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Permission to use or quote from this transcript must be obtained from the Delaware Folklife Project.

Ray Armstrong
February 27, 1997
Interviewer: Mike Miller
Port Penn Schoolhouse and Childhood

Tape Log

MM: It's Thursday February 27, we're here at Grass Dale Center with Ray Armstrong gonna talk a little bit about Port Penn School and life as a smaller person around Port Penn. Thanks for coming out Ray.

RA: You're welcome.

MM: Tracking me down. I appreciate it. So you used to be Superintendent at Fort Delaware, right?

RA: Yes.

MM: So you're a division guy too.

RA: 26 ½ years out there they gave me the 5 out and the total give me 31 ½ years.

MM: Excellent. So you got a pretty good set up now.

RA: Yep.

MM: It's okay , huh? Cool. Usually we start with a little personal background. You were born in the late thirties, maybe?

RA: Late 1938.

MM: You're younger than my folks. And you said you lived in Augustine Beach then, huh?

RA: Yeah, as a kid I was born and raised grew up around Augustine Beach and at that time Tommy Texas had what they call the Augustinian Hotown now which was an amusement park. And it was a great place to grow up as a kid. There's always something to do if it wasn't on the amusement park side it was on the river side. Swimming and playing all day.

MM: Yeah, what kind of stuff did they have in that park, do you remember?

RA: For a small park they had just about everything, I know they had the train ride, to circle the whole park, huh, the merry-go-round , chair-planes, and all the arcades, ball pitching and all that, it was pretty complete for a small park.

MM: Yeah, sounds great. About how old were you when you'd hang out there?

RA: Uh, at the amusement park I probably started when I was thirteen through seventeen. I was in there.

MM: So, did all the kids go there, is that where you'd...

RA: That's where we all hung out. Either there or down on the beach we got jobs working for fifty cents an hour renting out row boats and stuff when they'd down out on the Delaware River.

MM: And there was still a lot of active fishing at that time?

RA: Yeah, fishing and crabbing. Like I said, there was probably three places along the coast here that rented out rowboats and liability from the druhamonds and stuff that just kinda phased itself out.

MM: Yeah, So you went to Port Penn School?

RA: Yeah, I spent about two years at Port Penn School. My brother went there two, fact he graduated from there. It had to be somewhere between forty-five and forty-seven, third, fourth grade. I remember the teachers name, Mrs. Burris, lovely lady. She just died here recently within the last four or five years. But I can still see her first thing in the morning cooking, stoking out the old coal stove . She doing it in the morning an at lunch time when, we didn't see her doing it in the evening's we were at home by then. But I think there was eight grades in the class and she taught all eight grades. And there was only two students in the twelfth grade, there was my brother and a girl by the name of Barbara Fleming. And they both graduated and I think that when they left there they both went to Delaware City.

MM: They went all the way through twelfth grade in that school?

RA: No, eight grades I think it was. Then they left there and went to Delaware City or Commodore, I went to Commodore and I think my brother went to Delaware City.

MM: You mentioned a coal stove, do you remember where in that building that was? Because that's one of the things we don't know too much about.

RA: Let's see, We'd come in the cloak room and hang our clothes up first thing, and there was a little hallway there then , make a left and go into the class room and I think the coal stove was back in the corner, like going toward the Port Penn firehouse side corner, to the right corner back in there.

MM: I think they still got part of the draft somewhere. But people don't remember what it was like. What was It like being a kid in that school or had you been somewhere else before that?

RA: Uh, I went to Odessa for a year then come to Port Penn. But it was good, what the teacher was more or less a friend of the family, so I made out pretty good there. At the time there was a tomato canning factory right across the road there and in the evenings there was a belfry on top of that little school had a bell in it and we'd run a roup clean form that school over the cannery and get over there at nights an ring that bell. Ha Ha.

MM: Yeah, huh. So the cannery workers would be coming and going the same time that you were at school?

RA: Yeah, it was pretty active. It was pretty active, the farmers with their old tractors and wagons and horse and wagons, and just bringing tomatoes in by the tons. Until it phased itself out.

MM: Well, how would you get up to school? Did you walk up?

RA: Walked up, yeap.

MM: Anytime of year?

RA: Yeap, we walked, unless we was lucky enough to catch a ride. And that was it.

MM: So, huh, in your normal day you'd come in and you'd put your stuff up and go to class, do you remember just how a normal day might go? I don't remember third grade myself.

RA: I don't remember too much of it. I remember pretty much the seating order, it started with the lowest grade toward what you call the front doors of the school , now the lowest grades and seventh or eighth grade was up toward the front of the school and that's how she divided her classes and some classes consisted of one row of seats and that was it. There was only about twenty-five to thirty students in the whole school, if that many.

MM: Right, huh, remember what kind of subjects she taught?

RA: She taught it all, all the ABC's . I kinda liked the history part of it, especially the local history. I always was interested in that, but she pushed right on, she had to to get through all the classes in one day.

MM: Yeah, I guess so, so they taught some local history at that time?

RA: Yeah, they did teach local history because it was prominently a little historical port there , it was a fishing port what it actually was , and they taught about the fishing boats coming in , getting the herons, and shipping them out on the boats and stuff like that.

MM: No kidding, that's pretty rare cause they hardly talk about that even today. You know, in schools. They start to say how are we going to relate history, so they do local history. I never heard of anybody doing it in the forties.

RA: Like I said, she was a pretty unique woman. It's pretty hard to remember back that far but she did leave a vivid memory with ya.

MM: Yeah, sounds like it. So she impressed ya, huh?

RA: Yeap.

MM: Any other folks around who impressed you the same way?

RA: In town, the local trappers and stuff like that, the local winos, but there was a guy called Mr. Zach, all he done was lived on the water, there's a few left now that do it but he was one of them, I said Mr. Zach at that time was probably sixty years old and he was still hard at it, trapping, sturgeon, fishing, shad fishing, they put up what they call old fishers wharf there now. And they all kept their boots up there.

MM: That's pretty interesting you have folks like that making a living with their hands directly, that's pretty impressive.

RA: Yeah, well a lot of that left over from the war time. It wasn't too much to offer out there so if they could scrap it off the land they did. And they done pretty good at it.

MM: So it seemed like a pretty common activity, lots of people do trapping, lots of people do fishing?

RA: At that time, there was, yeah. You didn't have to worry about selling your furs or meats, the man was only doing it come get um. Just like a hawkster, he makes his dailey stops.

MM: What did you do for lunch? What did you have there? Did you have a lunch break?

RA: Yeah, I don't remember what we had then but we all brown-bagged it. Everybody carried their lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

MM: Yeah? Just stuff you picked up at the house?

RA: Yeah, you weren't allowed off of the school grounds. It was pretty strict, they kept you there. School grounds at that time were pretty big but they don't look too big now but ...

MM: Same lot though, right?

RA: Yeah ...right there.

MM: Did they have any equipment for you to use during the recess or anything like that or just play like tag games?

RA: No, no playground equipment at all. The flag pole, I guess the existing one is pretty much right where the original one was but I remember going out in the morning to help put up the flag and stuff like that, that was to the front left of the sidewalk.

MM: Did you have to do something extra special to get that privilege or did you just get picked on that day?

RA: Generally she went through the grades and let everybody have their turn putting the flag up and taking it down.

MM: That was kinda a lesson in itself I guess so everybody got that. You remember how long a school day would last? Did you have to get up real early or could you just kinda...

RA: I don't really remember but it was probably somewhere around nine to three or something like that.

MM: After they let you out of school and you went home did you have chores and things like that to do?

RA: Oh yeah, especially in the summer months you had to do your chores before you could go out and play that's all and mostly weeding the garden, helped get firewood, we'd get the driftwood off the river and burn it in the woodstove , help cut up the firewood .

MM: So you guys had a garden, huh?

RA: Yeap, always had a garden.

MM: Must have been a pretty big one.

RA: There was five us in the family, so we all pitched in a little to tend the garden, you had to, 'cause we was depending on the vegetables.

MM: Some folks are getting back into that today. But it was a real common part of the landscape, at the eastern shore everybody had a garden. Even the rich folks .You mentioned that you really liked history, was there anything you really, really, didn't like?

RA: Math. Never was no good at math and probably never will be. Too late now.

MM: You still got time, still got time. Anything else?

RA: Not that I could really say that bothered me, but never good at math.

MM: But you did well enough to go on to Delaware City I guess.

RA: Yep, left there, I think after I left Port Penn I went to Commodore McDougnah and then went to Delaware City. At the time Delaware City was twelve grades and graduated there, that's where I met my wife in Delaware City High School.

MM: So, she's obviously from around here also then.

RA: No, she's from West Virginia actually...come up here when she was thirteen, fourteen years old when the coal mines closed down there and come up here.

MM: Do you know what kind of work did her family go in to, do you know?

RA: Her father was a coal miner and got killed in a coal mine in the slate cave down in Beckley, West Virginia and the mines kind of petered out down there and the whole family come up here, there was thirteen in the family, brothers and sisters, and they worked at the power plants and stuff like that and throughout Elkton and Delaware.

MM: So you came here to work in the industry.

RA: Yeah to find work.

MM: Very interesting. I guess since she is from the mountains, how did she adapt to this lifestyle of flat land and marsh?

RA: She done pretty good right out of high school or during high school she worked at J.C. Penney's in Wilmington and got a job at A.I. DuPont's and got a retirement out of them. Now she does real-estate on the side. She adapted good. She has one leg shorter than the other...from walking on them mountains. Ha Ha.

