Interview with Elizabeth Heaps

              Interview with Elizabeth Heaps for the Harford County Library Living Treasure Collection, by Michael Dante, May 15, 1981.
DANTE: First of all, where were you born?
HEAPS: I was born in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. Want me to continue from there? When I was two years old my family moved to Delta, Pennsylvania. That's where I grew up, in Delta. Went to school there and graduated from Delta High School, which has since been consolidated into Kellerdale. Kellerdale is a consolidation now, but at that time the high school and the grade schools and everything were all together. So when I graduated from there I went to Temple in Philadelphia and graduated from a secretarial course. Worked in Philadelphia for'just a short time, but then it was so difficult--if I get too lengthy, well, you stop me.
MD: No.
EH: It was so difficult to get from here to
Philadelphia. You had to go down to the Susquahanna River, get on a ferry, go across, get on the train on the other side and go down to Perryville, get on another train to go to Philadelphia. That's how long it took and, of course, cars were not in abundance like they are today and the roads weren't like they are today, either. So after a short time in Philadelphia after I graduated, I was able to get a job in Baltimore doing the same kind of work. So I moved down to Baltimore because then it was much easier to get back and forth to Baltimore. We not only had the Maryland-Pennsylvania Railroad that ran from here home, or that time cars were getting a little more plentiful and we usually had transportation back and forth, particularly with boyfriends who lived in Harford County. Of course, it was much more farming. It wasn't
industrialized. I mean Harford County was a lot of farmers around, but really they sort of made it. My friends, of course, were in this section and a number of us worked in Baltimore and went back on the Maryland-Pennsylvania when we didn't have a ride, and had a lot of fun on the train. Judge Day was one of them in that age group. We had a lot of fun going up there on that crazy train.
Well, let's see. From here to Baltimore was like an hour and a half to two hours in a car. Now we're one hour and we're downtown and that made a difference. So then in 1923 I married a Harford County boy that I'd been going with prior to going away from home and it was Gerald Heaps. His father had a farm which had also gone to the grandfather. We were the third generation that took over the farm. The father and mother retired and moved really to this house that I'm living in now, their retirement home. Then we continued. We had a dairy farm. I was a town girl who knew nothing about farming whatever, but we made out okay. I guess I very much liked the country much, much better than being in the city. I'm a country girl.
So we farmed that place, which is on Heaps Road. Go down 136 and turn right, for thirty-five years. My husband in the meantime had developed arthritis and we had what we considered then a very fine opportunity to sell the farm, which now in this day and age would have been very small potatoes compared to that. But we had a very good opportunity to sell it, so we sold it and he retired and we moved up into this house. In the meantime his parents had died and the house was empty. We thought we would buy the house and fix it up if it needed fixing up, and then build. We were going to build out in the country because we weren't used to being surrounded. But he didn't get any better, so we never did build. We just fixed this up and he died eleven years ago of a heart attack. That was funny because it had nothing to do with the arthritis. So I've been here ever since.
In the meantime, after thirty-five years of farming--is this too personal
MD: No.
EH: After thirty-five years of farming, just in a joke I said to the cashier of the [unclear] Bank, they were friends of Eric, I said, "Sometime if you're looking for summer help, try me. I'd like to see if I can go back into office work again." By that time we were off the farm and there wasn't all that work to do. And much to my surprise, he asked me if I wanted to come in for summer help and I said, ti1tfl try it." So I stayed for eleven years. So it was a pretty long summer, but I enjoyed it very much, being back into the public again.
Since that I'm here. This is my personal
life. I've been a member of Slate Ridge Church and worked in the church. I play bridge. Just the things that everybody does when they get older and so on and so-forth.
MD: What did your parents do?
EH: My father was a baker. They has small bakeries around and we didn't have a truckload of stuff coming out. They had a bakery and that's where you got your things in a small town. That's how we happened to come to Delta because he had been in that business in Red Lion and was made an offer by a bakery in Delta to come to Delta. So after we were in Delta for a few years, my mother decided to start a ladies' shop. I think she called it the Model Notions Store or something like that, and this went on for many years until he got sick and died. That was during the last really big Depression we had and business got down pretty much. So then we sold that. That was our experience in Delta, he was a baker and she was a store keeper
MD: What was this area like growing up in?
EH: To me it was wonderful. I had many friends here. There was quite a competition between the Delta school and the Slate Ridge School because one's from Delta, Pennsylvania and one's Slate Ridge, and the high school was out here, too. It wasn't consolidated like it is now. We had pretty much the same kinds of things. They had basketball teams and the same kind of competition between two schools that you have now, only the schools, Delta and Slate Ridge, were so much smaller in comparison to what the schools are today. Personally I think it was a great thing. We really had a great time and the boys around the same age, and the girls, and there were a lot of us around here. Many of the friends that I have today are gone now, but some of them are still here in the community. Of course, we're all old, too, you know. Many of the friendships that I have today have lasted all through those years.
Between Cardiff and Delta you would really not know the difference. I know you're talking about Harford County, but Delta was lower York County and this is North Harford County. We always felt--and I have to put this in--that we were very much neglected, Northern Harford County. We still are, and I'll put that in, too. [unclear] I'm on Mr. Davidson's side. He couldn't do anything with Mr. Berringer. I don't care if you put that in, but you can if you want to.
But we're still on the tail end of Harford County up here, and if they have anything left we get it, except at election time. Then we can get something, a little bit. Delta was on the lower end of York County and they were in the same kind of condition. So they always have felt pretty much neglected.
There's a difference, of course, in the things that you did and the fun you had because you weren't roaming around all over the country. You had a party at your house or a bunch of you went out for a ride some place or that sort of thing. It was very much more economical than it is now. But we had a lot of fun, lots of fun. In Harford County particularly there was an awful lot of, not intermarrying, but interrelationship. I mean one family had been here for years and then their sons, which was in our particular case we were the third generation on that farm, and this was the usual thing out here. Everybody knew everybody else's grandmother and grandfather and this extends out into Delta, too. There were a bunch of us young people around here and we really had a good time. We had a lot of fun.
