Lloyd Kellam’s Final Words: Daddy’s Punishments
CAPE CHARLES WAVE
January 12, 2014
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum.)
SEVENTH AND FINAL PART
One of the other things, and this is to tell you how my childhood was, didn’t have anything to do with Cape Charles, sort of like what my parents were like. Like I said, I was born in a store and had jobs to do and if I didn’t do certain things on time, Daddy would punish me. Mother would usually punish me and Daddy would talk to me. If things were important, Daddy would start to punish or if I spoke back to him, he would punish me. And if I’d say, “I think Daddy that’s too strong,” whatever he gave me, he doubled.
I can remember one time I was supposed to have gotten the Eastern Shore News from the post office right after school and then I was on my own. Like I told you, once you did your job, then you were on your own. But I stayed too long. And when I got home, I went by the post office and they weren’t there. When I got to the store, I said, “Daddy, the Eastern Shore News wasn’t there.” He said, “I know. I had to hire somebody to go get them.”
“Who’d you hire?” He said, “Herman Etz.” I said, “Gee, Daddy, you take his money out of my money.” “Worse than that,” he said, “I’m going to punish you. You can’t go to the movies, you can’t have your candy, and you can’t leave the house for a week.” And I said, “Daddy . . . ” He said, “Two weeks.” I said, “But Daddy, “Guadalcanal Diaries” is on at the movies.” I never will forget that. He said, “Four weeks.” And then I said, “Can I read the funnies in the newspaper?” He said, “Eight weeks!” And I had that more than one time in my life.
At one time, he started out at a month and he got me up to three months in a hurry. That’s because I had the big bicycle that I told you about with the big basket. George used to run away, my little brother George, used to run away. I’ve often said that if I was going to write a book, the title would be, “My Brother Was an Only Child.” Because Mother always had a soft spot in her heart for George because he was the baby. But George would run away and wouldn’t mind.
This particular time, it was supper time and he wasn’t home. Mother said, “Lloyd, go get him.” And I said, “All right. I’m going to take my bike.” “Fine.” Well, I chased him down Pine Street. I saw him down there, he was down somewhere around Tazewell and Pine. When he saw me coming, he was right out in the middle of the street. As I got closer to him, he started running. I was in that big basket bicycle and I was going after it at a good clip and the little sucker stopped and I ran over him. I had to pick him up and put him in the basket and bring him back. [Read more…]
PART 6: Lloyd Kellam Remembers
George & Tommy’s Shocking Car; Saved by Herbert Bull
January 5, 2014
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum.
I left out a lot of things that I’ve forgotten. One is that some of the people that I know that have passed through here. The one that comes to my mind, I wrote it down tonight, was I can remember coming out of Daddy’s store when it was next to Wilson’s and walking down toward the bank and lo and behold this big convertible pulled up. I can’t remember what kind it was. A guy got out and opened up the door on the other side and a little guy got out in a uniform, about that tall, and it was the Philip Morris man. Do you remember who that was? He spent the night at McCarthy’s Hotel.
I think back about what went on. George and Tommy had an automobile, I don’t remember what it was, it must have been about ’20. ’23 Ford Town Car. But they had it hooked up, no not “hooked up,” they had it wired up! So that if you walked up to it and put your hand on it, it would shock you! The only way you could get in it, would be to jump up on the running board and you could hold on to it because then you weren’t grounded. But they would fool you sometimes. They would tell you it wasn’t on and then all of a sudden they would flip that switch. They had another little boy around town named Kelly; he lived out on Hollywood Farm. He did the same thing to his car and I can remember it. He’d call me over, “Lloyd, come over. Get me a Coke.” And I’d go get him a Coke and hand it in the thing and when I handed it in, it would set that thing off!
Talking about characters, I had numerous lives. I’ve different friends for different things. I used to get on my bicycle sometimes, but most of the time would walk out to Amos’ house, which is about a mile and half or so, just to play ping-pong. We’d play ping-pong all day long. All of a sudden it comes to me that Amos made a cake out there one time. What did you put in that cake that was wrong? He said he put in pancake mix!
[Amos:] He said it was good! Wanted to know what the recipe was. They put that in the Northampton Times! [Read more…]
PART 5: Lloyd Kellam Remembers
High School Football, Burned at the Barbershop
December 28, 2013
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum.
