The Day the ship knocked Our Bridge Down

The Day the ship knocked Our Bridge Down

There was not much clearance for ships to pass between the lift bridge towers. Inset: Link from the chain that raised and lowered the span. Link measures 13x8x7 inches and weighs 100 lbs

Scriver’s Marina at Court House Point, second site of Cecil County’s court house. Our first court house was at Ordinary Point.

440 lb sturgeon, with victorious anglers: Arch Foster, John Schaefer, and Eddie Taylor, circa 1939

            Up until a July morning in 1942 things had been pretty quiet for most of us in our little town along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Pop worked for the Corps of Engineers, my mother was heavy with child (not to be light until late October), and at six years old the most important thing I had to worry about was how often I could hit a telephone pole at fifty feet with stones from our pot-hole dominated lane. But then the spectacular happened. At 11:38 AM, after negotiating the curve near the pump house, the tanker, Franz Klasen, sheered uncontrollably to port and crashed into the south tower of our lift bridge.

            From our farm about a quarter of a mile away, I heard a sort of dull clanking sound coming from town. I looked over towards the sound and saw that the bridge had disappeared. In those days the fields between our farm and the bridge were dotted with saplings, not the tall, dense trees that now block the view. Back then, I could always see the black lift bridge looming in the distance, outlined against the sky. My grandmother came outside and I pointed and yelled. She said, “My word, where’s the bridge?” She then told me “not to fret” but to wait till my father came home.

            When Pop did come home that evening he took me to town to see what happened. He drove down Bohemia Avenue and turned left on the dirt street that ran between the canal and the Hole-in-the-Wall. He stopped the car just before we got to Mallory Toy’s building (now the Shipwatch Inn) and we looked out at all of the wreckage. The big ship was where the bridge used to be and the black steel from the bridge was strewn across its bow. The steel was twisted out of shape, with some of it jutting high out of the water. I was excited and started jumping around in the car. Pop explained that the bridge was constructed between 1924 and 1925, was opened for traffic in 1926, and served our town for only sixteen years.

The bridge excitement had just died down when Uncle Ernest came for a visit and told me about the exciting time he once had in the North Atlantic. “Well now, Moose the Goose,” he began, jostling the ice cubes in his glass, “a while back, after those Delaware Park ponies let me down, I went fishing off the coast of Maine to make some money. Taking with me my best friend, Jack Daniels, I sailed pretty far off shore in my run-about and just started landing some big trout when a tornado blew me far out to sea. After a while, I saw something large floating in the water. When I paddled up to it I saw a sorry-looking, water-soaked guy hanging on for dear life to a log. He must have had a strong will to survive because he clutched the gunwale and flopped aboard before I could help him. His name was Chuck and, after a long pull on my bottle, he explained that his ship, the H.M.S. Bagel, a majestic Jewish steamer, had foundered in the Bermuda Triangle on its way from the Galapagos Islands to England.

“I got the impression that Chuck was some kind of important person because he said that he had written a book called The Origin of the Spacies, a science fiction story I assumed, but to tell you the truth I thought he was some kind of kook, because every so often he would raise his fist and yell, ‘Only the fit will survive.’ Geez, Moose, he was overdosed on salt and sun. Anyway, he blabbed that he was a scientist and had been studying the animals around Ecuador. I couldn’t understand most of the stuff he talked about but I think he believed that all living things, over a long, long period of time, could somehow change into other, different living things. At any rate, I needed somebody to talk to and help with the boat so I kept him aboard. He said that if he survived he would return to England and write more books, which I would never want to read because he admitted that none of them would have any pictures in them.

“But staying afloat wasn’t easy, Moose, because the weather turned really dirty. A vicious, driving storm drove us north, and then we began seeing larger and larger ice chunks in the water. A while later Chuck pointed to a gigantic iceberg off our bow and we both were shivering something awful. Soon after passing the iceberg we saw a deadly sight. A mammoth ship, an ocean liner, was half submerged in the sea, its stern under water and its bow jutting straight up into the sky. The liner looked almost new, and its name on the bow was scraped off except for the last four letters: ‘---anic.’ And, Geez, I’d give anything to know that poor ship’s full name.

