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Updated July 24, 2010.

KITV Interview with Paul Brumley May/June 1997

Typed from DVD by Sue Fentress Austin in July 2010

Gary: Today we are taping Paul Brumley who will continue with his series on the history of Knotts Island (KI). Paul, as usual, you are always welcome. Now Roy (White) discussed eels and unfortunately we had an audio problem . Could you give us some discussion of the eels and your early childhood?

Paul: I can give you a little continuation of it. I never did do it for a living, a livelihood like Roy did. My eeling was done in my teenage years when I was trying to make a little extra money. My father and I had, oh I don’t know, 50 or 60 eel pots and as Roy said, we usually put them out in the spring of the year and tried it again in the fall. And that was usually when you caught the most of your eels . And I remember something my father told me one time about taking the eels out of the eel carts and put them in a fish box. At that time we would ship ‘em, put a little ice in the fish box and eels would live a right good while anyway and ship and send them to Norfolk. And I don’t know how they got from Norfolk to Baltimore and New York and places like that. But anyway we’d put them in fish boxes here. My father told me to never put that fish box on the wharf and put the eels in it. He says if there’s the least little crack in that box, those eels will get their tails in there and keep bashing and backing up and their tail is shaped kind of like a wedge and the further they back, the bigger they get and will bust that box open. Well luckily I listened to him. I had my fish box sitting in the boat, on the seat, taking my dip net, getting the eels out of the cart , putting them in the fish box. I must have had it about half full and I looked and saw about two or three tails sticking through a crack and the next thing I knew they had pried that box open and they fell in the bottom of the boat. I didn’t lose any of them, but had I had them on the wharf, I’d have lost them all! And we would send them to Norfolk as I said and I don’t remember what we got per pound for them, but a high school boy like I was at the time, it was a right good size amount of money.

Gary: What year are you speaking of here?

Paul: Ah, that was about ’42, ’43, somewhere in there.

Gary: Oh that late? They were shipped to Norfolk then, dry essentially?

Paul: Yeah, why if you could get them and put them in the box alive, put a little ice in them, they would last until they got to Norfolk. And like I say, I don’t know what they did with them then. When I’ve sent them away in fish boxes, and I’ve also sent them away like Roy was talking about – they’d come down here and get them.

Gary: Did you use the end of Brumley Road?

Paul: Yeah, that’s right. That was our landing. We’d come in there.

Gary: That’s where the eel cart was too?

Paul: Yeah, that’s where we’d have what we called “eel carts” and it was a box like Roy was talking about with wire in each end of it to keep them alive. And we had ‘em tied to the wharf down here at the end of the Brumley Road.

Gary: Did you use Back Bay?

Paul: No, I never did go up that far ‘cause I could catch as many as I needed to catch right here in the Bay or off of KI. And like I say, I was never doing it in a big way anyhow. I was just making a little extra money.

Gary: How long did you, how many years did you do it?

Paul: Oh I imagine I spent three or four years doing it.

Gary: Did your dad do it?

Paul: Yeah, he did some of it. I was going to school the time I was doing it. Sometimes I’d be in school and he’d have to go fish the pots. But I could do it if he didn’t get to it mornings, I could do it in the afternoons when I come home.

Gary: Did you check them once a day?

Paul: Yes. Checked them once a day, then baited them up and went back the next day.

Gary: What was the bait?

Paul: Used a lot of crab. Hard crabs and crushed ‘em, then drop ‘em in the eel cart. That was about the best bait we could find.

Gary: Just take these blue point crabs and crush ‘em?

Paul: Yeah, that’s right. We’d catch the crabs on what we called “the crab line” and tie bait onto a line and stretch it out. Then go along with a dip net and pick the line up, take the crabs off of it and use them for eel bait.

Gary: So you were doing two things then?

Paul: That’s right. You couldn’t afford to buy your bait ‘cause I was in it for what little money I could get out of it, and I could go ahead and catch the crabs and they didn’t cost me anything.

Gary: Were the eels bringing in more money than crabs?

Paul: I don’t remember what I got for eels back there then. And too, I believe it was a lot of times these commercial fisherman along here knew you wanted crabs. They would save some crabs for you and let you have the crabs that got up in their nets. They were fishing for perch and so forth.

