Mrs. Shaffer and Mrs. Murray, Mrs. Broomell and Mrs. Newsome,
Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Baum, and Mrs. Risley
"During the Depression the banks failed. You lost everything!"
What were the most popular sports? Mrs. Murray: Roller-skating was probably the first. Mrs. Shaffer: We would skate a around the whole block around the OC High School every Friday night. They would rope it off. We had to take the trolley to go there. Mrs. Murray: We used the skating rink on the boardwalk when we were older. We went to the Mays Landing Skating rink. Mrs. Shaffer: That was1933…right in middle of Great Depression. We played Kick the Can and Red Light. We didn't have what you have today. Mrs. Murray: When snow came, we would bellyflop on Maryland Ave. We might have as many as 10 kids on one sled. Mrs. Shaffer: We had a lot of snow. They would barricade New York Avenue. You never knew how many kids would end up on your back.
Trevor: Where the trolleys any different from today? Mrs. Murray: Quite a bit! We use to go to high school on the trolley. We would go across that old rickety trolley bridge. I use to be afraid that trolley would tip over this way or that way and we would all go into the bay. But it never happened. Mrs. Shaffer:We would have to run to catch the trolley if we were late. The next one was an hour later. Many a day we would have to run to catch it. That was running seven blocks. If you missed it you waited for the next. One Gas and tires were rationed. You couldn't just get into the car and take off. There were two tunnels near the Somers Mansion where the trolley went under Shore Road.
Did you have to pay for your school supplies? Mrs. Shaffer: Not too many had the advantage to go to college. Cooking class for the girls and Manual Training for the boys. We had no cafeteria so we brown bagged it. Mrs. Murray: We made our own graduation dresses. I graduated 8th grade in 1934. Mrs. Shaffer in 1933. 3 or 4 girls bought their dresses but most girls made their dresses.
What was popular back then? Mrs. Murray: Baseball and basketball. We both played basketball. Mr. Smith owned the lumberyard and owned a team. The old Dawes Avenue School had a low ceiling in the gym. We had a great advantage for home games. When we played for Smith Lumber, we had both boys and girls teams. We played big teams like Campbell Soup, RCA, and New York Shipyard. They were very good basketball players and we played our hearts out.
Mrs. R: Did you have field hockey, street hockey, or ice hockey? Mrs. Murray: No but we did have it in high school. Were there a lot of pickup games? Yes, we had "Workies Up." That's what we called it then (baseball). You played every position. Mrs. Shaffer: I played basketball for 20 years. I played semi-pro with an Atlantic City Team. I played Softball for 30 years. We would watch our son's Little League and then play softball afterward. One time, I got the mothers out to play against the kids. We lost to the 4th, 3rd and 2nd place teams. We beat the 1st place team…the Champs. During WWII, a lot of soldiers were on R&R in Atlantic City. I played basketball on a team that played for them. (Mrs. R. Explains R&R was for wounded soldiers Rest and Recreation)
Where the clothes very different then? Mrs. Murray: During WWII, my father raised chickens. When he went to get the chicken feed, he got 200 lb bags of feed. He got two of the same pattern. My mother made us dresses from that material. We were very poor during the Depression. We had four in our family. I never had a nickel a coke. I never got an allowance because they couldn't afford it. Most of our friends were in the same situation. Mrs. Shaffer: In the Depression, if you were lucky enough to have money in the bank and the banks failed. You lost everything. My parents were buying a house and lost the house. We then rented. We had an outhouse. We kept a bucket under the bed at night. And the other thing was the spiders. I think that's why I hate spiders even today. Mrs. Murray: My father built his own house. He lost two of the houses he built. When the Depression came along, everybody lost a lot of things. My father was forced to sell. Mrs. Shaffer: My father was a boat builder.
Mrs. R: Did you realize how poor you were? Mrs. Murray: I think we all accepted it. My mother could make a meal out of nothing. I could never take my lunch to school because we were too poor. When I went home for lunch, guess what we had? A bowl of rice. There was a nickel under the bowel. We were allowed to buy something with that nickel on the way back to school. We bought 3 large jelly donuts for a nickel. My mother was a wonderful person and taught my a lot of good things. Good manners. I am very thankful for her.