“This is the part of my story that I don’t like to tell, because people were screaming and crying something awful. It was about this time that we saw a man bobbing in the water. I reached down and pulled him aboard. The fellow was almost an iceberg himself, so I gave him a hefty shot of Jack Daniels to warm him up.

“And then, luck must have been on our side because a strong current and warm breeze carried us west towards the good old U.S. of A. We sailed into the Chesapeake Bay, passed Scriver’s Marina at Court House Point, and made our way beyond Schaefer’s Wharf to the yacht basin. We arrived just in time to see John Schaefer land a 440 pound sturgeon. The giant fish almost caught John, whom we watched struggle at the line for about an hour. Finally, with the help of Arch Foster and Eddie Taylor, the exhausted sturgeon was hauled aboard John’s boat. Then they hung the fish up for display at Schaefer’s Wharf.

After that excitement we learned more about the little guy we had rescued from that icy water. His name was Al and he sure was an odd looking bird, with an unruly mustache and hair that was fluffed up on the sides of his head. He told us that the first time he ever did anything for fun was to sail on that ill-fated ocean liner, and then he started telling us about himself. Laboring with the English language, he told us that he had come from Germany, and although he had had trouble with math in school, he was relatively sure that he knew some new theories about the universe that no one else did. But he made a funny statement that gave him away. He said, in his stilted English—now, Moose, I think I’ve remembered it right; he said something about an E equaling a square MC. And when he went on about relatives in space and warped time and all, I knew that we had rescued a goofball and, I swear, I almost booted him into the canal.

        “I restrained myself, though, because I’ve always felt sorry for slow learners. And it made me feel good when he told me that he had managed to get a job at an obscure college in New Jersey called Princetown. For all we know, he may be performing his janitorial duties now, even as we speak. And I wish him well because some people say that I’m not that smart myself.” But, dern, I sure thought Uncle Ernest was smart, as well as brave, never mind lucky to have survived such a dangerous adventure.

Chesapeake City and The Two Marys

Chesapeake City and The Two Marys

American Store (now Town Hall), the town’s most patronized grocery store in the mid1900s. L-R: Betty Jean Needles Watson, Tillie Blendy, Kathleen DeShane, Olive Spear, Anna Merchant, Dorothy Downs, Wilber Needles, Walter Bennett, Harry Potter, Hazel Hessey, and Inset at right: Frank Bristow (who was missing from original photo)—April 1946

Harry Bouchelle’s store, circa 1910. Later it was H. B. Bungard’s and after renovation the building became Walter Cooling’s general store for many years (now called Black Swan Antiques). People L-R: George Metz (blacksmith), Lou Blanchfield, 2 girls: one married Joe Schaefer (John’s brother) and the other married Mr. Mason, Mrs. Bouchelle, Harry Bouchelle, Tucker Steele, Charlie Banks.

Henry Hager’s butcher shop at Bohemia Ave. & 1st St., later the site of Mewhiter’s Drug Store and now a vacant lot next to The Victorian Lady—circa 1910. Inset: Henry Hager, said to have been a large man who delivered meat to both sides of canal 

I was in love with Mary Boyko, plain and simple. She was a blonde beauty who visited my mother from her house across the road from our small farm. I remember how she would help my mother with the dishes—Mom washing and Mary drying. The last time I saw her I was rolling around on the linoleum floor of our kitchen when I heard her say that she was soon to be married and would be moving to California. Oh, sensitive reader, what a falling off was there! For the first time in my life I was heartbroken, but I was to remember her beauty and the sound of her soft, girlish voice forever. As time passed I was to learn that we had had nothing in common—she had been nineteen and I had been five. Yet it’s surprising how the prospect of her not continuing to share my secluded world shocked me at the time and continued to haunt some remote section of my brain for decades.

Sixty-seven years later I thought about the power of that childhood fascination and, obtaining her California number from her sister, I called her. A chill migrated up my spine when I heard that same soft, girlish voice radiate surprise at hearing from a man whom she remembered as a toddler from her teenage years. She said that she would come to see me when she visited her sister in a few weeks, and when she finally did arrive it was something special. Now I was a foot taller than she and we laughed about it. She brought a photo of herself as a girl and one of me as a five-year-old. She was married with kids and I had a wife and a whole tribe of kids and grandkids. We were both happy.