Gary: Well then, you’re talking in the early ‘40s , what’s spring and summer - the commerce of the Island was out of the Bay, out of the water.

Paul: Yes, a good portion of it was, yeah.

Gary: Fishing? Eeling?

Paul: Fishing, eeling, crabbing . I can remember my father crabbing back in the mid-thirties. A lot of people, they call them “trout lines” now but they’d have a half a mile of cord, and tie this bait onto it. I think the bait come from Norfolk, it was cow skins and such from the slaughter houses. And the bait was put on there about five or six feet apart on the line and then you had a boom run over the side of your motor boat that you put this cord on it. Run the boat right alongside it slow and dragging a large dip net right underneath of it. Well when a crab would hit that boom it would knock him off, right into the net. And my father would catch I imagine six or eight barrels a day. And I don’t remember what he got for the crabs but he made right good off it for the time he did it, I don’t know, did it for several years. I was just a little boy then and I can just barely remember him doing it.

Gary: And you say the net, was obviously in the water, right?

Paul: Right, it was a large, I guess you would call it, it was similar to a dip net. And it was made so it would drag along in the water right underneath this crab line. And as the line was picked up, it would run across this boom, When this crab hit the boom, it would knock him off , he’d fall into the water and he would catch him in the net that was underneath it. Then when you got the net full, you’d have to stop and dump it and start over again.

Gary: When do you think the crab pots as we know them now first came in?

Paul: I don’t remember them coming in existence until probably about the ‘50s. I was gone from here then. But when I did move back over here for awhile, had a summer home over here and I think it was in the early ‘70s that I started living over here again. And my children were in their early teens, the boy. And I had six or eight crab pots for him and he’d take the boat and go out there and fish ‘em two or three times a day. Crabbing was good then. I’ve known him to catch two or three bushels in a day’s time. He’d catch a bushel, maybe a bushel and a half at one fishing. Tend to the pots mornings, and then late in the afternoon – he was about 12 or 14 years old at the time and it gave him something to do and we crabbed. Gary: Where were these sold that you got …did they go up to Norfolk? Paul: Yeah, there was somebody who come around, I guess every afternoon and took the crabs and carried them. I think, I believe you had to put ice on them to keep ‘em alive, or keep ‘em until you could get them to Norfolk. I guess they carried them to probably a fish house in Norfolk, that processed ‘em. But you had to ship them every day.

Gary: You didn’t have holding pens large enough.

Paul: No, they didn’t do it that day and time. They come around, somebody would - I believe it was Mr. Bonney used to come around. He was one of them that bought ‘em and then he carried them into Norfolk. Then they were processed there.

Gary: And the peel crabs, soft-shelled crabs, how did you get those?

Paul: I don’t remember of anybody fooling a whole lot with ‘em at that time. You’d catch your soft crabs, you’d take a dip net and walk along the shore and you’d usually catch all you want. The water was clear and you could see a crab 15 or 20 feet ahead of you. And it was plenty of crabs here at the time. And that first full moon in May they start to shed and you could walk along the shore and get all the soft crabs you would want.

Gary: Would they be doing that commercially? Wasn’t there a commercial interest?

Paul: I don’t think there was any commercial market for them at that time. If it was I don’t remember. I never did sell any of them like that. Now some people would go out there and catch them and go out and sell them locally, to the people of KI. But so far as the business of soft crabs, I don’t ever remember it back then.

Gary: How about fish as a commercial venture here, back then?

Paul: Yeah, we had , I don’t know, probably three or four crews of commercial fishermen. And they’d go out and catch perch mainly, but there was a few rock and of course there was plenty of bass. But you couldn’t sell them. So when they pulled ‘em up in their nets, they’d have to throw them back overboard.

Gary: Why couldn’t they sell the bass?

Paul: Well they were a game fish and it was illegal to sell them. The game fish you couldn’t sell. Perch was the main fish sold here.

Gary: And now are there many perch out here?

Paul: I don’t think there is – I haven’t talked to many recently doing it commercially. I haven’t heard of any being caught.

