Updated August 5, 2010.
Typed from DVD by Brenda Twiford in August 2010
Gary: Well Paul tell us how was it growing up on Knotts Island without electricity and running water.
Paul: Well, it would be tight now, but at the time we thought it was real good, I lived just as well as anybody else on Knotts Island, we all lived just about alike. I grew up with Elliott Williams, Ralph Lewark, Clarence Fentress, Irving ?, as they would call him, and we were all happy with what we had, we thought we were living good, we eat good, we had a house that would keep us dry, I won't say it kept us warm all of the time but anyway we managed to survive and I thought it was a right good life at the time. I really don't want to go back to that way of living, I enjoy this central heat and air conditioning, refrigeration, a whole lot better than what I did at that time growing up in that type of house. In fact Gary, the type of houses that we grew up in, they would not let us live in them now, they be uninhabitable, no running water, no indoor plumbing, they condemned the houses now.
Gary: They were not insulated.
Paul: That's right. We grew up in poverty and didn't know it.
Gary: But you had a good time growing up.
Paul: That's right. We had plenty to eat and there was a lot of fun around here and in the winter time we were shooting ducks, in the summer time we were fishing, we didn't need television that day and time to amuse us we had too many other things.
Gary: Tending the garden.
Paul: That's right, I never did like to do that, but I had to do it. That was one reason to convince me to get away from Knotts Island and do something other than farm. I grew up farming with an old horse and a single horse plow, wire grass, nut grass, a hoe and I guess when I was 11, 12, 14 years old I made up my mind that there was another way of life I would find it. When I got away from here I started climbing poles and that was before the days of the bucket truck and we had to hook them and I had much rather do that today than to farm like I had to farm.
Gary: Was that Virginia Power back then?
Paul: Well it was called Virginia Electric Power Company back then, VEPCO, and I still regard it as VEPCO.
Gary: I think a lot of the old timers still do.
Paul: That's right. It was a very good company to work for and I have no fault of the way I made my living, I've made a good living, I didn't have to worry about a layoff, I was there for 35 years and being laid off never crossed my mind. I never missed a pay check and most of the time it had overtime on it. My last 10 years I was there I was what they called a trouble man, you called and I was the first one on the scene and I would restore your service if I could, if not I would call a line crew to do it for me. At the time I was working there the company would bend over backwards to serve their customers and it didn't make any difference rather you were in the country or the city, I heard people say the people in the burrow of Virginia Beach get lights before we do, but that was not true. The last hurricane we had though here I think was Donna in 1960, I went to work on a Monday morning early about 2 o'clock when it came through here and other than 8 hours a day off I never quit working until the following Saturday afternoon. That Saturday afternoon I was getting ready to knock off, we were about winding down, finishing up, I put services back in Virginia Beach burrow, Baltic Avenue, Atlantic Avenue and people at Knotts Island and Princess Anne way had lights for several days at that time.
Gary: You can look at the last storm that just came through, we had lights on, they were only out for about 4 hours and places in Virginia Beach were still without.
Paul: You still don't get the service you got at the time I was working there, cause I left in 1984 and we had almost 15,000 employees throughout the whole system and now they got less than 10,000, so they just don't have the people to give the service that they had when I was working there.
Gary: Now there's more homes too.
Paul: More homes, a whole lot more loaded. I can remember a time when I first started working at Virginia Beach and Princess Anne County at that time was served out of a sub stations out of Virginia Beach, we had two 13,000 volts line running from Graves Avenue, that was our power station then, from Graves Avenue to Virginia Beach, we had one 34,000 volts line running to Virginia Beach that feed all of it. Between midnight and 6 o'clock the next morning we could take that 34,000 volt line out of service to work on it dead and carry all of Virginia Beach on the two 13,000 volt lines between midnight and 6 o'clock and now they got I don't know how many 110,000 volt lines, 240,000 volt lines coming in there serving the same area that I'm telling that was served for me, well about 1952, 53, somewhere in there.
Gary: Well the Island got electricity I heard about 1946?
Paul: Yes, 1946. I graduated high school in 1946 and we got electricity about 3 or 4 months before I graduated.
Gary: Did you do any work on the lines then?
Paul: No, I was to young then, I was only about 16 or 17, but I hadn't got out of school then.
Gary: When did you go to work for VEPCO?
Paul: 1949, I went to work for them in 1949 and I was 20 years old when I went to work there, I turned 21 years old on December 3, 1949, so I worked almost a year before I turned 21. I can remember seeing those guys up the poles working and hanging in those hooks and belts and I use to think to myself, that's no job for me, but I spent a life time with them.