And now, let me take you back to five years after Mary left (when I was eleven) to a time when another Mary entered my life with almost equal impact. She came to live with us unexpectedly, and she was dramatically different from my first Mary. This Mary was a short, energetic, platinum blonde with green, bulging eyes. She was more talkative and expressed herself loudly when the occasion called for it. A chill still bolts up my spine when I recall how that strident, staccato voice rattled my brain. She didn’t dry dishes or have much to do with my mother, but she was a fast runner and to my delight followed me all around the farm. 

Oh, I almost forgot. When she first became a family member she didn’t even have a name, so Pop let me pick her appellation: “Mary,” after the long-departed Mary Boyko.But now I must tell you that Mary II had some curiously bad habits, such as refusing to wear shoes (when I used to put them on her she’d always kick them off). And my but she did make the most annoying slurping noises at dinner, so bad that Mom insisted that she eat out on the porch. Not only that, but she displayed such a lack of hygiene that we all agreed that making her sleep in the barn with the cow would be a much better arrangement. But I liked her, never mind her habit of knocking people off balance when they least expected it. And I sort of admired the unique quality of her elongated chin. Another alarming thing was that Mary had a stupendous appetite during all hours of the day, sometimes eating unsavory things such as certain kitchen leftovers and normally unpalatable items from the garden.

After she got used to living on the farm and after she had fattened up a bit, Pop and I constructed a cart so that we could hitch her up to it with a harness and have her pull me into town, where I would be able to sell our excess corn and tomatoes. I don’t know why but, especially going uphill, Mary would sometimes balk at the strain of having to pull me and a cartload of vegetables, causing me to switch her on the rump to keep us moving.

I mean to tell you, we sold our goods to many grateful Chesapeake City families and businesses. We sold mainly to the South Side but also made our way across the lift bridge to the North Side. I remember how Mary and I talked to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Bouchelle, the proprietors of Bouchelle’s General Store. More recently the store was bought by Walter Cooling and is now owned by Black Swan Antiques.

Back then it was one of the places where townspeople gathered. I recall how, in the mid-forties, certain residents and I would stand in front of the store to watch the Friday night fights on a TV that Walter displayed from his front door. He was attracting customers, of course, even though not many families could afford to buy one back then, mine included. I remember seeing Dr. Davis pull up almost on the sidewalk to watch the fights in the comfort of his car. Surely he could afford to buy a TV, but he must have enjoyed the ambiance of that boisterous crowd of fight fans.

At any rate, years earlier, when Bouchelles owned the store, Mary and I sold our tomatoes to Mrs. Bouchelle, and while there we talked with undertaker, Charley Banks, and George Metz, the town’s blacksmith. After that, Mary pulled me and the cart down Bohemia Avenue to the American Store, where manager, Wilber Needles, bought our produce and where Frank Bristow, the store’s butcher, joked around by insisting that I must have stolen the vegetables. Across the street was the bank, where we said hello to Banker, Fletch Nickerson, and Janet Pyle, the teller.

With still more vegetables to sell, we rumbled down past Henry Hager’s butcher shop (later Mewhiter’s Drug Store and now a vacant lot) and descended to the oldest building in town, the famous Harriott Hotel. Bill Harriott bought some of our stuff, after his son, Punch, sampled a tomato. While there a juvenile Birdy Battersby emerged dripping wet from the canal and tried to ride Mary, who, indignant, reacted by butting him back into the canal, across which he swam back to Canal Street to lick his wounds. Birdy was to become the town’s most famous and well-liked bartender at the Hole-in-the-Wall, that exotic bar beneath the Bayard House.

After that, nearly sold out, we labored across the lift bridge to Schaefer’s North Side store where Kitty Schaefer bought us out and even offered to buy Mary—an offer we both graciously refused. While there we gabbed with Wilson Reynolds and Monica Breza before heading home, stopping only on George Street to wave at Jumping-Jim-the-Barber and to shoot the breeze with Walter Cooling who, with us, was perusing the “Coming Attractions” on display at the Rio Theater. Finally, tired but happy about making some money, we made our slow trek back to the farm.