I do remember very distinctly that after I went on to the farm here, for a while it seemed a good many of the roads were just dirt. They had a little patch of [unclear], depending on if you knew somebody that's in the government. I remember when we first had the macadamized road put in from Route 136 into our farm, which is called Heaps Road, and it just went to [unclear] house, and one of my friends came in here one day and she says, "If this isn't a political road I never saw one," and this really was true because my husband and his father both were always very political minded. Both of them ran for office at one time and neither one of them got it, Town Commissioner. They don't even have it anymore. But they were always very political minded and my husband was on the election board and all that sort of thing over the years and then finally on the tax review board and that sort of thing. So she was probably right. We knew somebody. But then now they finally have gotten good roads almost every place. That road eventually went clear on through to Highland.
I really can't see when you say what was it like then --    Let's see. I'll speak from the 
farming industry. We had to haul our milk out in the mornings. Now, before my time as a farm wife there was a creamery down around Prospect. You've probably heard this before, too. This is where they took the milk back with a spring wagon and a horse or maybe two horses. Just one horse, I think. But afterwards, why, they hauled milk to Pilesville to the creamery, was the Western Maryland Dairy. Well, then--I'm trying to think whether we shipped milk any other way. I don't know, but I know that they hauled it to the creamery.
Of course, that posed a problem when we had bad weather, too, because they had to get out. Our roads would be drifted in and it would be quite awhile trying to get them shoveled out. In fact, they had to shovel them out themselves. They didn't have machinery to come along and plow through your road. They shoveled them and when we didn't have the snow in wintertime--or when we had snow in the wintertime, in the spring it would thaw and then we'd have mud for awhile, which was difficult to get in and out. I remember after everybody had a car, I had different times started out the road, got stuck in the mud with my car and I'd holler for help and they'd come and bring the truck down to try to pull the car out, or the tractor. They had a little tractor and that would get stuck. It was just a little thing. Then they had to go back and get the mules to pull the tractor out. So it was pretty complicated, but I don't know. You didn't expect so much then like you do now. You really don't. Anyway, we did ship milk and hauled it to the creamery from the dairies. That was our main project. Of course, at that time we did the usual farming that people raised everything. We raised corn; we raised wheat; we had chickens. It wasn't so specialized like it is now. You had different ways to cut corn and you husk it. You know, that sort of thing. You didn't have machinery that was going along doing everything at one time. It was quite an experience, particularly for me who was not a farm girl. But I liked it. I really enjoyed it very much. I was sorry when we sold the farm. It was fun. A lot of work.
Talking about Prospect Creamery, now, in ease you want to know, as far as that road's concerned, the main road 136 that goes down there was just a dirt road. At the crossroads down there it was Prospect Store. A lot of the houses down on that aren't there anymore. So then eventually they macadamized it the whole ways through and widened it. Of course, a lot of the houses had to be taken down. As far as our farm is concerned, we were off the road and we didn't have anything taken off of ours. The farm is still there as it was. In the meantime the barn burned down and they had to build another barn. But there's no difference there at all, except that they farm in a very different way from what we did, with very large machinery and expensive machinery.
But the small town, if you're thinking about small towns here in Cardiff, you used to know everybody that lived in every house and that has changed very much, particularly with Delta and this runs over into Cardiff. You don't know the people, but there's no complaint about that. The people that we've had come in here have been really a boon because I said we were dying. This is true because the older people who were so interested, were just not interested in stirring things up.
Of course, we had the slate quarries up here, too, and most of the people originally that go back years, a large percentage of the population up through Delta and Cardiff here, too, were men who had worked in the slate quarries. Many of them were from Wales or their ancestors had come from Wales. That was the main occupation.
We had a movie down here. We had a hotel right
down at that corner. Both of them are gone, of course. And a whole lot of stores and things along the road. Like there was a store out at Whiteford.
You know where the drugstore is out there now?
Well, there was a store right across the street from that, a grocery store. There was another grocery store where the post office is now. The drugstore, of course, wasn't there. It's more recently built.
Okay, now, I don't know. What else do you want to know?
MD: Could you get pretty much everything you needed here in town?
EH: Yes, you really could. Going to grocery stores, well, there were no such things as these big Super Thrift and all that sort of thing. You went to the grocery store and we had some very good stores here, and they would even deliver your things here if you called up. "Are you coming down this way today?" and they'd bring them down. They were very obliging, very obliging. I know Reamer's particularly out at Whiteford. Another thing about that, on a certain day you went to the grocery store, I always used to say you must go on Thursday because that was the day they got their stuff in. You saw all your friends up there. It was just going like into a store and turning around.
Down at Prospect the store down there was smaller than up here. Do you know where Prospect
is? It's not very far from here, just a couple miles down the road. That was one of those stores that you sat around the stove and talked to your friends. Yes, you really could get practically everything you wanted.
Now, clothing, we even had clothing stores up here, too, but going to Baltimore or York, Pennsylvania, which was another place, it was a big trip. It was a big day. You planned to go and you went and you drove your car if you had one or you went on a train. But as far as buying anything, there was really no problem. Of course, they didn't expect then to have all this packaged food and these convenience foods. You did that yourself. You canned things and dried things and you always had plenty to eat that you could go down your basement and get the things out of. You didn't run over to the store and get a TV dinner and that sort of thing. You didn't expect to. It was no problem, really. Of course, you had your own eggs and milk and things on the farm. There was really no problem at all.
In fact, I thought sometimes it would be easier to live in the country. See, I had been raised, as I say, in a small town and it seemed to me we went to the store every other day because it was only a couple doors up the street. We'd forget we needed bread, so we'd go get that. We'd go get a can of beans or whatever. What we did in the country, we
provided. We had our own things. We didn't do that. That's a matter of good management, really.
There was really, really nothing. When cars came out we had automobile dealers and everything here that were just too willing to accommodate you. The mail delivery was in the country just like it is now. They came around throughout the country. You had a mail box, you know. There was nothing different there I can think of.