Gary: It must have been difficult for you to go out on a pole in all kinds of weather.
Paul: It was, but you know Gary when they came out with the bucket trucks and the hydraulic booms it made life a whole lot easier then and a whole lot safer.
Gary: I was wondering about those, is there a wind restriction on those that above a certain wind you can't use the bucket truck?
Paul: I don't know Gary, I've have been on Atlantic Avenue on many a night but I don't know how hard that wind was blowing but the bucket was rocking back and forth and they kept us right on working. Gary: It must be some feeling going up and down that thing, like an elevator. Paul: It is, I felt a whole lot safer standing in one that I did on a pole, but I guess I been there 20 years or more before I got to use a bucket truck, I had to climb it with the hooks.
Gary: On the early time on Knotts Island what was there for evening entertainment, did you go to bed with the chickens?
Paul: No, we all gathered in one of the stores, Eddy Munden store or Herman Jones store and the boys would play hiding or we would go and see the girls or something like that and we amused ourselves out there. Our fathers would go out there, they would catch up on the local gossip so to speak and the teenage boys would be outside playing or just doing whatever.
Gary: Creating mischief.
Paul: Probably. We did sometimes I guess, but we didn't have television to look at and we didn't even have radio to listen to, most of us didn't. We would go out to Eddy Munden store if something special was coming on, we would go out there to listen to it. We didn't really get a lot of radio's here until we got electricity in 1946.
Gary: Before that they would have to been battery operated.
Paul: That's right.
Gary: Those radio's had big batteries.
Paul: That's right. There was a few people that had them, but not many.
Gary: You talking about a car battery or something to run one.
Paul: Yes, that's what it was. One of my neighbors had an old car radio, that he had a 6 volt battery at that time, he had a couple of car batteries and when one got too weak to hear it he put the other one on and charged that one so he always had a spare and that was the kind of radio we had, I go and listen to that.
Gary: I remember we had the Shadow, Green Hornet, did you get those down here?
Paul: Yes, Back then in the late 30's boys read comic books a lot and some of those comic books that I threw away, burned them, are now worth 7,500 dollars a copy. I throw away a fortune, if I had known it.
Gary: Like you said we be rich now if we brought property, comic books...
Paul: Anything like that. There's things today Gary that if the young ones wait for it could do the same thing. My son, when he would buy his daughters a doll when they were small, he would put the box up in the attic and then when the girls out grew them he puts the doll baby back in the box, it will be worth something some day he said and it may.
Gary: Like Barbie dolls, if you had a collection of those back then.
Paul: Well he's probably got some, I don't know but I expect he has. The oldest daughter is about sixteen and I expect she might have some Barbie dolls, if she did, he's still got them.
Gary: You said earlier that you worked at the store?
Paul: I worked with Jerry Ansell first at the old store they had where John Munden's apartment is now, I worked there, I don't know, several months and the store burned and they didn't go in business there, they went around the corner and built Jenks place. Sometime around that era Ira Jones built a store across from what is now Eddy Munden or John's old store there on the south side of Brumley road. His father used to own that property there, that's where Ira grew up and I worked for him, probably about a year, then he sold out there or just quit and brought the store at Creeds, wants now the Creeds supermarket or whatever it is. Ira run that for many years, then he sold that and retired. I worked in two grocery stores before I left Knotts Island, it was right good work, I enjoyed it.
Gary: The pay probably wasn't much.
Paul: Well, it was good for that day and time. I could do better working at Knotts Island at the grocery store for what I got out of it here than I could by going to Norfolk working and paying my transportation. I couldn't make as much here as I could there, but it cost me more to get back and forth and here there were no expenses.
Gary: Did they have a delivery service for groceries?
Paul: Oh yes, they send a memorandum out to the store about somebody, I would fill it or Eddy Munden would fill it, who ever worked would fill it and when you got it filled you put it in the truck and carried it to the customer.
Gary: How was the automobiles and trucks on the Island in those days, the roads didn't get paved until the late 30's.
Paul: The road on Knotts Island proper didn't get paved until the early 50's, about 1950 I think. The hard road came to Knotts Island and stopped where it is now, where the "Y" is in the road and we didn't get that pavement until about the early 50's. Now the north end of Knotts Island, about 3 quarters of a mile up there, now that was paved for several years before we got it. A lot of people here like my father wanted hard surface roads over here so they went to Raleigh to the Department of Transportation and I heard it told, I don't know if it was my father or who got up and was speaking about it, but he said when we are born we are born in a Virginia hospital by a Virginia doctor, we come to Knotts Island and all of our food and clothing comes from Virginia, we're educated in Virginia, the high school kids then went to Virginia, we make our lively hood in Virginia, when we go to get a job it's in Virginia, when we die we're buried by a Virginia undertaker and he said the only thing we get from North Carolina is the taxes and that is all we get and we like to have a hard road out of the deal and it was insinuated that they might succeed from North Carolina if they didn't get it, of course I don't know that they could have done it, but I always felt that was instrumental in getting a hard road.