Mrs. R: Where many kids unable to finish high school? Mrs. Shaffer: My husband had to quit school after 8th grade for a job chopping wood. Mrs. Murray: My husband was a clammer when there was no work at all. Everybody was at our backdoor to buy the clams. My brother and my husband also cut wood during the Depression. This was all forest west of New Road. Mrs. Murray: I left high school to work at Murphy's in Ocean City. In October, they laid me off. I was too embarrassed to go back. It was very difficult to get a job and we didn't get paid much. I made $9.90 a week. It took $2.50 to ride the trolley to get to work. My mother saved my money for me. She gave me the money back for me to buy some new clothes. Mrs. Shaffer: We would get the little red wagon and buy several cases of food and get change out of a five-dollar bill. We shared the food with a family out of work. I worked 48 hours a week for $10.00. In the 1930s, they had CCC. My brother went in when he was 16. He went to different states to work. They would build mosquitoe ditches in the meadows.
Do you know men from Somers Point died during World War II? Mrs. Murray: Yes, Ed Isman. His father had a hardware store. Paul Clark, he was in the navy. Most of the Gold Star Mothers had something displayed in their window because they lost someone in the war. I hope the war today will end soon because already there have been a lot of boys lost.
What were the prices of things back then? Mrs. Shaffer: We didn't buy many clothes then. Mostly everything was homemade. Girls didn't wear jeans then. You didn't see too many slacks either. Mostly skirts with a poodle dog on it. Bread was 5 cents a loaf and coffee as around 25 cents a pound. Butter was in a big tub and you dipped in to measure out a pound. It was like 35 cents.
What was rationing during WWII? Mrs. Shaffer: You had to go to City Hall to get a rationing book. It was full of stamps. You were allowed maybe 5 lbs of sugar of month depending on how many people were in the family. Gas was rationed. You could have 5 gallons for a month if you were a worker. Also, tires. When I say rationing, that mean you had to have the stamp to get it. But you still had to have the money to pay for it besides. Sugar and butter…you didn't get much!
During the blackouts in WWII, "we had to pull our shades down and stay in. No street lights...no nothing."
(Click the image to hear the sound)
In school, did you have a dress code? Not really! Girls never wore pants to school. There were no rules; you just didn't have any. They weren't in style. Becky: Where did you hang out? We hung out in the Soda Pop Café. We had so much fun there. You didn't hear any bad words said. We use to jitterbug and just stand around and talk. They had hamburgers and sodas. I think half the Somers Point kids learned to dance there in the Soda Pop. It was very small. I would say not as big as this room.
What was it like when the men went to WWII? Mrs. Murray: My husband was in the war although I wasn't married to him then. I didn't know him then. He went to Germany and Japan. When he fought in Germany, he had a bomb explode right next to him. He became deaf in one ear and his buddy got killed right alongside of him. He could never hear right out of that ear again. Mrs. Shaffer: My husband…we were married and we had a child who was just 15 months old. He worked in a boatyard in Atlantic City; a shipyard. He would never have had to go to the service. Every day when he went to the post office with the mail from the company he saw this big poster, "Uncle Sam Wants You." So what did he do? He signed up? Left me home with my 15-month-old girl and went to war. He saw D-Day. He was in Normandy. Then he went to the islands. He was in both theatres of war. He was on the USS Missouri when the peace treaty was signed. So he saw every bit of it. All because he volunteered.
Trevor: Thank you very much for visiting us.
Mrs. Murray: I have 15 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild. Mrs. Shaffer: I have two grandchildren and 4 great-granddaughters.
Interviewed by Eric and Nick
Mrs. Broomell and Mrs. Newsome are sisters. Their maiden name was Mulford. They lived at 508 New Jersey Avenue, Somers Point. Mrs. Broomell was born February 28, 1940 and Mrs. Newsome was born January 20, 1935.
Was the Somers Point beach bigger when you were younger? Mrs. Newsome: The beach was smaller but there was more water and the water was also deeper. We went to the beach a lot and the water was so deep. There was a diving board at the end of the pier. There were two rafts at the beach. Mrs. Brommel: I don't remember a lifeguard stand. Where the play area is now, there were tennis courts. There were no bathrooms at the beach, though. We had to walk all the way to city hall. At very high tide, the boys would dive off the pavilion roof. The water was deep enough that you wouldn't get hurt.
Eric: Was there any air conditioning? Mrs. Newsome: No I don't remember any air conditioning Eric: How did you cool down in the summer? Mrs. Newsome: We would open the windows. There were fans. When you were younger, you don't feel the heat like you do now. If you went into a store during the summer, it wasn't air-conditioned. I think I would really feel the heat now opposed to when I was younger. But the schools weren't air-conditioned. Open the windows! We never got out of school early because of the heat.