The getting your produce and things out in the wintertime was really the worst problem. I mean like milk particularly, I can answer that because that's what we dealt in. But I really can't see any big deal if we didn't have industry. We didn't have the conveniences like we have now. There's no question about that, but we didn't expect to have them. We were very well satisfied.
I think there was more visiting done then than there is now because now you're big deal is to go out some place for dinner. You go to York, Baltimore, Bel Air or some place, but at that time there was nothing of that. You were invited to your friend's home, your whole family. "Come after church and we'll have dinner," and it was a social event. That was what they expected to do. You had a party. I remember very distinctly my own graduation from high school, which was 1918, and our prom we had lemonade and cake at somebody's house and we had a lot of fun. Now you have to invest a hundred dollars or so to have a prom night because you have to dress up like that, you have to go some place. We had just as much fun, just as much.
But it was different that way. There's no question about that.
MD: Were the three different towns all different in themselves?
EH: Cardiff and Delta were the two towns and when you're mentioning Whiteford out there, everybody went to school from Slate Ridge at Cardiff. There was just more houses here in Cardiff, that's it. Delta's a borough and so it was Pennsylvania. Right across the street is Pennsylvania. But Whiteford was just a mailing place, you know, country store and there was just a few houses there. All those people from there on down in both directions for several miles went to Slate Ridge to school. That was another thing. You had to get to school yourself. There wasn't all this bussing. When my husband went to school down there they were just one-room country schools, but in Delta we had a school with all the grades in it and a high school. Well, then before he was in high school even, they built the school up here at Slate Ridge. Now, I understand that's outdated and they're trying to get a new school. But his original schooling was a one-room country school at Mill Green. Do you know where that is? Well, there was one there and there was one that was back over the ridge that they called Rock Hill. That was a country school. Then there was one that they called Vernon down near where Vernon Church is, if you know where that is. It's Prospectville. So you see, right in that area there was three separate schools and you could go to any of them. One-room, one-teacher. I don't know if one of them had two teachers or not, but personally I went up here to Delta and we had all the grades and high school all together. But the Harford County ones there -- As I said, they had their own transportation. You got there. You walked or you drove your own horse or you did whatever. Well, then a little later on they decided to run a bus. This was when my daughter was going to school up here at Slate Ridge, but they wouldn't come in off the main road. So you had to walk from our place, which was about a quarter of a mile off the main road. I forget how they did
that. Oh, if you were more than a half mile, you had to pay a dollar and a half in high school. If you were more than a mile off the road or
something. I know we just came under it when she got to high school. We didn't have to pay, we were
just a quarter of a mile, but she had to walk from our place out to the main road. Now the bus runs in there and runs all over these places. So that was transportation. Different ones of the children walked four miles or a little later after they got bigger they had a horse, you know. When country schools were done away with, then it was Slate Ridge and now that's going to be done away with. How we do change and how we do grow. I don't know, I guess we grow.
MD: Did a lot of the farmers come into the town on Saturdays and stuff?
EH: Yes. Yes, I think they did. There was a time--this goes way back--we had two hotels. I think they were both on the Pennsylvania side, though, because I noticed one down here. I guess that was Pennsylvania and one uptown. Then Saturday night was a big night. The quarry men and so on and so-forth got into those places. Well, then the WCTU ladies got a hold of it and decided to get rid of the hotels, which they did. So that gathering of -- That wasn't so much of the farmers. That was more of the quarry men that did that. The farmers, they were kind of tired, I guess.
But anyway, we had a lot of fun. I mean we
really had a lot of fun. We had parties of our own. One thing that I have noticed so much about
the country, when you go down like in the area where I was and every place else, when I first went down there at night you couldn't see a light any place and now you walk out and there are just lights every place.
When we first moved there, or when I first moved there, they had what they called acetylene lights in the house. You know what they are? Well, now there's something I can tell you about. They thought this was really a great thing because most of the farm houses used to have lamps for lighting, and they had acetylene lights put in. They were a gas thing that you had--I don't know how to describe it exactly. You made your own gas. You had to have it filled up with some kind of whatever they did. The lights had fixtures and everything, but you lit them just like a gas light. You're probably too young to remember gas lights in the cities, but you know they had a come out from the wall and you took a match and lit it. It was very good lighting, really. I know in our dining room we had a beautiful lamp that went down like this. I think we probably sold it for five dollars and now they're worth five hundred.
We didn't have electricity put in there for about five or six years after I moved there because the electric line did not run down there. It ran
down the main road and those of us who went in off the road had to pay the expense of putting it in plus the expense of maintenance if the wiring in the poles and things went wrong. So when we put our line in, we decided to put in electricity after these acetylene lights, which were very good, different farmers around had them, but they were considered a luxury, you know. Gee, we've got acetylene lights. But you couldn't attach like a washing machine or any kind of things like that to them. They just made a light, and a very good light. So then finally the electric company decided that they'd put the line down the road, down the main road, but those of us who wanted it had to pay for putting it in. We had a choice of paying for the line or paying eight dollars a month. They would put it in and keep it up for eight dollars a month. Well, some of us thought that eight dollars a month was a lot of money, but then we decided we'll just go ahead and let them put the line in and we'll pay the eight dollars a month. Well, it wasn't any time until we were using more than eight dollars worth of electricity, so it was a wise choice. That was about 1928 I think when the line went in there.
Later on they came out with electric milk coolers because before that we had to set our milk cans in icy water. Then they had electric milk coolers. We had a little interim in there with the old Depression, the first Depression. I'll never forget that. The electric milk cooler we bought was the first thing we ever bought on time. You know what I mean.
MD: Credit.