       After two productive summers of our partnership—and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, sympathetic reader—I awoke one fall morning to discover that just like my old Mary, my new Mary left me as well. And you can imagine my sorrow when Pop explained that he took her to live with a farmer who needed the honeysuckle and wild rose bushes cleared from his fence rows. Later I learned of another reason (maybe the real one) as to why she was relocated. In a fit of hunger she had provoked Pop’s acrimony by eating the windshield wipers off of his 1941 Ford. And yet, it’s so sad to realize even now that Mary must have known she was leaving me, because on the previous evening, telling me farewell in that gruff yet endearing stammer, she exclaimed: “Naaaaa-aa-aa-aah. Naaaaa-aa-aa-aah.”

Life in a Tree and Uncle Ernest’s Adventure

Life in a Tree and Uncle Ernest’s Adventure

Collins’ Market, circa 1970. Both buildings comprised the store. The wooden right side was built about 1885. The building at left was a private school in early days. Lewis Collins, Sr. bought the store in 1941.

John Schaefer’s store, with L to R: John Schaefer, Winifred Schaefer (John’s mother), and Kitty Maloney (John’s sister). Inset at right: famous butcher, Frank Bristow

When I was a poor, lonely pre-teen I used to practically live near the top of our gigantic maple tree alongside of our farm house. Strangely enough, I enjoyed reclining high in its fork of branches, among the secluded, majestic leaves where four of my senses were especially keen. I could see for miles about the countryside: Chesapeake City with its picturesque lift bridge to the north, Bill Herman’s highly cultivated farm (with his work horse, Babe, pacing her pasture) to the west, the wide cornfield to the south, and to the east the grandeur of the deep woods. I had only to look at the bark near my hand to see a tiny ant foraging as if his life depended on it, or glance at an outer branch to grin at a blue jay scolding me for invading her domain.

But don’t think, attentive reader, that I always lounged there comfortably, for I had to readjust my position frequently because of the solid branches compromising my aching bones. Despite that, and the sore hands and feet from climbing the rough branches, I was sensitive to the dialog of the wild geese as they assured one another of the correctness of their flight. I’d hear the Bob Whites’ echoing whistles and the killdeers’ shrill melody. And every evening after dusk I’d be attuned to the haunting cadence of the whippoorwills from the deep woods. And through it all I marveled at the varied aroma of leaves and bark found only in the midst of the great tree, aroma enhanced by the gentle stirrings of the purest air on earth.

The tree was about ten feet from our porch roof, so one day I tied a rope to a high overhanging branch and would swing back and forth between the two. For quite a while it was great fun, but one time—the last time—swinging from the roof, I found myself on the gnarled roots at the base of the tree, moaning with pain. It was the fastest journey I had ever taken, for my hands slipped and in a split second I was lying crumbled on the ground. And someday when I’m sent to the bad place I suppose the trip down might be something like that. When I looked up—bruised but intact—I saw Uncle Ernest staring down at me with a silly grin on his face. He chuckled and quipped, “Nice trip, Moose the Goose; see you next fall!”

My pain subsided quickly because I remembered that he had promised to tell me another true adventure story. He said that he just had time to do so before he was off to spend the night partying with Snake Johnston, the well-liked bartender in Martin’s Tavern, Chesapeake City’s popular Second Street bar. First he said he had to catch the ferry to the North Side to meet at Lewis Collins’ market with Jazz and Eddie, his two best drinking buddies. The trio would then stroll over to Canal Street to get Birdy Battersby and then ride the ferry back and collar Bobby Sheridan, whom they knew would be frolicking with the gang on Postell’s Corner.

Then the five revelers would stride a few steps down the street to Martin’s Tavern for a night of shuffleboard and liquid entertainment until the morning hours. And so, with limited time available, as he sat next to me there in our double lawn chair and, interrupted only by his frequent trips inside to freshen his ice cubes, he told me about his brave escapades in the Brazilian jungle. “Yeah, Moose, a while back I had the urge to visit South America, so I stowed away on a freighter headed there, but some burly ruffian tossed me overboard next to a jungle, many miles north of Rio de Janeiro, where I had hoped to visit.

