Interview with Mr. D.R. Minga
September 15, 2004
Interviewed by Sandra M. Lowe and Herb DeGroft
Mr.Minga attended school across from his home, it was a large brick building, one floor, now called the Rescue Community Center. The first Rescue School had been a two-story house having grades through some high school level.
Today is Saturday, September 15th and we are here in Rescue talking with Mr. D. R. Minga, whose nickname is FROG.
Q. Could you tell us about the area where you grew up in Isle of Wight? Was it here in Rescue?
A. Right here in Rescue. I was born and raised right across the road in that old house, right over in front of my_____. And I had four brothers and my Dad worked in the oyster business, buying oysters. He sometimes got home once a week. So when he would come home, Mama would sit me on the floor on a blanket, and I never did crawl. I put one foot under me and hopped. My Dad looked at Mama and said, “Well, I have four boys and a frog.” And I have been “FROG ever since. My Dad was down in Hampton and the fellow in his office there, where they had to turn in their tickets for oyster buying, and Mr. Moore asked my Dad, I called down there – I was getting ready to go into the service – and I never done anything without asking Dad. So, they couldn’t take me in the Coast Guard. So I asked him if he wanted me to join the Navy or come home and sit and wait for the army. And when he got through talking to me on the telephone, Mr. Moore asked him, he said “Captain Marvin, what’s that boy’s name?” Daddy says, “I don’t know, just FROG.” Now that’s the honest truth.
Q. Laugh - OK, you didn’t mention sisters, you don’t have any sisters?
A. No sisters.
Q. Did your brothers all go to the same school?
A. They all went to the same school right out here where you just left from, the brick building… except Harry. Harry went to the old school that was built right behind the brick building that’s out there now. It was an old two-story house, and it has a school in it.
Q. Was it called Rescue School too?
A. I guess that’s what that was called too, because that’s the one that Lee Griffin and Calvin Griffin and all them went to. But we use to go out and play in it at recess time…
Herb DeGroft: So they built the brick school and replaced that one, and it just stood there as a vacant building?
A. As an old vacant building.
Q. Do you have any idea when the brick building was put up?
A. I sure don’t. The building that my mother went to, you know where the Rainbow Farm Road is? It was a two room house, just a plain old two room house and that, I don’t know how many was in there, I never heard her say, but when they stopped using it as a school, a fellow by the name of Charlie Blizzard lived in there, him and his family. And, of course there are housing built all in there now. It was a little farm, and they use to work on that little farm and lived in that little two room schoolhouse. It was he and his wife and about six or seven kids. They lived in that old school. Mama used lived there on the corner in a house that they had just torn down there. She just walked back and forth to school, just like we did. I would come home to get lunch from school, I’d walk down here and get my lunch and go back to school. We had an hour for lunch.
Q. When you mentioned the brick building, you’re talking about the Rescue Community Center Building?
A. Right, that was the school.
Q. So your mother went to the building off of Rainbow Road…
A. Right.
Q.And then they replaced that with a two-story house that was behind the Rescue Center?
A. That I don’t really know. But I would say so,
Q. Probably.
A. That was the only schools that we had, was the one on Rainbow Road and the old one that was behind the brick building now.
Q. How many grades were taught there in the building that you went to?
A. It was six.
Q. Six grades. And when you finished those six grades…
A. You went to Smithfield High School.
Q. How many classrooms were in the building?
A. You had two classrooms and an auditorium, and they taught the sixth grade in that auditorium. The auditorium had a stage and all in it. And that is where, mornings when we went in school, we would line up outside and march into school. And we would march right on down the hall into the auditorium.
Herb DeGroft: You lined up by grade?
A. Yes. And that is where we would pledge allegiance to the flag and the Lord’s Prayer and then we would go in the two classrooms.
Herb DeGroft: You did that every day?
