Mamie Wade (primary interviewee) and David Wade interview recording, 1993 July 15
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| Kara Miles | Sister. | 0:01 |
| Mamie Wade | No. | 0:01 |
| Kara Miles | Is that right? | 0:02 |
| Mamie Wade | No. He is my brother. I married His brother. | 0:04 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. | 0:05 |
| David Elliot Wade | Sister-in-law. | 0:06 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. Okay. Did you all both grow up around here? | 0:08 |
| Mamie Wade | Yes, yes. There's a place that we call, it's all the same area, but it was called up the road and down the road. He was born down the road, he, my husband, and I was born up the road. So, not that much difference, but we were separate a little bit. | 0:12 |
| Kara Miles | Is that Carolina Beach road or what road was this? | 0:38 |
| Mamie Wade | What was it called again? | 0:40 |
| David Elliot Wade | It was—what I called it—It's called Beach road. | 0:41 |
| Mamie Wade | Okay. | 0:46 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. | 0:47 |
| Mamie Wade | It wasn't near like this road. I'm going to tell you that. Nothing like this one. When I first knew it, it was the Shell road. It had shells. | 0:50 |
| David Elliot Wade | During that time, before your time, it'd be your time, there was just about a 15-foot strip with a road just about 20-foot wide. Now it's about 15-foot with a little ridge in the top of them. We'd pass them in the car, you had to slow down, and the wheel would be up on the roof. Your car would be leaning, so that way that's having a narrow road. It's just a one way highway. It's like it is now, but. | 1:03 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. He really remembers. He sure does. And this is why I thought I told Mrs. Freeman that I really thought that somebody should record because he's just a bowl of history. You know. And when He's gone, a lot of history is going to be gone from around here. | 1:33 |
| Kara Miles | Well, I want you to tell me all of that history today. Okay? | 1:53 |
| David Elliot Wade | Okay. | 1:57 |
| Kara Miles | So, did you all know each other growing up? You lived, I mean, you all lived up the road and down the road. | 2:02 |
| Mamie Wade | Right. | 2:07 |
| Kara Miles | Did you all know each other? | 2:07 |
| Mamie Wade | No I didn't. I didn't. I was, well, I guess I was a teenager. I guess about 16, 17, or something like that before I really knew him or my husband did. | 2:08 |
| Kara Miles | When were you born? | 2:26 |
| Mamie Wade | When? | 2:28 |
| Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 2:29 |
| Mamie Wade | April 21st, 1914. | 2:30 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. And how about you Mr. Wade? | 2:37 |
| David Elliot Wade | I was born August the 21st, 1913. | 2:39 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. So, Mrs. Wade how did you finally meet your husband? | 2:42 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh, my. Well, we used to intermingle, you know, the boys or the girls from down the road would, you know like the ones up the road. It was Christmas and my husband came up with a cousin of his, Roy. They came up. Roy Wade was dating a friend of mine. So, Roy and Louis were cousins. They came up and they took us to Seabreeze. I don't know if you've ever heard talk Seabreeze, but it's a little Black Beach it was there. It was a fine Black Beach then. And I only think about it because I thought Louis was interested in my friend, my girl friend and I came down to Seabreeze with them and I thought that he was interested in her, and it turned out he was interested in me. So, this is really how we met for the first time, I think. I don't remember seeing him before then. | 2:47 |
| Kara Miles | So, tell me about Seabreeze. You said it was a fine beach then. | 3:58 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh, Yes! | 4:02 |
| Kara Miles | Tell me about it. | 4:03 |
| Mamie Wade | Considering that day, you know, during that time I should say. Now Elliot can even tell you— | 4:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, I'll tell you I'm not cutting between now, but I remember Seabreeze was a settled place. People come down there and built anywhere from one, to a two-story, to a three-story buildings. | 4:18 |
| Kara Miles | Wow. | 4:27 |
| David Elliot Wade | And there was one lady come down there at the Seabreeze, I couldn't tell you what year it was in because I can't remember that much, but during the time she come down there she built a three-story building. Down stairs there was a dining room and the second building was a dance hall, and then up at the top, the third-story was the sleeping apartments. | 4:27 |
| Kara Miles | Oh. Okay. So it was like a hotel also? Okay. | 4:52 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. Well, it was also a hotel. | 4:54 |
| Kara Miles | Oh. Okay. | 4:56 |
| David Elliot Wade | During later on as she stayed there she built a cement walk through from the front of her building. At the building we went out and get the water—well, not the water way, but when we went out to the water, there she built a bigger, a house out there where people could come down and fish and crab off. The bigger kids catch crabs out there, but there was a lot of people that would be crabbing. [indistinct 00:05:27] Crabbing down there during the day. Probably all day. | 4:59 |
| Mamie Wade | And could I cut in right here? Also, we, the people who come down for the water, but one time people could walk across before the water, you remember that? They could walk across to the ocean. And this was really nice, but later one when they dug or whatever they did— | 5:32 |
| David Elliot Wade | Hodges cut. | 5:56 |
| Mamie Wade | —Okay. It's called snooze cut around here. Just before you went up on the bridge, this is snooze cuts bridge and there's a waterway that goes under there. And after that they had boats to take them across to the ocean and people liked that so much. Because you couldn't go to Carolina Beach. That was White and they didn't allow you to go there, so there were motor boats to take us across. Right Elliot? | 5:57 |
| David Elliot Wade | Mm-hmm. | 6:29 |
| Mamie Wade | Okay. Yeah. | 6:29 |
| David Elliot Wade | [indistinct 00:06:35], but I wasn't really supposed to mention this, but our same time, my time when—we call it the old hag. One day, which is Labor Day, and during them times what would happen, I seen many times you go down there, usually Labor Day is always the first Monday in September, but the White people would go down there. They keep the people from Seabreeze from going across it. I seen them go over there and set the marsh on fire. | 6:35 |
| Kara Miles | What! | 7:17 |
| David Elliot Wade | The marsh would be on fire. There'd be a fire. There'd be a lot of smoke. But that didn't slow us down because we, it may slow us down, but it didn't stop us from going down there. That was the only summers off we had to celebrate. | 7:17 |
| Mamie Wade | That's right. | 7:32 |
| David Elliot Wade | You couldn't go to Carolina Beach. My daddy told me many times that on certain days you count on that beach wave, the White people, they could go anytime they wanted, but the Black people couldn't go but once a year and that was what you call Labor Day. | 7:32 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. So, on Labor Day Black people could go to— | 7:48 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. They was free to go. | 7:51 |
| Kara Miles | —Carolina Beach? | 7:51 |
| David Elliot Wade | And I seen many times on Saturday evenings, when Seabreeze, when how we say boom, Seabreeze was in boom, I seen many Saturday evenings, the Saturday before Labor Day, which Monday was Labor Day. People start to come, country people a lot of times the back and stuff, they all had money to spend. They come down to Seabreeze and stay down there until maybe Monday evening. I seen them at two in the morning a lot of the times. I seen more people down between my house and where I live at, before I went off, it'll be on Seabreeze on Labor Day now. Between Seabreeze. | 7:57 |
| Mamie Wade | I was telling Her your house is right back of mine and you got to go see it, it's sitting right back of mine. And I would like to mention too, about the—Now I don't remember when the Black people went to Seabreeze, to Carolina Beach I mean for that one day. But my memory is when we could go, we only went to Seabreeze, we weren't going to Carolina Beach except to cross over in the boat. But like he was talking about, the holidays, especially Labor Day, these people, and I guess I'm repeating him almost, they would work on farms and all for that one day. And you should see the trucks. Truck loads of people just coming down, it was just wonderful, but it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Had a good time. What did you want to say about Seabreeze? | 8:35 |
| David Elliot Wade | Hmm? Just a lot—. I would just. | 9:24 |
| Mamie Wade | They had a pier. A pier. A P-I-E-R. They had a pier that was so nice. That was famous. People just loved to come down and go out on that pier. Yeah. It would stretch out into the water and then there was a house over there, and this was very nice. | 9:25 |
| Kara Miles | You said there was a house over it? | 10:00 |
| Mamie Wade | There was a house at the end of the pier. | 10:02 |
| Kara Miles | Oh. Okay. | 10:03 |
| Mamie Wade | I guess I should have said a top over the end of it. | 10:04 |
| Kara Miles | Whose house was it? | 10:09 |
| Mamie Wade | Who owned that pier? | 10:10 |
| David Elliot Wade | Grogan Freeman. | 10:12 |
| Mamie Wade | Grogan Freeman. | 10:13 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. See Grogan's was the one running the boat from that pier to, He had a pier right across from that waterway, and that's where he—Margaret Green used to fleet the people from Seabreeze down to near Snows Cut and put them on a pier and then they'd walk on across the marsh and ocean front. Then later on people got to building over there. They built several buildings over there right on the water front over there. | 10:15 |
| David Elliot Wade | And it was a nice beach, but then they started right there. But when the storms came around, I don't know if it was days, or weeks, or days, but it tore down all that. And I've been over there several times since then and when them people drive over there, it may be a block or two of no ocean with all them wrecked buildings. For the permanently hang up with them, where the storm tore them down. Yeah. I seen all that there. That belonged to Hill and Lulu Freeman. | 10:42 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. I started to say, over on the beach, as we call it now, belonged to Black people. And of course the White people under minded, and took what they wanted, and everything. And they were in court not too long ago. Maybe about three years ago at most. It's something like that. Trying to get, well, the White folk could build all up their condos and all that stuff. Their trying to get it there. But the man to whom it belongs, Hill, Frank Hill, he passed and I don't know. They never did get anything for it. I just thought that was awful. | 11:13 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, because the White people just kept ruling them out until they found a way take it away from the Black people. | 12:00 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. Just took it away. | 12:07 |
| David Elliot Wade | They fought in court for some kind of time, but the money is what wins. | 12:07 |
| Mamie Wade | So, that was a day, I thought that was, let's say that shouldn't have happened. You know. Justice for all that this won't happen again. | 12:14 |
| Kara Miles | What was, the hotel that you were telling me about, the three-story building. | 12:29 |
| David Elliot Wade | That belongs to Lofton. | 12:34 |
| Kara Miles | Mrs. Lofton. | 12:36 |
| David Elliot Wade | But I can't remember, but my man told me, well, ever since I've been back this time about a week ago. I asked him what happened to the hotel because I couldn't remember. I said, "Well, if they had a fire down there, see what I mean? Close them buildings, the new water, no fight in the court was there. I could see how they could save it." But he said that's what happened to it. He said, "That it was Lofton's building burned down." I know several buildings around there, but I asked him what was happening with them. He said the storm torn down some of them. | 12:36 |