“I swam ashore, walked a short distance inland, and entered a small encampment of folks who spoke a language that was Dutch to me. And it was a good thing they knew enough English so that we could communicate. But they’d say things like, ‘Guten Morgan,’ and to their leader they’d yell, ‘Heil Dolphie.’ This Dolphie guy was a scrawny devil, with a black, toothbrush-sized mustache and a band of jet-black hair that sort of slashed across his forehead. I’ll tell you, I didn’t like that bird at all. Something he had though was one gorgeous girlfriend, who was as pretty as he was ugly. Her name was Ava, the most beautiful buxom blonde I had ever seen, with luxurious golden curls that sort of tumbled down in ringlets, accentuating her stunningly beautiful face. And her figure . . . how can I tell you about her figure? It was breathtaking, designed and molded with curvaceous perfection, one that would put to shame any model or movie star you’ve ever seen.

“Anyway, after I decided to build a sturdy canoe to get me to Rio, and just as I yelled ‘Timber’ and my axe severed the last fiber of a giant Brazilian nut tree, it fell and busted old Dolphie, who was lurking nearby, right on the noggin, driving him six feet into the Brazilian turf. Well, Moose, to my surprise all the people bowed to me and called me a hero. I discovered that Dolphie ruled them as an evil tyrant; everybody hated him.

“Ava, it turned out, had been kidnapped and dominated by him, whom she hated because of his brutal treatment of people. Anyhow, because I freed her of him—never mind my handsome, muscular looks and my irresistible way of sweet-talking—she fell instantly in love with me. Yeah, and it was tough on me, too, because she embraced me with so many kisses and hugs that I had to beg her to ease up or be smothered. I finally got her to relent by promising to become her ever-lovin’ steady boyfriend and by assuring her that she could accompany me as I sailed to Rio once my canoe was finished and equipped.

“And so, after I finished the canoe we shoved off into the vast Atlantic Ocean. We stayed on course until a hurricane drove us north for several hours. It then blew us up onto a small island, which we soon discovered was moving. Geez, Moose, we were riding on the shell of a giant snapping turtle that had been blown off to sea by the hurricane. It was returning up the coast to Chesapeake City’s Back Creek swamp. And so, with us clinging on for dear life, he carried us up the Chesapeake Bay, past Welsh’s Point, and up Back Creek towards the canal.

But when we got near Schaefer’s Wharf we saw John Schaefer and his sister, Kitty, along with Frank Bristow. They leaped into John’s boat, lassoed that snapper’s head, and dragged us ashore. My, but it was amazing the way Frank Bristow handled that angry turtle. Then John and Kitty got to work and prepared the most delicious snapper soup I’d ever eaten. And, for the next two years the gentle people of Chesapeake City feasted on Schaefer’s Restaurant’s snapper soup.”

         And with that true adventure account, Uncle Ernest jumped up and told me that he was expected at Martin’s Tavern for his night of partying, and I thought that I was the luckiest 10-year-old alive, because what other boy in the world had such a resourceful hero as my Uncle Ernest?

Canal Street – Chesapeake City

Canal Street – Chesapeake City

North Side school children boarding the Victory, the temporary passenger ferry from August, 1942, until the car ferry, Gotham, arrived in March of 1943. Many children aboard and boarding lived on Canal Street.

 

Large Canal Street house being razed—Inset: Aunt Kate (Battersby) Lloyd, who cried, “They’ll have to carry me out before I move!”

I wish I could remember what I had done wrong that caused all the excitement in my house on that bitter-cold, late December day. 1942 was about to end; it had been the best of years and it had been the worst of years. Relax, and let me take you back there for a spell. In that year many pleasurable events occurred. Bing Crosby was crooning White Christmas, The Andrews Sisters were singing Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, and Glenn Miller was conducting Moonlight Cocktail. In the movie theaters James Cagney dazzled us in Yankee Doodle Dandy, Bogart and Bergman held us spellbound in Casablanca, and Walt Disney astounded us with Bambi, an animated marvel. On a personal basis I was managing to make it through the first grade, never mind my doubts about completing the second. And my family was happily excited because my only brother was born in October.

On the disheartening side, our nation was at war. The Germans were bombing the daylights out of Great Britain. We were fighting the Japanese in the vicious Battle of Midway. Locally, our lift bridge was destroyed by a freighter on July 28^th and our car ferry didn’t arrive to serve us until March of 1943. Furthermore, for me personally, as I mentioned earlier, our household was in a frenzied uproar one day because of some devilish thing I had done. And it must have been something pretty bad for it to make my mother and grandmother furious with me. Maybe I had hurt my little brother, or maybe I had stoned one of our settin’ hens. But no, wait! I think I do recall now. Granny was babysitting me and my little brother there in the farm house. I was not behaving for her at all. I don’t remember what I was doing wrong, but I recall Granny’s warning: “Boy, if you don’t behave yourself I’m going to go out and cut a switch and go aboard you with it.”

 Well, she did walk outside for a switch so I locked her out in that fifteen-degree weather. It was so cold that two-foot icicles hung from the shed roof, and one even extended from the roof into the frozen-solid rain barrel. When my mother came home with the key about an hour later, she and my frozen Granny screamed their heads off at me.  “You just wait, young man, until your father comes home,” they yelled. “He’ll whip you within an inch of your life.” Granny was especially disgusted with me, crying out, “I just don’t know what to think of such a nasty rascal.” My mother cried, “The very idea! Your father will be home soon. You just wait, buckaroo.”

So when I saw Pop’s car rolling up the lane, I ran upstairs and lay stretched across my bed, sobbing to beat the band. Then all three of them came up the stairs, and I could hear their animated chatter in the hall. Then they came into my room. Pop didn’t say a word, but Mom and Granny were both talking at once. I started crying as Pop stood there, belt in hand, glaring down at me. Then he came towards me and in a flash my mother was next to me. She put her arm around me, looked up at Pop and screamed, “You’re not going to hurt him; you’re not.”

Almost at the same time, Granny lunged in front of her son, grabbing the belt as she said, “Now, Ralph, you leave him alone. He’s suffered enough; leave him be; you hear?” Pop then shook his head and slumped out of the room as Mom and Granny comforted me. As I sobbed softly, Granny stroked my head and whispered, “You rest yourself now, good boy. When you’re feeling better, you come on down and get your supper.” So, understanding reader, from this you can see the kind of hard life I led; how I survived it I’ll never know.

It was ten years later, 1952, when I was 16 and driving Pop’s ’48 Ford that I eyed with special interest the Dungaree Girl of Canal Street. You know about Canal Street, of course, that ran along Chesapeake City’s North Side, the one where so many wonderful people raised their children, worked their jobs, and lived their lives in sight of the vibrant waters of the C&D Canal. Over thirty houses of varied architecture lined the narrow street, and out front, toward the 250-foot waterway, was a steep bank that descended in certain places to sandy shorelines that provided joyful recreation for generations of children. Sometimes joining the fun, I recall sliding down the bank into the water on a piece of cardboard.

But then, in the mid-sixties, all residents of Canal Street were relocated when the Corps of Engineers widened and deepened the canal. Except for the Stapp House and the Snyder House, which were moved to other locations, all of the houses were demolished. Many people were distraught at having to move, especially Aunt Kate Lloyd who, crying, had to be carried off her front porch the day before it was razed. Many Chesapeake City notables were displaced, including one-time mayor, Jim Wharton, Harold Reynolds, Mable Thornton, Eddie Bedwell, and Capt. Albert Battersby, father of Birdy Battersby, who became a respected councilman as well as the town’s most popular bartender.

But wait. Geez, I almost forgot about Canal Street’s Dungaree Girl. So let me return you to 1952, to when I was a teenager with wheels and paying attention to those beautiful and lively girls who flowered that ill-fated street. Why growing up near the water there made them so attractive I’ll never know. There were Betty and Dotty Thornton brightening the East End where Birdy Battersby lived. Other beauties were Ina Lloyd, Betty Dixon, Louise Bedwell and, of course, the enchanting Dungaree Girl.