A. Every day.
Q. That was the same time you got your ___________________?
A. Yeh, we were standing in line and all lined up ready to go in school. And Ms. Koper (spelling?), one of the teachers, she taught the sixth grade. They would stand up there on that porch, see, and we would march in between those columns, and go right on down the hall to the auditorium. And she was standing up there, and the boy ahead of me, I always said he was the teacher’s pet. His name was Newton Scott. And he was keeping some kind of noise, and I see Ms. Koper, she slipped down off the cement porch and was walking down that line, and I was right behind Newton, and I see her pulling her ring off. And I said Uh Oh; old Newton is going to get it this morning. And she walked back there and smacked me and I almost fell down. That woman had the hardest smack. And I got the smack for what Newton was doing. It made me some kind of hot. I started to come home. Laugh.
Q. Were you in here class then or were you a younger child?
A. No, I was younger then.
Q. You mentioned Ms. Koper, were there any other teachers there that you recall?
A. Oh yes. My first grade teacher was Emma Bradshaw and she was an old maid. She was good but strict. You had to be on the ball. I was left-handed and she tried to teach me to write with my right hand. Every time she would catch me writing with my left hand, she would crack my fingers with a ruler. She got me so that I cold not write with either hand and I still can’t. Laugh. I’m not making any of this up. It is the truth. Laugh.
Q. Did you go there for all six grades?
A. No I quit in the fifth. Times got tight, my father was not making any money and I had a neighbor up the road here, she bought my last years books for me, Nanny Mae Johnson. So I told Daddy, I will quite and go to work and help you out with the grocery bill. I tell you, things were tight back then.
Herb DeGroft: What year was that Mr. Minga? During the depression?
A. Yes, early thirties.
Q. When were you born?
A. 1922.
Q. So, were you six when you …
A. I was six when I started school in 1928.
Q. Do you remember any other teachers that were there?
A. Oh yes. The ones that I had, my first grade teacher was Ms. Bradshaw and the second grade was Ms. Bradshaw and the third grade was Ms. Bradshaw. And then we went across the call into the other room and started the fourth grade. And I had Bessie Grenand. She use to live right there in Smithfield on Church Street. She was too good for her own good. That was a nice woman. And then I had another one named Daisy Noun joy (name?). She lived in Smithfield on Days Point; she lived over in Days Point (name?). And then I had another one, Ms. Steins. I think she was German. And she didn’t play around with you either. Laugh. Yep, she was very strict.
Q. What kind of punishment was used?
A. Well you got your fingers cracked, you stayed in after school. They wouldn’t keep you in on a recess but after school you had to stay there until the teacher left. And then I have stood in the corridor on one foot, back to the class, turn backwards. The class is snickering at you and you don’t know who is laughing at you and who ain’t. Laugh. It is kind of embarrassing you know.
Herb DeGroft: What happened to Ms. Lena Mae Roads?
A. She was a nurse. She was over there when I was born. I was born a blue baby.
Q. Do you want to explain that?
A. Well, when I was born, instead of being white I was blue and my mother was in bad shape. And Ms. Lena Mae Roads was a nurse from Pennsylvania. And she was visiting. And the doctor was working on my mother to keep her alive and they put me over on another bed and she picked me up. She just kept messing with me and messing with me until I got to wiggling and crying. And my brothers tell me I cried for eighteen months. Laugh.
Q. Was that lack of oxygen that turned you blue?
A .I never known what caused it. So she told my daddy that I had to have part of her name. So I was a born, they couldn’t name me Lena. So I got my daddy’s middle name which was Marvin Duncan and I got her last name, which was Roads. So my name is Duncan Roads. That’s how I got my name. But they gave her all the credit in the world for my being alive. And she was only visiting Mr. Milby down here on the hill, from Pennsylvania. She was from Philadelphia. So if she hadn’t been around I don’t know if I’d have been here.
Q. Well, we are glad that she did something over and above and knew exactly what to do.
A. Yes, that’s exactly how I got my name, the Roads part. in my name.
Q. Very interesting. You said you lived near the school, so you walked to school?
A. Yes, we walked to school.
Q. How close, were there all these houses here or did you have a short cut?
A. Well, sometimes we would cut through the branch. In other words, you know where the other street goes down to the creek? Well, we would cut right through. My aunt lived there where that house is now. They have just fixed that house up and sold it. My aunt lived there ____________Mount Joy??? And I would cut through her yard and go down through her garden and down in a branch and up a hill and then I was at school. It beat going all the way around. We went that way most of the time walking.
