Interview with Robert Smith

              Robert Smith
A Harford Living Treasure
Hello, this is Doug Washburn for the Harford County Public Library. Today is 9, March, 2011. And I'm with a Harford Living Treasure, Robert Smith of Bel Air. Mr. Smith, thank you for taking time with me today.
RS	Glad to do it.

DW	Good, good. So you're a life-long Harford County resident? RS	Yes.
DW	You were born?

RS	Well, our family farm is in Creswell. DW	Creswell, o.k., so that would be…
RS	My father was born in Creswell; my grand-father's farm was in Creswell. DW	O.k.
RS	And my great grand-father lived in Harford County when he came over from Germany in
1845. He has always lived in Harford County.

DW	Wow! That's long roots. For the listening audience, Creswell would be roughly the intersection of Maryland Route 136 and Route 543.
RS	Yes, in the old days that was Creswell. Creswell Store was there and the ball diamond was there where they played baseball on Saturdays and so forth.
DW	So what year were you born? RS	1920.

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DW	1920; so you're 90.  [Mr. Smith had not yet turned 91 when this interview was done.]
RS	Yes.

DW	You look good.

RS	I'm still here and I'm still playing cards.

DW	Still playing cards. So you mentioned a store; was it a general store?

RS	Yes, the general store was there. The store…the family had a home in the store. DW	Do you remember who owned it?
RS	Back in the very first, I remember Rogers; a family by the name of Rogers. And then it was bought by Hamby. Maybe a few of them are still left around Creswell. And then later Arlie Rice bought it; Roger Rice's father.
DW	Marly, did you say? RS	Arlie Rice.
DW	What did they sell there?

RS	They just had a general country store; they sold everything. DW	Boots, clothes, food…
RS   Clothes, food and few years there I think one of them sold a little whiskey out of the back. [Laughter] I'm not sure. No, it used to be just a general store. They had a gas pump; everything. They even had slot machines in there one time.
DW	One-arm bandits; o.k. And did you win cash or did you win prizes?
 
RS	Money, quarters, dimes.

DW	I've seen some of the stuff on the history channel where some of the old one-arm bandits were candy and knick-knacks and stuff. Now was that legal at the time?
RS	Well, yes, maybe. I don't really know. You know they…I guess they were because the American Legion had them and all years ago. The legion was in that big white house back, not here, but the property next to the legion. But behind these houses was a large farm at one time, and the house over here that the Maryland's [Careys] own is a tenant house. The big main house was over here and that's where the legion used to be.
DW	Back down Crocker.

RS	Well, where those apartments are back there; the edge of the apartments. No

 	; I bought this. It didn't take long though because the day we dug the basement, the legion dug a basement 		. And I talked to Ed Higgonbottom about it; he was a good lawyer. And he said, no they couldn't do that. He said nobody but 	non-profit that could. He'd been my partner for long time. They've [The American Legion] been there as long as I have, in the building where they are now.
DW	I knew Mr. Higgonbottom. When I knew him, he worked for Forest Hill State Bank, well association. He probably was with other ones too.


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RS	But they had slot machines in those days and they had a lottery. Because the day they decided to move; they voted on moving out of here and he started building and he took the slot machines away. And they built it; it was a cinderblock building with a tar paper roof and it sat there for years; it was the ugliest as could be with no members; it was a mess.
DW	Well, we will work our way up to that one. So you talked about a baseball field in Creswell. Was it the Susquehanna baseball league?
RS	I don't know what league they belonged to; probably so. They were just the local…
DW	Adults.

RS	Yes, no children. DW	O.k.
RS	Just adults. On Saturday [Sunday] we weren't working so we had baseball games. Hanby's farm had a corn field there and they had baseball teams. They'd play Churchville; they played Abingdon; any little village that had baseball teams.
DW	Right, o.k. It sounds like the Susquehanna baseball.

RS	Well they have more. In later years they got more; they brought in good players, better players and so forth. Up Hickory at the bar there; Cappy Williams; he had
 
a team. They got very competitive. Tom Lee, the Buick dealer in Elkton; he had a team and they would try to get better players.  	
DW	That's where Cal Ripken, Sr. started with the Aberdeen team. RS	Yes.
DW	Did you use to go to those games?

RS	Yes and we also used to have a softball league. DW	Males?
RS	Males and they played by the old Bel Air School ground. DW	On Gordon Street.
RS	Yes, behind the Armory; right next to where it was. There were night games and oh they were big! Aberdeen and Bel Air had them; they all had them. And they used to play and it was rather funny when they used to play somebody would just go up and turn the lights on and they'd play ball. And about that time they came along with Parks and Recreation had just started. So then by that time they sent a hired person up to turn the lights on. All they would do it turn the lights on and turn them off. Individuals couldn't do it anymore; Parks and Recreation took over.
DW	So what did your parents do to make a living?

RS	They had a farm. In the beginning they had a canning house. They used to can tomatoes and my grand-father had a canning house. My father when he got

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married he bought a…my Uncle Chris; he was a canner and he bought his place down below Creswell. And he canned for a few years and then grand-dad had a stroke and then my father went up and ran his house in Creswell.
DW	Do you have any labels?