| David Elliot Wade | Which I know the storm did take out a lot of them, of course. Blue's lost his during the storm. And then old Petty, his name is Ted but it belonged to Grogan. I seen that pier left, the storm got so bad, and come down there, and it would have been out in the river. But it came across the marsh on the high tide and it got lodged on the old way plant you called it then. Well, the giant snow was cut and it stayed there until the people tore it up, and hauled off the wood, and first one took it to another. Because I went down there and got some of this. Pipe was messed up. That was the water where it went from the hill out to Groves Pen. Everybody was getting it, so it was free for everybody to go get it. | 13:14 |
| Kara Miles | So, Mrs. Lofton was a Black woman? | 14:10 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yes. Yup. | 14:13 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. | 14:13 |
| David Elliot Wade | Mrs. Lofton had to have money because She had a shofer, and a man running around the dining room. And then my aunt worked for several summers there. Washing and drying bath suits, and some of them—You ought to see them. All the bath suits they had. Bath suits. Oh. Lord. | 14:16 |
| Kara Miles | Tell me about them. What did they look like? | 14:45 |
| David Elliot Wade | The bath suit. The man and woman wear bath suits now. Shit. You couldn't even be—A lot of them people didn't treat it wise neither. I ain't going to lie to you. Shit. You wear a boy suit with pants under it. Then it had a big apron come down about halfway your leg. | 14:50 |
| Mamie Wade | That's right. Including—. | 15:12 |
| David Elliot Wade | My aunt dried many beds there often. | 15:13 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. Her name was Vick—Her first—Her name was Vick wasn't it? | 15:18 |
| David Elliot Wade | Uh-huh. Vick Lofton. I think she was Vick Lofton. Must have been the lady to Ted Lofton. | 15:22 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:15:33] Wrights. | 15:30 |
| David Elliot Wade | Uh-huh. Yeah. | 15:33 |
| Mamie Wade | Okay. Yeah. And then there was another man. Evidently he came later, Frank Harry. | 15:37 |
| David Elliot Wade | Huh? | 15:42 |
| Mamie Wade | Frank Harry came down later right? | 15:43 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yes. Frank Harry coming in later and Frank Harry, when it first starts it seemed the community owned the place. Mr. Rolling, Mr. George Greene, and George Gaus, and piled up together in the building. It's a community building, so later on when their partner died out then Bruce got in charge. And Bruce come in nearly after Frank Harry because I remember my— | 15:48 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. Bruce was yeah. | 16:12 |
| David Elliot Wade | —I remember Frank used to hide—we was married. I don't even think it was hardly courting and my wife used to wait on tables for Frank Harry a long time ago. | 16:18 |
| Mamie Wade | And there was a Daily, Richard Daily. He had a business down there. I was trying to think of somebody, and Sadie Willard. What was Sadie before—Sadie Simpson. | 16:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | Sadie was a Simpson, but last July she married George then she— | 16:46 |
| Mamie Wade | And Sadie didn't have a place for Sadie's grandparents right? | 16:48 |
| David Elliot Wade | No, Sadie didn't build the pit. Sadie grandparents built that building even though they were the Simpsons. And I can't think of what his wife's name, but I'm not good with their kind. | 16:53 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. All I knew was Mrs. Simpson. And there was a—I was trying to think of some of the older ones who had places down there. Wasn't it Higgins? Mimi and Higgins? | 17:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | Mimi Higgins and Mrs. Lockins. She built a place in there. That same place that Senator running it now. | 17:11 |
| Mamie Wade | Mm-hmm. | 17:20 |
| David Elliot Wade | Then there was a man coming there, even had a snake show. | 17:21 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh. Yeah. | 17:27 |
| David Elliot Wade | He was Snake Man. | 17:28 |
| Mamie Wade | We called him Snake Man. | 17:31 |
| David Elliot Wade | Called him Snake Man, but his name was—What was his name? | 17:31 |
| Mamie Wade | Thomas Robinson. | 17:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | Thomas? | 17:36 |
| Mamie Wade | Robinson. | 17:37 |
| David Elliot Wade | Robinson. Thomas Robinson. He come in there and he opened up a snake show. | 17:37 |
| Kara Miles | Oh goodness. | 17:42 |
| David Elliot Wade | He had snakes, live snakes and all them dancing, and doing that. Yeah. He didn't have much way to keep his snakes and it became a big storm, not a big storm, it's what we call it when we were there. It was just under the storm, but somehow he lost all his snakes in there. | 17:44 |
| Kara Miles | In his room? | 18:01 |
| David Elliot Wade | I don't know. | 18:05 |
| Kara Miles | So, all the snakes were just running lose? | 18:07 |
| David Elliot Wade | I guess he grabbed them around the storm, I reckon. I don't know. | 18:08 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh, Lord. | 18:09 |
| David Elliot Wade | Even though that show for lost count time. | 18:19 |
| Mamie Wade | Sure did. He did all kinds of things and all sorts of things to make money and entertain people too. He was one of the biggest liars. He would lie. He would just tell lies. I think just to tell them. Just to tell them. | 18:24 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, I heard when he'd come up to the school and he was telling them, talking so much, he told Mrs. Ellis, Mrs. Ellis knows good about farming, he come to the show, corn cost up to five, six ears corn on me [indistinct 00:18:58] any corn talk one or two cans. That was Snake Man. Said don't. I'm tired of hearing you guys. | 18:40 |
| Mamie Wade | Seems like one of the biggest ones, that to me that I heard him tell, he said that a dog was chasing him. And he had two buckets of water and he ran until he got to a fence that was eight feet tall, and he jumped this fence with two buckets of water, and not one drop spilled. | 19:09 |
| David Elliot Wade | Oh, man. | 19:38 |
| Mamie Wade | I thought that was about as big as he could tell. He just would do that. I think he knew that people didn't believe him. | 19:39 |
| Kara Miles | Nice. | 19:45 |