MM: That's a good one. What year did you graduate, do you remember?

RA: Uh, I can't think of it. Fifty-seven, sixty-seven, I don't remember, I think it was fifty-seven..

MM: That's fine, it's not required. When you were a kid and you talked about hanging out... when you were hanging out with your friends did, you probably had friends before you went to Port Penn School, but do you remember what other types of things that you guys would do together besides the park and whatever, the chores, did you go out hunting and fishing at all?

RA: A lot of fishing, spending a lot of time on the river fishing, hunting and pheasant, rabbit, and all we had to do was go in the back of the house, it's a housing development now and was open field and good pheasant hunting, and just hanging out. Just hanging out and spending a lot of time like I said, during the summer months at that beach and the amusement park.

MM: Did all the guys get into that type of activity?

RA: Just about all of the guys down there. Augustine Beach at that time probably consists of thirteen houses if that so I guess I knew just about everybody at the beach and at Port Penn.

MM: Yeah, that's kinda just an extended group. Well, you mentioned where you met your wife but today they'd call it cruising, hanging out down at the beach and hanging out and scoping the girls, did you guys get into that when you...

RA: We done a lot of cruising...ha ha.

MM: Maybe one of the best parts about it , huh? Some of this stuff does go pretty far back but, and we have covered a lot of it. Besides Mrs. Burris ,wasn't it, you got any memories of something really strange happening over there while you were at school or anything bizarre?
Those were post-war years so I guess it was really pretty quite.

RA: I can't think of anything extraordinary, I really can't.

MM: Have you been over to the interpretive center since they did the rehabilitation on the building itself, I guess it needed a lot of work. Over at the old school house.

RA: I haven't been there, no. Not since I retired, I hadn't been there.

MM: I even thought about doing this interview over there. So we can look at that building , cause I am real interested in what it might have looked like from a kids perspective at that time. Do you remember paneling on the walls? Do you remember what the walls where like? Plain white maybe or...

RA: Don't remember nothing.

MM: There was no running water inside, right?

RA: There was pitcher pump back in the cloak room, yeah, I remember it.

MM: So that's where you draw your water?

RA: Yep, that's where we drew the water.

MM: But there's a privy out back.

RA: Yep, there's a privy out back.

MM: She just let you whenever you had to go? Do you remember what that privy looked like?
Was it wood?

RA: It was wood, a typical, there's still a few around town in Delaware City now and then. The same with the slanted roof and typical outdoor privy.

MM: Black widow spiders and ... especially around where it's wet. I was going to ask you about your teachers role but you already kinda talked about that a little bit. Did she ever have to come down and discipline the kids at all? Or where you all just so good ...

RA: No, I'm sure I don't remember anybody getting cracked with a ruler, but that disciplinary action would show up on your report card. Get that note to your mother then the discipline would come.

MM: Yeah, was that a tough thing for the kids to go through?

RA: If the parents were strict, yeah. At that time I guess when you are seven or eight years old , eleven years old your parents kinda strict on ya. If you had a bad note from the teacher.

MM: Do you remember any of the kids you went to school with? Are they still around here somewhere?

RA: No, lost tract of just about all of them. There's one girl that lives outside of town in Port Penn Her name was Fleming and whether she's still there or not I don't know.

MM: Linda Beck, I think, went to school there, but it was probably after you. But I'm not sure, I don't know exactly how old she is.

RA: Yeah, It was after me.

MM: So you probably took off before she came in. I know that some people have talked to her about it but not quite like this. Well, what was interesting about living in Augustine Beach in Port Penn when you where a kid? If somebody just came in here form China or something and you just had 15 minutes to tell them what was really cool about growing up in that area what would it be?

RA: Well, Like I said, when we moved to Augustine Beach it was probably the first new house that we ever lived in, it was a brand new house. Now days you'd call it a bungalow and you thought you was on top of the world right on the waterfront. The parking lot that was straight across from them houses now when I was a kid was a marsh with a ditch running through it and that Fish and Wildlife has filled it all in. It is pretty presentable looking now but when we where there you had to cross through that marsh and go out and play on the river shore if you want to play out in front of your house, we had paths and boats in there and everything else. But far as an ideal place to live when you was growing up as a kid you couldn't beat it , cause there always something to do starting in May right on through to the fall months and you were busy. It kept you active enough that you didn't get in too much trouble. You had enjoyable things to do.

MM: So you had a lot of different activities and stuff. Well, It sounds real interesting, lots of places around the country I guess make a similar claim but I guess the winters were never too bad around here were they?