RS	Yes. I have a cup around that somebody made up with one of the old labels on it. They ran that. They would can in the summer and then they were in the timber business in the winter. They had horses and had people working for them. They would cut piling, which you use down at the peers; white oak mostly. And they would haul them down to Belcamp Station.
DW	Belcamp Station; oh, take them down on the train. RS	And then they'd load them on cars.
DW O.k. And canning tomatoes? RS Canning corn and tomatoes. DW     Corn and tomatoes, o.k.
RS	Ruckers tomatoes and Scotland corn.

DW	Ruckers tomatoes and Scotland brand corn. RS	That was a canning 	.
DW	So it didn't say Smith on it? Well it did in small print.
 
RS	Yes, it did in small print. [Laughter] And my Uncle Chris, after he sold the farm to dad, he came into Bel Air and started a brokerage business, Smith, Rouse, and Webster.
DW	Smith, Rouse, and Webster.

RS	I don't know how long they were in business. DW	Now we are in the thirties or the forties?
RS	That would have been in the twenties.

DW	The twenties; o.k., so we're talking just before The Depression and the stock market?
RS	Had to be before because I can remember Uncle Chris, but he had gone broke, I guess or he retired or something, but I just barely remember. But he was the oldest brother so he was older than my grand-father.
DW	And when they had the brokerage, did they have something like the ticker tapes, the old…
RS	No.

DW	Nothing like that.

RS     No, I don't think so. In those days we had small canning houses. Every fifth farm or so had a packing house or a canning house. Todd's place was down there; that was Berkley's. They had a place. My Uncle Roy [Willy]up at Calvary had a small packing house. Farmers would grow crops and they didn't have a…they couldn't
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take them to the market or anything so what they would do is can them. So the section of eight or ten farms had small canning houses. In those days we used to go to Baltimore and pick up help. They'd have what they called a row boss.
DW	Row boss.

RS	You contact her; it was usually a woman. And she'd gather up families that would come out in the summer and work in the canning houses and pick tomatoes, beans, and whatever. They stayed where it was called Shaneytown houses, cook house with a big stove where they all could cook and pump the water. And when we had grand-dad's farm it was on a stream so we could use that. The mothers and the children would come and lots of times the husbands would come out on the weekends. It would be a way for the city people to get out in the country and make some money.
DW	And make some money. So there was no racial mixture to that?

RS	No, and there was no inspection of those type houses. Later on it all vanished because there was no indoor plumbing or anything like that. But it was out in the country and the older children would take care of the little; one of them would take care of the really small ones and ones that were big enough; would work.
DW	Now the canning that you are talking about is the glass jars, not the sealed tins. RS	No, they were cans.
 
DW	Cans, o.k. So how did they do the seal process right there? Weren't they soldered?
RS  No, you bought the…say you bought the American can and the Continental can. You could buy them in Baltimore. You buy the cans from them and they give you crimpers.
DW	Crimpers?

RS	It went up behind and it went around and it crimped the lid on the can. DW	Oh, o.k.
RS	And then you had these big round steam vaults and you have a boiler. And then you put all the cans in a big container and let it down in the steam and you cook them for so long to process them. It was a pretty simple operation. You bring your tomatoes in and peel them and put them in a wooden troth; dump them in there and wash them and they go out onto a like a merry-go-round. The women would sit and peel the tomatoes and when she had a bucket done she would put that bucket on it and it would go around and then she would get another bucket. And then they used to have what you called…little coins.
DW	Token?

RS	Token. And somebody could get so many tokens for tomatoes and so much for cutting corn. It was kind of interesting. Like the corn, they would have the same


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buckets and have a wooden thing and they just take it and cut the corn and they drop it in the bucket. When they got done a bucket, they would get a token.
DW	And each farm had their own token, right?

RS	Yes, 	. The store, like I said, Hanby's Store, they honored them. They would go up there and buy their groceries and on Saturdays you pay off. They could turn their tokens into money. And then the store-keeper whatever he had, he would turn that in and get his cash on Saturday. It was a lot less book-keeping. [Laughter]
DW	So did your family have a saw mill in addition to just doing timber?

RS	They had a saw mill at different times. We had a saw mill. The main one…I know they had one down on Gilbert Place at one time for a while, but mainly it was piling.
DW	No chain saws at this time so this is all hand… RS	Hand-saw.
DW	Hand-saw; two men?

RS	When I first started with a chain saw, the one that ran the engine, weighed ninety pounds.
DW	Wow!

RS	It was a day's work just carrying it around. [Laughter] Of course the fellow on the other end; all he had was the end of the blade, you know. All he had was the
 
blade; he didn't have any weight, but the guy that carried that thing; it was a day's work. It made you wonder whether it was better than a cross cut or not.
DW	So what other kind of stores were around besides the general store? Was there a blacksmith shop or a cabinet maker?
RS	Well there was no…At one time there was a blacksmith shop, but I can't remember it. They say there was a blacksmith shop in Creswell. When I was growing up there was a black smith shop in Perryman by the name of Piper who had it. And he went around and shoed the horses. He would come around the farms and shoe the horses. And then there was always Norris' Corner which is Abingdon now.
DW	Oh, o.k. Old Abingdon and Route 7 and Abingdon Road?

RS	No, that's where I call Abingdon. But in those days where like Boyle Buick is, that was Norris' Corner.
DW	O.k.

RS	And on the corner there was a blacksmith shop. And on the other corner was Burgess Store. I think that's about all that was there, but that was Norris' Corner.
DW	I do remember Bearch's, but I don't remember the blacksmith. RS	Well the blacksmith was there at one time.
DW	That would have been a little distance for you; maybe six miles or so.