| David Elliot Wade | Just like you believe him now because it didn't slow him down. | 19:46 |
| Kara Miles | Was he from here? | 19:51 |
| Mamie Wade | No. | 19:52 |
| David Elliot Wade | No. | 19:52 |
| Mamie Wade | He was part Indian. I don't know what the tribe, but he was partly Indian. But you know, was it Portland Oregon, it seems like, that he came from somewhere. I know he used to talk about that a lot. Portland Oregon. Somewhere up in that area. I don't know where the Indians are, but. | 19:53 |
| Kara Miles | And would He be here all year round, or only— | 20:21 |
| Mamie Wade | He lives here. | 20:23 |
| Kara Miles | —come in Summer time, or? | 20:24 |
| Mamie Wade | No. He lives here. | 20:25 |
| Kara Miles | Oh. Okay. He came here to live. | 20:25 |
| David Elliot Wade | After He moved East, he stayed here in Wilmington. | 20:25 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. His wife is still living. | 20:34 |
| Kara Miles | Really? | 20:37 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. She's in a nursing home. She was the funniest and he used to put her on this display for people to see her. But she's a funny—Looking lady she was, I guess a regular size to her waist, from her head to her waist, and from there I bet she wasn't, she was so short. I mean her legs and thighs they were real short. She looked real funny and she'd go about like this. | 20:37 |
| David Elliot Wade | Mamie I'm not trying to cut you off, but I seen her coming down Front Street a many times and she'd get out around Dock Street, and step on something. She had to go to the light pole, skim down, and get her feet on the ground to get on the sidewalk. | 21:05 |
| Kara Miles | Oh my goodness. | 21:19 |
| David Elliot Wade | There was something wrong with her leg. If her leg would have been straight, she'd have been out there, maybe, six or 10 inches taller if it wasn't. | 21:20 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. | 21:32 |
| Kara Miles | And he would put her on display? | 21:32 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. Sure did. | 21:34 |
| Mamie Wade | That's what they said, yeah. | 21:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | I tell you, she was something to look at because we had never seen a person like her. Not a living being. One day she later on she built a place, what's it called? It's uh, what's the, I can't think of it. This lady built a place down there and she had high counter. Mrs. Arleen would get behind the counter, the counter was above her neck. So, one day she, there was this tall guy down there called Jim B., so he walked along and he sat up on the counter and she said to him, she said, "Jim get down off my counter." He ain't supposed to sit up on the counter. He said, "Aw. You just jealous because you can't get there." | 21:37 |
| Mamie Wade | And she had two—They had two beautiful children. | 22:29 |
| David Elliot Wade | She sure did. | 22:33 |
| Mamie Wade | Uh-huh. Her daughter's, who I thought was a beautiful girl too, and the son was a good-looking tall. They were nice children. | 22:38 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. She was nice and the children. What about Tom's little man. | 22:48 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh. No. | 22:50 |
| David Elliot Wade | You sure? I seen her in a dress a many of times. [indistinct 00:22:55]. You couldn't dress her up. | 22:50 |
| Mamie Wade | It seemed like it was a natural phase. She wasn't that ugly, but just the way she was built. | 22:57 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. Her legs. Well, she couldn't help it to the fact you could feel for her, something for her about it. | 23:05 |
| Kara Miles | So, was She a midget or? | 23:15 |
| Mamie Wade | Almost, not—They said she wasn't a midget, but she seemed to be almost the size of a midget. | 23:16 |
| Kara Miles | Where did Snake Man do his shows at? Where did he perform? | 23:26 |
| Mamie Wade | On Seabreeze. | 23:30 |
| Kara Miles | I mean, was there a building that he was at, or he would just be on the beach, or where would? | 23:32 |
| Mamie Wade | Well, he had some little cages built like little stands that he could perform into. That's what I remember. | 23:37 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. | 23:45 |
| Mamie Wade | Well, I'll tell you. Let me tell you something else Snake Man did. And you probably remember it too Elliot, he said that there was a man underground. He said that, no he didn't. He said that, this was a head. Do you remember that? He said that there was a head down there, so he had it fenced around for the people to come and see. And what had happened, he dug a hole down in the ground and he had somebody down there standing, that is one big liar he is, standing down in the ground, and the sand—all you could see was the head. And some of these devilish boys started throwing at the head and he had to stop that. We were talking about that the other day. Elliot do you remember that? | 23:47 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. I can remember that. | 24:45 |
| Mamie Wade | I remember because it was—And I sometimes, at that time, I would fall for a lot of things. People could fool me. And so, I thought, "Well, that must be a head." You know. "That a head there so." I would stand and look. I didn't see the boys throwing at it, but I heard later that it did and the man started hollering, so they had to—he had to stop that show. And I don't know. I can't—One thing he did, he had rides. He brought rides into Seabreeze. Said this was good for our children. They would go on different rides and this was good. | 24:51 |
| Kara Miles | He bought rides like— | 25:28 |
| Mamie Wade | Have them come in— | 25:28 |
| Kara Miles | —Ferris wheels— | 25:28 |
| Mamie Wade | —Yeah. | 25:28 |
| Kara Miles | —and things like that? | 25:29 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. Had Ferris wheels. Yeah. Swings and things like that. | 25:29 |
| David Elliot Wade | I remember He had the Ferris wheel, the happy horses, and— | 25:40 |
| Mamie Wade | The swings. | 25:40 |
| David Elliot Wade | —the swings and all that on all the beaches. | 25:42 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. So, that was a good things. I think he was really an—I knew he was an asset to the Seabreeze. He added, bright little things like that. Where it seems like most people were for the restaurants, the cooking, things like this. Beer. Selling beer, liquor, or whatever. And I guess he did the same thing, but he brought some other things in. So, I thought he did good. | 25:43 |