Cousin Dick Sheridan and I used to ride or walk over the bridge to talk to them for hours, sometimes even amusing them with our adolescent sweet-talk. I first saw the Dungaree Girl astride her bike alongside of George Gorman’s gas station and candy store. And I wish I knew why talking to or even eyeballing her increased my heartbeat the way it did. Maybe it was the delicate way she rode that bicycle when I pulled up next to her and smiled. Maybe it was the way she flickered her eyes at me. There was for sure something elusively special about her. Her eyes, that was it—those eyes that seemed to glance about fleetingly with a kind of equivocal playfulness that appeared sometimes to have me as their focus.

 And yet, now that I’ve thought it over, it must have been the combination of bike riding and eyes, never mind the way she sort of flipped her pony tail, and the way she wore her white socks above her penny loafers, socks that left a three-inch gap of leg below those delightfully faded, rolled-up dungarees. Anyway, after what seemed like months, she agreed to attend a movie with me and eventually she was my date to the prom. So 1952 was absolutely the best of years for me. But when I picked her up I was shocked silly: She was not a Canal Street Girl at all! She lived on Cecil Street.

          But I let it slide and, regardless of her disappointing location, she was awfully pretty when I strode in to get her for the prom, despite the comical prom dress and the doctored hairdo. At any rate, her tentative agreement to go steady has lasted 61 years so far, and when I ask when she can make it permanent she just shakes her head and says: “Give it time! Give it time!”  But you know it’s sad that she doesn’t ride her bike anymore, and I don’t know what happened to those engaging dungarees. But don’t you wish, as I do disappointed reader, that she had turned out to have lived on that historic street, just so, along with the real Canal Street girls, she could say with an emotional catch in her voice: “Where I grew up is now under thirty feet of water.”

Riding a Dead Horse and Chesapeake City’s Crystal-Ball Doctor

Riding a Dead Horse and Chesapeake City’s Crystal-Ball Doctor

Locust tree at left where Jack strangled himself. Tent occupants: Wiggsey, the dog for all seasons, with his best friend.

Dr. Van Norden’s house and office, built by Mr. Lindsey in 1917. Dr. Van Norden lived there from 1941 until about 1948. Jim Peaper and family lived there and the current residents are Cathy and John Watson. Stone fence built by Taylor S. Stubbs

I woke up early that mid-summer morning in 1946 and ambled outside to pick some grapes from our flourishing arbor. And before I sat down on the back steps to enjoy them I did a few forward rolls and, dizzy, sat up just in time to see a robin dart onto the grassy island next to our pump trough. She stood erect and motionless, proud red breast puffed out, and beak lifted high. She then skittered quickly across the grass with her body tilted level with the ground like a speed boat leveling into its plane. Stopping abruptly, she again presented that boasting chest and attentive head. In a flash, she pivoted her body downward, placing her beak about an inch from the ground, with head tilted as if listening for some weak though important message. She stabbed the ground, bringing up a wriggling, startled worm. Repeating her quick-footed, level dash and her martial stance—with the frenzied worm dangling in her beak—she lifted off and glided with a graceful swoop into the pecan tree.

Then I turned toward our lane just in time to see Uncle Ernest, who stumbled up next to me and squatted with exaggerated effort accompanied by a long groan of fatigue. He had just arrived from a night of bar hopping that ended with his eviction from Earl White’s tavern on Chesapeake City’s North Side. He promised to tell me an adventure story after he rested his eyes on our couch. And, geez, I just couldn’t wait until I could hear another one of his true stories, just as I know you can’t wait, pensive reader, until you read it in the next week’s posting.

So I cooled my heels and thought about a crazy thing that had happened earlier that summer. Old man Dave McNatt, a local farmer who tilled our forty acres, had horses, mules, cows, and many other domesticated farm animals. The cows he’d graze on our fields occasionally, but the mules and horses were there often. Well, one of the horses he had was a bad one. As you know, sometimes an animal can be as ornery as a person. At any rate, this horse, a large, brown stallion named Jack, was wild and hard to manage, and one evening, before McNatt returned to his farm with the other mules and horses, he had tied Jack to one of our locust trees. Well, old Jack snorted, whinnied, and stomped the ground like crazy that evening before bedtime.