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RS	The old days in Bel Air you had different stores that you went to like Coale's; you always went there to get their meat. Kroh's; you always went there to get your fresh vegetables. Kroh's had a produce stand there.
DW	Bond Street.

RS	Bond Street and of course the chain stores; there weren't many there then. American was there I guess years ago. But Bel Air was the center place on Saturday night in those days. We had a lot of farmers and people came up from the south in the thirties.
DW	To get away from the heat or to work?

RS	No, I think it was The Depression; there was more up here. They would, like everybody worked on our farm, the tenant houses and all. [They came from] Marian Virginia; the one would come and bring his cousin, and so forth. But Saturday night was a big night. They all met in Bel Air because that was the center gathering place. They'd always get to go out on Saturday night. I remember we had a family in our tenant house and of course in those days I remembered what they made; twelve dollars a week.
DW	Twelve dollars a week?

RS	They always had a car and they always got to go out on Saturday night and they always had plenty to eat. Of course you had a garden,
 	and so forth. It was different.
 
DW	Well, we can talk about Bel Air a little more, but let me back you up. So where did you go to school?
RS	I started at Harford Furnace. DW	And where was that located?
RS	Well, it was rather funny in a way. Billy Boniface at the thing up town… DW	County Council.
RS	County Council. He said, where's Harford Furnace. Well Boniface's had a farm. Well, what we always considered Harford Furnace, because he didn't even know it. And the school was half a mile north of his farm; it's still there and he didn't know it. But nobody knows what it used to be called and so forth. Harford Furnace is…well, if you go down Route 543, going down to Route 95; just before you get to Route 95, there's a road that branches off the left.
DW	Yes.

RS	That was the old Harford Furnace Road. And in those old days, Route 543 was nothing but a dirt road. And it went right up past Harford Furnace School and you made a right turn on Belcamp Road which took you down to the station. And of course there wasn't any Route 40 and there wasn't any Route 95 or anything like that. See now that road that branches off is still there; it still takes you up to the corner. But then you turn right and you can't get to Belcamp Station because Route 95 is there and all that. In the old days that's how you
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would go. You would go up to Harford Furnace, turn right and if you went straight on past Harford Furnace School, you would have hit Route 7; you still can hit Route 7, I would think.
DW	O.k.

RS	No, you can't. Route 95 cuts it off. DW	Oh, o.k.
RS	And that was the…I have a picture of the school.

DW	I would love to have a picture. We'll get it after the fact. But I would like to include that.
RS	There's the old farm; that was my father's.

DW	O.k. That's a nice painting. We'll take some pictures if you…Oh, I see on the wall there you've got the logging; a picture of the logging.
RS	It's not our logging, but what it was; its' rather funny. We were down in the Amelia Island in Florida and there was a restaurant there and there were pictures on the wall. And my wife said well that's good and she found out who had painted it. She contacted him and he sent her a print and she said sent it back and said she wanted it painted. That's where that came from.
DW	Where in Florida? RS	Amelia Island; o.k.
 
DW	Amelia Island; o.k. So in those days Harford Furnace would have been seven grades?
RS	Seven grades; one room.

DW	Do you remember who your teacher was?

RS	One was Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Wright was a widow. DW	As in WRIGHT?
RS	Yes. Her daughter is married to Jim Fielder. You know the Fielders around here. DW	Right.
RS	It was a little different because she had about three or four children and her husband died and she was our teacher and she had some young ones; they weren't school age but she'd have to bring them to school with her. And they were tattle tales. They were her eyes and ears. [Laughter] Then the big thing too was the old Harford County Fair, they would have a field day every year for the school children. This man near the school, Mr. Jersey, had an old Ford truck. And he would bring his truck up with hay bales in it and we would all load up and come to field day. And it was rather funny because they didn't have any school grounds or anything so they didn't have any sports. But every kid got a chance to run on the track and they gave everybody a medal. The whole school would go out there and line up in groups and run a ways and that was field day.


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DW	And of course you are talking about the fairgrounds where the Harford Mall is today.
RS	Yes before that. They would always have the country fair with sulky races and things. Old Mr. Wright was our school superintendent. He'd come around about once a year and check his schools out.
DW	C. Milton?

RS	Miss Wright was one of the teachers; there was another one. I only went there four years. There were around two teachers at that time. She used to board the family close so she could walk to school. In the summer of course she would go home.
DW	Now was the Miss Wright that was your teacher related to C. Milton? RS	I don't think so; I don't really know.
DW	O.k. It wasn't a close relation, anyhow. I see you have also been a long-time member of Saint Ignatius in Hickory.
RS	Yes.

DW	Were you part of a group of farmers who helped stabilize the old chapel when it started to fall in disrepair?
RS	Well the church…there was a church down in Brooklyn, Baltimore; Saint Rose or something. The roof came down and people were hurt so they started checking the old churches; the Archdiocese did. And the walls had bulged at Saint
 
Ignatius; you could see it. In fact they put rods across to try and stabilize them but it didn't do any good. So the Archdiocese got scared and they had their engineers check it out. It cost two hundred thousand to fix it.
DW	Wow!