Gary: The thing is nothing has changed.
Paul: Nothing's changed. I thought about it and in fact I think it was my father, some of the older people told me the reason that the line like it was, the state line and it makes sense, that the time that it was surveyed it made a state of North Carolina and a state of Virginia, it was easier to get to Knotts Island to the county of Currituck by boat than it was to get through that marsh to get to the Princess Anne court house, so they did not bend the line, they kept it straight. Well over the years things change, it is a whole lot easier to get to Virginia Beach now than to Currituck but that part of it has never been changed.
Gary: Who maintained the roads on the Island when they were dirt roads?
Paul: Well, before my time I heard it told each man had to give one day a month, I think or one day a week or something to maintain and build the roads, well I think Roy White mentioned this the other day, but anyway I'll tell it again what I've heard. There was a fellow named Waterfield that lived on the Mill point and he got tired of working on the roads and he said he wasn't going to do it and the sheriff said you will do it, he said I will not come anymore, so he knocked off that day, he didn't and when the sheriff went to see what was going on there was nothing on the Mill point but a bare field out there, he had moved his house, his chickens, his hogs and everything that night and went to False Cape. They couldn't make you come across water to work on the roads, that is how Romie Waterfield, Curtis Waterfield relatives got over on the beach, I had heard, it was their great granddaddy or something and he had made up his mind that he was not going to work on the road for free that week.
Gary: How about in your time?
Paul: In my time they had one or two men that lived on Knotts Island that worked on it continually. They had a road grader, a truck and they kept grading it every day because when they get one section of it graded by the time they got back to it again that one was in terrible shape, partially if it rain you know and dusty of course, it was just as dusty as it could be if you lived along the road.
Gary: Some places there sand and others there clay.
Paul: That's right. Going down Brumley road there when I was a little boy, Roy mentioned this the other day, we talked about it, it was a dirt road there and you could hardly get up and down it when it was raining, but anyway a dry spell the wind would blow the dust and sand off there and you seen dirt look hard, kind of like concrete when the wind would blow the loose stuff off the top of it, well I was going to the landing one day and the wind was blowing from the west and I was on my bicycle and I was making right good speed, well Pud White, Roy's daddy had pulled fence along there and he left part of that fence, field fence sticking out in the road a little bit, well that bicycle of my had about an inch and a half of the axle sticking out on that side, front axle and got hung in that fence, needless to say I stopped. So Roy's momma said she saw me when it happen and she watched me, I laid there for awhile and she bout sent somebody to come get me, before I got up, but I'll tell you one thing I looked out for that fence for now on, didn't have to have it happen but once.
Gary: What there was only about 3 or 4 families on that road too.
Paul: There was only three houses on it at that time.
Gary: You had to pick one with the fence coming out.
Paul: That's right. It was along the field, he had to put his fence up to keep his cattle or whatever he had out there grazing in the field. That was the way they use to do it, they had fences around their farms to turn their cattle out there and their horses and let them graze in the fields at certain times of the year you know, but they didn't have any crops out there.
Gary: You mentioned that you were a guide for the duck hunters?
Paul: Yes, I started guiding I guess when I was around 15 or 16 years old, my father kept a place there he made his money taking people out hunting or fishing, when I got old enough he would let me guide and I don't know, I think it was 7.50, 8.00 dollars, 10.00 dollars a day or something, but that was right good money for a high school boy. I would guide on Saturday's, on holidays and once and awhile I would talk him into letting me skip school and guide. But the other boys, Elliott, Ralph, they did the same thing, they guided too.
Gary: What time did your day start?
Paul: We left the landing about sun up, around 7 o'clock mornings and we get in after sun down because we didn't start picking up our decoy's I think it was about 30 minutes before sun down or something like that, it would be around 4 o'clock in the winter time, by the time you got them in the boat and got your hunting party in the boat with all their gear you got to the landing by dark most of the time, particularly if there was any clouds in the sky. So it was about a 10 or 11 hour day.
Gary: What do you do around a blind all day long, a lot of sea stories or hunting stories.
