say, “Look, here’s why you have trouble starting your car.” For the rest of his life Robert was “Snake” to everybody in town.

Lifetime resident Raymond Battersby—“Birdy” to everyone except his older family members—told me that he got that name as a kid on Canal Street because of all the bird-brained things he did. He’d swim across the canal to the Corps of Engineers’ area, for example, climb to the top of a high crane and jump off into fairly shallow water.

My son’s friend, Gene, was dubbed “Hook” when he was a boy of eleven or twelve. One day, when my boy and Gene were trying out for the town’s Little League team, I was helping coach Marty Poore work with the boys on sliding drills. We demonstrated the hook slide and had the boys line up beyond third base. One by one we had them run and slide into home as we commented on their techniques. Well, Gene really excelled in sliding. At breakneck speed, he made perfect hook slides to the plate, causing clouds of dust to linger in the air. I can still see him dashing towards home and executing a perfect slide. All the kids slid in several times and he was always the best by far. And, as you suspect, we all started calling him “Hook.” It caught on big.

Well-known Major League baseball player, John Mabry, grew up in Chesapeake City. He played baseball for the town’s Little League teams and for Bohemia Manor High School. To most of us in town “John” sounds a little strange because we’ve always called him “Digger.” His grandfather, John Sager, told me that his Little League coach named him that because he was always such a hustler on the ball field, always “digging out” infield hits, giving everything he had. Hard work and talent paid off for Digger and made Cecil County proud.

As noted, these lively monikers almost always stick for a lifetime, yet one that did not was applied to Ed Sheridan, the famous Chesapeake Bay ferryboat, tugboat and cruise boat captain. Ed was a stellar athlete as a boy in the twenties. He was the town’s fastest runner and excelled in soccer and baseball. Well, during a baseball game played on the North Side Field (now Titter Park), he did something especially noteworthy. And, perceptive reader, I sure wish that I had been born so I could have seen it along with the other astounded spectators. Ed was playing left field, and in those times most of the townspeople had stables, chicken coops, pig pens, etc. in their back yards. And so, at this point something happened that made this particular game remarkably entertaining, and you need to brace yourself and get set to picture this scene in your mind’s eye.

There were two outs in a closely-fought game in the late innings, and a long foul ball was hit to Ed’s left field position, and Ed, on the run to make the last vital out, watched the ball curving towards a pig pen in someone’s back yard. Leaping over the fence, he just missed catching the ball as it bounced into the muck. After groping around for the ball, he found it and fired it in to the third baseman, who dropped it in disgust and beckoned to the manager to come out and wipe in off. Well, you can imagine the uproar and, after the game, not many remembered who won, but everyone remembered Ed’s left-field leap into fame. From then on he was known as “Piggy.” Never mind how bright he was. Never mind how good an athlete he was. Never mind how accomplished he was to become as a waterman: from then on he was “Piggy.”

But this new name didn’t seem to bother Ed at all. Happy-go-lucky, always telling funny stories about himself and others, and full of laughter at the world, he passed it off as just a peculiar incident of life. However, as you know, nicknames of the fathers are often visited upon the sons, maybe for several generations. And so it was with Ed’s son, Edward, who didn’t like “Piggy,” despised it in fact. But he endured it until the new school year began when he was, oh, about fourteen. That summer had engendered positive changes in Edward. When school began he was no longer an average-sized boy, but a good bit taller, heavier, and muscular than average. Moreover, the transformation didn’t lessen his hatred for the nickname; it enhanced it. And so, on that first day of school, a grim-faced Edward stood by the entrance and snatched the arms of boys about to enter. He pulled them up to his face, looked into their eyes and declared: “If  you know what’s good for you, don’t you ever call me ‘Piggy’ again. My name is Edward!”

          And, don’t you know, that day marked the death of “Piggy.” As a nickname,“Piggy” never again resided with the quick. Not only was Edward’s future son spared the handle, but his father was as well. From then on his father was called “Ed,” “Captain Ed,” or “The Captain.” The story of the “Piggy” nickname, however, has been remembered by certain family members and certain old timers who, with a twinkle in their eyes, passed it on to me. I’m glad they did.

A Canal Romance—the Hamburger Girl

A Canal Romance—the Hamburger Girl

Moving Jumpin’ Jim’s Barber Shop, with Rio Theater at left - 1962

The Gotham Ferry preparing to unload - 1944

Back in the mid-forties, when our big ferry carried people and cars across the canal, I was just as active as any 13-year-old could be. We didn’t have TV or computers, but we had a great variety of built-in recreation and entertainment. We rode the ferry just for fun, and boys and girls on the North Side rode it back and forth to school. Just up the street from the ferry slip, where George Street ran to the canal, were three of the most memorable buildings in town: the Rio Theater, Jumpin’ Jim’s Barber Shop, and Walter Coleman’s Pool Hall.

Most of us kids saw our first movie at the Rio. My favorite ones were the Saturday afternoon shows, especially Tom Mix and the Durango Kid. I recall when Gone with the Wind played there, also. I remember Mrs. Nichols, whose husband had a shoe repair shop next to the Rio—very close to the lift bridge that preceded the ferry. On the morning when a ship rammed into the bridge, she said she heard the awful crash and screamed, and she was so excited that she ran into the street still clutching her hot iron.

On the other side of the theater was a small, square shack where Jumping Jim, the barber, gave me my first haircut. The building still exists, having been moved to the corner of Biddle and Hemphill streets on the North Side. I can still feel the buzzing and snipping, and when it ended he would always shake a gallon of smelly hair lotion onto the top of my head, massage it vigorously into my scalp with a force that rocked my whole body back and forth. Then he'd comb my wet hair with deft strokes, leaving a nice part that lasted until I ran out of there.