RA: Yeah, the winters were harsh especially right on the coast there, that you probably it a couple times where the ice washes up on the shore and it starts to shelf and pile up, I remember that vividly down in walking out on the layers of ice out there and I didn't see it, my father drove a car out to that jetty out there right off of Augustine Beach, we drove right out across the river and come back, it froze up so tight out there.

MM: How was your house heated, do you remember?

RA: Space heater, oil space heat. And supplemented it with a wood fire cook stove in the kitchen.
MM: So you had a kitchen potbelly , huh?

RA: It was a flat top, flat, regular cooking stove, and later on dad converted over to fuel oil.

MM: So you were pretty comfortable as a kid.

RA: It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all.

MM: What kind of stuff would you do.... well during the winter months you didn't stay outside too much, what type of things did you have to do with the family? Did your mom can any stuff in the fall?

RA: Yeap, a lot of the winter groceries come from canning. Stuff that she put up in preserve, and my father was a carpenter, the winter months were pretty tough on carpenters. And you couldn't get the work so, we depended on that summer garden a lot. And the fish that you caught out in the river. He loved muskrats, I don't eat them myself. He loved his muskrats.

MM: Oh yeah....you got any recipes for him?

RA: I'm sure he had his own but....

MM: You had to pick them up, huh?

RA: No, I only ate muskrat once, I didn't care for it so I don't eat it.

MM: Oh yeah...when was that?

RA: When I was a kid, tried it, muskrat and liver, it and I don't get along.

MM: Yeah, I understand. Did your dad ever take you out to work on his jobs or anything or show you any of that stuff when you were growing up or was he just kind off doing his work and....

RA: Nope, Probably when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old I'd go out with dad on jobs and helped with odd jobs, he was a pretty good mason, block layer, put up chimneys for people when they was converting from these old woodstoves over to the fuel oil stoves dad probably run up ninety percent of the chimneys around Port Penn and Augustine Beach on the houses and stuff. He was a handyman, he could do almost anything.

MM: So he got called on quite a bit by folks.

RA: Yeap.

MM: Did you enjoy that kind of work?

RA: Well, there was a dollar in it and at that time a dollar was hard to come by and I did enjoy it just to get the money cause money was hard to come by.

MM: Did you like working with your hands or did you want to do something else?

RA: No, I always liked working with my hands, I still do. I was never one to be confined in an office.

MM: Kind of tough isn't it?

RA: Not really, not if you enjoy it.

MM: No, I mean, being stuck in the office.

RA: Oh yeah, I never did like that. I couldn't handle being hung up in the office all day.

MM: Well, if you grew up outside I think people around you kind of expect it. Well, what's important about Augustine Beach and Port Penn. We have hit on some pretty interesting stuff, like the fact that your dad put up a lot of the chimneys. What was his name by the way?

RA: Edward, Ed Armstrong. He was typical....my dad was about six foot four inches tall, had hands on him like bushel baskets, big man, hard drinker and lived hard. That's the way it was then, that's the way it was but he knew his trade, very good carpenter, very good carpenter.

MM: You know any jobs around town that he did, might still be around?

RA: He did work here in Delaware City and Port Penn but to point out the jobs...

MM: Maybe not...that's okay. Do you happen to know anything about your family history , about where they came from?

RA: Mothers side, they all came from England. English descent. And my fathers people , the Armstrong tract down on route nine going toward thirteen going south was my grandfather's place. Where the little heronry is right there after you pass Bayview going south there's a heronry not comparable to Pea Patch, but there is one back there and that was my grandfathers estate there and the Armstrong tract up further now it belongs to wild lands.

MM: I'm not sure whether Armstrong is English or if it's a translation from German, I really don't know. Could be Irish.

RA: It's Scottish and Irish mixed, I think It's a mixer. My fathers side I'm not too sure of the ancestry and all that other than no further my grandfather anyhow but I can remember him coming up when we was at Augustine Beach from down there below Bayview on horse and buggy coming to the house at Augustine Beach.

MM: So what did you, at that time, you guys probably had cars, right?

RA: Yeah, dad did, grandpa still had another foot in the next century so he still had his horse and buggy.

MM: Did you get to go down there and visit much?

RA: Yeah, I can remember the big old mules he still worked the fields with, huge animals. After grandfather passed on my uncle took over, Gordon Armstrong, which he was a pretty big conservationist in the state. And after he deceased, which wasn't seven, eight, nine years ago, a lot of it went to the wild lands, donated land to the wild lands.

MM: YEAH, there has been kind of a conservation ethic around here which you don't find other places.

RA: No, a lot of people are conservation minded so it might be related living so close to the factory that they keep drilling it into you, I don't know.

MM: Could be, well how do you feel about that, was that big old plant there when you were in high school?