Gary: Are bass able to be caught commercially now?

Paul: Oh no you can’t catch them commercially. They are still as a game fish.

Gary: Oh, game fish you can’t?

Paul: No, you can’t sell them.

Gary: What else did we get out of the Bay? You mentioned something about muskrats?

Paul: We used to catch muskrats in the wintertime starting sometime about the middle of December. I don’t remember how the season ran. There was a season on them. But when I was in my teens, about the same time I was doing this eeling, the people who owned what they called the Neck Point now , I believe Doctor Burk owns it now. That time it was some people from Portsmouth owned it and my father and I had permission to go in there and trap. And the first year we trapped there, I don’t remember exactly how many – we probably caught 250-300 “rats” out of there that year and they were selling anywhere from, well the trifling lines were if a seagull got a-hold of one and pecked a hole in him you might get a dollar , so I would say they sold from a dollar on up to about $3.50. Price was $3.75 for the large, black muskrats. They were the ones you got the best price for, so the average price ran from about a $1 to $3.75. So we made right good out of it for about two or three years – in the ‘40s.

Gary: Was there a permit needed for this? Was there a limit?

Paul: No, no permit at that time and no limit on it. Oh we would probably catch from, some days probably 6, 8 or 4. Some days maybe catch 18 for a good day. We didn’t catch 15 or 18 all the time, but once in awhile we did.

Gary: And then you’d skin these and hang them up to dry?

Paul: Sometimes we’d have to skin them if the fur buyer was going to be several days in coming. If he was coming the same day we caught ‘em or maybe the next day, he’d buy the “rat” just like he was. He’d skin him. And I think they had a sale for the meat somewhere. I never did eat the stuff , I never did try it. I’ve heard people say it was good but I never did sample that.

Gary: How ‘bout the eels, did you sample those?

Paul: Oh yeah. I’ve eaten them, they’re right good. Not bad at all.

Gary: I remember in Brooklyn, an uncle that whenever we visited he would have eels and I cannot ever remember tasting it. I don’t know if I had one or not.

Paul: Well they’re not bad. I think a lot of people are just a notion with them ‘cause they look so much like a snake.

Gary: Well Paul I’d like to thank you for your time discussing the history.

Second Interview

Gary: Welcome back Paul. We’d like to continue with our previous discussion about farmers and the Bay and the fishing. How about the farming? Was there much commence from there?

Paul: Well ‘most everybody over here had one to two horses and most of them were farmers - small farmers. Most of the crops were soybeans and corn and they fed it to the animals. And the animals would pay him more because that day and time you could slaughter a hog, during cold weather of course, carry to the storekeeper the night before he was going to Norfolk. And he’d put it on the truck and carry it to Norfolk and put it at the Farmer’s Market, I think it was on Market Street at that time and you’d get a few dollars out of your hog. And their chickens, they did the same thing. They’d kill eight or ten dozen chickens once-in-awhile and send ‘em to Norfolk the same way. And of course you had to feed your hens to get your eggs, feed your cow so you’d have milk and butter. And that was most of what the farming was over here at that time. Except for Irish Potatoes & there were a lot of people, my father included, would raise a few acres of Irish Potatoes and it was right good money in them at that time. They made money that way. And there was a few farmers over here that did “truck farming” but my father never did do any of that to speak of. So I was not too familiar with raising watermelons, cucumbers, tomatoes and stuff for market because he never did do that.

Gary: About how much land did you use for this farming – did your dad have?

Paul: I imagine it was probably about somewhere around 50 acres, 45 or 50 acres. He tended it with one horse. And I often think to myself now when I’m out in the garden with a roto-tiller, tilling, that he could have probably done as much or more work, and done it better, with that roto-tiller than he could have with that one horse then. And our place up there was full of wire grass and nut grass and don’t you think that wasn’t something about this time of year when it was starting . And he used to always tell me when I was plowing and cultivating or whatever, to make SURE that I covered that wire grass ‘cause if I didn’t it would keep right on growing. Well I got news for you, you can cover it up and it still keep right on growing underground. It doesn’t slow it a bit. And the cultivator that we used, the old one-horse cultivator, in my opinion didn’t do a single thing in the world but spread it. It would pull it up here and drop it over there! It would keep right on growing – wouldn’t even wilt it in the summer’s sun.