RS	They said it wasn't needed so they decided to close it. We were a mission parish of Saint Margaret's at that time. At one time Saint Ignatius was a parish and then they were down to a mission parish of Saint Margaret's. Well Saint Ignatius was the oldest parish in the Archdiocese. And then they built Saint Margaret's and they…But the Archdiocese didn't need it so they let it go; they closed it. So Mary Street and John O'Neil and Louise Wilson, Kenneth Wilson and Donald Harkins. We were on a committee to try and do something about it. Because Donald was a builder and he had a friend that was a stone mason in Baltimore and he got him to come out and look at it. And he said what you need to do is you have to jack it up; there were scissor tresses in the ceiling, in the slate room and they broke some of the tresses so all the weight was on the others. And that was what pushed the wall out. Then he said if you jack it up, jack the ceiling up and put new tresses in there, the wall would come back by itself; it was practically true.
But the Archdiocese wouldn't believe us. They wouldn't have any

 	. I think we made about five trips down to Baltimore to talk to him and they finally got tired of us bothering them so they said if you figure you
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can fix it, we'll have our engineers look at it and if they approve, you can go ahead and do it. So anyway they gave us permission. So Donald did the work; he had three or four men helping him. They jacked it up and they put steel beams from the front to the back on the good walls. It cost us eighteen thousand dollars.
DW	Ten percent, or less than ten percent.

RS	And the church was fixed. And the thing was, we were outcast but the Slade family lived up in Hickory and Monsignor Slade had retired from a parish down in Glen Burnie. So he said I'll be your Pastor, so we started opening up and he was our Pastor and after about a year or two the Archdiocese reclaimed us. But it was different in those days. We put up five thousand dollars a piece to do that; to put the church back together; the four of us. Donald did the work and we opened up. After about two years, the Archdiocese gave us a priest and then Saint Ignatius looked like it does today.
DW	Right; the new church is very pretty and I've been through the whole chapel and it's very interesting.
RS	Well they did things that the big contractor didn't. Donald took blocks and took the steel beams up in eight foot sections. Man-handled because it didn't take… they were going to take the roof off and everything; we wouldn't have been able to do that. But Donald got it done and they molded the beams together and it's still there.
 
DW	It' still there and it looks good. So I know you are a World War II veteran. It says you were part of the Normandy D Day.
RS	Yes.

DW	That must have been scary.

RS	Well think what they did was after they had been training for three years, you're so tired of it you'd rather go in than walk around the hills of the south in swamps and so forth. They had us well trained; I will say that. I'll give the Army that. We
 	trained 	and the whole bit.

DW	Because you are a veteran, I see that you are a part of establishing the guard unit at the Record Armory.
RS	Yes.

DW	Can you tell me something about…maybe some family names that would be recognizable?
RS	Oh yeah. They had a piece in the Aegis that they were going to start a tournament of the artillery battery in Bel Air. And if anybody had any experience in artillery to come to the Bel Air Armory. So I had a cousin, Frank Henson and he'd been in the mortars company which is something like artillery. So the two of us went up; I wasn't married then or anything, to see what was going on. And anyhow the battalion commander and there was a local Tommy Cadwaller lived down around Joppa for years and he was the battalion executive officer. So
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anyhow by the time the night was over we had a battery up here. Frank was executive officer and I was battery commander. We started getting people in. We had a lot of local people.
DW	What year was this?

RS	It was; I guess it was about '46 or '47 or something like that. Between the time I got home and I got married; that would have been a four year period because… let's see I got married…yes, about '46 I think they started.
DW	When was the Record Armory constructed? RS	It was built; it was before the First World War. DW	Before the First World War.
RS	The twenty-ninth had an infantry unit in there. Major Record and some of the names in the First World War were there. I guess Goetz; some of the Goetz's, and the fellow that had the movie theatre; Burkins. I remember Burkins; they were all names from the First World War. And they were at the Armory.
DW	So the unit that you are talking about in the forties…the building existed from the First World War, was there activity going on in those years?
RS	Well, not really. The draft board was set up there. And I don't…it was usually just used for political meetings. I can remember that.
DW	As far as veterans, it really wasn't…
 
RS	They closed it after the First World War until they started with the Second World War. It was just sitting there. It had uses for political meetings and so forth.
DW	You were talking about the gentleman that owned the theatre in town here. Was that when it was called the Argon?
RS	Yes.

DW	O.k. It's had a couple of different names, I think. Argon is the… RS	They had a hall downstairs.
DW	In the movie theatre or under the Record Armory? RS	Under the theatre.
DW	A hall for?

RS	It is rather funny; they had boxing down there and so forth. DW	Oh, like a sports arena sort of.
RS	Yes, because I remember coming up there. There was a fellow who used to be a bookie in Bel Air. And he called me because he was doing history of his bookie days. But he mentioned about the boxing and it's all on the…if you look on the George VanBibber letters in there; I'll give you some of this. Because I had forgotten all about it and he mentioned that he read about this one fight. This Raphel from Kingsville and Coakley from Havre de Grace and Raphel from Kingsville was my brother-in-law. I can kind of remember going up there; they used to have these fights under the theatre.
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DW	So did you go in the front door like you were going to the movies?

RS	To tell you the truth, I don't remember. I think you went in the side; there were steps downstairs. I remember that. Of course in those days the bowling alley was a big thing too. They had a pool hall down there that everybody used to go to, I think.
DW	Where the Red Fox was? RS	In the basement.
DW	"The Hole", is what they called it.

RS	The Vaugn Hotel is what they called it.