RA: When I was in eleventh grade in high school we got the word through the teacher, that's when we first heard of it. Tidewater was going to build a refinery and kinda laid it out how it would help Delaware City become another Wilmington with all the jobs and everything which Delaware City hasn't seen much since or before. My personal feeling on the factories necessary if you wanna drive the cars and heat your homes you gotta have it so as long as they keep their act clean it don't bother me. I don't like to see the river get messed up with spills and pollution and today's technology, and their pretty much on top of it so.

MM: It's kind of tough because this area, I guess we are kind of like down winders. Not just from Wilmington, but Philly, all the way up the Delaware River Valley there was historically a lot of really heavy industry up there, whether it was steel or heavy manufacturing like automobiles or tractors, cranes, whatever..there was just a whole lot of stuff. And Delaware was downwind and downstream from all this stuff and it's really changed environmental law and it seems like its added to peoples awareness cause you can go to lots of rural places around and they are really interested in getting the next housing development because that means money. And you don't here that around here, people want to preserve the open space.

RA: Preserve the open space and a lot of conservationalists want to protect that water, and like you say back in the fifties you didn't swim in the Delaware River on the outgoing tide. 'Cause you had all that junk coming down from up north from the industry and the river was terrible then and fishing, crabbing was poor so if you wanted to go out and play in that water when you was a kid in the fifties you'd do it on the incoming or high tide.

MM: So all the kids knew this?

RA: Yeah, the locals knew it, the clean water coming up from the bay.

MM: So it changed from the time you were little to the time you were in high school or just after?

RA: Right, in fact, after, I'd seen a big change in the Delaware River in the last twenty years. It's really cleaning up. And a lot of it is industry can't keep up with itself its phased out and went under so a lot of the pollution is gone. I don't think it's nothing that, well through conservation efforts it's gotta help, but just a lot of the bad stuff just went to the wayside up there.

MM: And we've kind of benefited indirectly.

RA: I'd like to say that Mr. Armstrong when those boats of Thomas Clyde and all them come rolling in here, that has to be interesting history, and them guys got the memory for it.

MM: That was Jack Armstrong, right? What was the name of that division or development he was in?

RA: Harbor Estates, go in town, make a left at the light and it will be the little development on the left going out, right across from the cemetery out there.

MM: I'll try to give him a call.

RA: He's listed.

MM: I don't know if this is true in the Chesapeake Bay, but they had steamboats, before the railroad came through and reach all those fingers of land, it was all done by steamboat. I don't know if that was the case in Delaware, do you have any idea?

RA: Yeah, I know the Thomas Clyde would come down out of Philly on a steamboat and hit Delaware City , Port Penn, Collins Beach. I don't think it went any farther south and this was a tourism excursion thing. I wasn't old enough to remember but I can remember the people telling me about it, I probably missed it by twenty years.

MM: That's right, a lot of them got converted to tourism and excursion type of things but before that they were all pretty much economy oriented, they'd either be shipping in oysters or shipping out sail cloth or something, but it was all the economy and then when the oyster harvest fell they switched to tourism . Then the railroad came in and all the truck farmers, the community has turned away from the water and toward the land. So how has Delaware City changed since you've been here? Because you have pretty much been here your whole life, haven't you?

RA: Yes, I have, between, I never lived down in New Castle County, between Augustine Beach and Delaware City, as far as Delaware City changing, the only change that I can remember any significance is the power plant, or the oil refinery out there and during the centennial years , the state and the city got together and made the improvements down the end of town where the old lot is and put in the office there for fort Delaware and the bulk heading of the river front. Which made a pretty big change , but there hasn't been any significant changes other than taking out the drawbridge and putting in the overhead bridge at Reeby point.

MM: There used to be a drawbridge?

RA: Yes, that was a drawbridge there . And I was going from Port Penn to Delaware City as a kid I'd hear that whistle blow I always run and get on that drawbridge so I can ride it all the way up the top. When the ship went under then you'd ride back down on it.

MM: Oh, you're kidding. That must have risen up quite a ways.

RA: Yeah, I would say one hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty feet it would go up. I'd let the ship go under and we would as kids run and break our necks just to get on that and ride it.

MM: Quite a thrill then, huh?

RA: Yeah, that was an experience for us. Just ride the drawbridge up and ride back down. There is only one left in the whole C & D Canal complex now and that is the railroad bridge.

MM: The one that's over west of route one?

RA: Yeah, that's the only drawbridge left and that's, like I said, that's a railroad bridge so there's not too much you can do about redesigning it.

MM: I never heard of people riding drawbridges for thrills before. You ever spot any sailors on the deck?

RA: Yeah, you can see when you where up there, you had a good view of everything .

MM: Did they ever spot you?

RA: No, they never spotted me, they had a bridge stander on the Delaware city side of the canal and we were just too far away , he wouldn't even know that we was on the bridge, we used ride 'er up and ride 'er down.