Gary: That was before we had the weed killers.

Paul: That’s right – we didn’t know anything about herbicides. If I’d of had Round-Up in that day and time I’d have had it made. It would have been easy. As one fellow said to my father-in-law one time up around Creeds – he had a farm that was full of wire grass. He said you know I have plowed that wire grass up and I can take a rake and rake it up, pile it up and let it dry and set fire to it and the smoke will take root to it and grow again! And he was almost right about that too.

Gary: You talk of horses---where there many tractors?

Paul: I remember when the first tractor came over to KI. I believe Roy White’s family – Edmund, I believe, had the first tractor that came over here.

Gary: Well we can check that out with Roy.

Paul: Yeah, we can ask Roy about that. I believe Edmund was the first one to have it.

Gary: What year do you think?

Paul: About 1941-2.

Gary: That late?

Paul: Yeah, there weren’t any tractors over here in the ‘30s that I can recall. I don’t remember any.

Gary: Did they rely strictly on horses? Weren’t any oxen?

Paul: There might have been. Seems like I’ve heard my father talk about ‘em.

Gary: Mules?

Paul: Oh yeah we had mules. But if there were any oxen I don’t remember it. I think there were some in the early ‘30s.

Gary: That was hard farming then.

Paul: It really was. As I told some time ago, that when I was in my teens and going to high school, coming home in the afternoon, having to change my clothes and get out there and fight that nut grass and wire grass with a one horse, well I made up my mind then that if I did ever get on my own I’d never farm again. I didn’t! Oh I do a little bit of it now but it is so, so different. They get an 18-wheeler, like H. M. Dudley’s to haul grain and stuff to the granary. But It’s so much different in the farming compared now as it was then. Tractors now - you’ve got an air ride seat, AM-FM radio, air-conditioned - it wasn’t like walking behind that old horse.

Gary: I can imagine. But with the horse you could tell it where to go.

Paul: That’s right. I would rather climb poles today, with hooks, then to farm like I had to do it. You talk about mules. I gotta tell this one. My father bought a pair of mules one time and the horse traders that day and time thought like the auto salesmen are today – will tell you anything. Well this guy come along, had an old black mule and a yellow one. They’d been working together for years, they worked good and shot my daddy a line like that and he bought it. I don’t think the two mules had ever seen each other until that day. One was fast, the other was slow. Well he hitched up the old black one – after awhile he got the thing hitched up to the cart. The old mule went wild, liked to have torn up everything around and definitely didn’t like the cart behind him. So he tried the yellow mule with the cart. And he had something he was going to carry to the landing in the cart; the old mule got along there where Roy lives now and he wouldn’t go no further. That was as far as he would go. He didn’t like that water. So my daddy couldn’t do anything with him. Well he put me to working with the yellow one ‘cause he was slower in the field with the plow and the cultivator and all that. So we were cultivating corn, guess the corn was about that high and my daddy and I both working out there at the same time. About quarter to twelve come, I was about middle way of that row and that yellow mule decided he was going to that house. Well I couldn’t stop him. He dragged me, the cultivator and everything right across the corn. My daddy got mad with me ‘cause I tore up some corn. I couldn’t help it. The next day daddy said, “I’ll take this one, you take the other one.” That pleased me. Well about the same time of the day I heard my daddy cuss a little bit and I looked and he was dragging him right across the field just like he did with me. You heard “stubborn as a mule” well, the mule was hungry and he was going to eat. That’s the way our mules were.

Gary: You mentioned corn – did you eat the corn?

Paul: We called it old field corn then and it was about two to four days when it was maturing when you could eat it. Then it got too hard. And I thought it was good that day and you didn’t get any sweet corn, what they called Silver Queen and that stuff, Norfolk Market, you might get some of that around here at that time. Anyway, my daddy never raised much of it, just the old field corn. And I got some of it a few years ago when I was living over here after I got grown. I couldn’t eat it, didn’t like the stuff. I think it has been hybridized until the flavor has been taken out of it. And now if you want corn, you get Silver Queen or something like that – you’ve got to use the sweet corn.

Gary: Yes, you are probably right. Most of the field corn was probably hybridized into sweet corn.

Paul: That’s right. Gary: Into what we’ve got today.

Paul: You notice your tomatoes in this day and time. They’ll keep a long time, those you buy from the store, but they don’t have the flavor to ‘em that they used to have. They’ve been hybridized so they will keep but the taste sure isn’t as good. The tomato is a pretty tomato, but the taste sure isn’t there.

Gary: How often did you send the meat and produce to the Farmers Market?

Paul: Well you had to do that in cold weather. If you slaughtered a hog and that involved from November on through about March. And the chickens the same way. The grain that we grew was used to feed those animals, feed the chickens of course and you had your eggs, your own eggs. And I can recall one time we had a cow to give us our milk and so forth. And I didn’t do it on purpose, it was accidental, but she could unhook the barn door just about as good as I can. And it had some kind of a hook latch on it. There was a post in front of the barn door that we used to tie the cow to for overnight or whatever. And I tied the cow like I should but I left the rope a little bit too long. Well she got to the barn door and there was a bag of soybeans set where she could get to them. And she eat most of them. Well those soybeans will kill a cow, will get inside and they’ll swell up. That’s what happened. The cow died after a little bit. I don’t remember how long it took her to die but she swelled up from those soybeans and it killed her.

Gary: I bet you got into trouble.

Paul: Well my daddy realized I didn’t do it on purpose but I guess like a kid it was carelessness. I was sorry about it. I liked the cow. Of course I liked milk and the milk cut off.

Gary: So you were pretty self-sufficient – you had your cow, chickens, probably a garden - to raise your vegetables?

Paul: You had your garden, your vegetables, your salted meat, you killed hogs in the winter time. The way we kept fresh meat for maybe a month or so during the winter, the neighbors would arrange their hog killings – they had it scheduled so that they’d come over and help me kill hogs. And then maybe next week, we’d go kill your hogs. And each way we’d get fresh spare ribs, pork chops, fresh pork anyway and that’s the way we got our fresh meat in the winter. When I killed my hogs I had to start salting meat to cure it, and in that way we could have fresh meat as well as salt pork.

Gary: So it was like a barn raising, a community barn raising instead it was a hog killing.

Paul: That’s right. And the bacon, hams and shoulders, the jowls they called it, I don’t know how he did it, the recipe, but he salted it. And then after it sat in salt a certain length of time, he’d put it in the Smoke House. It wasn’t a fire he built under it, but he’d get the wood smoldering . I think the wood he used to use – they didn’t have any hard wood over here to speak of. He used to go out and get pine logs and they fell in the woods and was partially rotten. And he would get that wood burning and then pour water on it to keep the flame down. Didn’t want a flame on it, you wanted it to smolder and use the smoke. And that’s the way the hams, the bacon and shoulders was cured.

Gary: And so, essentially, most of the people had a Smoke House and did their own curing.

Paul: Yes, that’s right. They cured their own meat. And the other part of the hog, pork chops, along the back bone and so forth it was cut up and salted. A lot of the side meat was salted also. That was called salt pork and put in a wooden barrel . Like I say, he had a recipe to salt it by, but I don’t know what it was. It is very few people now who could cure it I imagine.

Gary: Now this meat you sent to Norfolk – was that fresh?

Paul: No that was fresh - a whole hog or a whole chicken. They cut it up at the market in Norfolk.

Gary: Would you ship the hog alive or dead?

Paul: No, no, he was dead. Clean. The entrails taken out, everything, he was ready to be cut up. And I guess, like I say, the man who bought him at the market cut him up and sold it for fresh pork.

Gary: That would be the same with chickens?

Paul: Yeah.

Gary: How about beef? Did you – was there any beef?

Paul: There was some here but my father never did kill any cows but some people would kill one once-in-awhile and he’d buy some from them. They would kill a cow and sell it locally. Always there was a sale for it because you didn’t get beef very often. Only time I got it was when somebody killed it, a cow like that, or when my father went to Norfolk and he’d buy some hamburger or steak or something like that. Two or three times a year – you didn’t go to Norfolk very often.

