Carl: You wouldn't imagine how quiet it was back then. Televisions, of course, were unheard of; radio was rare-- this was in the twenties--
Before 1928, you had no television, no radio...well, radio was an amateur thing back then. You had no network radio, no shows. Your movies were silent until 1928. The world was very quiet back then. Very few automobiles. You walked. You thought nothing of walking miles. I went to high school about five miles from my house, on High Street, for four years. Walked, every day. You never even thought-- to get there by bus you had to take a bus downtown, then transfer to the streetcar going up High Street. It was easier to walk. All the kids walked back then.
When I was very young, we had streetcars. The electric line were not streetcars; they were like these Tide cars (modern light rail), interurban cars. In Portsmouth, we had streetcars. In Norfolk, you had streetcars... all the streetcars came down and circled around from Granby Street to the Monticello Hotel (Carl pronounces this name "Montisello," as it is traditionally pronounced in Norfolk, in contrast to Jefferson's home, which is pronounced "Montichello") and then back up Monticello Avenue... that was the center point of the town, uh, city. You had an Ocean View streetcar, a Willoughby streetcar, a Naval Base streetcar, a Colonial Place bus-- never had a streetcar there-- Berkley streetcar, a Riverside streetcar-- that was the city park-- all of them converged right downtown in front of where the Monticello was.
In Portsmouth, there were no cars, no radios-- it was profoundly quiet. I could lie awake at night, a mile from High Street, and hear the streetcars rumbling-- they had a little bell, the standard signal for a streetcar, clang clang clang! Late at night, there was absolute stillness; you could hear the streetcar coming out to Park View, by ear. There were about five railroads-- the Seaboard, the Southern, the Atlantic Coastline, the Beltline... in Norfolk, right across the river, there was the Norfolk and Western, the Norfolk Southern... about eight railroads altogether. And they all of course had steam locomotives. Every steam locomotive had a whistle, a very distinctive whistle. And all night-- you could hear steam locomotives from the Beltline five miles away, blowing their whistles.
Ellen: There were a few rich people who had cars, weren't there?
Carl: Doctors had cars, lawyers had cars. The M family had cars-- they ran the big hardware store. A truck was a really noisy thing back then. Most deliveries were done by horses and wagons. You had the milk wagon in the morning, you had the ice wagon...
Ellen: So you heard the horses clopping around?
Carl: The horses didn't make big noise. You had the vegetable truck, horsedrawn. The farmers would come in with their wagons, pulled by a single horse, and peddle their fresh vegetables. They'd come to Park View, and you knew they were coming-- you'd expect them.
Ellen: Didn't they have vegetables in the markets?
Carl: In someplace like Park View, you had a little family store, and that was groceries. That didn't mean meat departments-- basically just the canned stuff, package stuff. Lot of the same stuff you see today was around even then. Then you had, somewhere in the neighborhood, a meat market. Downtown you had a fish market. The first chain was A&P; we had a local chain called Piggly Wiggly. The DP Store-- that was run by David Pember in Norfolk.
You had a milk truck every morning, that brought you milk-- a quart or a pint. The bread man came out with his horse and wagon from Hall's Bakery, brought you fresh-baked bread, fresh pastries and such, right out of the kitchen.
Ellen: I guess you couldn't keep too much milk around, because you didn't have a proper fridge?
Carl: For the first ten years of my life, we had an icebox. You got your ice every morning. Had a sign you put up in the window-- 25, 50, 75, or 100. The number that was up so they could read it was the amount you wanted that day. The ice man would come down his route and look at everyone's window. Those guys could take a 500 pound block of ice and go chip chip chip chip chip and come up with 25 pounds just like that, or 50 pounds.
Your fishman came around every day. Bakery wagon, fish wagon, grocery wagon-- they brought all those things--
Ellen: When did they switch over to proper trucks?
Carl: Somewhere in the late twenties. I can remember the first time I saw a truck, a Mack truck, with a big M on the front. I was maybe four or five years old, and it scared me. I was sitting in the bay window, and I saw what to me was a great monstrous thing pull up. There were only about four cars in that whole part of Park View. Cars were terribly expensive-- $775 to buy a Ford or a Chevrolet new. That was a lot of money...
I imagine there's not a couple of dozen people in Portsmouth now that can remember the things I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment