ORAL HISTORY: A Chat with Alston Godwin

January 26, 2014

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Cape Charles Historical Society has for more than a decade been recording oral histories of the area’s earlier days.  In 2008, Bill and Jan Neville interviewed Alston Godwin, who was then 96. Mrs. Godwin lived to be 101, and her obituary may be read by clicking here.

A grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities enabled 15 interviews to be transcribed, and the Historical Society has made this one available for readers of the Wave.  All the transcriptions may be read at the Cape Charles Museum.)

Excerpts from an interview with Bill and Jan Neville, March 12, 2008

Entering the Funeral Business

The Funeral business started, my aunt and uncle [Mills Grey] established that business.  I don’t think Uncle Mills was born here.  But anyway, he and my aunt were very lovable people, lovable to each other and all the people they came in contact with.  He learned people and he worked to do that.  He established himself and his memory was good for everything he had ever heard or seen.  And so then, he got married and established his business.  It was the first black business in Cape Charles.  They had one white undertaker.  This was in 1895.  My aunt stuck right by him.  She learned from him what he was doing, but he didn’t have her embalm and she didn’t want to embalm.  And you know, I didn’t either!  I’d work to do anything but that.  I didn’t care for that.  My daughter, Jennie Marie, used to hang around them.  She wasn’t afraid of no dead people.

Now I’ll tell you how I came to [enter the funeral business].  My first year in college, we were having our Christmas vacation and I came home and Uncle Mills had just died and been buried.  He hadn’t been buried very long and I said to my mother, ” Mama I think I would like to go spend a couple nights with Aunt Jenny.”  She said, “I think Alston that’s a good idea.”  So I went there and I was an excellent driver.  I could drive anywhere.  So then I went and when I got there, sure enough, she had a call out.  And I drove the hearse for her.  And she and I went and got the body.  She went with me.  Because she worked with her husband, too.  She was with him all the time.  So then I saw a need that I had to stay longer.  I was going to stay there until this body was buried.  My aunt wasn’t up to it.

Bill Neville: She didn’t have anybody else to help her after her husband died?

Oh yes, back then that’s one good thing.  There was not a neighbor, white or black, that wouldn’t come if you called and do anything to help you.  And they’d come and cook for her.  I didn’t have to do any cooking.  But I wanted to because I didn’t want to forget how to cook.  Then I used to give them dinners and things to eat. [Read more…]

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DINING:
Bistro Tuesdays Bring Taste of Europe to Mason Avenue

By CLARICE MACGARVEY
Cape Charles Wave

January 21, 2014

Chef Timothy Brown of Hook-U-Up Gourmet has ambitious culinary goals. He intends to elevate the level of dining on the Eastern Shore, and establish some new benchmarks for quality and good taste, both locally and region-wide.

A talented and innovative chef, Brown’s credentials include teaching at the Culinary Institute of America and operating the 5-Star restaurant, Myriah’s at Tower Hill.  He opened Hook-U-Up, a gourmet dine-in/take-out café-style restaurant, in April 2012, and began introducing Bistro Tuesdays, a more upscale dining experience, this past November.

My first visit to Hook-U-Up Gourmet’s Bistro Tuesdays event indicates that Chef Brown is taking the right approach, and that there is plenty of great dining ahead for epicureans living on, or visiting, the Shore.

Located at 227 Mason Avenue in downtown Cape Charles, the venue is small and intimate, with only six tables at the front. The kitchen is within view.  My companion and I arrived at 7:30, and although the dining space was packed, our server, also named Tim, seated us and took our drink orders right away.  My first surprise was finding some of my favorite wines listed at very reasonable price points.  The bottle of Hess Select Chardonnay we enjoyed, for example, was only $22.

For appetizers, my companion ordered the Salmon Mousse served with chopped egg, red onion, and crème fraiche.  It was so creamy and delicious, I couldn’t keep my fork away, even though I had a lovely appetizer of my own: Sauteed Local Crabmeat en bouchee, finished with sherry, butter, and country ham. [Read more…]

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…]

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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…]

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Lloyd Kellam Remembers Cape Charles (and Ol’ Sud Bell)

(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…]

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’12 Days of Christmas’ Begins Friday in Cape Charles

By TAMMY HOLLOWAY
Bay Haven Inn

December 6, 2013

The 12 Days of Cape Charles Christmas kicks off today (Friday) with the 18th Annual Northampton County Chamber Holiday Progressive Dinner Tour where guests are treated to a Progressive Dinner Feast as featured in the December issue of Southern Living magazine.

Throughout the 12-day period, events will be offered that provide opportunities for people to celebrate, share, give, and unite. Many of the events are free or have a nominal charge. A bounty of offerings for children and adults alike such as Santa arriving via skiff during the lighted boat parade and continuing his journey via lighted golf cart parade.

Participants will follow a luminary lit path that culminates at Central Park for the GRAND ILLUMINATION, December 7.

Sunday afternoon, December 8, adults will not want to miss the Holiday Wine Tasting Event, where Gull Hummock Gourmet Food Market offers wine and food pairings, wine selections from “Women of the Vine,” and female wine specialists will showcase wine from four continents.

As the 12 days celebration continues the town kicks off the week of giving by declaring Monday, December 9, Random Act of Kindness Day. “We encourage residents to visit a friend who might live alone, send a card, buy someone’s lunch at one of restaurants in town or simply thank someone for the kindness they give all year long,” says Mayor Dora Sullivan. [Read more…]

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