MM: That's great. Well that reminds me of authority figures, did you ever....especially when you were teenagers you can get away with a lot but being not fully grown and not so smart sometimes you can't help but run into the cops. Did you ever run into, did you have a county sheriff down here or did you have a town police person?

RA: Delaware City had it's own police force in town, town police force and I was smart enough to not get into no trouble with the cops. I tried to avoid that.

MM: Some kids aren't that smart these days. Well, you probably weren't up to anything that would draw their attention anyway, right? I'm sure you weren't. What do you reckon we've got to get on here, Mr. Armstrong? Is there anything? We've heard some pretty good stories by accident, like that drawbridge thing. What else did you guys do just for goofing off? Did you ever race your boats?

RA: No, We didn't have nothing to race but a set of oars. Put the floor in the boat, my brother and I would put off right there at Augustine Beach, this is good duck hunting in the dead of winter and we would row to the Delaware side of Reedy Island , tie our boat off, sneak across that island and jump shoot ducks on the other side. And they would lay in kinda next to shore and at that time the old military pier was still out there and it had a platform on it with the X-braces and just shoot the ducks according to which way the tide was running cause we didn't have no dog, you'd climb down on the X- braces and pick the ducks up out of the water that drifted by.

MM: Really? That's pretty interesting.

RA: I even remember living down there I was probably ten, twelve years old and two of the tankers come together just at the very north end of Listens Range which is about off of Bayview Beach and it looked like that whole river was on fire, it was one of them situations when the gas and oil spilled out on top of the water and kept on burning, and they were bringing the bodies of the boatmen in right there at Augustine Beach. I don't remember how many lives were lost but there was quite a few in that one particular shipping accident.

MM: I never heard of that, you were a teenager at the time?

RA: Yeah, yeah a teenager and later on they had one right off of Delaware City out here, part of the old wreck is still out there called The Phoenix and the Paine Massachusetts collided and there was about a dozen deaths on the Phoenix and it sank and it's still out there as a channel marker on the Jersey side of the shipping channel. But it was stuff like that, shipping accidents, the hurricanes kinda left the memory with ya when you was a kid rather than everyday stuff.

MM: Do you remember a hurricane?

RA: I remember hurricane Hazel. We was at Augustine Beach then and dad boarded up the front of the house, that's how high the water come across, about a foot in the front, but he didn't board up the back and the water went around and the back was lower than the front, which it generally is, and the water come in the back and we had about a foot of water in the kitchen. But it took, right now where the boat ramp is going south, every bit of that rope and ripraft and laid it in the field where the houses are and it just took the whole road out.

MM: Yeah, I don't know where it hit specifically but it kinda toar through Maryland too, that was fifty-seven wasn't it?

RA: That thing was fifty-seven, it come like I say through Maryland, it come up the Delaware Coast here. It done a lot of damage, it done a lot of damage on Pea Patch at that time and Fort Delaware. There's two granite walkways one out where they used to unload the prisoners on the Jersey side of Pea Patch and Hurricane Hazel took them walls out during that storm and laid them over.

MM: I don't even know if our folks know that. That there might be some remnants in the water there.

RA: Those rocks are still there, there bigger than that desk, twice as big as that desk what they had there going out it was on both sides and they'd bring the old schooners up on the slit you know. That's pretty deep water there, real deep water, thirty-eight foot of water.

MM: Well, you mentioned jump hunting, is that when you lay down in the grass and wait, when you jump up?

RA: Yeah, when you would sneak across, when you'd get as close as you can without them ducks flying away from ya and then you'd make ya clap your hands and whistle and ya get up and spook them and then ya shoot em.

MM: And then they would rise up off the water and fly out, right? That's interesting. Well, you know the channel between Delaware City and Pea Patch doesn't seem, I mean that's a pretty long ways and a pretty strong current to be rowing across, isn't it?

RA: Yeah, but uh....

MM: It was nothing to you guys, you were doing it all the time.

RA: Well, we done it all the time, especially during ducking season, we were pretty good duck hunters and we could not afford a motor so we want to go out we would row, we took once in the fog run to from Augustine Beach to Reedy Island and we ended up in Bayview, got lost in the fog , had to row all the back. But as a kid you couldn't hurt the kids then.

MM: Right, it was an adventure then.

RA: Yeah, it was an adventure, that was all.

MM: Especially when you realize you end up somewhere else. Well, you mentioned hunting rabbit and pheasant. I don't imagine there were too many deer around here at the time, or where there?

RA: No, there was not too many deer here. Nah, just rabbit, pheasant, squirrel, that was about it.

MM: Did they have the big bull squirrels like they got down south Still?

RA: No, no, just a small old gray-brown squirrel.

MM: Park squirrelly...

RA: Yeah, that was about it.