| Kara Miles | So, the rides that he brought in, were they—would you have to pay to ride them and things? | 26:13 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. You would have to pay. | 26:20 |
| Kara Miles | Were you children when he did that, or you were, did you ride these things or? | 26:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | My time, well, it was me. I was just a stock middle age teenager, I called it. In our times. | 26:33 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. We were teenagers. Yeah. 'Cause he's just a little older than I. And my children rode on those rides though. We used to take them down to Seabreeze. This was the only place to go and not just for, for people all around. Black people all around it seemed like. Seabreeze was the only place. Now that they have other beaches and then two, Black people have access to other beaches too, so. Seabreeze is just going down. It just went down. | 26:41 |
| Kara Miles | Was Seabreeze the only beach that Blacks could go to? | 27:23 |
| Mamie Wade | Right. | 27:26 |
| David Elliot Wade | Atlantic Beach. | 27:31 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. Years later in South Carolina somewhere opened up Atlantic Beach. | 27:32 |
| Kara Miles | Did you all ever hear, I've been hearing about a beach area called Bop City. | 27:43 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh. Yes! | 27:48 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well— | 27:49 |
| Mamie Wade | This is what we told— | 27:50 |
| David Elliot Wade | —that's over there. Go ahead Mamie. As I was trying to tell you, I won't be butting in. | 27:51 |
| Mamie Wade | That's okay. You can tell them because you remember so much better than I do. Yeah. Bop City is where, you heard Her say that the boat used to take them across, but when they went across that was Bop City right across from Seabreeze. | 27:58 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. | 28:10 |
| Mamie Wade | Uh-huh. Yeah. And this was the place that the White people took away from Frank Hill. | 28:11 |
| Kara Miles | What were you going to say about Bop City Mr. Wade? | 28:26 |
| David Elliot Wade | Bop Cit was just beginning to grow. I can't replace what's stolen because when I was working with the people over there we were hauling and graveling over there making freaking streets for them. During that year, but that was all. | 28:29 |
| Mamie Wade | I believe it was Hazel. | 28:42 |
| David Elliot Wade | It might have been him. I don't know, but you know Dave had built a place there. And then Grove had a big tent there for sale down at beach from that little coal about city down at the beach. When the pier come out there, then I get a fishing pier get out there in the ocean there. You'd rent and go out and fish, but that was owned by the White people, but still the Colored people could buy a ticket and go out during that time. But I don't know. | 28:48 |
| Kara Miles | How did Bop City get it's name? | 29:22 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, I think from people dancing and all that. They used a piccolo player over there just like— | 29:25 |
| Mamie Wade | Bopping. | 29:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | —Yeah. | 29:37 |
| Mamie Wade | Bop City. | 29:37 |
| David Elliot Wade | This is what you call a good time place. | 29:37 |
| Kara Miles | Did you use to go over there and have a good time? | 29:40 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, I've been over there, but I guess I was too old time. | 29:42 |
| Mamie Wade | I never did go to Bop City or maybe I went once, or maybe twice, but I guess because I'm afraid of water. | 29:52 |
| Kara Miles | Where there any other shows, like, you told me about Snake Man. Where there any other performers, or any other shows that used to be here? | 30:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | Not that I— | 30:11 |
| Mamie Wade | They used to bring bands in, didn't they? To Francis, somewhere to play. | 30:15 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, Yeah. I remember that. | 30:23 |
| Mamie Wade | Uh-huh. On holidays, but no other shows. Not that I can remember. | 30:25 |
| David Elliot Wade | They'd have orchestras that'd come down there. I say on Sunday afternoons, and Monday nights, and all that. It'd be me and Blue be jumping down there Monday nights. I just remember how many orchestras I've seen. I used to know the musicians that were playing there. | 30:37 |
| Mamie Wade | Orchestra. | 31:08 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, orchestras. | 31:08 |
| Mamie Wade | I was trying to think of some of them, some of them names. I remember one of them named Freddie Keith because I used to like him. Freddie Kieth, He was a pianist. | 31:08 |
| David Elliot Wade | There was one that he was a, Bennie played the drums. | 31:28 |
| Mamie Wade | That's it. | 31:29 |
| David Elliot Wade | A lot of them couldn't think of what was wrong with Bennie. Bennie would come in there then they'd take him up to talk. They had to bring him up there and sit him up just like a baby, but he sat there, and could beat that drum, and could tear the drum up. Because I don't know. Something's wrong with Ben's leg, I don't know what. | 31:31 |
| Mamie Wade | What about the lady. There was a big fat lady Elliot who used to play the piano. Big fat lady. I forgot her name, but she used to. | 31:56 |
| David Elliot Wade | I've been there many nights and many days seen that girl, but it's like I said, I can't remember. I seen many nights with my wife and her sister, half sister. We'd go down there at night, and she'd climb over that, and get where they was playing that music, and dancing, and dance herself to death. I often wondered how I could [indistinct 00:2:40]. I don't know nobody my way. I said go to the Blue Moon sometime and her and Douglass Williams would be dancing together. Many times. She'd be dancing, what they call it the breakaway during that time. And shit. They could turn them around slowly—Oh. God. | 32:20 |
