Child of the Great Depression: Growing up Poor but Proud on the Eastern Shore of Maryland

By William Elihu Palmer

In this book, Child of the Great Depression, I try to recapture and revive the lore of the enduring legacy of Powellville. My, but there are so many things to remember: riding atop a load of tomatoes and throwing a tomato at every mailbox along the way, shooting marbles in the alley by the general store, playing baseball, splashing naked in the swimming hole in the creek in the woods. Those were just childhood activities.

The real legacy of the town is based on the sharing of lifes journey among all those who lived there: the hardship, the sacrifice, the happiness, the tragedy, and all the bad and good of human nature. In short, it is a portrait of the trials and the struggles, the humor and the woe that most Americans shared during the years of the Great Depression.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503518308

William Elihu Palmer

William Elihu Palmer grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland during the Great Depression. He enlisted in the Army at the age of 17 and served n Occupied Japan and fought in the Korean War. He married Angeles Palmer in Madrid, Spain in 1960. They have four children. He spent his career as an educator, teaching at universities in the USA and abroad, including Ohio University, the University of Salamanca, Spain, and at Salisbury University in Maryland. He and Angeles moved to Coronado, California in 2017.

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Copyright © 2014 by William Elihu Palmer.

The cover image is the author’s father, Willard H. Palmer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/18/2014

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Table of Contents

1. First Love

2. Bailey’s Porch

3. The Family Circle

4. Children of the Village

5. The Childhood Games

6. Dressing up

7. The Church Picnic

8. The Fields Beyond the Stream

9. The CCC Camp

10. Election Day

11. The Hunting Dogs

12. Playing Hookey

13. Winter Chores

14. Hog-Killing Day

15. Food on the Farm

16. The Milk Factory

17. Going to Town

18. Christmas on the Farm

19. A Baby in the House

20. Outsiders

21. The Cursed

22. Death Comes to Town

23. The Radio

24. The City Market

25. At the End of the Road

26. Heroes That Melt Away; Dreams That Peter Out

27. The Cider Mill

28. The War

29. After the War

30. The Move West

31. Powellville: The Town That Died

Dear Reader, as a child growing up on a small farm in the country in the 1930s, the Great Depression was the normal condition of life for me. I knew the reality of an existence with only the necessities for survival: an unheated farmhouse for shelter, a hand pump for water, and an outhouse with a path beaten through rain, mud, wind and snow. A wood burning stove, a kerosene lamp and a kettle hissing on the kitchen stove were comforting to a youngster who saw that all who lived nearby lived under the same conditions. Life for me at that time and at that place was good and anything beyond basic needs—special foods for the holidays or a battery-powered radio—these brought joy beyond present imagining.

They called me Billy where I was born in Powellville on October 3, 1931. Powellville was then a country town of about 400 farmers, timber cutters, chicken growers, and their families.

In this book I try to recapture my childhood impressions and remembrances of life in that isolated town at the time when all who lived there were poor. But then too, all who lived in Powellville were neighbors who came together to share the hardships and sacrifices which life imposed. Out of their sharing came hope and humor, banter and laughter, story-telling and gossip. For me, now that I remember and try to relive the fleeting years of my youth, I realize that it was the hardy souls of that place, Powellville, who transformed the hard times of the Great Depression into the happy, happy days of my childhood.

So share with me, Dear Reader, if you care to know the way of life of that time and that place, share with me those days when Americans struggled to go forward with rough hands and a brave heart.

(Dedicated to all who shared their life experiences with me. And dedicated to you too, Dear Reader, who will find that the adversities encountered on life’s journey often leave behind cherished memories.)

Albuquerque, NM

(c)March 2012

*     *     *

First Love

Many years ago when I was growing up in a farming village on the East Coast, I knew a girl whose name still excites me when I hear it spoken. Her name, though, like the village itself, has fallen into disuse and for the most part neither it nor the village can be said to exist. Oh, her name can still be found as a character in some ancient novel now gathering dust, stored away among books no longer read in forgotten trunks in dark corners of attics. Her name like the name of the village is seldom spoken even by those who may have known them both. Oh, the village still exists, but not as a village. The place where the village stood is now but a dividing of the roads which lead to ranch-type houses and mobile homes and the few remaining farm houses, all of which represent the changing complexion of modern times.

The girl whose name still excites me—she, too, probably still lives in some tidy suburb of a city in which she has lived in all the anonymity of the city dweller for all these years. But the name I knew her by will certainly have changed, just as she has changed since the days when her light auburn tresses fell to the dip in her back and her smile widened when we took the path on the way to the school house. She must be known now by another name, a name of more recent devising in her life in the city, for her village name was not suitable for city use. It was too pure, too innocent, too crystal clear, and too slow to say for everyday use in the city. It could not survive the transfer from the timeless days in strawberry fields to the hasty scribbles of life on the run.

Nor could the village itself survive a transformation from a town nestled in the lap of small farms populated by farmers and simple craftsmen. Its geography was not right. It had no river to give that spiritual lift to growth that all vital towns must have. No, the town was doomed to extinction. Doomed because it had no redeeming feature, no natural gift to distinguish it from thousands of other villages and towns which for a moment flicker to life but expire as traffic patterns change.

But I remember them both: the girl with the endearing name and the village with its vibrant gossip and its memorable cast of players who for the period of my boyhood scampered and strutted and more often stumbled along the two main streets of the village—the two main streets which also marked the dividing of the main road. I can remember the village so well that even now, after all these years, I can call the names from the roll of names like Elwood Hobby Burbage and Charles Prosperity Morris. I remember the changing moods of the village just as I remember the changing expressions on the face and in the eyes of the girl with the endearing name. In winter as farmers gathered around the wood-burning stove in the general store, the mood was reflective, meditative, contemplative. In spring with the planting and the opening of the baseball season, the mood of the village was filled with expectation. In summer with the crops laid by, the farmers were restive, anxiously awaiting the harvest. In the fall a mood of celebration would settle over the village and the great moment of celebration came at Christmas when Christmas Eve services were held at the only church in the village, St. John’s Methodist Church. It was at one of these Christmas Eve services that I became a hero in my own eyes and in the eyes of the girl with the endearing name.

At the time I was a mere boy of twelve or so, and at that age it is hard to be a hero even in those years so long ago when heroic feats were not flashed throughout the land on television and in the movies. It was especially hard for me to be a hero because I, like the