DW	Yes, when it was a hotel and then it was Preston's Stationery and "The Hole" was down the alley.
RS	Yes, Gene Graybeal had the bowling alley. It was about the Korean War when we had the Armory building because a lot of young farmers joined; all the good farmers; Crouse went to 	, Sam Jones, Danny Fitzpatrick used to be at the bank, Joe Poole; all the boys came and joined the Guard. Doctor VanBibber and Doctor Richardson used to be there to give physicals. They took turns giving one. Ten dollars and you could get a physical. We kept it divided between the two. I stayed in about seven or eight years. But then I got married and had children and my wife wanted to go away in the summer. You go to camp two weeks and you work. That was enough to take off but then trying to work and
 
then go away for two week's vacation and go two weeks in the Guard; it was a little too much. So the Guard was passed by. Some of the boys, Wade Carroll from Aberdeen, he was one of the officers and Frank Hanson. They stayed in it about twenty years. Surprising how long they made out after they retired. They gave you credit for double. If you're in the Army for five years and in the Calvary for twenty years; I mean for ten. So they didn't have to stay in for too awful long.
DW	What other businesses around town, let me see. First National Bank would have been there on…
RS	The First National was there. DW	Office Street.
RS	And Commercial. And the old liquor dispenser was in town.

DW	Originally in the bottom of the…well it was originally in the bottom of the Masonic Lodge.
RS	No. It was upstairs. On the corner of Courtland Street was the liquor dispenser. DW	Courtland and Bond, no?
RS	Yes, that was where the old Harford Bank was. Was it Short Street that went between…?
DW	Oh yes Wall Street. RS	It's gone, isn't it?
DW	Yes, when they expanded the courthouse…

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RS	Well Wall Street where the corner of Wall Street and Courtland Street; the dispenser was right there.
DW	Oh, o.k.

RS	And I think it had the bank at one time before. I forget the…Oh the  	

Restaurant was over there underneath.

DW	On the Bond Street side. How about other businesses up and down Main Street or Bond Street that you can recall?
RS	McComas down on the corner where you turn; at the railroad tracks where the station was. McComas had a big hardware store there. And behind that was of course Corbin. In those days he had a place to store frozen food. The farmers would take their meat up there and you got a locker for it and you could freeze it. If you needed some more meat to buy, you would go to town and go to Corbin's and get your meat out of your locker.
DW	I never heard of that. RS	You didn't know that? DW	No.
RS	The lockers were in there

DW	And this is in the area where Courtland Fuel is today?

RS	Where their trucks are parked right now. It was a big square building and it had all these lockers he built in there. In those days too of course
 
 	my mother and father 	when my grandmother announced their engagement for getting married, the address was Belcamp because they didn't have a post office. Everything went to the train station practically so 		Belcamp because that was the center of life, the train stations.
DW	That would have been Ma & Pa at the end in Bel Air. And that was the Maryland and Central earlier? Is that the right one?
RS	Which one? B&O?

DW	Was it the B&O in Bel Air?

RS	Oh no; no, no. I always called it the Ma & Pa; I don't know what it was. I guess it had a…yes, Maryland and Pennsylvania, wasn't it?
DW	Yes, but I was thinking that before it was the Ma & Pa, I think it was Maryland and Central.
RS	It might have been.

DW	I'm not sure about that. So the train stations around the county were Bel Air and Belcamp and…
RS	They were every four miles down the track. I mean you had Belcamp and Sewell which is Abingdon. And then there would be Van Bibber and then the next one down was Bradshaw. They were pretty close together. If you ever had to ride one of them, you would find out.
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DW	Every four miles; he hardly got moving.

RS	Well I rode the old Southern railroad; I guess it was one time back to Canton in Georgia? I thought I'd never get there. We picked up milk cans; we picked up this; we picked up that. We went forever. That was a local. Now if you got on one of the fast ones, you were all right, but you had to have reservations and everything else to get on them. They came up from Florida; it only stopped at the big places. It made a big difference. If you got on it you'd be in Baltimore in six hours; if you got on the other one, it would be fifteen hours.
DW	You worked your way up on Main and Bond there. You started on the Rocks end; so you are at McComas.
RS	There wasn't much outside of McComas, as far as I can remember; in the town in those days.
DW	Let me see, we did Kroh's for vegetables on Bond Street. You mentioned a grocery store; American. Was that the one that was at the corner of Lee and Main or was that a different one?
RS	No, I think that was the one. Some of them didn't like the chain stores coming in. I know that it was American. And then there was A&P, Atlantic & Pacific. I think there were two chain stores in town. I think we got Woolworths later; I think on Main Street.
DW	The Five and Ten; that's where Frederick Ward is today.
 
RS	Yes.

DW	The pizza shop next door; that was Bata Shoe.

RS	Yes, Bata Shoe; that's true. Of course Crow's is behind it. Crow's Cleaners; they've been there for a while.
DW	Oh yes.

RS	Well they are outside on the street where the parking lot is now. There was a wooden building there in those days. Richardson's Drug Store.
DW	We talked a little bit about Bel Air School on Gordon Street and since we were talking about the train station; you just said Bradshaw. Now is Bradshaw still in Harford County?
RS	No, that is in Baltimore County, just across the line. DW	O.k. That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure.
RS	Yes, it's just across the line.