| Mamie Wade | I was looking at the television not to long ago and that dance is back. Are they still doing that dance that we used to do? Where you kind of push him off, I don't know what it's called now. Phew, I used to love to dance. | 33:00 |
| David Elliot Wade | I don't know anybody my way in my family that dance except for her. She'd go to Blue Moon and most the dance you'd do. I was watching her and Douglass dance—it's dancing that I know. But I seen many times them people come out that dance hall on Labor Day, they go in there, I guess during the mornings, or even maybe Sunday afternoons and stay out half the night. By the night then they come in it being wet with topity shorts, I bet you couldn't nickname. You couldn't get that to work. You get wet with [indistint 00:33:58] like there would be sometimes. I said Lord. | 33:20 |
| Kara Miles | You didn't like to dance huh Mr. Wade? | 33:58 |
| David Elliot Wade | I didn't like to dance. | 33:58 |
| Mamie Wade | No. You didn't dance. Michael didn't either. They weren't dancing people. | 33:58 |
| David Elliot Wade | I couldn't even make a step. | 34:11 |
| Kara Miles | So, Mrs. Wade, you said you used to love to dance. | 34:12 |
| Mamie Wade | Uh-huh. Goodness I used to love to dance. | 34:20 |
| Kara Miles | Where did you used to go dancing at? | 34:25 |
| Mamie Wade | Seabreeze. | 34:27 |
| Kara Miles | Seabreeze. | 34:27 |
| Mamie Wade | And there's a place, He was mentioning it— | 34:30 |
| David Elliot Wade | Blue Moon. | 34:32 |
| Mamie Wade | —Blue Moon is it. That was a big club. They sold food there and had a big dance floor. But um, that was good too. I'd go there. And the same ones He was talking about his wife we'd dance with, I would too. Boogatee, Maceo, Thelmas. Those were the dances and we were dancers too. | 34:33 |
| Kara Miles | What kind of music was popular then? | 35:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | There were three or four piece orchestras doing their timeshare. And then later on piccolo got in bloom. | 35:09 |
| Mamie Wade | There was all kind— | 35:20 |
| David Elliot Wade | I seen the Mennonite out to the Blue Moon. Three or four people playing the slide horns, the bass drums, a many a night. | 35:26 |
| Mamie Wade | It seems like to me Blue's. Other ones too, but I guess that was my music. I like Blue's music. The blues, Louis Armstrong, all those—goodness. | 35:30 |
| Kara Miles | I wanted to ask again about, when you were talking about Labor Day at Carolina Beach, when Blacks could go to Carolina Beach on Labor Day. Did you ever go to that? | 35:59 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, during them times I worked for Carolina Beach for about, oh I guess, I stayed at Carolina Beach I guess 12 or 13 years working off and on with Carolina Beach. But during them times the biggest, there wasn't no Colored people come down because during that time on Fourth of July during the holiday we'd be working in the City Hall there. Cleaning the tables, we'd just clean for Carolina Beach. We'd go down there on and clean up. Then we got, there was a man, he was a town clerk, and he was just as nice as to be a White man he could be, Joey Vincent and Bill Smith, I got favors out of them that I couldn't get out of the Black people. | 36:10 |
| David Elliot Wade | But after I got the whole new WPA labor, through you I'd be interested in it, we could hardly get WPA labor, I want some eye glasses. Back then Colored people didn't make no money much. And so, I went to him and I said to him, I said, "Well, could you help me get a raise." I was getting 25 cent an hour. So, he said to me, he said, "I get what you do." He said, "Don't you never ask for 25, ask which is what you want. It's your weapon. Five or 10 cent more if you want and then you finally get what you asking for." So, I said, "Well, I guess that means you told me to." So, he told me that day, "Well, you put the running water fountain on the ocean front." | 37:17 |
| David Elliot Wade | And so, he said that, "Sometimes, oh. I think it was today, they're supposed to have a boat meeting." He said, "I'm going to talk for you." And he said, "I'm going to see if I can get you more money." So, I told him, I thanked him, I said, "These are things I need." I said, "I still need a raise. I'm getting 25 cents an hour." So, what he done, that week when the boat meeting come on I went to work the next morning he called me, he called me, He said, "Come here." He said, "You know what I've done? Last night I put your problem against the boat and I got you 35 cents." I said, "Great." I wanted to hug him. | 38:06 |
| David Elliot Wade | Then later on I got on a different WPA Labor, I got to making a 11 miles a day for 35 cents an hour during that time. | 38:51 |
| Mamie Wade | Good money huh. | 39:03 |
| David Elliot Wade | That was good money back then, child. I done that until way after—I never worked and I was a WPA—never had to work for what I had to do. I was driving trucks and Carolina Beach company, they borrowed up the money to put in that sewer system down there for the government. And they had to furnish the transportation. Was still by me working for the town. I had to haul and my job working in town and I owned a WGA. Was working on the double D and I know I'm supposed to be in my lane. But I worked with George Good and them and Bill Smith until they resigned. During that time when they resigned, I don't know how many years that was, but he told me, Dave said, "You just well, when they buy a new town clerk and policeman, he said, "What's going to happen they going to hire who they want, so they going to let you go." | 39:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, he said, "I'll tell you what I'm going—" That's George told me. He said, "What I'm going to do now." He said, "I've done resigned. I'm going to Florida and I'm going to visit some tourist in Florida." He said, "If you want to go with me, you and your wife both." My little boy had just been born, in 1937 he was born, and so when they got ready to go he said, "Well, you can go with me or you can stay. I'm going down to build some tourist and if you get down there and you and your wife don't like it, he said, I'll send you back or I'll bring you back home." So, I kept promising I was going, but as the time drew near I didn't want to go. I had just built my home and all. I said I don't want to go down there. | 40:05 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, I went to him and told him, so he hired another girl and young man from up where their name is from for naming them that. We go up the road and they went down. They went down to Florida and stayed down there for about, I guess it was a year or two. I don't know. But I don't know why they come back, but they come back and they never did go back. Now I never did ask them why or nothing about that, but I know they never went back. I just didn't want to leave home. | 40:55 |