Q. How long do you think that would take?
A. Oh around ten minutes. I can walk out there in ten minutes.
Herb DeGroft: The roads were all dirt then?
A. Oh yes.
Q. Since your father was an oysterman, did you have some chores to do before and after school?
A. Well, mostly at home we just either burned wood or coal. I would get in (we would store it on the front porch). I would get the wood in. I tell you, back then there wasn’t really nothing to do. I use to peddle some fish for Mr. Tennis (name?) who lives in this house right over here. He was a fisherman and he would catch mullets and that sort of thing you know. He would go mulleting, sometimes I would go with him fishing and he had an old wheelbarrow. It was a real wheelbarrow, it looked like a barrel cut in two and it had a front wheel on it. And he would fill that full of fish and I would go for at least two miles up the road, house to house, selling mullets. And believe it or not, I have sold them for 15 cents a dozen. Buy one now. Laugh.
Herb DeGroft: When did electricity come to Rescue?
A. That was in the late twenties or early thirties.
Herb DeGroft: Did they have any electricity in the school?
A. Oh yes, we had electricity. No, we didn’t have any water. We had a cooler that sat on a table in the corner. It had a handle on each side, and the house, not the house that is closest to the school over here now, but a two-story house that is on the right hand of the school, they had an artesian well that run all the time. It just kept flowing. And we would, another boy and myself, most of the time, would go… Of course, they would change it around, we would go and sometimes some other boys would go. And the reason they sent two was because that cooler was pretty heavy. It held over five gallons of water. And we would hold the cooler under that pipe that was running until it filled up. And then we had a handle on each side and we would bring it back, carry it in and sit it up on that table. And I could tell you a little something about that cooler but I don’t recon I’d better tell that. That might not look good in the museum. Laugh. But you know what boys will do and he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Laugh
Herb DeGroft: Somebody else mentioned something about Spring Keepers. What is a Spring Keeper?
A. A Spring Keeper?
Q. Little salamanders or lizards that were living in the spring waters. This was around Carrollton. And they said that they would swim up and keep the channels clear for the water to flow. You don’t remember seeing small animals in the water or anything?
A. Not that I really know of. We didn’t have but one spring that I knew of and that was down by the post office. You go down there and take a turn. Because we had some grape vines that came down out of the trees you know. And we went down there and cut them off where you could reach them. And it was a branch; we would get up on the hill, catch a hold of that grape vine and swing over to the other side. And I’ve seen as high as twenty-five or thirty kids down there swinging on grape vines. I tell you, you done most anything back then for entertainment because you didn’t have no money, you couldn’t go anywhere, you couldn’t do anything. So you had to make your own fun. There wasn’t anything but getting in a boat and rowing up and down the river or creek. Laugh.
Q. Getting back to the school days, you said that everyone went into the auditorium and you had your devotions and everything there. Once you left the auditorium and went into your classroom, what do you recall about your subjects that you had or textbooks?
A. Well, about the only thing was reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling and geography. That was the main subjects that we had.
Q. Does anything stand out that you recall about any of those subjects?
A. No, not particular. I loved to do arithmetic; match and I kind of enjoyed that more so than anything else. Oh, and we also had history and had a history book.
Herb DeGroft: Did you provide your own books or did the school provide your books?
A. You had to buy your own books.
Q. How long was the school day and the school year?
A. The school year was nine months and you started at 9:00 and you got out at 3:30.
Q. Was there much of a problem with children staying out of school at certain times of the year to help parents working?
A. Some of them it was. These Scott children that I was telling you about the boy and getting smacked, they lived over here in Battery Park and their father tended right much land, he was a farmer. And sometimes they would have to stay home and help him because he couldn’t hire nobody. Didn’t have the money to pay them.