Mrs. R.: Were there ever any early dismissals for hurricanes? What do you remember about the hurricane of '44? Mrs. Newsome: The only thing I remember about the hurricane of '44, other then the storm, was my grandfather Harry Elwellhe had gone down to open the school up because people were coming over from Ocean City. People were evacuating from Ocean City. Now for those of you that don't realize the hurricane of 44 was a really big event. It was a terrible storm. One of the biggest on record Eric: Wasn't that when Longport lost some of its land? Mrs.Broomell: Yeah, it lost a lot of it. Eric: Yeah, cause it starts at only 11th Ave. Mrs. Broomell: Probably! Back then we didn't have all the news coverage you have today.
Nick: Tell us about school. Mrs. Newsome: We didn't have uniforms. The girls weren't allowed to wear slacks or jeans. You just knew it wasn't acceptable for girls to wear pants. Our legs froze because we walked to school. There were no busses. When you were younger, you had what was called leggings. Once you got to school, you took them off and you were in a dress. Most of the town had dirt roads.
Did you graduated? What grade did you stop? High School. We graduated from Dawes Avenue in 9th grade and then went to Ocean City High School. Why did Somers Point Schools go to 9th grade? Mainland Regional did not exist. We went to school on a bus just for high school students. The trolley stopped by 1948.
Mrs. R: What do you remember about boating in Somers Point? I just remember the docks where the rental boats are. It's pretty much the same. I can remember walking from school down Shore Road near Cedar Avenue, there was Benny Louis's Sale Loft. He was a sailmaker.
Nick: Did they have sports back then? There was the Boy's Club; they had basketball. Did the girl's have as many sports as the boys? We had basketball but not baseball. We didn't have soccer or the football league for the younger guys. If we wanted to play softball, we just rounded up a group. We just went to the recreation field. Someone had a bat and someone had a ball. We just got out there. Down where the Pit is…we called it the Pit too! It will always be the Pit!! It was actually a dump It was a big hole with old cars and stuff. The Pit was a junkyard. It was called Brownies. We would home from school through the Pit. I guess it was originally a sandpit.
Eric: What about tourists coming here to visit in the summer? Mrs. Newsome: We called tourists Shoobies. Did they bring lunches in shoeboxes? I don't remember but supposedly that's how they got the name. They would come down for the day by train. We used to walk along the railroad tracks. When we heard the whistle, we got off the tracks. I don't remember it being a passenger train. It came to Smith's Lumberyard and the coal yard. Nick: Was there an airfield? The airfield in Atlantic City was called Bader Field. It was one of the first airfields in the country.
How were homes heated by coal? Trucks would come from Pleasantville. They would put a shoot through the basement window and the coal fell down into the coal bin. Someone had to shovel the coal into the furnace everyday. When I went to school at New York Avenue, it was heated by coal. Shoveling coal was pretty dirty. Not only that, your house always had a film inside it. It was very dusty. We didn't have heat in every room. There was a grate in the living room and the heat came up from the basement. When we were young, we room out from the bedroom to the dining room. The clothes were out on the dining room chair and that's where you got dressed because the bedrooms were too cold. When we came home, we would sometimes shovel the coal with small shovels.
What is you memory of the biggest event in Somers Point? I remember the Memorial Day Parades. It was a small town and if something was going on everyone turned out.
Eric: How was healthcare different? There were a lot of home remedies. I had a lot of earaches. My grandfather would puff on his cigar and blow smoke in my ear and then put cotton in the ear. The warm air would make it feel better. There were no heating pads so you had a hot water bottle. It wasn't really a bottle…it was made of rubber. You filled it with hot water. During WWII, we didn't have a water heater. You had to heat all your water on the stove. You heated buckets, carried it from the kitchen to the bathroom for a bath. Our grandmother had very bad asthma. She would put hot water in a bowel in hold her head over it with a towel over her head. There was no medicine for asthma. When you burnt yourself, you put butter on it. The doctors would come to your house if you were sick. They made house calls. There was a doctor's office but it wasn't unusual to call the doctor to your house. He would come with his black bag and give you medicine.
Was Kennedy Park there? What was it called? It was called High Banks. It was just woods. There was a road. There were no bathrooms or boat ramp. The golf course where all the houses are was all woods too.