| Kara Miles | So, were you able to still keep the job that you had here? | 41:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | No. No. | 41:34 |
| Kara Miles | No? They did let you go? | 41:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | No. They let me go. They wouldn't have let me go I guess if I had done like they wanted me to do, but I was long here. I just didn't believe in what people just using me just because they could. So one evening—I'll tell you why on my part on why I got fired. My brother married a girl up there, which we call a hill and Seabreeze road. And he and her had a run in one evening. So, the lady, her daughter, this girls mother told. Well, she called the cop on my brother. | 41:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, what happened when the cop came, the cop come on home there and she told that my brother was literally me. During the time when the cop first come over there, my brother wasn't, but my brother was drinking and he come back there in the bedroom. We had a four room house, so he come back to the bedroom and he laid down and he couldn't even lay on the bed. So, I said, "Yeah. Go ahead." So, I didn't know what had happened on—What he and his wife had been doing. I know nothing about that. | 42:13 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, later on I went to my mother and she said that the cop had been there and looking for my brother Dan and he searched the house, her house, and when he got ready to leave he made a smart remark. Yeah. He searched everything, but she had a little package, but she kept the girls on the back porch, and when he came out he asked, he searched that then he asked her if she had any more rooms. Well, he done searched all the house. Then Patti went, "Why do you want to know if—" You know we don't have more rooms. He wanted to be smart, so then he come on out to search mine. So, he come down to my house. He come on down and he and my boss there was riding a little pound wagon. | 42:42 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, he can lead through, so on the side of the house, he went around to the front door. So, he started beating on the front door. So, I went and turned the light on, so I said to him, I said, "What do you want?" He said, "I'm going to search your house." I said, "No your not." I said, "You searched my mothers house." I said, "If I had been over there you'd never searched it." And so he said, "Well, I'm supposed to search it." I said, "Well, you ain't going to come in here. You ain't going to search mine without a search warrant." I said, "You ain't supposed to search nobodies home without a search warrant." | 43:26 |
| David Elliot Wade | He got mad and my boss man was—had him in the wagon with him, so he said, "Davie." During that time I had the town truck. The new town truck belonged to town of Carolina Beach. Parked in my backyard because I was with WPA Labor. So, he said to me, my boss man said, "Wait, today he can't search your home without a search warrant, but I can tell you what he can do. He can make it hard for you on the job." I said, "Well, I don't care. If I work in the kitchen to make it hard on me, I don't care what he does." So, that went on for about two, three weeks. And so, all the other time I'd bring back for five, six, seven, or eight years, I'd been bringing the truck home from the job when I put my men out in Wilmington and I come on back down my road down there in Seabreeze tell him I'm going to keep the truck in my yard until the next morning. | 43:58 |
| David Elliot Wade | Get up the next morning it was time to pick up the men. I was running from—One of these guys was running from the CA. The Carolina Adversary, Whites would take over. He'd go CA and I'd go to Red Cross and pick up 35 or 40 he had to meet at the end of the day. When putting that sewer system in there. So, what happened, they told I went and heard they were going to fire me, but I done quit before they were going to fire me. So, my people that I was hauling, David P. he said, "Dave don't you quit. I don't know if your saved or not. He said, "I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to talk for you." But I done quit at 4:45 without a chance to fire me. I hung around there a long time thinking they was going to help me and got to, they want to get out there. The chain go all new men. All George, Bill Smith, and men all were gone. Everything was a new crew men. So, they didn't know me and I didn't know them. | 44:45 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, what happened, I went down there one Saturday. Me and other boys had to go down on a Saturday and clean up the beach. It's 12 o'clock, we was working hard. Get the truck and go on back home. So, that particular day they told them to come to me. He said, "Dave, don't take the truck home tonight. Leave the truck on the town lot and Monday morning when you get ready to go pick up your men." | 45:50 |
| David Elliot Wade | I just finally got messed up with them and I got tired of it. When they let me go, they thought I had more many yet, many more of them that would go on many weeks before they got there and burned them up. I didn't want [indistinct 00:00:33] and everybody had a job. So I was a job to job when I got it. I got my car and headed to [indistinct 00:00:36]. Mamie you can take over. | 0:03 |
| Mamie Wade | You're doing fine. I knew you would do well. He can remember so much. | 0:33 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, yeah. | 0:33 |
| Mamie Wade | So well. | 0:44 |
| Kara Miles | So when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, did you go to the war? | 0:47 |
| David Elliot Wade | I went to Fort Bragg. | 1:01 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. | 1:02 |
| David Elliot Wade | That's as far as I got. I drove all the way to Fort Bragg, but I didn't pass. I know I didn't have an idea I was going to pass when I went there, but I just knowed I had to go. | 1:02 |