Q. What do you remember about your lunch period?
A. Well, we would come home and get lunch and go back, get back quick as we could because teachers didn’t like if you were late. So we would come home, grab something to eat, and go right strait back. And down in the branch, that I was telling you about, not where the artesian well was but over on the other side, on the left hand side of the school, there is some branch down in there. You know, low, you know what I’m talking about when I say branch? Well it was a lot of these, I recon you call them gum trees, and they were close together. And we would get down at the end of them, they were planted right down the edge of the woods on a field. Whether they were planted there or whether they came right up and grew there I don’t know. But they weren’t very big. They were small trees, but they were right good and tall. And we use to get up in those trees and play Tarzan. And we would climb up the one on the end and swing to the other one until we went down the whole line of trees. Laugh. One kid behind the other. Laugh. And the schoolyard was full of what they called Indian tobacco. And Buster Mount joy (name?) and myself, we use to strip that Indian tobacco off, go down in that same branch and make us some cigarettes. And we would smoke that Indian tobacco.
Herb DeGroft: That was while it was still green?
A. No it dried. So we went down there one day and the bell rang and man when we came out that branch like a rabbit to get back in school. We didn’t wanted to be late because them teachers didn’t like for you to be late. After we got in school, we looked out the window and there was smoke coming out of the branch. Laugh. We had done set the branch on fire. Laugh. Oh me my. Laugh.
Q. So did you have to explain to the teacher that you needed to go out there?
A. No Ms. Griffin went down there and put it out. Laugh. She was living in the house.
Herb DeGroft Did the Rescue area have it’s own volunteer fire group?
A. No. It had no fire chief, nothing around here. That would have to come from Smithfield or whatever.
Herb DeGroft: There was no local bucket brigade or nothing?
A. Laugh. No.
Q. Did they know that you or the other boy had started the fire?
A. They never did and we never did say anything about it. Ms. Griffin but it out, it never hurt anything, but it was smoking. Laugh.
Q. You had a recess along with lunch?
A.I think we had a recess, a morning recess I believe, was thirty minutes. We started at 10:00, seems to me. And then we had another hour for lunch, and then we had another one at 2:00. But they were short ones; they were only about 15 or 20 minutes.
Q. What did you play?
A. Well, we use to play sing in the biscuits. You’d line up, catch hold of one another’s hands, and you’d got both hands out like this and you would run. And then you would make a loop, and when you make that loop, the whole group snatches. And the poor fellow that’s on the end down there, he really gets a ride. Laugh. You always wanted to find some guy that wasn’t very big to put down on that end so you could sling him as far as you could. Laugh.
Q. Any other games stand out in your mind?
A. Well, we use to play baseball and I can’t think of the name of that one where we would like up and run by one another or something. I can’t think of what that was, fox in the clover? That sounds right to me. I believe that was fox in the clover. In other words you would get a whole line of kids over here and a whole line over here on the other side of the schoolyard. And you would run across and you would see how many got through. In other words, when you got through, whoever had the most kids on their side when they crossed one another, is the one that won. Just a game that we picked out ourselves. And then we use to play baseball.
Q. With hardball or softball?
A. A regular baseball.
Q. How would you describe the classrooms inside?
A. Well, you had a cloakroom and the one in the first grade room, Ms. Bradshaw’s room that had a window in it. But the one in the fourth, fifth and sixth grade room, that was dark and didn’t have any window. But it they were good big cloakrooms. As a matter of fact now, they are using the cloakroom that is out there now as a kitchen.
Q. What else was in there?
A. Well, you had your hooks and stuff in there to hang your coats on. And in the schoolroom you had blackboards, chalkboards down one side and across the end. And they were use very much. That is where another one of your punishments comes in. Sometimes if you misbehaved, whatever you were doing, Ms. Bradshaw, most especially, she would make you get up and write it on the chalkboard. And you wrote it on the chalkboard until you’d fill all them chalkboards up. Laugh. You just kept right on writing. I must not do this, I must not do that. Whew, I tell you, the whole room looked like it was painted with chalk sometimes. Laugh.
Q. You never experienced that personally right? Laugh.
A. Oh yes, I got a little of that too. But the most exciting thing was the day that Jackie Watkins was in the schoolroom and he was eating lunch, I went home to get mine. But he lived up the road about a mile and it was too far for him to go home. And he had chocolate meringue pie. And the meringue, his mother could make it that the meringue sat up like that, the chocolate was about that thick. And he was kidding around with the boys and everything and he cut that slice of pie and he says, “I got rang pie today boys”, and throwed it and when it went over it hit the black board. And just about the time it hit the blackboard, Ms. Bradshaw walked in the door. And the blackboard went right to the edge of the door. It would have been just a little bit further over till it would have got Ms. Bradshaw right in the face, that slice of meringue. And that sat there and sat there and shook. Laugh. And she made him go get water and everything else and then he had to stay in that afternoon after school. Laugh. That was his punishment. And he lost his chocolate meringue pie. But that boy was something.
Q. Can you explain why he felt like throwing that up against the wall?
A. I don’t know, just to be funny. He was that type of boy. I don’t know whether you know who I’m talking about, but his name was Jackie Watkins. And his brother is the pastor over here in this church, Donald. And Jackie, I think he lives, was it Carolina or Tennessee. And he also is a pastor. So them two boys, and they had a brother named Donald, and they claim that he hurt himself pushing a lawnmower, because he put the handle against his stomach and something went wrong with it and he died a very young kid. He use to cut grass to make some money. But the boy wasn’t really big enough to cut grass. And it got him. He is buried right out here at this church.
Q. How would you describe the student’s desks and the teacher’s desk, was it the regular wood?
A. Yeh, our desk, well it had the lift-up seat, you know. And the seats were screwed down on a wooden track. A little track about that wide and the seats were screwed down on it so they wouldn’t turn over. And there was one seat behind the other. And then you had your desk and then you had an opening under the top of the desk that you could put your books or tablet or whatever right under there. And in the right hand corner was an inkwell, you could dip your pen in that ink.
Q. You had mentioned that you had electricity at some point in there.
A. Yes, we had electricity, but we didn’t have any water. Eventually they put a fountain there in the hall right at the door so you could get some water but that was after they got the water system in the community.
Q. Are there any other positive memories of your school days?
A. Not too much. Other than the kids, they were all about the same, what one had done the other ones had done too. Laugh.
Herb DeGroft: You enjoyed going to school?
A. No, I really didn’t. I never did like it. I could always, when I got in school I would always look out the window and just wish so bad I was out there. Wondering where Mama was. Laugh.
Q. Did you have any other negative memories of your school days of your teachers or anything other than not really wanting to be there?
A. Not that I can remember, I just didn’t like to be shut up in the building. I liked to be outside and be on my own. So when I got out, I found out though, that it isn’t so easy being on your own. Cause when I got out, instead of coming down here and playing around in the community. Daddy says, “You’re either going to school or you’re going to work”. So I got a job with Little Ollie King and we use to fish _____. And we fished in an open boat. In other words it had no cabin, no nothing. And we would leave here and go at 3:00 in the morning and go to Lyon’s Creek, up where idle fleet is, right at the mouth of Lyon’s Creek. As a matter of fact, Black _______ Point was where our last pike was, that was between Lyons Creek and Hog Island. And that was our upper pike. Now you ride from here at 3:00 in the morning in the wintertime in an open boat, with a spray of water flying on you. And you know, what I was making, Little Ollie was giving me, $2 a week. That’s what I got. Well, later on he raise me and I got $8 a week. Then he went to the Navy Yard. Well, after he went to the Navy Yard, he turned it all over to me. Well, we stopped fishing up after you cross over to Burwell’s Bay and the only fish ____ up Days Point Shore. Right on around Day’s Point Shore right on up to, well almost to Burwell’s Bay. Because a fike, you run it from the shore out. A fike has round hooks. You’ve got a set of bays, they go out like this and then you go in and then and then your hedging goes on in shore. Well it is chicken wire, is all it is, and the fish come and follow that ___, because you would go for deeper water see. It is deeper out here where the head of your fike is. And they follow that on out and go through them bays, and then they don’t know how to get back out. There no way to go but in the fike. And he would always take off the Navy Yard when we had to take the fikes out or put in new ones, then he would help me see. But we got to catching so many croakers I couldn’t handle it. And when he’d come home in the afternoon, he would go out there with me and we would clean the fike’s out until he finally hired Moses Jordan, he lived over in Smithfield. And Moses went with me and the two of us. But when the fike got so heavy with fish I couldn’t get it up on the side of the boat. So what you do is you open the fike up because it has got a drawstring in it. You open it up and then you take the first ring, it is about a six foot ring and you put that on the edge of the boat, like that, and you pull it over and then you open it up, bail it out. And when I turned the tail line loose from the tail pole, the tide snatched it out of my hand and the fike was leaning down river and I couldn’t get it back up to the tail pole to fish it. So I had to leave it. And that’s when he would go out there evenings and between the two of us, we would tie the tail line on the boat, start the engine and pull it ahead real slowly or you would pull the whole fike right on out. Boy, right here off of Days Point that ebb tide runs!