EH: Yes, and we thought. We thought a long time. We didn't want to go in debt for anything. Now it's so different today, nobody bothers about that. But this man was trying to sell us the electric cooler and he said in order to sell it that he would give us part of his commission. We thought that was a pretty good deal, so, "We'll buy it." He dropped dead, we had no written contract and the Depression came and the milk prices went down to one half. Well, we thought to ourselves, "This is our last installment buying." However, it wasn't. We went along with the crowd later on. But that was a big blow, I'll tell you. It really was. Of course, the Depression was a pretty bad time, a really bad time. But we survived.
MD: Did it have much effect around here in this area?
EH: Yes, it did. Not like it does in the cities, though, because you know when you're on a fan, you're pretty much self-supporting and the fact that you don't get as much for your stuff and maybe you're a little more heavily in debt than you'd like to be, but you can pretty much survive. You really can. The main thing that I ever felt about it was the fact that we did have to economize on the things we did and the things we bought, clothing and things like that. We had to do things a little cheaper and hem our own, but no comparison to the cities at the time of the Depression. We survived. We worked a little harder, maybe, but it's a pretty big blow when you're first married, particularly, and then you have the bottom drop out of everything like that. It was a pretty big blow. But some of the people had problems here, of course. I didn't know of any starvation or anything of that kind. Most people helped other people and it wasn't all that bad. But it finally came back again after a while.
I remember one year, and this seems so ridiculous when you think of the prices today, we raised tomatoes one year to ship to the cannery in Baltimore. We had sort of a huckster that picked these things up and took them in and he came home and he'd gotten a dollar a bushel for tomatoes. We just thought we were millionaires. A dollar a bushel! Now you get a little package about this big and that wide for a dollar. When you think about it, it's funny.
One thing we did, and this is definitely personal, we always felt we needed to take one vacation. It might be two days, one day or whatever. So we went to Atlantic City. We always liked to go to Atlantic City. Well, when the Depression hit us so hard we just couldn't afford the hotel bills. We'd get up early in the morning and go to Atlantic City and then we would stay over one night and then we'd stay there all the next day. So actually we had only one night's hotel bill and two whole days, and that worked. So you see, you can do things when times get hard. We had a lot of fun, and we had lots of friends, too.
The country's a friendly place. It really is. You have friends and you can make your own amusement or you can go together. But I don't know, there may have been some people that went out of business because of the Depression. My mother for one really did, but she was getting up to an age where she just couldn't take it. Her stock that she had in the store and the prices had fallen so. They really fell, even with anything you had to sell. The bottom just dropped out of everything. The banks closed, of course, and I know with my own father he never would buy an investment. He was putting his money in the bank to save. Well, the real time he needed the money, the bank was closed. Eventually he was paid off. Eventually, but psychologically it had a terrific effect on a lot of people. I know
some of the farmers had gone into the stock market on the produce, buying and selling short on wheat and that sort of them. Some of them really couldn't afford to do it, but it was a gamble. I know one
man particularly, an older man, who lost heavily on that because the market closed. But that taught a lot of people a lesson, too, if they haven't forgotten it by this time.
I feel personally--I've said this many
times--it was an education to come through that last Depression. This that we're having now has never hit me hard like it has the younger people because I remember that other one so much. Hopefully we won't get into that kind of mess again, but I don't know.
Anyway, I know some of the merchants, I know
one place particularly were very much upset wondering if they'd make it through, but they did. You had bought things at such a high price, particularly people who had feed and things like that on sale, and then all of a sudden you have to sell it for whatever is the market then. That was pretty bad. Of course, the farmers are going through this now. Farming is so dependent on the weather, the market and everything. You have to be a pretty good gambler, but then most people who farm like it very much. But the people who come out from 
the cities and think they'll buy a farm and think you have to do nothing but sit there and mow the grass and raise a cow or sheep or something and put it in the freezer, they've got a lot to learn.
MD: Did you have bad years sometimes with weather?
EH: Oh, yes. Yes, you'd have bad years. Then lots of times you'd have--I don't mean the market--but suppose you had no rain when you needed it, or you might have an epidemic of bugs and things that eat your crop up. Or with animals, with cows and things, I remember one time we bought a cow and paid three hundred dollars at that time. That was a terrible price to pay for a cow. The cow died the next day. It had some kind of ailment. This went on and on. I mean that you expected and hoped for the best, but this is true. It is. You could have not enough rain or too much rain about the time you were trying to get your wheat crop in. You'd have it stacked up out in the field and then you'd get a terrific rain and maybe it would wash down places. But then maybe the next year it would be just
great. So it was an up and down thing, that's true.
I can say this from my viewpoint of not having been raised on a farm. Many people felt that farmer's wives had to work so hard and I know before I was married, here I'm a city girl going on a farm: "You'll be sorry," and all this. You can arrange that yourself. It's like every other job that you do. Now it's different, we have so many conveniences and everything it doesn't make that much difference. But you can manage. If you put your mind to it, you can manage. It's not as bad as some other things in life. I certainly wouldn't say that. They used to feel like a farm life was drudgery. I mean you had to work so hard and you had to this and you had to do that, and you did have to work hard, but you have to work hard doing anything today if you want to do it right.
And as far as the profits and things like that are concerned, they are very up and down. There's no question about that because the weather has played such a big place in it. Of course, now everybody has such big farms and they have such big machinery and they farm maybe two or three or four different places. I think our farm was about 150 acres and we just farmed our farm and that was it. We didn't have all that machinery. Later on towards the last, when we were in with some other people. Then that was another thing. When they thrashed--I don't know whether you know what thrashing is or not--anyway, this is when you were getting your crops in during harvest, the farmers helped each other, and that was a good thing. They had small equipment and some of it had to be done by hand. A
certain day one of the farmers would farm and then if you had men that were going to thrash that day, they were your neighbors. You had to feed then for dinner, that was one thing. Sometimes for two meals. They would come and they'd make kind of fun out of it. "We'll help so and so to thrash because so and so makes a big dinner," and, "I like to go to their place because they have"-- Well, I always used to have fried chicken and candied sweet potatoes and one of the men said he always liked to come to our place because we had fried chicken and candied sweet potatoes.
[end of side 1]
Eli: And the thing he has to worry about is, "How am I going to get this piece of machinery fixed." So that's the difference, too. It's quite a difference.
Most of the area around our section down where I live, most of it is still farm, but now I noticed this one farm that was good friends of ours, I've heard recently that that farm has been sold to the Whiteford Packing Company out here. So you see what they will do, they'll just farm it themselves for their canning. It's a different story from when you used to farm and you sent your stuff to the market, that kind of thing. That's what a lot of them have done.
Of course, we have a lot of houses around here, too. There's been a lot of building around different places. Not in this particular little town. There's very little change here. Well, there's no place to go here. I mean there's no See, we're right down here in a valley here and here's the slate quarries over here. We have these two streets, Chestnut Street and this street and there's really no place to go until you get over the other side of the ridge. So we can't grow that much as far as housing is concerned. But we have about everything everybody else has.
I really think we did before, too. Now, I do remember about the first radio that came out. Am I telling you something?
MD: Yes.
EH: Well, okay. I didn't know I was that old. I am. When radios first came out, they were something that if you had a radio it was really something. I remember one of our neighbors, there was a thing about that long, about that wide and it had wires and you had to convert your own. For instance, we had a small cabinet that belonged to our dining room suite and that's what we put the radio up on. The wires ran underneath and it ran on batteries and you put them down underneath. But we didn't get one when they first came out because we couldn't afford it. So one of our neighbors, an older man who had saved up a little money, had one and then they had to put ear things on to listen. Of course, one person would have to listen and if somebody else wanted to listen you take that off. I remember he invited Gerald, my husband, to come over to listen to a baseball game or maybe a football game. I forget what. It was a game of some kind. My husband was just tickled to death to get over there and listen to this game. This is the way it operated. Finally they got a little more plentiful around, but that was the first radio and sometime later after that television came out.
Then we finally got one ourselves, a radio. At first they were run on batteries and, of course, when your batteries went dead then you had to either get them recharged or you had to get a new battery. Then came television and we didn't even have a television for a long time because we really weren't interested. I remember I had a woman come to help me in the house, which I had once a week or something like that, and she was--I don't dare to say this--she was a colored lady, and when she was about to go home that day she said to me, "You don't have television," and I said to my husband after she left, "She just treated me like I was poor white trash." She knew if they had one plug, they're
going to get television of they have anything else. We finally got television. That goes back, I don't know when the first radios came out, but that's what they were. They were something that you invited your friends in and then you had to take the earphone and let them listen a little bit and then you'd go back and listen a little bit more. Then they got better after that, of course. That was just the very beginning.
There have been an awful lot of improvements, progress and difference in thinking, let me put it that way.
MD: You said your father and your husband had been interested in politics.
EH: My father-in-law. My husband and his father, they were always very interested in politics and we were Democrats. I used to laugh because my father was like that, too. He always said he voted for the best man, but the best man was always a Democrat. My husband ran his father ran neither one of the circuit of an experience,
for County Commissioner for County Commissioner them made it. But I've dinners and whatevers.
one time and one time and been through It was quite knew. You hated to lose, but you lost. As I said, my husband was always on the election. After we left the farm he was on the tax board. That is, the tax--what do you call it where the people come in
and complain about their taxes? You know what I mean?
MD: Uh-huh.
EH: Yes, they were very interested in politics always. ND: Did a lot more people get involved locally in elections and things?
EH: Yes, and this is one thing. We had another Mr. Heaps, Marshal Heaps. See, you're not Harford County, are you? Are you originally from Harford County? Well, at one time this whole section was an awful lot of Heaps up here and I think they were originally from the same background, but not closely related. Marshal Heaps at one time was in the legislature. We had several men from up here in the legislature. There was Mr. Whiteford, he's been dead for some time. He was down in legislature. We used to have some pretty good politics up around here. My complaint was that since we haven't had those people here, Cardiff has had a struggle I would say because we don't have anybody ding-donging at them.
I was trying to get this road back of the church up here patched, black-topped. I was talking to Mr. Amos about it and he was going to try to get it done and I said, "Since my husband died and Marshal Heaps died, we just don't have anybody."
said, "All they do is complain, but they never complain to them. They just complain to their neighbors or something." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'll appoint you mayor of Cardiff. I said no, I didn't want any official capacity, but I would like to have the roads fixed. We got it patched, but then they thought they could get it black-topped because we really did have an agreement, which I have a copy of here, with the
government. [unclear]    Of course, I think they've 
had so many complaints, so many roads need to be done.
At one time we had different people up here that were quite active.
MD: What about the McNaffs?
EH: Yes, McNaffs.
MD: Did you know him?
EH: Not in Cardiff, but just a couple miles beyond the
road. Mr. Charlie McNaff, who was a lawyer. You said you talked to Dr. Wilhelm. He lived in that house next there and he was quite a prominent citizen at one time. Of course, Paul McNaff over the years was very active. I was just trying to think of anybody else that might have been really that active.
I know Mr. Joe Whiteford at one time was down in Annapolis, but he's been gone many years. I don't think the younger ones, they just don't seem to bother very much about it.
MD: Do you all feel sort of isolated in a way?
EH: Well, yes, because we're up at this end of the county. We feel isolated if we want something. We don't have much power. We don't have much influence. This has been one of my complaints. I mean that was one of the things that I was complaining about when I was talking to Mr. Amos because I feel they just sort of ignore us up here. I know people from York County feel the same way about York County. So we're kind of up in here.
Of course, with Harford County and the same with York County, Eel Air used to be a little town and you know what it is now. So much of that has gone down towards Baltimore and there are more people, there's more industry. We have no place for industry up here and really, as far as I'm concerned, I don't care because I don't know what you'd do with them if we did. We have garages and all that kind of stuff, but this is not an industrial section.