DW	Well, the reason why I asked you that was because I saw that after elementary school you went to Saint Stephen's, but that would have been in Baltimore County.
RS	Yes, Baltimore County. Saint Francis Church; we went to Saint Francis of Abingdon. That was a mission parish of Saint Stephen's in Bradshaw and they had one priest for two churches. And then when they started school down there, they started to run the bus up here. And things were a lot different in those days
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because in high school if a boy was sixteen and he lived in Perryman, he automatically became a bus driver. Because he could take the bus home and drop everybody off and then the next morning he could start the bus and go to school. Joe Webster, he was the first one; he drove for a couple of years and then he graduated and then Harry Ford took over and he drove the bus. There weren't any restrictions like you have today.
DW	Right. Well I had heard of the kids driving the horse drawn school buses but I have never heard of actually driving motorized buses.
RS	Yes, they drove them. The priest drove for a while. We didn't have any money in those days. I remember old Father Fitzgerald; he'd get up on that alter every Sunday and wanted thirty-five cents. He wanted ten cents in the offertory and twenty-five cents in the school collection. He would keep harping on that thirty- five cents.
DW	I see you were also active in the zoning piece of the town of Bel Air?

RS Yes, I was on the zoning appeal board for eight or ten years. Pete Schaffer was Mayor. John Schaffer had that garage at the edge of town. Did you know John Schaffer?
DW	No; what time period are you in now? Sixties or seventies? RS	I would guess late fifties or sixties.
 
DW	So this was the time that a lot of changes were happening. Not too long after that, the mall took the place of the fairground.
RS	Yes, but I don't think we… Of course the only thing we had were the appeals; mainly what we had were signs. It seemed like everything; everybody wanted a bigger sign that they could. That was a lot of it. Jack Archer and Judge Day's daughter; there was four of us. I don't think anything was really important. Now they're in big construction.
DW	O.k. O.k.

RS	The only things we got were things that people complained about, which were more minor than anything else.
DW	O.k. I understand. I thought maybe you were part of all the changes that occurred from Main Street to the suburbs and down Main Street.
RS	The only ones we got was somebody had an appeal. We had to hear the appeals. Back in the way, way back if you wanted anything in Harford County, you had to talk to Bob Archer. Did you ever hear that?
DW	No.

RS	If you wanted to work for the government; talk to Bob. If you wanted to work here; talk to Bob. It was terrible! Of course he and that Millard Tydings were close. He ran all the 	. It was a one party system then; there


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weren't any Republicans; they were all Democrats. It was pretty cut and dry. But like we started the PWA.
DW	Which stands for?

RS	Public Works Administration. That was during the Depression. DW	O.k.
RS	They did work on roads and so forth. It was like stimulus today. DW	Right.
RS	We had no truck or anything 	put your truck on PWA. We had an old truck and we went over to Billy James' and had a dump bed put on it and so it went on PWA. He worked on a farm and he'd take it out every morning. They didn't do much, but they got a pay check from them.
DW	Now would this have been a county funded or state funded or national? RS	No, it was federal funded.
DW	Federal funded; o.k.

RS	The first road they built was…they put a road in at Tydings' Farm. Senator Tydings was our Senator in those days and the first road built was the road from Route 7 into his driveway. Do you know where Tydings place is; or used to be?
DW	Towards Havre de Grace.

RS	Yes, it is where; where you can go get dried out now, what is that place? That's his estate back there.
 
DW	Oh, o.k. Yes, Father somebody does that. I had always heard that the first road paved in the County was Route 155 from Churchville to Havre de Grace.
RS	It might have been. I can remember when they paved Route 136. It was dirt. I think I can practically remember when Route 7 was paved. I don't know when they put Route 7 in.
DW	Sections of Route 7 is the old Post Road so it's been here since the time George Washington…
RS	Yes, it's been a while, but I don't know how long 	. There was no electric or anything. I remember I was ten or thirteen when they did 136. It's always interesting because in those days Edgewood was Fort Hoyle and Edgewood Arsenal was two separate army bases. Fort HOlye had the artillery; horse drawn artillery. I don't know
 	they built 136. But the horse drawn guns and all. It was a big day watching them go by. I remember we had gas lines. We had a tank outside with a bottle of carbine acid and water dripped on it and formed the gas right in the house. Right along the wall you would have a pipe and you light it. We didn't have a bathroom at first because
 	. We also had a water tank up high; natural flow. At one time it had a wind mill on it and we kept a tank with a gas engine that pumped the water up to the tank and then we could get it into the house. Grand-dad

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never had it. They always had kind of an electric light up there and they used to use batteries in the basement; I don't know where they came from.
DW	What did he use the batteries for, lights? RS	Lights and something in the basement. DW	Did you have an ice box?
RS	No we had an old ice house. 	used to have ice and you'd go up there and put ice; I don't know; it must have been a lot colder then because it couldn't be that thick. An ice house would be under the ground with poles on the side of it and you would put it in there and throw hay on top of it.
DW	It would last through the summer.

RS	If you get chunk ice. The old gas pumps used to be there and bring it in; you measure it out into five gallons and dump it in your tank. The gas truck would come and dad would pull a lever and have these five gallon buckets and you dump it in. He had a combine; one of the first ones in the county. You know how they go now with a tractor pulling it. One man had to ride in the back of the tractor and crank the 	. So if you went in a ditch or something or down…To regulate the height of the cut.
DW	Right.

RS	Big crank [laughs] cranking it back and forth. We had two men on the bagging the grain. It came out on a platform and when the bag was full you would pull it
 
off and you would tie the bag and put it in a little shoot there. When you get three bags then you trip it and of course you would have to take the wagon and run behind and pick it up.
DW	Any other memories of when you were growing up come to mind here because you kind of went back to growing up, but that is good; I like that.
RS	Well that was a…

DW	What did you do for entertainment?