MM: They're not really tough to catch though are they?

RA: In the wild they are a little bit elusive but other than, you make a noise on one side of the tree he's on the other, you won't even see him, he's gone.

MM: Right, you remember what kind of firearms you used or had?

RA: Well, I had a four-ten, a little single-barrel four-ten, that was about all I can afford at the time, I think my brother has a double-barrel twelve gage.

MM: Did you guys buy commercial shells or did you pack your own?

RA: No, we bought commercial shells , had two little stores in Port Penn and you can get most of anything you wanted in Mom and Pop store in there. One was called Sybil's and the other one was called Copel's. That's when they had the soda fountains in the store and get your milkshakes and banana splits and the whole nine yards.

MM: Everybody come and hang out.

RA: Yep, that was the hang-out.

MM: Well, the old school house was a store for a while wasn't it?

RA: I don't know.

MM: I think it would have been after the sixties because I think that's when....

RA: Ah, wait a minute, did Bob Beck have it then, when it was a store, or is that prior to him?

MM: I don't know If he ran the store, I think somebody else ran the store.

RA: I vaguely remember that, I think you're right. I think it was a bait and tackle. Yeah, I don't know who had it, I don't remember.

MM: I think they shipped the kids out to Gunning-Bedford District or whatever in the sixties or something, about that time. And then it shut down as a school house, and it must have laid empty for a while. Then somebody opened it up as a store and then they went out and then I think Bob Beck came in. Do you remember anything about him getting started over there?

RA: I can remember Bob Beck setting up the museum and getting started down there, yes, and I thought it was great that the idea kinda helped preserve some of that local history down there. And he had what I thought at the time was a good collection of stuff, he had that old school full and it was a lot of hunting and fishing, lot of that, sturgeon, sturgeon fishing, heron .

MM: Did a lot of the local folks like that idea?

RA: I don't see why not but it's like most things of interest in your backyard you don't go to, the local people don't but for some reason they go half way across the state to see something and don't look in their own back yard, but...

MM: Cause I'm just kinda curious about how folks looked at it, Um, I've been a lot of places. Not everywhere by any means, but I've never seen a place quite like that. Where somebody just decided to do it, you know and kept it open all the time.

RA: It was pretty neat, that's a tribute to him, I'll tell ya.

MM: Well you obviously knew him.

RA: Yes indeed.

MM: Well, what was he like?

RA: I remember Bob when he got out of the military., and like I was probably fourteen, fifteen at the time. And he was lost overseas and got separated from his regiment. And he was separated for three or four months from his own regiment and finally caught back up with them but I even remember when they come out of the service and they started with the state of Delaware and he was more or less the local game warden. And one of the game wardens, and he was pretty strict on the boys, he was pretty strict as far as catching the over limit of fish or the wrong size of fish, and then he went on to be a biologist, he loved his fishing, sturgeon fishing mainly on the side. Done a lot of that and the striped bass fishing. But I never had the opportunity to go out with him but as a kid I'd be there on the dock when they come in to see what they caught and stuff.

MM: And they were still pulling sturgeon out regularly then?

RA: Pretty much so, yeah, him and the others , the old gentleman I mentioned Mr. Zach , they teamed up and Carl Marsh from Port Penn, were the main sturgeon fishermen and they done pretty good, pretty good. It was uh, a pretty unique way to make a dollar and they had the knowledge of how to do it.

MM: Well, they're interesting fish I think they're prehistoric or something like that, they go way back. So Bob was a pretty tough enforcer, huh?

RA: Yes, yes he was. Bob went by the letter of the law. If you was wrong he would tell ya.

MM: Was he still everybody's buddy or did some people not take it too kindly?

RA: I don't remember anybody breaking bad or getting mad about it. If you was wrong you was wrong and that's the way it was.

MM: Enough said, huh? Yeah, pay your fine or whatever it is. Cause game wardens aren't always that lucky. I guess, to get that amount of respect, but he was a local guy.

RA: Yes.

MM: So I guess he took that role.

RA: Right.

MM: Do you, I don't remember but shad were probably pretty depleted by the time you were coming up. Or where they still running?

RA: No, the shad was still running, me and my brother and I, we would have our own little shad net and catch our own shad, for use and sell. And they must be a pretty hardy fish cause like you said from the time I was a kid right on up to now you go out there during the season and catch shad and shad and heron, they were always there. Some was the part of those sport fisherman, the pollution kinda hurt it until they made their come back.

MM: Well, don't you do shad fishing at night?

RA: No, no the daytime generally. Either on the high slack water or the low-slack water, out there to catch shad. That way your net laid loose when the fish hit it he killed himself. When the tides running hard, it pulls a strain on the net and the fish can hit the net and bounce back off you wouldn't kill him so easy. So we always kinda aimed for slack water, either high or low.