If you're going to have influence in what they decide to do or not to do, you have to be in industry because everybody's cutting everybody else's throat all the time. That sounds like a harsh thing. Personally, I vote. I have never missed a time of voting. Many times I've gone to vote when I couldn't care less, but I'd go because I think you ought to go. There are many people who think, "What's the use of going? I won't get any place for that." I think that's the wrong attitude and I don't know what to do about that whole business. But we do feel isolated up here. This is true because there hasn't been that much progress, that much building. As I said, there's no place to build. Now, we've had a run just within the last couple of years on houses and many of these houses up here have been to the point of no return almost. I mean people just didn't want to bother, and particularly in Bellwood. We've had a bunch of school teachers have come up here and bought these houses and fixed them up for themselves because properties have gotten so expensive further down in the county and also taxes were higher down there. It's been a big help to the community. Our community has really grown in the last few years, not only grown, but there's more culture, there's more everything that you want. It isn't just somebody that's old and retired and crawling back waiting to die. It's been a big help. Now that's kind of slacking off a little bit, though, because of the terrible high prices of things and the high interest rates and so on. But we've had a lot of improvements here, that's true.
When we moved into this house, which is 22 years ago, '58, might be 23, we had no intention of staying here. The house was running down. It was in the estate, as I told you. We had sold the farm and we were going to build out of town. We fixed it up thinking we'd sell it right away. Then as I told you, my husband really didn't improve any and we never did build. But that's been a blessing, too, because then when he died so suddenly if I'd have been way out in the country with a house around me, I would have to sell it anyway. I wouldn't have stayed out there. Here we're surrounded with the church up here and I have loads of friends here. This works out. But a lot of the houses had run down, you know, but there has just been a terrific improvement in that. The people are nice, they really are.
MD: Now, speaking of industry, did you hear much about
the marble quarry? Has that always been around?
EH: At that time, yes. It was operating and, of course, it's like the other quarries around here. See, that whole ridge, there used to be slate quarries on that whole ridge up here. Have you never heard that story? Gee, you've got a lot to learn.
This was a slate quarry county. The man that built these houses was a Mr. Lloyd and the Lloyds were Welsh people. We had a great many Welsh people around here. The man that lived in the house right back of me where Roberts is, you know Men
Thompson? Well, his wife was a Roberts and this was her grandfather's house right back here. I think one of Merv's sons runs this place again and now they make iron things like some kind of equipment that's made of iron. A lot of the people were Welsh and there were several quarries up on the ridge here, right up above here, that extended from--let's see, there's a quarry hole right here. I think about the end of that on the ridge is out on the other side of 136. Up on the ridge there's a quarry hole clear on out there and that runs all the way from here up clear through Delta to a little place they used to call Bangor up there, but it's no place anymore. It's clear the other end of Bel Air, and that whole ridge was nothing but quarries. The industry was great then. A lot of these people had come over from Wales to work in these quarries because the Welsh people are quarriers and these Peach Bottom Slate was considered some of the best slate in the world. Now, my roof that I have here now is Peach Bottom Slate. Someone stopped here one day who was writing a book on the Welsh and they saw slate on the roof and they came in here to try to find out something. I sent them on up to an old gentleman on the hill. He's dead now and he knew everything from way back.
But it was very busy, very busy, and those people they mined the slate and then they, I guess you'd call it, processed it really because they made slabs. They had sort of sheds there and you had to know. It was an accomplishment to know exactly how to cut this slate. That was the industry here at that time, but then they came out with all of these synthetics and that sort of thing, so the slate quarries themselves--now, I'm surprised you haven't heard this from somebody before because so many people have come here about this--the slate quarries then began to go downhill because they came out with other kinds of roofing and all that sort of thing
Then a couple of companies bought these quarries out and ground the slate. One of them was out here on the other side of Whiteford and one of them was down on the other side of [unclear], and for a while they were very progressive. They ground it and shipped it. Then something else came out and all this synthetic material and so neither one of those people are in business anymore. But the quarries are still up along the ridge the whole way up there, but they don't operate. The only thing that happens on these quarries up here on this hill is a whole bunch of people come up from Baltimore on Sundays and drown themselves or somebody else. It's a regular den for marijuana and cocaine or whatever and they're shooting. The cops have an awful time up there back on the hill. There used to be a beautiful place up there that you walk and now you wouldn't dare go up there to walk around for anything. But that was quite an industry, really, for a long time.
ND: Now, these Welsh people, did they stay among themselves?
EH: No, they lived all over the place. There's a few of the younger ones left. I'll say like my generation, not the younger ones, there's just a few of my generation left. But then their children, they don't bother with those things. But they have now gotten back to clubs, Welsh people that come from here. There's a Welsh church still up in Delta which doesn't belong to any [unclear] or anything like that. Just a few of them keep it going. A pretty nice church, and twice a year they have what they call their [unclear], and that's a singing. They sing. They're marvelous singers, you know. Just congregational singing, but they come from all over for that. Up in Pennsylvania, Scranton, those places. They had one just a couple of weeks ago and they have their church just packed full of people. People come from Baltimore. They have a Welsh club
in Baltimore. As far as industry is concerned it's nothing, but they have sort of revived.
But all along the ridge up there, that's just nothing but huge piles of slate and big holes is what it is. But it used to be a great industry here.
Now, you first started talking about the green marble. It was not really a part of that industry. I don't remember when that green marble started, but I remember when there was a skating pond down there at that place. We used to go ice skating down there. But the people that first owned that green marble had come out of Baltimore I think or some place, and that was mining, but it wasn't exactly
--    Well, it was marble instead of slate, let's put 
it that way. But that operated for a good little while. I don't know why they ever stopped it. Then they started up again a couple years ago making products. Not just shipping the marble. That was considered very high class marble, too. But somebody started making book ends and that kind of thing but that didn't last very long. It just seemed like they couldn't get it going. I think there is a vein of it runs some place under if they had enough money to get to it. You know, those veins run out. I mean the same way with the slate, they have to keep -- Well, it's just like a mine or
anything else. You go so far and then you run out. Then you have to start again.