RS	Go to parties or a movie; that would be a big day. And other days you had Del Haven out here; that's where you go get your ice cream cone after the movies and so forth. 	.
DW	Right, you had the little motel there back in those days.

RS	They had swimming lessons. I was about eight or ten and I came up here and took swimming lessons. Lizzie Lutz was teaching with the Red Cross, I guess. I had an uncle who was a doctor; he was county health doctor for many years; Tim Callahan.
DW	Tim Callahan?

RS	Yes.

DW	And what was the functions that he'd perform for the county?

RS	We had a health nurse and a health doctor. Now what they did, I don't really know. They had an office…I guess people could go there and get medical care.
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He'd come to Bel Air every day. He practiced for a long while and then he retired. Then we still had it because after he retired we still had it after the war because Doctor Richardson; young Doctor Richardson. What it changed into…
DW	You used to be able to go over to the health department there off of Thomas Street. I guess it was Hayes and Thomas.
RS	I guess it was the same thing. DW	You could get vaccinations and… RS	Yes, that's what they did.
DW	Let's see, did you…you were talking about the meat lockers but since we're down in the area there of Thomas and Hayes, Peppi's Meats would have been there.
RS	Yes. Peppi 	well Peppi wasn't there until much later than that. He came over here after the Second World War. Peppi and I were best of friends. We played golf all the time and we took trips together. I got a thing there on the wall that somebody gave me; I'll let you look at it, from Peppi.
DW	Yes, you have several things here I'd like to get some pictures of.

RS	Back in those days, though; I think 1935 or 1936 dad had a boat built. DW	How big?
RS	Forty-two footer.

DW	O.k. So he didn't run it on the streams going through the farm.
 
RS	No, he took it on Bush River. DW	Bush River.
RS	We spent a lot of good times on that boat. DW	Was it like a speed boat or a party boat?
RS	No it's a cabin cruiser. I have a picture of it I will show you. DW	Oh, cabin cruiser.
RS	Dad was a charter member of Bush River Boat Club. We built the thing. DW	What year was that?
RS I don't even remember. It had to be back in the late thirties and forties. I would guess...Bush River Boat Club started at Otter Point. Do you know where Otter Point is?
DW	I know it's…

RS	It's a public landing. You go through Abingdon right down across Route 40 on down there. It's a public landing and anybody could use it. And the county had built a pier there, so they got the county to put a little walk from the pier here and they built a little club house. Joe 	put a little round club house out there. That's where Bush River Boat Club started. And they had…you just keep your boats anchored around there. And then they went over to Long Bar and bought some land there and built a club. They now have a swimming pool and everything over there. But we built the pier ourselves with volunteers. We

35
 
had a barge that somebody rigged up with a trussel on it high enough to put the piling in. About six or eight to pull the hammer up with a rope and then you yell drop! Of course you are driving the pole in the mud anyhow, but that's how we built the first pier over there. It was a lot of work but we got it built.
DW	Right. Of course across the way would have been Gablers. Was that the same time period or was that later?
RS	That was later. Gablers used to be Forest Greens Beach. It was a public beach and there were very few places on Bush River where you could swim. There was so much mud. There was a place along Long Bar, there was Flying Point across over on the other side and then Forest Greens. That's where all the main swimming was done on Bush River in those days. But where they used to swim, they started using those places and by people moving around on it all of the time, it kept pretty sandy. Flying Point was very good. A lot of good river was there and the government took up an awful lot of valuable land there when they built the Proving Ground. I was surprised when I read about when they built the Proving Ground. I guess you read about it, haven't you?
DW	I don't know that I've read anything, but…

RS	I saw a piece on it. Wilson in World War I, they built the place to test guns. And they checked everywhere and they decided they liked Aberdeen. So this article I read in there said that he just went in there and told the people to get off. We'll
 
give you so much and you go. This thing I read up here showed them going out in their horses and their wagons and their cows and things. They had about six months to clear the whole place. I think six months after it was condemned they were testing guns on it. They didn't make any bones; they just wanted it and you went.
DW I think it was thirty-five thousand acres. Of course a lot of tomatoes and corn growing with families down there and canneries. And I think it was another thirty-five thousand acres of swamp and marsh and stuff. It's a lot of land.
RS	I 	totaled all the miles on the bay and on the rivers; it was quite a bit of water property.
DW	How about changes that you've seen in the county for the better?

RS	Well I guess 	for the better. Yes, there's no doubt about that.

DW	Well I was asking about the good ones and then maybe we'll talk about bad ones.

RS	I think the biggest problem we have today is the traffic and things. People say it is so great with all that help coming into Aberdeen, but then we start riding on Route 22 or some of these roads and you wonder how it could be that great.
DW	Right. That is quite a common comment that I hear.

RS	Yes, you know it's pretty messy out there at times. And I think the more the gas goes up, the more people drive; it seems like it. [Laughs] If you try to drive Bel Air Road to try and go to the Greek Diner; if somebody doesn't let you in during
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rush hour; you can't even get in there. But I guess on the whole, everybody is better off.
DW	Well, are there any other topics that you'd like to provide some insight on? RS	I think I gave you enough bad advice already. [Laughter]
DW	Well, that's the best description I've heard of the canning process in all the histories that I have done. I think the only one that I've heard about lumbering so I appreciate that very much.
RS	Yes, they were the good old days, I guess. Now you have fork lifts and what have you. In the old days you had the old cars. You put a pole up back and tie it to the track and tie it to the pier and on this end you put a pole up and tie it on the opposite. You put a block tackle up here and one up there and you unload your poles and then you have the rope around them and a horse on each end. You pull it up and slide it up in the car. Get another pole and pull another load up and nothing was done fast.
DW	Hard work.

RS	I tell you we did have an interesting contract for a long time with American Smelding Company.
DW	Smelding? RS	Yes.
DW	O.k.
 
RS	It was kind of different. They needed…they brought the copper into Baltimore. It was already smelded into blocks but they had to purify it. They had to re-heat it. And by using gas furnaces you got air into copper. So they had to take wood to burn in the copper to take the air/oxygen out of it. So they would buy trees, forty- five foot long and that big around. We sold it to them by the ton. They'd come in and take it over with a crane and throw it right into the furnace, chain it up and feed it in.
DW	Full length?

RS	Feed them in full length until they burn up to get the oxygen out of the copper.

And they had to have it. It was the only way they could get it out.

DW	Did it make any difference what kind of wood it was?

RS	Not pine; anything except pine. So it was a real nice contract; I just stumbled into it. The same man had it for years. He started out getting it by his brother-in-law being a purchasing agent way back when. And then the father died and the two sons messed up and let them run out of poles and somebody happened to mention our name. They called so we started by taking half of the contract.
Because one of the fellows that was in it, was still doing it. And then later on we got the whole contract. It was a real good contact and it lasted ten or twelve years but then they had to move out because of pollution. Well they moved out to where there were getting in the war.
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DW	So did you still use the train or were using trucks by now? RS	We were using trucks then.
DW	Trucks.

RS	That was in the forties. We would…it was great because we didn't really need a saw mill or anything because if you got a real good tree
 	you could cut it [the veneer] off and put the rest on the truck and haul it. Of course you get a lot more money if you get thrown into lumber. It was a real nice contract; it really was. They said how can you take that in there to be burnt? I said because it's none of your business but you'd pay a lot more if you cut up logs at the saw mill. You'd only get half for it. It was a really good contract. The only thing about it was that you had to do it in winter, summer, middle of rain; they had to have it. They had a little bit of a supply, but not many. So not too many days…well weekends you take off. But you always had to go out there in the mud and everything and try to get them out because they had to have them.
DW	So you always had to cut seven days-worth of wood in five days.

RS	Well, we only took about a load or two a day. I think average, a load a day, a trailer load every day. But it was just a good way to get rid of the load grade lumber.  We used those trash logs at the Copper Works.  Down on Clinton Street.
DW	Clinton Street in Baltimore?
 
RS	Yes. Oh, and another thing we did was cut fish poles. That's something nobody knows about. They're hickory.
DW	O.k.

RS	And you know 	We wanted them seventy-five or eighty feet long. The top didn't have to be real straight and we'd haul them up to Jersey Coast, Wildwood, Asbury Park. And fishermen put them out in the ocean to put their pound nets. And they wanted hickory because hickory bark was so thick and heavy; the worms didn't eat it. So we'd go around to different woods and look and you'd find these poles and buy them for so much a pole.
DW	When you first said fish pole I was thinking you were talking about the kind you [both people talking at the same time].
RS	They were big old things and they were a mess. [Laughs] I mean there was…well like today if you wanted to go to Wildwood, New Jersey for a couple hours up and a couple of hours back, I think my brother and I left one day at two o'clock in the morning and got back at four in the afternoon going to Wildwood. But that was before they had a bridge. The only bridge in Havre de Grace was a double- decker and you go down that street with an eighty foot pole on and tried to go on that bridge; you couldn't get on it. You had to cock your trailer and after you were over [on] the bridge; you had to straighten your trailer. It would take you


41
 
two hours to get from Creswell to Elkton. And of course you had to go across the ferry up in Pennsville.
DW	Pennsville?

RS	Pennsville Ferry in New Jersey going across. There was no Delaware River Bridge in those days. Some of the ferries were built with the center portion enclosed. You had to go on like so but some of them had an open section where you could drive straight on. We would have to wait until we got a ferry with a straight on before we could cross because we couldn't make the turn going the other way.
DW	Did they charge you by the axel or by the ton? RS	They charged you by the axel.
DW	By the axel.

RS	And then if you have over seventy-five foot, you couldn't go there, you had to go up to New Castle. They'd let you cross New Castle but they wouldn't let you cross in Pennsville. They had all sorts of restrictions. You couldn't go through the Brooklyn Tunnel with anything over seventy feet long. You had to go up to George Washington Bridge.
DW	Oh to New York; o.k.
 
RS	We did haul some things 		Long Island, a few loads up there 	; we had a lot of trouble up in New York. Any how you had to have a special permit.
DW	Because you were so long. How many people did the timber business employ? RS	Probably about eight or ten at the most.
DW	So you didn't go too far past the family.

RS	No, not really. We always had about seven or eight men outside the family in the business. I used to run the crew in the woods doing the cutting in the woods and so forth. And I had crew of about five; that's about all. A couple of good chain saw drivers and a couple of operators for loggers.
DW	Well, I think we've covered a good bit of ground and I have enjoyed it very much.
RS	I hope so.

DW	I think I'll say thank you very much and I wish you well for many, many years. RS	You're welcome and not too many.










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