What kinds of jobs did work? Babysitting and working at Murphy's (the 5 and 20) in Ocean City. There were fewer stores. There was a time there wasn't even a bank in Somers Point. There were no traffic lights. We weren't taught about traffic lights and I really didn't know how to cross. The first one was at Maryland Avenue. Mrs. Rydzewski: Thank you very much for coming to share your experiences with us. (Return to top of page)
Mrs. Baum, Mrs. Miler and Mrs. Risley
November 4, 2005
Interviewed by Eric
Mrs. Doris Baum's maiden name is Ford. She was born on December 6, 1918. She lived at 115 E. Pierson Avenue, Somers Point. · Mrs. Sophie Miller's maiden name is Heim. She was born on December 26, 1925 . She lived at Third Street and Dobbs Avenue, Somers Point. · Mrs. Jeanne Risley's maiden name is Balliet. She was born on July 19, 1920. She lived at 16 Kappella Avenue, Somers Point.
Eric: Why was Bass Harbor in Somers Point called Lousy Harbor? Mrs. Risley: When the British were there it was a deep, deep water Harbor. There were ships that came from England and they didn't have fresh fruit and vegetables. They had no way to bath and so the men had lice. They had lice all over them. Of course, that was way before any of us lived there. But they always called it Lousy Harbor because of that. It was probably in the 1950s when they changed it to Bass Harbor.
Eric: Where did you go to school? Mrs. Risley: I went to school at New York Avenue School. When the Dawes Avenue School was built in 1931, we started there in probably 6th grade. Mrs. Baum: I started the same way. I had to walk to New York Avenue from Pierson Avenue and I was only 6 years old. Mrs. Miller: I started at New York Avenue School. I went to Dawes Avenue School for 7th and 8th Grade. The Junior High was in the upstairs at Dawes Avenue School.
What things were you involved in? Mrs. Risley: We didn't have sports in school. We came home from school and went across the street to play. We played our own games. We didn't have organized sports. When we were in high school, Smith Lumber Company had a basketball team. But that wasn't through school. In school we just played volleyball and kickball. Pop Smith owned a lumber mill. The first one burned down and he built another one between Groveland Avenue and Johnson Avenue. The upstairs of the lumber mill was a gym. Almost as big as the one in this school. They had men's and women's basketball teams. He sponsored sports of all kinds including baseball…Little League. He gave a lot of money for traveling teams. His grandson taught at Mainland Regional H.S. and continued the tradition of coaching basketball.
Nick: What was your first job? Mrs. Baum: The 5 & 10 Store in Ocean City. The 2nd year I was there, the first day of work Social Security started. I paid in to Social Security then. It was just a job during school vacation. That would have been in the beginning of 1936 or 1937. The Depression was really bad then. I made $8.00 a week. You were not allowed to sit down. Mrs. Rydzewski to students: As a teacher I think it is important to mention that in the beginning of the Great Depression there was no help. There was no unemployment insurance, food stamps, no breakfast or lunch programs at school. The elderly people had no Social Security. If you couldn't work and you were disabled… Mrs. Baum: Your family took care of you. When I started my job, they just started taking out money for Social Security. It was when Roosevelt started the Social Security Program which was intended to be a supplement to peoples' retirement not to actually live on. People didn't have pensions and, if they didn't save when they were young, they had nothing when they got old.
Mrs. Rydzewski: Can you share any memories of people losing their homes or any other memories during the Depression? Mrs. Risley: I remember along Bay Avenue there was a farm run by the WPA. Men who had no jobs could go there and that whole area from Bay Avenue to Sunny Avenue was a big farm and they raised all kinds of vegetables. They use to tease because it was hard work and the men were not use to that kind of work. They would stand on their shovels and people always would say it was a WPA project if they saw people bumming. It was not a push job. It was something they did and they could take the food home and whatever was left was sold very, very reasonably. It was 5 cents a pound for potatoes or something like that. It was very, very cheap. This was later in the Depression after Roosevelt got in. People just had not money and no jobs. People took care of each other. In other words, if you had extra you shared with your family and neighbors.