Herb DeGroft: How big was the boat that you took out?
A. She was about 26 feet.
Herb DeGroft :How many fish would you get on a really good day?
A. Well, it just depends on the time of the year. In the spring, when we were catching croakers I would say, it varied off and on. You take, in the fall we would get rockfish mostly. In the spring you caught croakers mostly. And you would get ten or twelve basket full. An apple basket weighed fifty or sixty pounds.
Q. So that’s about six hundred pounds.
Herb DeGroft: A whole boat full.
A. Yes.
Q. Did you do any other jobs other than working on the water fishing?
A. Not when I was younger, that was about all there was around here to do.
Q. As you got older, what types of jobs did you have until you stopped working?
A. Oh well, I went with, they called it back then, the Commission of Fisheries. And, now it is the Marine Resource Commission. And I was with them 35 ½ years. That’s where I retired. And we had districts and police boat, operated the police boat and enforced the seafood laws every year in the James River. And the Commission… Let’s see, my first boat was named Potomac and I run her for several years, and then I had another one names Glamour Girl and they got rid of that. And then they bought a bunch of these fiberglass, real wide, but not very long. They have two motors in them and they do about forty miles an hour. I can’t think of what the name of it was. The name of the one that I had was named Nansemond, after the Nansemond River down there.
Herb DeGroft: Earlier when you started talking about how you called your father when you couldn’t get in the coast guard, what did he end up telling you to do about the Navy?
A. He told me to do the best I could, don’t wait too long because I had already gotten my orders to go to Richmond to be examined for the Army and you couldn’t mess around. So what I did was, a fellow whose dad use to live down in Burwell’s Bay, Tom Pool, ran this old log cabin place down there, as you are going into Smithfield. There use to be a log cabin there. They sold food, beer, drinks and things like that. So Tom was in the same boat I was in because he had to go to the Army too. So I came home and went up to his place of business, he was running it, the old log cabin. I was telling him that the Coast Guard was not taking anybody, so the two boys that went with me joined the Navy. I never did anything that I did not talk to Daddy first. So after I called and talked to him I came home and went up to talk to Tom Pool. He told me who to go see, Captain Obey Bloxom. He said he is the man who got him in. So I went to see Captain Obey and he was not home but over in Suffolk at a church meeting. So I went to Suffolk, because I didn’t have time to mess around. I went to Suffolk and got the usher in the church, and pointed Mr. Bloxom out. And I told him, will you go down there and ask that man to come out here. I got to talk to him on some business. So he did, and he came out. And he wrote me a note on a piece of brown paper bag and told me to carry it out there on to the Coast Guard office and get it to Captain Odestall. So I did. And I was sworn into the Coast Guard by myself right then and there. So that goes to show you what politics can do. Laugh. And that’s what it all was. And if it wasn’t for that I would have gone into the Army just as sure as you’re born. Daddy did advise me that if worse comes to worse, join the Navy, don’t get in that Army. Join the Navy. At least you would have somewhere to sleep until you do get it. In the Army you sleep on the ground, you sleep everywhere but in the Navy you do get a chance to eat a hot meal and a bed to lay in. Laugh.