I wanted a bicycle like everybody else had and my Daddy said he’d get me one, and he did. But when he got one, I got a bicycle with a wheel on the front of it and a basket about that big. You all have remembered seeing it or one like it. It was a delivery bicycle and after I got it one of my jobs was to go to a place called “Eastern Shore News” and deliver newspapers on Sunday. Going in people’s houses, I used to deliver newspapers and go in to collect for them. And I can remember going in different houses and different people and realizing how they were just a little bit different or they had different religious artifacts on the wall or pictures and furniture like they did. I sort of realized now that I had an appreciation for things even though I didn’t know what kind of appreciation it was. Some old women that I look back on now, that I wanted to get out of their house in a hurry because they wanted to dote on you a little too much, but they had such nice furniture. I realize that now maybe if I like nice furniture that was my going into all these nice houses.
One big thing — sports! When I grew up in grammar school, Father Miller started a football program. I think they played football here maybe back in the ’20s but it sort of died down and they didn’t have it. Father Miller started football. Boys started playing football, not enough equipment, but they started. Later on, Dan Wilkins came to help him coach and then wound up being coach alone. But the teams that we had for such a little town, most of the teams we played had more kids on the football team than we had in the high school! I think George was on one of these teams. I know Mike was, I know Tommy was. Father Miller scheduled a game with a team in Wilmington, Delaware, called Salesianum High School. That was a Catholic high school that had, if I’m not too far wrong, about 2,000 boys it seemed like. It was a big school. Anyway, the town or school or somebody paid, they rented two cars on the train. Took them up to Wilmington, played football, did a fairly good job, didn’t win, but came back. Going back in my memory, I know that Granby’s junior varsity, or second string, supposedly played Cape Charles. But one of the boys that later moved over here that played first string for Granby, said that it was named their second string but it was really most of their first string that played Cape Charles. And Cape Charles did very well. It was like 31 to 13, I think was the score, in fact, I know that was what it was. [Read more…]
LLOYD KELLAM PT 4:
Hambone, ‘Jersey,’ Casinos, Rationing, School Fights,
and What Made Cape Charles Different
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum.
This is Part 4 of Mr. Kellam’s reminiscences. Click for Part 1, click for Part 2, click for Part 3.)
There’s so many things. I can remember one time they had a little Austin automobile and a bunch of high school boys picked it up and put it in the bank window. Do you remember that? You go by sometime and look at those windows on the bank. And it was not on the side street, it was on the front. Right up next to Daddy’s store. They packed that thing in there and there was about an inch on each side.
But we had some characters in town and these are characters! One of my favorite characters was a guy named Pat Richardson. Pat hung around a lot. One of the reasons he was such a character was he was supposed to have, and I think it’s true, he was supposed to have been wealthy at one time or had a lot of land, left home and sold it. But he was a real true sport in his day in that, this money burnt a hole in his pocket, he rented two train cars and took his friends to Philadelphia, put them up in hotels and carried them out to ball games and wined and dined them and brought them back home. That was the way he went through his money until it was gone. And I remember Daddy giving him coffee often. Cape Charles has had some characters.
[Audience member mentions learning the hambone.]
Yeah, a black man named Slim. Does everybody know what the hambone is? I was a schoolboy and I would hambone on everything. Slim used to charge us 25 cents to show us how to do it. Amos could hambone.
[Audience laughs at the sound of hands slapping knees and chest.]
I taught my boy how to hambone. There’s one more boy in here who can hambone. The Cape Charles boys could do it, but they couldn’t do it quite as good as Amos and Lloyd. In fact, at the high school annual, in my senior year, you know how you pass on something to somebody else, it said, “I passed on to Amos my ability to hambone in order to fascinate girls from other schools.” It did work! [Read more…]
Lloyd Kellam Remembers Cape Charles (and Ol’ Sud Bell)
“Sud” Bell c. 1940 (Hog Island Life, Yvonne Widgeon)
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum.
This is Part 3 of Mr. Kellam’s reminiscences. Click here to read Part 1 and click here for Part 2.)
December 8, 2013
I’m trying to bring back memories to people who lived here and describe what the town was like [if you] didn’t live here. But we had a dairy and I remember, I don’t think you got it all the time, but I remember him delivering milk in the horse and buggy. And there were cars, we had cars. I can remember when the cars parked catty corner in the streets. One other story that I forgot to tell you. Later on as I was walking down the street, Ray Lassiter came here with a music store. He had a store on Pine Street and moved it right next to your drugstore, right?
[Audience member:] Lloyd, at one time, you know, Dad moved down next to the Wilsons.
Yes, he did. He had two stores at one time. The store next to the bank was Lloyd’s until he bought the store from Louis Getzel. For a period of about a year he ran both stores. But he renamed the one down the by the bank, “The Capital.” He sold that to Toad Ewell and a guy named Harry Johnson ran that for a time. Then Lloyd’s was up close to town.