In Delta that was one of the main industries for a long, long time. My next door neighbor here is Welsh and they don't even speak the language. Only a few words that they know, but now they've brought the old tradition to life and this [unclear] that they have has gotten to be quite a thing.
Delta particularly and Cardiff here, I was really just thinking since you mentioned that, I hadn't though much about it, but I can really see most of these houses in Cardiff I expect were built for Welsh people. Most of the houses up here are old. Now up on Chestnut Street, Dr. Wilhelm, his house and the one next to that and of course Mr. McNaff lived on the other side where [unclear] live now. Those three houses and the parsonage, and the next three I know were built by Welsh people years ago.
Like Saturday nights you were talking about, and this was more in Delta than down here because Delta they had sidewalks. Down here we didn't have sidewalks then. On Saturday night, of course, they had the two hotels and people would be walking up the street chattering away in Welsh. They'd ask for a little beer. Just walking, no cars. It was lively. But they were the Welsh people. That's
what the name Cardiff comes from, you know, Wales. Cardiff, Wales. They had a centennial up here a couple years ago and the mayor of Cardiff, Wales was here. I don't think he came on purpose, but he happened to be in Baltimore or some place and somebody got a hold of him and brought him up here. That's actually the origin of the town of Cardiff.
And most of those people like this Mr. Lloyd, these three houses along here I know he built and the movie hail burned down now, but it was Lloyd's Hall. That's where whatever we had showed. One of those houses over there was his house, two of them over there. One successful sort of a patriarch I guess you'd call him and he would build beautiful things. One of the older Welsh ladies they just told me yesterday, she's about not quite 90 I guess, just fell and broke her hip. She was one of the ones that was one of the sponsors that kept this thing going. But as I said before, some of the younger things have now taken it up. You know, we're getting more the genealogy type of people who get so hepped up on that ancestry now, it's more interesting and more prevalent. I think people are more interested in that sort of thing.
There's a museum up in Delta now in the old bank building that's open weekends, I guess. Anybody that's interested in the background of the
area, it's an interesting place to go to look around.
I've lived around here so long I don't get all
excited over those things, but then when I get started talking, why, maybe you are interested.
But we do, as you said, feel sort of isolated. Not isolated socially at all. We don't feel that way at all. I think everybody is very content and different people that have moved into the community here have been surprised. They feel like they're moving into a small town, but they're very surprised because the people are sociable. If you want to play bridge, you can get a bridge game any old time.
Of course, we're away from the city but it doesn't take you long to go any place. You can be in Baltimore in no time and any place like that. Most of the people that live here work. Now, like this man who is a teacher up here on the hill, I think he teaches down -- No, he's not the
teacher. The man that lives up the street is a teacher and I think he teaches down at Edgewood or some place. This man works out on Route 40 or something. In Baltimore, really. They go back and forth every day, most of them. There's nothing much to do here except if you have a garage and you want to work in a grocery store or something like that. But nothing for engineers and all that kind of
stuff.
There is one color card place up on 136 and that's a pretty good size, and those people came over here from England. It's a pretty good size thing. You know, when you see paint ads and they have these different cards, well, that's what they make. They call it a color card factory. I don't know how many people they employ. Then we have a sewing factory and a few things like that. That's about the only thing as far as anything you can do to make money here. You're not going to get rich off what they pay you. Then it doesn't cost you that much to live, either.
ND: You were speaking about the train. When you went to Baltimore, how would you go? Was there a station here?
EH: Oh, yes. A lot of stations. Oh, I can just show you a picture. Ridge Church, too, but I don't know if you'd be interested in that at all or not, but that's what I had blown up. I think this was the station. Here. These are railroad stations. Somebody did these cards to sell. Look through those.
MD: Haiston?
EH: That's Halston, too.
ND: Whiteford.
EH: That's Whiteford right out here. That station's
still here, but the Whiteford Packing Company uses it.
MD: And Delta.
EH: That's the Delta station.
MD: That looked bigger.
EH: Yes. Oh, Delta was a much bigger stop. Delta was I
would say the biggest stop between here and Eel Air. What's that one?
MD: Let me see, Forest Hill.
EH: That's Forest Hill. The Forest Hill station now is--are you familiar with Forest Hill?
MD: Yeah.
EH: Well, it's right down you know where the bank is? Well, then where this road crosses? It's right down the road towards Eel Air. It's on the right. I think they have a recreation park or something there. That used to be the Forest Hill Station. Oh, this is Forest Hill. I've never opened these before.
That's all the ones I have, but between here there was Cardiff, Delta and then from Delta it went on up towards York like Brownsville and on that way. Delta, Cardiff, Whiteford, Pilesville, Highland, the Rocks and the next one was Forest Hill, Bynan. Did you ever hear tell of Bynan? Clear on to Baltimore there was a station every few miles. You know how long it took you to go down
there, and the thing would get stuck, the train would get stuck. I remember leaves got on the track and they'd get wet, and then they couldn't get up the hill. I remember one Saturday we came up. A whole bunch of us used to come up from Baltimore to work down there. So they got stuck down at the Rocks, the leaves were on the track and the wheels were going, but the train wasn't. So they had to put sand on it. So in the meantime the boys got off the train and went up to Rock Store and got a whole bunch of stuff to eat and brought it back and we had a lot of fun. That's the kind of fun you had then.
But the whole way to Baltimore it was just stations every couple of miles. Really the tracks up here were still here for sometime, but they're all covered over now. Then for a long time they didn't run--I think they went as far as Bel Air then they stopped. But it was all the way from York to Baltimore you could go on this track down here.
Then they had a branch that ran down towards the river for awhile, down towards Peach Bottom. That was sort of a side branch because they hauled freight. They took the passenger trains off up here and then they hauled freight for a long time. Now, of course, they don't have them at all because there's so much trucking and everything.
But those trains, my goodness sakes, people
would go and they'd have things in Baltimore like some particular theater thing. They had Billy Graham, who was a great evangelist, in Baltimore and they'd run special trains it would just be crowded. They'd run what they called the midnight or the "owl" train and you could go to the theater and then come back on the owl train if you wanted to. So we got around.
MD: What kind of ride was it like?
ER: I don't know. You just tried not to notice.
[laughs] It wasn't so bad. It certainly wasn't deluxe and don't count on a dining car or anything. You know, you just sort of chug-a-lugged along and you really didn't think much about it, to tell you the truth. You just went. Of course, as I said with us we had a lot of fun because there would be a bunch of us going up and down like on Saturday. On Sunday evening they ran a train. For awhile it got so that they didn't run a train from here to go back on Sunday. You had to go down to Bel Air to get on the train. So we'd usually get a ride to Bel Air and go on the train. It would be the same bunch, and you'd just have a lot of crazy fun.
But the train was, as I say, you just chugged along, but we didn't know any better. I mean we didn't feel as bad about it chugging along as the people would today with all this electricity
shooting along like that, you know. We expected it to be like that. But it was a good many years that train went.
The station in Baltimore was on North Avenue and Maryland. It came up stopped at all these places, and it was a lot of stops, but they had to on that local, had to stop all these places.
ND: That's remarkable. It really is.
EH: It's interesting. It really is. We've always had a lot of churches around here. We have a lot of churches of any denomination that you want. So that was never any problem. They've always been kept up
and well kept.    - 
ND: Is Slate Ridge pretty old?
EH: Yes. Not this particular building. This is about the third or fourth building I think Slate Ridge has had. Out in country they had at least two. One burned down. They were like stone buildings and then they built this one. I don't know, this one's been up here a good while. Several years ago they built the el onto it and made a much bigger building. 1750 to 1950 was the church. Now, this one up here was built--I'm not sure what the date is. This was the original old Slate Ridge Church. I don't know whether they give the date on there.
ND: 1805.
Eli: And you see the one back of this, it says from 1750.
The one they had before was the beginning of 1750. This seemed about the third one. I don't think they had any pictures of the ones before. Then the one they built up here. This is the parsonage, things like that. I'm sure in there some place it tells when this one was built. Then we built on education rooms that really doubled it in size several years ago.
MD: Is this the biggest church around town would you say?
EH: Well, actually it's the only one on the Maryland side. Now, we had a Slateville Church which is a split off from Slate Ridge and it's about the same size. It's in Pennsylvania over the other side. In fact, Slate Ridge is the mother church of Highland and about three churches up in Pennsylvania. The Slate Ridge is the mother church of all of them. We're Presbyterians here. We have many other denominations around here. They have Baptists they have the Nazarene. There's a lot of churches here, but these are the big ones. Slate Ridge and Slateville. They have a Methodist church up here that's a pretty good size.
MD: When your family came to Delta was this the church you went to?
EH: I started personally before I was married I went to Slateville Church. My family saw to it that we went
to church, but they weren't all wrapped up in it. But my husband's family were bulwarks with the Slate Ridge church. My father-in-law was always an elder and my mother-in-law was the head of the missionary society. You know, that sort of thing. So then when we were married and we had a little girl, I didn't see any sense in having a divided family so I transferred. I would never have asked his parents. If I had mentioned getting him to transfer out there, they would have flipped, but it didn't make any difference to me. They were both Presbyterian churches so I came down here and I've been there, I guess it's been about fifty years. Not quite fifty that I have belonged up there. I played the organ up there for twenty-five years.
MD: You did? How did you lean to play?
EH: Well, we bought a pipe organ, this church. We used to have like a piano and a little organ. So the church had a chance to buy a pipe organ from St. Michael's and All Angels in Baltimore who were putting in a bigger organ. We had a chance to get this pipe organ from them and we bought it. Then we had a man come down from York and I think he gave us ten lessons. There were about a dozen of us that took these lessons learning how to take the pipe organ. It's one of those kinds that you pull stops out. You probably never even saw one, but you didn't have all this beautiful stuff like you do. Then the arrangement was that the church was going to pay for these lessons. We didn't have to pay anything but we were supposed to play, like take turns playing one Sunday and somebody else another Sunday to pay for them. Well, that didn't work out too well because I don't know if you know too much about church organ business. Whoever was the organist had to direct the choir, too, and also arrange for all the music and everything and it was very difficult to have one person doing it one Sunday and then another person doing it. You couldn't make any kind of programming. Then another thing, we were all newly young married people and then the first thing you know somebody got going pretty good and then they got a baby and then they couldn't come every Sunday. So it finally wore itself down to about a couple of us, and I finally wound up to be the last one that could do it. Of course, I had a small child, too, but we managed to take care of that very well. I enjoyed it.
I would have stopped before I did but because it's a pretty big job. You don't get paid
anything. I see now they pay them a little bit, but they didn't then and it didn't always suite you to get there. So we finally had a young woman who had been at college and taken music and she married a man around here. So she took over and she's been up there for, I don't know, 2 or 30 years, I guess. We have wonderful music up here. Really, if you ever have time to come up to one of our special things. We have a director who directs the music in the public schools and she belongs up here and between those two they whip up some really great programs, and I mean much, much more advanced music than I played up there because they have a really great choir. It's just outstanding for a small community, everybody says that. They're really good.
ND: Had you had piano training before?
EH: Oh, yes. I had played piano before and I also taught piano sum and played the violin a little bit and taught it a little bit. All along over my life I'm always doing a little bit of something besides just being a housewife and mother. So the organ playing was a matter of practicing more than anything else. You got the stops. Then somebody had a baby out in Slatesville, so I went out and played about a year out there for them and then she came back. But I had the preliminaries before. Anyway, it was nice.
Then afterwards that organ, we finally decided that it was past its prime, so then we bought a much better organ, a bigger one, and we still have it. It's a very nice organ. That's how I started on it.
But the music is really outstanding up there. It certainly is.
We're in Maryland, but we still belong, as far as the church is concerned, to Pennsylvania Presbyterian because the church originated in Pennsylvania, and then when they bought this up here, I think somebody gave them --


[End of Interview]