Q. You’ve given us the highlights of your working life. Would you like to tell us something about your family or stages of your family life?
A. Well, mine I take it was very good. We all got along good together to be a bunch of boys.
Q. Tell us about your married life, your children.?
A. Well, she has been very good, very patient, she has put up with me. The kids, we all love them. I’ve got two girls and a boy. (shows a photo). My son has three boys, Ann’s got two boys, and Angela has got a daughter and a son.
Q. Is there anything else you would like to add?
A. I did work at Gwaltney over here, I drove a truck, delivery for him for a short time. That was just before I went into the service. I was working, Captain and myself was running the Pines, log cabin where the Pool boy was. We ran it for Jack Grimes who owned it. We run it for him. I worked there with him for a short while. I went on and quit Gwaltney because I knew I had to go into the service.
Herb DeGroft: Considering where that was, and you lived here, was there a bridge here then and a bridge across the Cypress Creek too?
A. Oh yes. This one is being replaced now. The one that was there then was an old wooden bridge that went across this creek. Yes, low to the water. The draw opened, it was on a turntable and you would go there and life this plate up. You had a big iron crank. And you would spin this iron crank around and around and it would open the bridge. A bunch of us boys went down there one night because we use to jump off the bride swimming. It had a tower that went up with iron rods running down to hold each end of the draw. So we decided we were going to open the bridge and we did. And when we opened it, three or four of them run down to one end of it and it come near sliding off the turntable into the creek (Laugh). And that was a long old draw (Laugh) that went all the way across the creek. Laugh. The things you could get into. We were lucky, we ran back up there and it came down and sat on those little wheels under there.
Herb DeGroft: So if you kept winding, it would literally go off the thing?
A. Yeh. It didn’t have nothing up on each end. Usually, there will have something up at each end of the draw so when it’s opened, the ends of the draw can sit on. But this one down here didn’t have that. And that long draw, if you get too much weight on one end it would tip up, yes sir.
Q. So you found some things that needed improvement in the make up?
A. Oh yes, you found a lot of them. The school bus use to come in from Smithfield and the old bridge got so bad off that they made the kids get off of the bus and walk across the bridge and then the bus would come on over behind them (Laugh) and pick them up again over on this side of the creek. Laugh. But when a heavy truck come over it you cold see it bending in the middle like that. The Acreage beverage company use to have a drink truck and the man, every time he would go across, because there was a store on the other side of the creek. When he went across the bridge he’d open the door and stand on the running board with his foot on the accelerator (Laugh) in case the bridge broke, he would jump overboard. Laugh. That’s the honest truth. That’s how bad off it got. And then in 1936 they built this bridge that they’ve torn down here now. Then we had a Northeaster, and they had a whole lot of cement piled up in an old house down there on the edge of the creek. They gave us 5 cents a bag to get that cement out and carry it up and put it at my uncles barn to keep the cement from getting wet. That was in 1936. We got a nickel a bag. Well, we were too little to carry a bag of cement, so they figured it out, they gave us two staffs, like two sticks. We would hold them in our hands and they would lay two bags on there across the sticks. We had to go up this steep hill that was there then. Not like Spady has it now, tapered, it was a steep old hill, just like the good Lord built it. And we had to climb up that hill with them two bags of cement. Well, the boy that I was carrying cement with (Laugh), he was week as a kitten. So I was behind him and besides carrying the cement, I had to push him up the hill (Laugh) with the cement. Times were tight then. That was in 1936.
Q. Well thank you very much. We appreciate your stories and you giving us a very good and interesting interview. If you have nothing else to add this completes our interview.
Herb DeGroft: Here’s what we will do, you think up your additional stories, Mrs. Rosie, you help him (Laugh) remember them, and when we come see Mr. Cappy when he get’s feeling better, we will see if you want to renail us with any more stories. (Laugh)