Gary: So most of your diet then appears to be salt pork, ham, fish, duck, geese, chickens. Of course we didn’t have the wild fowl all around here in the summertime.

Paul: No.

Gary: So you’d rely on your chickens .

Paul: We’d have fish – bass or something we’d catch. And no one ever eat that I know of, my mother never did eat hard crabs. I don’t know why. She never steamed any crabs.

Gary: Now they are a delicacy.

Paul: And there were plenty of crabs here – she could have steamed ‘em by the pot fulls. She never did.

Gary: Oh one thing that comes to mind, I’ve noticed clams out here. Did anybody ever use those? I’ve opened some up but they were awfully dirty.

Paul: Well, I, was no size to them was it?

Gary: No, pretty small.

Paul: Well I’ve seen ‘em out here a few years ago when the water had a little salt in it and if you find them now must be a little brackish. But anyhow they were small, maybe the size of a fifty-cent piece, and they were no good. I never saw any big ones in here.

Gary: Well Paul, I appreciate it.

Third Interview

Gary: Good morning. We are pleased to have Paul Brumley here again and he will explain to you the picture you are seeing. It’s one of a kind.

Paul: This is a picture of Captain Tuck on the left in a white uniform. He was captain of the aircraft carrier “Illustrious” in World War II. That was the aircraft carrier I believe that slipped into the Mediterranean and sunk so many in the Italian Navy at one time. And then he tried to get away from there and he said that he heard the radio message when it went out to the German Luftwaffe to sink that ship, they didn’t care the cost. He ended up steering it by the engines ‘cause the steering was gone. He went through the Suez Canal, came around the Point of Africa and brought it back into Norfolk for repairs. Well, while he was in Norfolk for repairs, he came to my father’s, down here, fishing. He came as a guest of a navy captain, a Captain Woods. And he brought him down here fishing . While he was here, my father asked him for a souvenir from the aircraft carrier, “Illustrious” and before he left he brought this autographed picture of himself and the Duke of Kent. That’s the Duke of Kent on the right, also autographed. And shortly after this picture was made, I don’t remember how long, the Duke of Kent was killed in an airplane crash. Anyway, Captain Tuck always dressed in short sleeves shirt and what we would call Bermuda shorts now. That’s the way he fished. Well, Captain Woods always liked to fish until just before dark. And as most people know, the mosquitoes are terrible over here along this beach between sundown and dark. But Captain Woods kept right on fishing. Well my father said he saw the mosquitoes began to rise and he put his jacket on. And at that time he had to park his larger motor boat outside the creek to shove and then pulled his fishing boat with the larger boat. He said before he could get that man to the larger boat and get moving and get some air going, he thought mosquitoes would eat him up. And he did have a lot of mosquito bites on him when he got him back to the boat. But anyway that was the story behind the picture. It was the captain of the aircraft carrier “Illustrious” and the Duke of Kent.

Gary: Thank you Paul. And now we have Paul’s mom and dad.

Paul: This is my mother and father taken just a short time before he died – I think in 1961 – probably the summer of ’61. He was about 72 at the time and of course he was born and raised right here on Knotts Island. He was a hunting and fishing guide, he farmed part the time. He was about a half-way politician in his prime and I mentioned before that he was Justice of the Peace at one time over here. And he was always active in politics as long as he was able to. Even the old Princess Anne politics – I’ve known him to go over to Creeds on Election Day so he could hear those votes counted over there in Princess Anne ‘cause he was interested in that also.

Gary: OK. Now we have one more so stay by. (Shows picture of Paul’s mother with message from President Reagan) How about this Paul?

Paul: OK, this was a birthday card that came from the White House. The way that thing works is when someone is 90 years old or older, you can write the White House a letter stating who it is, their birthday and all that, about 30 days before the birthday. They will send the person a birthday card on their birthday. And of course Ronald Reagan was in office when mama was either 90 or 91 when she got this card from the White House. But I thought it was pretty unique to get one from there. I guess the name Ronald Reagan is probably a photograph, but anyway it is his signature.

Gary: That’s great. In a few more years, you will get one and then I will follow!