Paul: You put your decoys out and if you got a hunting party with you, you watch for ducks or geese or whatever and we thought we were honking but anyhow we were probably just making a noise but it was good for a duck or goose just to attract their attention for our sportsmen and let them shoot the ducks.
Gary: How many blinds would you have, would it be a group of blinds?
Paul: Well in our case we had two, my father had two blinds, he come along and put me out in the first blind or I would put him out there and take the motor boat and go on to the next one. We didn't have outboards then, we had a large motor boat with a model A Ford engine in it and we pulled two decoy skiffs behind it, he put me out at the first blind, get my men out there with their gear, get in the blind, he go on to the next one, like I say when we picked up in the afternoon, whoever had the motor boat you always had to wait for it. After you picked up there was no other way to get in so we waited.
Gary: How close were the blinds?
Paul: Well his was roughly about a mile apart.
Gary: So you couldn't see one another?
Paul: No, we couldn't see what each was doing, we wait to hear some guns firing and look at the other blinds and see some boats go out.
Gary: So what the guide did was to go from the house, from the club to the blind from the blind if they shot any ducks go collect them.
Paul: That's right and put the decoys out and pick them up, that was a job and if it was cold Gary, it was a job just staying out there you know with nothing to do like that, they didn't have thermal back then. If you were shooting for yourself, if some of my friends were out there and we were shooting for ourselves you didn't get as cold because your mind was on something else, you enjoyed it more., but to watch someone else shoot, partially for a boy that was not really enjoyable.
Gary: And miss
Paul: That's right, I have shot after they shoot, some of them would give me shells you know to kill cripples with and if I got the chance and they shot and missed him I shoot too and some of them appreciated it and some of them get angry with you, they didn't pay to see me shoot a duck. You hated to go in and Ralph or Elliot whoever tell me how many ducks they got that day, I didn't get them but I had the opportunity, they didn't miss them you know.
Gary: Did they for the most part stay in the blind all day or was there a peak time.
Paul: All day.
Gary: Momma would make lunch for them.
Paul: That's right, pack a bag lunch. Now some of them prefer a hot lunch, they come in about 11 o'clock and go back out about 1 o'clock. That was the sensible thing to do, that was the slack time of the day, but most of them felt they were paying for it and they wanted to stay out there all day. Now fishing was the same way, fishing was harder work than hunting, you had to hold that boat just right for them and you were moving and doing something all day, holding the boat partially if the wind was blowing at all. Those people, a lot of them wanted to stay all day from sun up to sun down. They thought fishing was better at sun up and sun down but they wanted to stay in-between time also.
Gary: Do you use the motor boat or was that hand?
Paul: Hand, We take the motor boat and pulled the smaller boat to the creek to get it as close as we could get to where the fish are. Then we take our two men, we usually take two men in a boat, We take the two men and shove up the creek and fish it and when we got through we come back up to the motor boat where that was anchored and go to another location.
Gary: You go up the creeks for bass?
Paul: Bass, that's right. Creeks and use to be shore line over there along the beach use to be good back in the 40's,when I was telling you about when we had a little salt in the bay.
Gary: Back to too salt, not to salt.
Paul: I only go by facts as I've seen it. Like I told you, I don't know if it had anything to do with it or not, but fishing and hunting was better in the 40's and 50's than it's been in a long time. Barnacles would grow on the boat, you would have to take them up and scrap them two or three times a year. As the bay begin to get fresher the fishing and duck hunting begin to drop, the grass wasn't growing out here, whats the cause?
Gary: There's no opening now anywhere in Back Bay or Knotts Island Bay.
Paul: If you stop and think about it, the water in Back Bay is the same water that was there 50 years ago. The north wind shoves out to the Currituck Sound, a south wind comes along and pushes it back to Back Bay, it's the same water except for what little rain we get, run off and that's polluted now, look at your shopping centers up around Dam Neck, look at your chemicals that come from these sub divisions, farmers use chemicals, but farmers use it cost effective, they only use the amount it takes to do the job. The home owner has a lawn, he buys a 50 pound bag of whatever, when 10 pounds is plenty, he's not going to store that, he throws it out in the yard and when the rain comes it washes in Back Bay.
Gary: Currituck sound gets run off from Lynnhaven Mall, that ditch back there.
Paul: That's right. That ditch your' talking about, you probably read it in the paper, from West Neck Creek to London Bridge Creek is where that creek is. I don't think there's much salt that comes through there, because by the time it leaves London Bridge Creek which is not as salty as the ocean to start with and runs through that ditch and all the run off through there and mixes with that water, by the time it gets to West Neck it's not a whole lot of salt.