MM: Do you know why there's a lot of old photographs but they show fisher people with their boats strung all the way across the river, and lanterns and with the nets going from boat to boat to boat to boat, like they were going to catch everything with was coming through. And I think reading somewhere that they said the shad were attracted to light of the lanterns.

RA: I don't know. I never seen shad fishing done like that. I have seen, I haven't done it but I'm sure Bob done it, that they would line up, over what they called Salem Cove was one of the good areas for catching sturgeon. There was only one good drift there. So you would line up, actually take your turn to drift your net in the Delaware River to catch sturgeon. I've seen that.

MM: So these were, I don't even know the right term, but you'd just, well you said drift, it's a drift net, just toss it out and wait.

RA: Yeah, you'd toss it and put a parallel like from bank to bank and the tide would take it up and you'd see 'em old quarts of sturgeon that kinda laid down in the water until you had a fish in the net and it would kind of pop up and you'd have a signal, you'd know you'd had a fish. If the quart popped up and down two or three times you'd know you had him gilled. And you'd get right over there and take him out then before you would lose him.

MM: What other kinds of fish would you go for in there?

RA: Well, I remember prominently three species, and that was the shad, the heron and there was very few of the sturgeon fish but there was a few. But uh, catch up with old Jack Armstrong, he'll tell ya Delaware City people would call heron chokers cause they caught so many heron and there's a story behind it somewhere, but I don't now where it's at, yeah they were called heron chokers.

MM: That's a good one, that's a real good one. Now, I thought heron were pretty skinny fish

RA: They are, their not very big, maybe twelve, fifteen inches long and full of bones, as far as eatable, I don't like em. I'm too lazy to pick the bones probably.

MM: I heard shad had a lot of bones too.

RA: Yeah, but they have a way of marinating them you could eat bones and all with the shad, there was more recipes going around for shad and there were a lot of crab cakes I guess.

MM: Well, you mentioned crabs, were they like Chesapeake Blues, were they pointed...

RA: Yeah. Blue-claw crab and we'd shove right off of Augustine Beach when I was a kid you wouldn't have to go off shore fifty feet and catch a bushel or two hours hand lining and it was just full of crabs.

MM: Did they call them trout lines or turkey, or chicken neckers.

RA: Yeah, chicken neckers, just through a bunch of line down and dip 'em up and then you'd be the next day picking crab meat.

MM: Right, all day. Cause even when I was a kid they were, seemed to be pretty plentiful, I mean we didn't know nothing from nothing we just stomp out there and you know, whether you had a line or not or just walking through the sea weed, pick em out, but we used to catch bunches of em, in the same place, my grandfathers place I mean there's hardly any anymore.

RA: Yeah, don't have the, you get more commercial entity now then we had then so I don't wash depleting the pans in the wide, you ask them they'll tell you no, their not depleting it, mother nature is.

MM: Right, there's some other factor at play. There's somebody else to blame. Well, of course I'll need to defend them a little bit I guess. Well, do you remember some commercial fisher folks?
Or was it mostly people working out of their house? On their Own?

RA: It was mostly out of their house, on their own, what was commercial was at a low scale , you know, it wasn't no big scale, other than probably Bob and them with the sturgeon now. They had to get somebody come in and really take care of them fish and get 'em to New York or Philly in a hurry and that was probably the commercial side of it.

MM: Cause some of these locations like they had a cannery and sometimes it'll have a shuck n shack or crab picking house or ....

RA: Yeah, I don't remember none of that I wasn't that old but, uh, right out of high school I did work on the commercial troller out of Lewes. That's when they were allowed to troll in the Delaware Bay and you would load up with fish and you had your shucking places there then for your oysters n crabs n stuff . But I done that for I guess three years, three or four years. You wouldn't believe the species of fish just in the Delaware Bay from Lewes to Bowers say, it's unreal what's out there.

MM: What was your job on board?

RA: Mate, there was only two of us on board, the captain and me. And we worked it in shares, the boat got a third, I got a third and the captain got a third. And ya had a good catch, you was rich. If not, you collect, you still collect with unemployment.

MM: That's a pretty good deal, you did that for three years, huh? What other things did you do before you came on at Fort Delaware?

RA: Let's see, I worked on then fishing boat for three years, then I went out to Eastern shore concrete pipe plant right after I got married, worked out there, left there and went with the state and been with the state ever since.

MM: Well, that's kind of a natural place for the next one to pick up on. We've covered about an hour, um, anything you got to have on tape? Jokes, political statements, comments,.....

RA: Wouldn't dare, wouldn't dare, that's probably enough.

MM: Okay, Thanks a lot.

RA: I see that other dude down the street I'll catch up with him.

MA: Mr. Armstrong? Oh, that would be great. I'd appreciate it.