Mrs. Miller: My family had go leave Somers Point. We went to Florida to live with my Aunt. My family had to leave because we lost everything in the Depression. My father had a bake shop and made buns… (Mrs. Baum: They were delicious. Didn't he go around and deliver them door to door? Yes!) Then, of course, when the Depression came along, we lost it all. All the money was in the bank and the banks closed. Mrs. Risley: The banks closed. Anyone who had money in the bank lost it. The banks closed their doors. All your money was gone. People had a hard time and lost their homes. They couldn't pay their taxes. The city was so poor that, instead of paying you with money, they paid you with paper that was script. A promissory note that they would pay it. You couldn't spend it because no one would take it. If you had a ten dollar script, they would give you $9.00 because it wasn't real money. You would give it to your father or someone to pay their taxes because it was worth $10.00 towards the taxes. Real estate people would take it. They paid me for many years at the library in script. I gave it to my father and he turned it in for the taxes. Mrs. Baum: Teachers were paid in script. City employees too. Mrs. Risley: The City had no money. Their money had been in the bank. Anyone with money in the bank never got it back. So business lost a lot. That was in 1929. In 1930 to 1933, things were very bad. People had no money. In 1933, I would have been about 13 years old. Did you use those scripts to buy food? Mrs. Risley: If the store would take it! A large store wouldn't take it. A small store, like Conover's Market, would take it for $9.00 on $10.00 script. They paid taxes and could use it to pay the taxes. But most places wouldn't take it. It wasn't useful except in the city of Somers Point. It was issued by the City.
Mrs. Miller: My father made us go to Florida where his sister lived. It was the first cold winter in Florida. I never went back to Florida again because it was so cold! They had to close the schools because they didn't have heat. They only had fireplace then. I never went back to Florida until 40 years later. Finally, I did go back. My father stayed here. He thought it would be better for us there. We drove there. Mrs. Baum: We had a fireplace and my father would chop wood to burn in the furnace. Every scrap of wood was used.
Eric: What was the price of gasoline? In those days, 1936, you could get 5 gallons for one dollar. We sent to Benner's Gas Station on Shore Road. The WPA built MacArthur Blvd near High Banks. This was all woods where the school is now.
Mrs. Baum: My older brother had to go to high school by trolley to Atlantic City. When I got to high school, they decided it would be better to go to Ocean City. We went on the trolley and the trolley went over a bridge and it would wobble all over. You kept thinking it was going to fall into the bay. It took us about 20 minutes to cross the bay and then we would walk from the trolley to school. There was a bridge that went across the meadows and across the water part there was a single track. On windy days, that trolley rocked back and forth. It was a wild ride!! The kids would do all things. The conductor ran the trolley. In the wintertime, the seats were like velvet. In summer, they were made of wicker or something. The children were mischievous. You paid 15 cents to ride. Kids were only a dime. Sometimes the kids would lock him in the doors. He would go out to talk to the motorman and they would lock the doors and leave him out there. Finally, they let him back in. The boys would shake the trolley. Mrs. Baum: There were two schoolteachers that rode the trolley. The kids teased them unmercifully. It was a fun ride. The trolley never fell into the water; we thought it might though the way it wobbled.
What did you do in your spare time when you were out of school? Mrs. Miller: The first of May was May Day. They had poles and they would twist streamers and walk around. There were games and so forth. Mrs. Risley: We had a prom in high school. I went to Ocean City H.S. The prom was held on the Music Pier.
Did teachers ever hit? When we were in grammar school, the principal use to paddle kids. The principal would pick someone who was bad. He looked to us to be 9 feet tall. He had a German accent and was very strict. The children would go in there and you would hear hollering. They said afterwards that he hit a chair to make noise and told the kids to holler so everyone thought they were being killed. I don't know…I never had to go there. Mrs. Miller: I was never sent to the Principal's office. Our parents would have killed us. Mrs. Baum: I had an older brother. He couldn't get out of line, ever! Mrs. Risley: In those days you got a grade for deportment. And you better have an A in deportment. That's was your behavior. Or you would be grounded until the next report card. Mothers were home all the time. So grounded meant you went directly home from school and you stayed in all day.
Do you remember blackouts during WWII? Mrs. Baum: They painted the lights black toward the ocean. We had heavy curtains because they thought there were submarines out there in the ocean. The lights were painted half way so they wouldn't shine out in the ocean. The car had half of the headlights painted black. Did you ever hear about submarines being exploded? Mrs. Risley: One of the teachers at the high school went to the Music Pier to watch for ships and planes. She went every afternoon after school until midnight. She said there were problems out there. She often saw a ship or something. Mrs. Baum: My father was an air warden. He would go out and, if anyone had their lights on, he would tell them to turn them off.
We had rationing. You go so many points. If you wanted meat or butter, it was so many points. The same with gasoline. You were rationed and had to prove you needed it to get to work. It was 5 points to get shoes for my daughter. When the money started returning, my husband was overseas, they brought them home based on so many points. (Note from teacher: this reference is not rationing points) They got points for months of service, being overseas. A wife was so many points and a daughter. I had my daughter with me and a soldier said, "Look at those 25 points." With food rationing, even if you had enough money, you still couldn't buy it. You had to give so many points for butter, meat, sugar, shoes, gasoline, any leather product. Anything that was needed overseas.
