Transportation

Carl: A lot of times, to get around, you rode a ferry. You had no bridges; if you went from Norfolk to Portsmouth, or Berkeley, or Newport News, you took a ferry. If you were going west on the Chesapeake and Ohio, which went out of Newport News, you took the ferry boat. They had a fast ferry--steamer, actually, but it was a ferry. Everywhere you went-- if you were going to New York, you took the ferry over to Cape Charles. You traveled by steamboat to these places. You had the Baltimore line-- two lines going to Baltimore-- the Washington line, a Philadelphia line, a New York line, a Boston line, a Charleston and Savannah line-- there were no bridges.

Ellen: When did they start building bridges? Was that one of the things the WPA did in the thirties?

Carl: They actually got into the first bridges during the Roosevelt administration, during the Depression. The Military Highway was built almost entirely by WPA workers. (Note that the Wikipedia link indicates Military Highway was built in 1943 due to the military buildup during World War II. Carl may be conflating two different roads here.) It put a lot of men to work. The Post Office building in downtown Norfolk, that was built by the WPA. I worked there for twenty years, before I went to Portsmouth.

Ellen: Did you ever work for the WPA?

Carl (thinks about it): Somewhere along the line... I went to work for the railroad (first). That was my first really permanent job. I did work some for the WPA, office-type work... Anyway, one of the things that's most different today was the fact that you went nowhere across water except by ferry.

Ellen: Tell me about your first car.

Carl (with sardonic amusement): Oh, my first car was a wonder.... a real dog, I think it was an Essex. I think I paid $35 for it. It had holes in the floor; you could reach down and push yourself along. Holes in the floor where your feet were. That was a real dog. 

But the second car I got was fantastic. It was a straight-eight sportscar. Pierce-Arrow, which was the American equivalent of Rolls Royce. That was a real fine car. I got that from-- a young "blade," as we used to call them, and he got married, and his wife insisted he settle down and buy a normal car. So he bought a Buick, or something like that, probably, and sold that car to me for something like $75. Which doesn't sound as cheap as it would be today, because you could buy a new Ford or Chevrolet for $700.

After the war, when I bought my old Chevrolet, I wanted to buy it-- I had a good buy. That was a '48, the last remaining prewar car. It was nothing in the world but a '41, '42-- they discontinued (cars) entirely during the war, made tanks and that sort of thing. When they went back into the business in '47, after the war-- it took them a couple of years to tool up and get going-- they didn't have a new car. They still made the prewar car until about '49, and the first postwar Chevrolets that came out were 1949s. I had a '48, brand new. Well, practically. Guy I worked with bought it, then shortly afterward the '49s came out, and he had to have a new car. So he sold me that thing for a reasonable-- something like $200. Almost brand new. I had that car for a long time, right up till after we were married. (This site suggests Carl's dates are accurate, saying, "In 1949, Chevrolet presented its first all new models since the end of World War II.")

Ellen: What happened to the Pierce-Arrow? Did you sell it when you went to the war?

Carl: I went into the service, and I left that car with somebody I knew, told them to take care of it. They thought I was gone, of course; I mean, when you went in the service-- and he had it a while, and when he got a chance, he sold it up the river. He sold it to somebody who knew the value of it, and he completely restored it, and it was a showcar after the war, at sportscar shows. I mean, it was a showpiece! It had a trunk, and under the second seat was a hole, like that (holds hands a couple of feet apart)-- that was for your golf clubs. It had wire wheels, something like twenty-two inches. Straight-eight. The two spare wheels were in wells on either side-- you've seen pictures, it was the standard sports car of the day. Got about six miles to the gallon (laughs). Beautiful car.