But Walt’s Pool Hall (now called The Shipwatch Inn) was something special. Walt Coleman had two or three pool tables set up, and a rack on the wall for the pool cues. My buddy and I would each choose a cue stick, always checking to make sure it was not bowed by rolling it across the table's surface. Then we would rack the balls and sometimes argue over who would break. Breaking was such fun because you could smash that cue ball as hard as you could by thrusting all your weight into it. Sometimes, when I broke, the ball would go flying off the table and bounce around the floor until you tracked it down as it bounced haphazardly with diminishing height about the floor. We would play several games of eight ball, and when Walt came up to us we would dig into our pockets for enough nickels to pay him.

Walt was a tall, thin man but sort of bent over. He had a good-sized nose and always wore a khaki shirt with khaki trousers. He was always calm and friendly and spoke in a soft, friendly voice. Many years later I found out that he had been a doughboy in World War I. Walt's wife, Alma, was in charge of the lunchroom, which had been converted from a porch and faced George Street, the main run through town. Alma was all business, and when you looked at her and she looked at you, you knew not to mess with her; there was no humor there, for sure.

Oh, I just remembered, alert reader; this is supposed to be a love story. So . . . I’d better get on with the romancing. One Saturday at about noon, before the movie started at the Rio, and after I had finished a few games of eight ball, I slid up onto a stool at the lunch room counter and waited for my turn to order. Well, Alma was busy at the grill, but there, messing with the napkins and pouring some drinks, was a gal with big, fuzzy, light brown hair and a busy look on her face. She glanced at me and came over to take my order, and I got a good look at that hair sort of fluffed up and framing her face. Then she went over and cooked my hamburger. And when I bit into it, it was so good that I thought to myself, "Wow! That girl can really cook!"

Now, it must have been a few months later that another strange thing happened. Classes had just ended in the school day, and I was strolling through the halls, thinking about what kind of trouble I could get into before I walked on home to hunt some squirrels until dark. Anyway, as I walked past the door to the gym, I heard a weird rumbling noise—pretty loud—coming from in there. "Geez," I thought, "What in the world could that be?" The door was closed so I yanked it open and stuck my head in. Students and a teacher or two were lined up blocking my view, so I had to wiggle through to see what the racket was.

And then, my eyes must have bulged out, because I saw the strangest sight you could imagine. There, whirling and spinning around the entire gym floor, was the hamburger girl who had served me at the pool hall lunch counter. She had the entire floor to herself and was, believe it or not folks, on roller skates, which were attached to some kind of high-topped shoes. Not only that, but she was dressed—or maybe I should say "undressed"—in a getup that made my unblinking eyes widen and my mouth drop open.

The same fluffy hair was there, now fluttering in the breeze, but she was wearing a fancy, frilled blouse, which was connected to a mini skirt that stuck out all around the sides. I guess somebody had sown the two together somehow. It was an unforgettable sight for sure. Believe me, my friends, you need to squint and grit your teeth to imagine what I was experiencing. The gal—on calf-high roller skates, in that costume, with arms held way out to her sides, bare, white legs aflashin’, and frizzled hair aflowin’—was skating in circles all around our basketball floor. She was going fast, too, as if wanting to get it over with. She was even rolling backwards at times, spinning around to some kind of organ music in the background. She zipped just as fast backward as she did forward and never had to stop and start over either, just kept moving at a frenzied pace the whole while. I'll tell you, she made the whole floor shake to the beat of the music.

Well, I was impressed for sure, just stood there gawking at the sight, torn between wanting to see her fall and not wanting to. But she didn't even lose her balance, just kept it up until the music stopped, and then zipped out of view into the coach's office. Everybody clapped except me. I was sort of dumbstruck thinking about what just happened. "Wow!" I remember thinking; "Anybody who would do what she just did—in front of all those people, including a pack of snickering boys—was really something." And I said to myself, "A gal who had that much nerve besides being able to cook delicious hamburgers . . . well, man, she's the girl for me."

          And so, discerning reader, I'll bet that by now you've figured out who that girl turned out to be. That's right; she became my high school sweetheart. And when we grew up she was even bold enough to become my life-long girlfriend. And I've been enjoying the world's best hamburgers for the last 60 years.

Bethel Bridge, Church and Cemetery

Bethel Bridge, Church and Cemetery

The pivot bridge at Bethel, with tender, James Watson - circa 1917

Archway entrance to Bethel Cemetery, erected in 1906

Moving graves in the sixties

        I remember the Bethel church very well. I recall hearing that the Chesapeake City Little League had a function there in the fifties. The church was razed after the canal was widened and deepened in the sixties. Many of the church artifacts (communion glasses, lectern, documents, etc.) are stored in Barratt’s Chapel, located south of Dover on Rt.113. (http://www.barrattschapel.org/)

        My grandmother was married in the Bethel church in 1908. She and her husband, Harper, had their reception in the big white house on Biddle Street. The revelry was exciting, because so many were dancing in the living room that the floor collapsed, which made continued dancing awkward and comical. It’s the mistake of my life that I was not there to see it. My father was born ten months later. The family lived on Third Street on Chesapeake City’s South Side.

          Most of my ancient relatives abide in the cemetery there in their narrow rooms. Someday I have plans of retiring there, also. When the canal was widened in the sixties, many inmates were dug up and moved, but it could be that some were missed and may still be languishing at the bottom of that waterway. Let’s hope that no more widened will occur, because I certainly don’t want my bones jostled once I settle in. I’ll surely look forward, along with all the other residents, to yearly midnights on October 31^st. At the stroke of twelve we’ll all be granted a field trip in order to blow off the stink by dancing and frolicking until the first cock’s crow, at which time we’ll reluctantly return to convalesce until the same happy time the following year.