Mrs. Risley: My husband and both of my brothers went to war. Mrs. Baum: My husband and we had a one-year-old baby. My husband reported on the first of the month and on the 15th he was gone. They use to say on the eye examination, if you put a finger up and they could see past that, then they passed the exam. Mrs. Miller: My family was too old. But I almost went because I was training to be a nurse. Mrs. Risley: There were quite a few who did not come back. Fehrle was the first one. He was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. His father donated property for the recreation field. It's called Fehrle Field. Paul Clark was killed. The ship he was on was sunk. Mrs. Risley: A Gold Star Mother was someone who lost a son in the war. Mrs. Clark was a Gold Star Mother. There were two ladies that lived in Hickory Point and they lost sons in World War I. They would have a gold star in the window. You put a blue star in the window if you had someone in the service. If someone died, you put it a gold star. Mothers of children that were lost were very highly recognized.
Eric: What was D-Day like? Mrs. Risley: It was the day before my son was born. In those days, we didn't know anything until at least a week after it happened. We use to go to the movies to see the news because there was no television. You went to the movies….it was a week or longer before you knew anything. My husband used to write everyday. But what they wrote …you couldn't write anything about where he was. If you happened to mention something….all the letters were censored. Sometimes you got a piece of paper that looked like it was cut out here and there because they cut out what they didn't want sent. If anything was mentioned, they cut it out. My husband was in Seabees which was construction of airports for the planes in the South Pacific. The Admiralties and Guadalcanal,!. If they happened to mention a ship or different kind of plane, it all got cut out.
Mrs. Baum: Mayor Chapman wrote to every serviceman. I kept the list for him and sent the newsletters. A funny story: One of the young men's commander said, "Do you have a problem at home? We see letters keep coming on a regular basis from your police department." Mayor Chapman was head of the police department and we used his envelopes. The letters were interesting. They were typed on legal size paper on both sides. He would write the letters to the men and they would write back. The men got to know where each other were. If they were close, they could get together and many of them did.
How long were your husbands away? Mrs. Risley: My son was 18 months old by the time his father came home the first time. Then he went back and he was back overseas for a year. Mrs. Baum: My husband went for his physical December 15, I didn't see him until Spring, and he was sent overseas in September. He missed four of my daughter's birthdays. He came back on a Victory Ship, small ships they built during the war, and there was a storm and they couldn't land. They were bopping up and down. After he got off that ship, he never set foot on one again. Mrs. Risley: The casinos in Atlantic City are built over hotels. Those hotels were taken over by the army and were known as England General Hospital. The troops did there training there and would march up and down the boardwalk. There feet on those boards sounded like elephants. Sometimes they marched on the sidestreets. They brought the wounded soldiers there for the sunshine, salt air and so forth.
Thank you very much for visiting us and sharing your memories. (Return to top of page)
Many times I ran the Cricks between Steelman Bay and Scull Bay and also Broad Thorofare and Sod Thorofare, Mostly in the winter cause back them I worked the Bay and when I needed a days pay and it was blowing I could always get out of the wind there. Looking back on it all now, things were tough. I remember one day I had to go out to make enough to have dinner that night. It was so cold that I took wash tubs out and filled them with water so the clams would not freeze, I thought it would be OK. Well it froze from the bottom up and it was a block of ice when I got in. I sold the clams anyway and no one said a word. I remember trying to race cars at Rainbow Channel. It was a pretty good run and we would parallel the bridge and go at it. I never beat one though. I never had a boat that fast. And I have watched the sun come up over Longport Bridge and a lot of other places. When you work the bay, you have to beat the sun and the wind. I've watched the sun come up and down on all our rivers too. That is the place to be. I remember the duck hunters taking their house boats into the Tuckahoe Riverfor the winter, and the clamers' houseboats at Brick Kiln Crick, Ya, I guess I should write a book. We hulled the river in the winter and caught pirch and catfish, and sometimes stripers, and also set a large fike net at Champion place just above English Crick. It was a great life and I loved it, But , I had a growing family and I had to get a job to take care of them, So I went to work for the State and stayed there thirty-five years and I now sneak around all them places with a camera. I remember Chick Conover had a Clam house in the garage behind his house on Third Street and Les had one later at the piers on Bay Ave. Also Lou Talman had a clam house at one time on Shore Rd. (Return to top of page)