Gary: Where it really starts at, is Link Horn Bay and starts there and comes south.
Paul: No it would come up the Lynnhaven river, because Board Bay and Link Horn Bay is too far to the east for London Bridge, for that to run in there. The ditch comes from London Bridge Creek and crosses under Potters Road there at the bridge and comes on down by Princess Anne Plaza and it crosses Ships Corner Road down there, there's a bridge down there or something and it comes on down to Princess Anne Road, that Dozier Bridge they call it, their renewing it now, then goes out into West Neck Creek. I saw where some biologist, I think from the State of North Carolina suggested that Virginia Beach build a dam way across that creek to hold that water until the salt dissolved in it, then turn it loose. I always thought salt dissolved in the water and it could stay there forever and it would still be salty, wouldn't going to settle in it.
Gary: What would be an average day at the blind for ducks, do you have any idea, of course it would depend on how well they were shooting.
Paul: A lot of the time Gary you could go out there and your might kill 30 or 40 ducks or 7 or 8 geese. Blue Pete's were plentiful, a lot of people wouldn't even shoot them, but you could kill 40 or 50 of them with ease. It would depend on the day, there are days that you would go out there and you would hardly get a shot, blue bird day as we called them, no wind, warm and the ducks would just settle down in the water somewhere, where ever they went they rest, they stayed there all day. If it was rough with the wind blowing they got restless, fly from one place to another and see the decoys around the blind and that would attract them, they come by there and you got a shot. I have been out there on a warm but windy day and have a good day shoot, partially the canvas back and red heads, there were plenty of them here then, you could shoot into one bunch and you could see another bunch coming, that was fun.
Gary: Actually then in one day you shot almost what the season limit is today.
Paul: Oh yea, exactly.
Gary: Knowing the Bay as it is now, it's hard to picture so many ducks.
Paul: I think when I started hunting in my early teens, I think it was 10 ducks to the man and 4 or 5 geese, for a day per man and I believe the Blue Peter's were 25 to the man per day. Well if you went out there and killed that many birds you had a lot of fun that day.
Gary: What did they do with them all, I guess clean them and send them off to the market?
Paul: Not then, your couldn't sell them then, you give them to people that didn't hunt to eat, all the game I killed somebody eat, I didn't but somebody atE it cause I give it away to people who liked it.
Gary: Sure would make a lot of feather pillows.
Paul: That's right. They thought the pillows were nice, I still sleep on one of them. And they made bed ticks too, what they called bed ticks is actually a feather mattress.
Gary: Do you use the coarser feathers for that?
Paul: No, you want the finer feathers, the downing, the finer the feathers the better, the coarser feathers the quill would stick though the bedding and you wouldn't want that. You know in the houses we had to sleep in that day and time a tick bed was nice, because when you got in it those feathers would come up around you and they were warm. When you sleep in a room where a glass of water will freeze over night you need something to keep you warm.
Gary: Sue Austin's comment on the Brumley house you didn't have the rooms upstairs finished.
Paul: There was one room that was unfinished up there but the other two rooms were finished as long as I can remember, but what we called the north room upstairs the studs were showing, it had been framed up and that was it. My father put sheet rock up there and had finished it when he started keeping these sportsmen to go hunting and fishing. He put theirs up there, finished that room off, that made the third room and if he guides enough he keep 6 men there at one time.
Gary: How did you heat those rooms.
Paul: Heaters, we had kerosene heaters. That brings to mind, one time we had one of these kerosene heaters, you seen them about that big around and stand up like an oil stove, well one of those rooms had a kerosene heater in it and the other one had a wood heater, okay I lit the kerosene heater about 30 minutes before the men were coming in to dress, wash up, you know to eat supper. I lit that heater and went to the wood pile to gather some wood for the wood heater and when I come back I couldn't hardly see upstairs, you know how use to run up what we used to call soot-tags flooding around in there, one terrible mess. Momma was trying to clean that up before they got there, but she couldn't do it, she didn't have enough time. That heater run up in 5 minutes time and did that.
Gary: Was the wick up to high?
Paul: Something was wrong with it.
Gary: You were getting soot all over everything.
Paul: Their dress clothes were up there and some of them had white shirts and them soot-tags got on them white shirts. I got the blame for it, but I really, guess I might have been careless, because I knew they run up that way, but I just forgot and lit it and thought while it's warming up I go get my wood, that was a mistake. If we had kerosene heater then like we have today, then there would have been no problem.
Gary: Well Paul it's been enjoyable, glad you came down.