The tree was right outside my bedroom window, and let me tell you, sympathetic reader, that when I woke up the next morning I saw a startling sight. Jack was lying dead on the ground, strangled around the base of that tree, with his eyeballs bulging out and his purple tongue dangling to the ground. He had twisted himself around and down to the bottom of the tree trunk until he had no where to go, so that his head and neck were snug up against the trunk. He had struggled valiantly—in one direction only. His enormous body lay fully across the area where I had pitched my tent a few days before.

And do you believe that Old Dave McNatt didn’t bother to remove the carcass. As days went by the body swelled up to twice its size, its belly especially, bloating up like a gigantic hairy balloon and stretching as taut as a bass drum. I remember how bizarre it was to look up at the prostrate Jack as I stood there on the ground, but it was even more remarkable to see it from the hall window upstairs, where I could take in the full absurdity of it all.

But you must know that as a kid I didn’t think it was that bad, because my buddies, Junior and Dick, and I would climb to the top of that belly and slide down it. We even switched him and pretended to ride him. We played on poor old Jack every day, never mind what my mother said: “My, the very idea! Don’t you dare climb on that disgusting thing?” And yet, sixty-seven years later I can still feel my bare feet stepping on that distended, hairy belly, a belly that grew larger day by day. And I can still feel my fingers digging into that taut, hairy horsehide as I struggled to reach the top. Yep, we enjoyed an unusual sliding board, which I’ll bet no other kid ever had, until the flies and the stink got so bad that Pop had to pay a renderer to haul it away.

Later that summer I started my first job: pulling weeds out of Dr. Van Norden’s garden. The doc lived on South Chesapeake City’s Third Street, just up from the school. He wanted me to begin work at noon, in the heat of late July. After an hour of battling the infested weeds, the heat, and the biting insects, I decided that being a wage earner at ten years’ old was not only exhausting but unnecessary. And the more weeds I pulled the more unnecessary it became. So, after about an hour, drenched with sweat, with a sunburned and welt-dotted face, I knocked on his door for my pay.

He opened the door, peered out and beckoned me in. Let me tell you about Dr. Van Norden, my first doctor and my first employer. He was a small man so it won’t take long. Thin and maybe five feet tall if you were to stretch him out, he had a head that made up in magnitude for what his shriveled body lacked. He had piercing eyes, a long nose, and a full head of pure-white hair.

He drove a 1915 Pierce-Arrow automobile, and when he ran it around town it looked as if there was no driver because he could just barely see over the dashboard. Folks said that he always drove through town ignoring the stop signs and pedestrians. Nevertheless, he paid me for my labor with a tarnished quarter. Four years earlier he had given me my school vaccination on my left bicep. The quarter I spent that evening; the vaccination I still have, and if I flex my muscle it’ll pop right out at you.

The winter before I pulled those weeds for him I was his patient. Pop took me to him because I had a bad cold with a high fever. Feeling miserable, I sat next to his desk as he told me to chew on a small absorbent, paper tab and then spit it into his hand. He made a fist for about five seconds, cocked his head to one side and said: “Um humm, 102 degrees—not good.” Then I answered his questions: “Are your mouth and lips dry?” “Uh-huh.” “Do you stick your feet out from under the covers at night?” “Uh-huh.” “Do your bowel movements have an odor?” “Uh-huh.” Well,” he said, “Everything points to nux vomica, but we’d better make sure.”

Then he pulled out from his drawer a crystal ball about the size of a baseball that had a foot-long string attached to it. He cleared his desk and poured and folded what looked like sugar (the Nux Vomica medicine) into a tiny piece of white paper. Next he placed it about eight inches from the tab I had saturated. After that he grabbed the end of the string attached to the crystal ball and held the dandling ball about six inches above the saliva tab.

I sat there wide-eyed at the spectacle and looked over at Pop, who nodded his approval. Then, believe it or not, that crystal ball began swinging back and forth between the medicine and my saliva. “There’s the proof,” Doctor Van Norden said. So Pop paid him two dollars, took me home, and dissolved the medicine in a glass of water. That evening he gave me a teaspoon full of it every hour, and the next morning I felt fine—no cough, no sore throat, and no fever. I was cured.