Paul: That’s so. I’ll put it this way - I hope I’m able to get one at that time.

Gary: What you are looking at is one of Paul’s hobbies (small replicas of boats). It looks like PT-104 there.

Paul: (laughing) I don’t know about that. But anyhow I started visiting a friend of mine in Florida and most people around here know him - Julian Lewark. He married Audrey Cooper’s sister. And of course, Madeline stood up with Judy when we got married. I’ve always been friends with Julian. So he’s in the hobby of building these things When I went to Florida to stay a month I got roped into building. Well this one that you are looking at now is – I have built one of them with his help but that’s number 1 and it’s never going to be a number 2 I don’t think. It’s too much work involved in it. But anyway I had a lot of fun doing it and I enjoy looking at it. And it looks like a lot of the old boats you used to see out in Currituck Sound years ago with the “V” bottom and so forth. A lot you see right now with a cabin similar to this and on top of that we’ve got the steering wheel on the inside, we put the seat on the inside, got a little seat there, got an engine cover and of course a propeller on it and the rudder will swing back and forth, so it really looks pretty authentic. And like I say, I built this one. Now these, (is showing a second boat), this one, is not so much trouble to build. I guess I have made, probably about 15 or 18 of these. And I have given them as gifts to my friends and relatives and so forth. They’re pretty interested in them.

Gary: Would you consider it a working boat?

Paul: This was somewhat, like what was the working boat around here that was built out of juniper and yeah, this is what I would call a “work boat” . Of course we had them painted green or grey or some color like that. We didn’t have them naturally finished.

Gary; Did you have an inboard or outboard on them?

Paul: Outboard. Yeah, these were normally built out of 16 foot stuff so they were pretty close to 16 feet on top. And I will say somewhere around about 4 feet wide. I have forgotten the measurements but if I remember back, I think about 4 feet at the widest part.

Gary: That’s your hobby now?

Paul: Well when I retired I got roped into this for going to visit Julian. But yeah, I guess it’s somewhat of a hobby.

Gary: How about if we go into your youth now.

Paul: Well I grew up as most people who know me, here on KI. The house that I grew up in is up there on Brumley Road, the old Brumley House. And I’ve often said that in this day and time, that house would be condemned, unfit for human- habitation, as well as the rest of ‘em on KI at that time because we had no indoor plumbing, we had no electricity, of course no running water, used kerosene lamps, and the Health Department wouldn’t let you live in a house like that now. But anyway I survived it along with my other four siblings, mother and father. I started to school, I think, I believe it was in 1935. And at that time they were building the Causeway. They had a sandpit out there behind the KI School, and I used to play on the piles of sand and get dirty. They had it piled up there and they hauled it down there in the marsh for the marsh road. Well I was about seven years old at the time and I went through the KI School and finished out there. During the time when I was about 11 years old, I was taken with a fever. Well at that time, in 1940, they didn’t know anything about Lymes Disease or Tick Fever so they diagnosed me as having Typhoid. The Health Department came around KI, checked everywhere I had drank water, everywhere that I had been, and they couldn’t find any source for it. Well I had been to Virginia Beach and places, drinking, and they went and checked that and found no source for it. So, I think it was about a month before I went to the hospital – I had been over here on the beach and got in a bunch of those small ticks that weren’t much bigger than hen lice. But I was full of them. And I’ve always believed after I got grown and read about it and learned about it, I believe I either had Lymes Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Pretty sure of it. Anyway, I guess I was lucky in that day and time, no antibiotics, no intravenous feeding. I survived it with the help of my family, sitting by me in the hospital, feeding me. Finished school out here in KI, then I went to Creeds, bussed over there, went across the Causeway. I finished over there in 1946. During that time the war was on and the boys, then, didn’t have automobiles like they do this day and time. They had to use their father’s vehicles on weekends because he drove it to work during the week. Well my father didn’t have a car. But anyway gasoline was rationed at that time, in the 40s. And you could not get but just a small amount for pleasure. But anyway, my father had this boat that he made his livelihood from so we got gasoline tickets for the boat. And in addition to that, we had some friends that came down from the Texas Oil Company (TEXACO), that worked down at Munden Point. So it was awfully convenient for them to bring a little gasoline once-in-awhile so we could take ‘em fishing. So we had gasoline in a 55 gallon barrel. Well on weekends when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I had the gasoline, somebody else had the automobile, we were dependent one upon the other to go out dating or to Virginia Beach or whatever for our pleasure on weekends. Like I say everybody didn’t have cars then like they have now. If you’re a boy now, you have a car by the time you get your driver’s license. Well I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 18.

