11-11-11 the year of Emergence

Minding the roots at Tavern Creek-11

The strange thing about this post is that.... I found this one to be the eleventh.  Wow, a coincidence?
Maybe I should wait till eleven after eleven this morning to post it.  Nah, not that interested in the numerology thing.

To reach Tavern Creek directly we had to make an overland trip by car from central New Jersey to the Eastern shore of MD on the Chesapeake.  The destination, if you have been following, was a little place called Gratitude which is in a little place called Rock Hall.  Rock Hall in the mid fifties consisted of  maybe about 2,000 souls and what appeared to be six hundred black, brown, or Chesapeake bay Labrador retriever dogs of questionable family lineages.  And, most of whom slept on the broken white lines of the three main roads in the town.  Yep it was that slow.  But when one passed another car or truck coming towards you, you needed to wave cause the other person was going to.  We started in a little summer home on Lawton Ave right across the street from Swan creek, which was adjacent to Tavern Creek, which was adjacent to the bay itself.  Being in my teens, I probably didn't pay much attention to the adults living out there.  But there were some with "Character".

Dorsey Loan, (sp) live next door to the third house we owned out there.  I think that he was a retired machinist of some kind.  Could have been one of the local town drunks but I'm not sure.  That revered position was taken over some years later by one of my childhood friends, Sonny of aka Festus.  I think that Dorsey had a crush on my mother, but then again he probably had a crush on most any woman who crossed his path.  He rented boat slips and sold some gas from the little dock he had on his property. Was in a constant state of pontification because he was educated and wanted everyone to know it.

I did not know too much about Jack Smollins (sp) other than he lived there on the point and carved wood for a living.  Well, I guess it was a living.  At that time all I remember was walking into his house one Saturday night and thinking the house was on fire.  But all I could find was the smoke and it made you feel funny.  I guess, and this would have been in the late fifties or early sixties and Jack was evidently kinda living a little of the flower child life.  However, his enduring legacy is the carving of the waterman that one finds as one enters Rock Hall.

Then there were the Walberts who lived a couple of houses down.  They had three kids and he did construction.  He helped my father rebuild most of the houses we bought there.   I kept in touch with their middle son, Donny, for almost forty years.

Bill and Annette Woolford ran the little fishing dock and four booth restaurant across the street from us.  Bill was a painter by trade and Annette ran the place.  I remember during Hurricane Hazel, she stood in water up to her knees making us kids hamburgers on the gas stove because we helped to secure the boats.  I mean this was in the storm, not before or afterward............but IN.  Walking out the dock in three feet of water and holding onto ropes so we weren't swept out to sea.  Talk about true grit.  Annette was the mother we didn't have when we were away from our own houses.  Down to earth and in full command of the street language that scared the pants off we kids.  You could always get a good lunch,  rent a boat, buy bait and use their dock for whatever it is kids wanted to do when they thought they were unsupervised.  We were always supervised!

There are many others but time has done this thing to my memory.  Rock Hall was always a cool place to go with my father on Saturday morning to a little market right on Main Street.  Dad was gregarious and had to talk to everybody.  I wish I could remember the names of the people who ran all the little shops.  All I can remember is that one of them, it might have been Emil, was "Dating" Ms. Durding who ran the drugstore on the corner.  Course we kids didn't know anything about all that.  Mr. Stenger ran the hardware store that generally was out of what you were looking for.  And I forget the man that ran the 5 & 10 cent store, but the place always remined me of a ladies ware store.

Durdings, the building on the left in this 1990's image, was the "Hangout" for us kids.  Olde tyme soda fountain, penny candy, the whole nine yards.  Ms. Durding would put up with us kids only so long and kick us either out of the store or off the front steps.  If I recall she was armed with a broom.  Years, later when I was running a one hour film lab in Chestertown, MD, she came in to have some film developed.

  I will always remember saying "Helen Durding?....You probably don't remember me but you kicked me out of your store more times than I care to remember.  Helen, get outa my store!"  She of course knew who I was and expected some smart comment from me.  We laughed about all that for years.  She really was a fine lady, constantly interested in how we were doing.

Little towns generally don't' change much too quickly.  This view of Rock Hall is on a postcard probably printed in the 1930's.  The streets had not been paved then.  The one below in the 50's.  It is amazing the amount of visual is found on the old postcards.

The above view is from the other direction, looking south.  So Durdings would be at the end of the street on the right.  This is an old linen postcard from the fifties and the grain of the paper pattern is visible in the photo.  The relative prosperity of the town can be noted by the number of vehicles which were probably late forties vintage.  Things were kept neat, but there was not a lot of extra money around to buy fancy cars.  Most extra dollars went to boats and farm equipment which provided the local folks with their primary source of income.  Farming and the water were the income sources back then and the sailing tourist boom was still thirty years away.

Out of frame and to the right (behind the perspective) was an old bowling alley which was also a popular hangout but is now gone.  That was another place for a kid from out of town....either you had to fight good or be with someone who could (always my choice)........or you could run like hell!  I must admit at that age I was pretty fast.  A waterman friend told me one day while describing the Rock Hall boys.  "If Joe Frazier was coming to town, the boys would fight each other all day long to see who got to fight him that night.  All the time knowing they was going to get their butts kicked."  Small towns.  Gotta love em.