A partial collection of people, places and events that have made
Chesapeake City the unique and desirable location that it has become today.
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Hearsay:
The feed store sold all kinds of feed and seed because it was not uncommon to see chickens, pigs and goats in town. Thus, the name "Pig Alley".
Sweet potato vine plants were very popular.
The house on the southwest corner of Bohemia Avenue and First Street is a Sears
& Roebuck home. It is the only one I've heard of in or around Chesapeake City.
The Harrington family raised mums on the lot now occupied by the Episcopal Parish House in South Chesapeake City. The mums were loaded onto the "Night Boat" when it came through the locks and the flowers were shipped to Philadelphia to be sold.
Know this
to be a fact: (I think?)
Everyone living south of the
Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is living on an island - not a peninsula. Try
leaving this island without crossing a body of water. Where is the land
(peninsula) connection? Also, the C&D Railroad Bridge is the only rail link to our
island.
Plucked chickens were suspended by their feet in the open air in front of the meat market. I will include a photo as proof of this sometime in the future.
Funeral viewings were held in the home of the deceased.
Chesapeake City did not have ambulance service until about 1960. Singerly Fire Co. of Elkton handled our ambulance calls.
Dr. Davis made house calls.
Fires and other emergencies were called in to the Canal Dispatcher who in turn activated the fire whistle. Two whistles for NCC and three for SCC if memory serves me correctly. Upon arrival at the fire house, the firemen would contact the Canal Dispatcher via a crank type phone on the window sill to find out where the fire or emergency was located.
Phone numbers had four digits and if you had a party line shared with other families, you could be nosey and listen.
Hitchhiking was a way of life if you wanted to get somewhere as a youngster. I did this quite often during 1959 and 1960 to get to back to my base in Quantico, Va. and it was nearly as fast as driving if I didn't get stranded in Baltimore or D.C.
Parris Island, SC and Paris, France have nothing in common - trust me on this one. My father was very convincing but he must have been confused.
Gasoline was twenty-five or thirty cents per gallon during the 1950s. It is now about ten times higher but so is everything else. What's all the fuss about? Cigarettes were $2.00 per carton and now they are over $30.00. A sixteen ounce bottle of water costs $1.00 in a dispensing machine - if my math is correct, that amounts to $8.00 per gallon.
Beer Garden? - Not sure of the origin of this
title or what they grew but Chesapeake City took advantage of them and had quite a few.
Small School Advantage - During my working career, I told many people that I
graduated eighteenth in my high school graduation class and I was considered
scholarly for the achievement. Fortunately for me, nobody ever asked how many
students were in my graduating class.
Happy people do not attend town meetings!
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