Gary: Can we back up a little bit to about when you were 7 or 8 ? How was it to get out of the bed mornings? About eating?

Paul: You got out of bed of a morning at my house was the larger part where the bedrooms were – there was a breezeway between there and the kitchen and dining room. Well you’d get up mornings and of course it was freezing in your bedroom, just as cold in there as it was outside. Well you’d get on a few clothes , you’d run and jump across that porch and sometimes we’d have snow on it, to get in to where the fire was going. At that time my father had made a fire, my mother was cooking breakfast on the old wood stove and that’s the way we lived. We didn’t think anything about it. Everybody else I grew up with lived about the same way. And it was just normal living like they live now. We didn’t think anything about it.

Gary: Was it like a potbelly stove or was it a cook stove?

Paul: We had the old wood, cook stove in the kitchen. We had the King Heaters in the living room. The kitchen and dining room was heated by the old wood stove/cook stove. And I don’t know how my mama ever regulated the temperature to cook bread and stuff in the oven, but it come out just as good as they cook it now. She knew how to regulate it – I don’t know how, but she did. She never burnt up anything. And the milk from the cow, she set on the back of the stove, was warm, but not hot and the cream would come to the top. Well then we’d have hot biscuits, cream, preserves for breakfast, ham and eggs other mornings. I would think now I was living pretty good as far as eating was concerned. Hot coffee. So we grew up and we fared pretty good over here on KI. Of course we probably fared better over here then you would have in the city without a job because in the city you’d have no way of having a cow , hogs or chickens and stuff and you’d have to go to the market to buy what you eat. If you didn’t have the money to do it, you’d be in bad shape. And we didn’t have the money here. My father didn’t have anything except when he carried these hunting parties out during the winter. He didn’t make anything in the summer, during that time, ‘cause he never started carrying these sports fisherman out until the late 30s, early 40s when it became popular down here and the bass was plentiful. The news got out all over the country I guess, because we had people come down from all over North Carolina. Anyway, we had some people come down from up near Ashville, come down and spend the week fishing. Well then he’d make a little money. What he grew in the fields went to the animals, the hogs, the chickens, the horse. He didn’t sell any of the grain. He had to use it to feed the animals in order to feed us.

Gary: That must have been a quick trip to the outhouse every morning.

Paul: Oh yeah it was. That was about, at least 50 yards further from the house. And what it was, was just a wooden building, sitting over a pit. I can remember before those pits came into existence, they were on top of the ground, just a little house there. And no, you didn’t take the newspaper and go in there and read it. You went out there and you were soon back to where that fire was in the winter time. And in the summer time you were liable to look around the corner there or up over the plates and see a blacksnake in there while you were visiting the outhouse. So therefore you didn’t stay there very long then either!

Gary: You had other uses for the newspaper in the outhouse.

Paul: Yes, you really did.

Gary: You had a hand pump for water, in the yard?

Paul: And that was one thing I couldn’t figure out even then. The hand pump was out in the yard. Finally my father moved it up onto the porch and I thought that was nice. Later on, he finally did move it into the kitchen. That was real nice, you didn’t have to go outside in the wind and rain or the cold or heat to get water. And I don’t know why people didn’t do that years before they did. Everybody had their pump outside, 20 yards from the house. You’d go out there with a bucket, fill it up, bring it in and set it beside your kitchen sink. Best I remember they had a sink with a drain pipe running outside but didn’t have a pump inside for a long – I guess I was probably six or eight years old before he ever moved the pump inside.

Gary: Water just drained out on the outside? Or into a pit?

Paul: Yes, just running outside. Well the water was clean, you see, just soaked into the ground. We recycled it.