Another story of when Daddy bought the store from Getzel — I smiled when I think of Miss Getzel because her little bulldog she had, she would never let me in the store to get any of that ice cream. I think the first ice cream I got was when Daddy bought it! I didn’t know this and I don’t know if anyone else does, but Mr. Getzel used to sell ice cream up and down the Shore and he put it on the train. He’d loaded ice cream on the train. He had these freezers in the back and all this ice cream ice, I guess, block ice and rock salt, and metal cans. He had freezers back there. But when Daddy bought the business from him, he filled every metal can full of ice cream before he left. I’ve never talked to you about this, but the worst thing he ever did to you, was Daddy had a halfway decent ice grinder down at the one down next to the bank, but the ice grinder he left Daddy at Getzel’s was just horrible. And that was my job, ground ice. If you had one of those hand grinders, it would kill you. [Read more…]
Part 2: Lloyd Kellam Remembers Cape Charles
November 30, 2013
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum. This is Part 2 of Mr. Kellam’s reminiscences. Click here to read Part 1.)
Anyway, where was Sample’s [Barbershop]?
[Audience member]: Near Wing Sing’s Laundry. Right in that group.
I don’t remember that. I remember apartments being over top. Anyway, to change the subject, in my time, Sample’s Barbershop was down that same street. He moved it. His son’s picture is in the paper this week, Johnny Sample. If you wonder who he is, Tommy Savage taught him all he knew about football!
When you turned the corner, there was Savage’s Drugstore and then, I can’t remember what was next to that. Was it a dress shop? OK, there was a dress shop there. Then the Palace Theatre was my first recollection, but I do remember when the Palace was built and I remember them tearing all those old buildings down. But I can’t remember who was there. I do remember Mr. Tilghman and I spent many a day in Mr. Tilghman’s place watching him fix watches. Back in those days, a watch was probably the most important thing that people had. And then there was Adam’s Quality Shop [?], Harry Rudy had a barbershop in there. And Lee Hart had a plumbing place, I forgot what it was called. And then Byrd Vick and then a Western Auto. The Radium was between Waddell’s Popcorn Shop, I called it, and Slim Colonna’s Barbershop. Then about the time I really remember, they opened up a beauty parlor upstairs and F. Winslow Toussaint’s. F. Winslow Toussaint and he started taking pictures. In looking back on it, I think that he didn’t have a bad deal with having the Miss Virginia Pageant in the Palace Theatre, which is another story. The newspaper that had that in it had nothing in there but pictures of all those beautiful girls from F. Winslow Toussaint. They were great, he could make a local girl look like a movie star! He was good.
Mr. Sak’s was down there. Where the building burned, I can’t remember exactly what was there, but my recollection was it was a grocery store.
[Audience]: Gaskill’s Grocery Store.
Then last but not least on that corner, in my memory, is the Palm Tavern. If Cape Charles ever really does come back, I want to go in there and open up a restaurant called Peach Street Chicken! [Read more…]
ORAL HISTORY:
Lloyd Kellam Recalls Growing Up in Cape Charles (Pt. 1)
Lloyd Kellam remembers “the way we were” in Cape Charles. (Photo: Connie Morrison, Eastern Shore News)
November 23, 2013
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days. In 2002, as one in a series of lectures sponsored by the Cape Charles Library entitled “The Way We Were,” Cape Charles native Lloyd Kellam shared the following account. In 2012, funded by a grant by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the recording, along with 14 others, was transcribed. The Historical Society has now made it available for readers of the Wave. All the transcriptions are also available for reading at the Museum. In Part 1 below, Mr. Kellam recalls the German P.O.W. camp in Oyster, as well as the day a Cape Charles policeman accidentally shot and killed Mrs. Barban. Mr. Kellam, now 79, is a long-time pharmacist who reopened his Shore Pharmacy this year in Exmore.)
My name is Lloyd Kellam. And those of you who lived here knew me before as “Brother.” Some guys in here knew me as “Sly.” Those were some of my nicknames. Everybody here during that time had a nickname, and I mean everybody! I can’t think of some people’s real names!
But anyway, it’s hard to do this, but it’s easy. One of the reasons is that I’ve had this love affair with Cape Charles all my life. And I just can’t seem to shake it, it’s like a good woman, I guess. But my thoughts of Cape Charles are maybe not the same as yours because you’re going to see my memories through a child’s eyes. I think my thoughts begin when my father went in business downtown and stopped when I went to college. Daddy opened his business in Cape Charles downtown in 1938. We had an apartment over the store. A lot of things I’m going to tell you, you’ll have to visualize. We had an apartment and when we were in the living room we looked out and saw the ferry traffic. We saw the steamers. We saw the ferries’ comings and goings. [Read more…]