| Kara Miles | How about jobs during the war? Was it easier or harder to get jobs during the war? | 1:14 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, it was a small community. It was one of those little—Most of the people in my community always get a job. We was all been doing just things around like carving or fishing or something or other, cooking or something or other. I didn't have—My son's told me several times since I tell him what I do. He said, "Daddy, you didn't stay on a job long enough to get no money out there." | 1:19 |
| David Elliot Wade | I said, "No, when I got tired, I leave, because everybody knows me and [indistinct 00:01:55]." My daddy was kind of industrial. I don't believe another Black man was on the [indistinct 00:02:01], because I know he had two shrimping trawls and all. My dad had two shrimp trawls and boats and all that stuff. He carried all that to Southport from Mamie's husband to my oldest brother because we'd been down there, five or six of us, one family shrimping. When the people are catching shrimp now, I've been down there. We go out in the ocean some morning and you put onboard and drag anywhere from an hour, from an hour to an hour and a half and take up maybe 15, 20, 25 bushels of shrimp in one drag. I don't mean no one day. | 1:45 |
| David Elliot Wade | I said one night we come in there. The women out in South Port headed shrimp all afternoon to maybe 12:00, 1:00 at night. Then there's 300 some bushels on the table in the shrimp house till the next day. | 2:38 |
| Kara Miles | Nice food. | 2:51 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. | 2:51 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, 300 bushels on the table there, that ain't nothing, and the women come down. Then a lot of time they'd have to go up in Brunswick County. See, I'll tell you. Y'all don't know. Scaling the shrimp will make your hands just as sore as if somebody was sticking needles in them in a way, but a lot of women and even I done it many times. Buy a box of gloves. I think it comes 24 pair in a box. And I'd buy a box and another Colored fellow in Southport would divide and do it, and sometimes during that week you wear them out. Every one of them was just a cotton, you know, cotton gloves. | 2:52 |
| Mamie Wade | How much was shrimp a bushel then? | 3:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | Hmm? | 3:28 |
| Mamie Wade | How much were the shrimp a bushel? | 3:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | Shrimp? Well, they were anything from a dollar to a dollar and 25. | 3:28 |
| Mamie Wade | A bushel. | 3:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | A bushel, and I don't need—The stuff they're catching now, when you see them outside the highway on these cars down there, you couldn't give that away during my time. I seen one of them old ladies. If my wife was still living, she could tell you the same thing. I was [indistinct 00:03:30]. Sometimes do it from Thursday until we come home on Saturday or maybe Friday night or Saturday morning, and sometimes we were staying out, how you felt about it, how tired you were doing. I feeled every time I'd go through some of the shrimp doing it, I'd say Thursday and Friday, and pick all the big blue legs, I called them, and they were running there for 16 shrimp to a pound. I seen that happen many times. | 3:29 |
| David Elliot Wade | I'd bring them onto shore to my wife and her sister, just knowing, because I knowed they had never seen nothing like that. But there weren't good to eat because some of them so big and tough you had to almost cut them up into small pieces unless you cook them a long time. You could boil them a long time and they'd get soft, but I don't know. They just— | 4:27 |
| Mamie Wade | When you were mentioning about the work, doing the work, wasn't there a shipyard Elliot that people worked? | 4:27 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, during the wartime, there wasn't many ships in Wilmington, and the women, they might know about it. I don't believe it. I don't believe no ship. Well, one time the ship. That was before my time. That was before my time. I heard people talking about it, but the only thing I know, the last war was they were building a new ship there in Wilmington. | 4:27 |
| Mamie Wade | Uh-huh. | 4:27 |
| Kara Miles | Mr. Wade, when you were talking about Whites like Mr. Goodson and all of those people that you had good relationships with, were there any Whites that you didn't have good relationships with? | 5:45 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, during them times, you didn't have to do much of anything to them. Some of them, some of them you could. I don't care what you—Your wife could go down there and cook for them and do all that, work for them and clean for them, but still all the same time, they didn't want you to come in their buildings. | 5:59 |
| David Elliot Wade | I seen one time my wife worked with the man owned a lot of business on Carolina Beach or where he worked, but she worked with him from the time his first children was only—He had two boys, and she worked there with him until them boys got grown enough that they had children of their own. But my daddy went down there one time. Well as he knowed my daddy, I went and looked in his front door. | 6:22 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, Daddy was telling me he wanted to make a telephone call. Well, by him knowing and my wife worked with him and he know, he figured he was already good and they wouldn't mind him making a phone call. So Papa went up to the door and went in the dining room, and the White people were there. He looked up and seen Papa, and Papa said he just as well looked up and seen a barrel of manure the way he carried on. From then on, Papa didn't never care no more about him. And I don't much blame him, but he was— | 6:53 |
| David Elliot Wade | White people, I don't care what you do, White people just didn't—Back in them times, I don't care what you had done. You was a Negro, a nigger, as they call them. | 7:30 |
| Mamie Wade | Carolina Beach was very, very segregated. They just seen, just hate you because you were Black. That's almost a fact, but I guess that's why all of them— | 7:43 |
| David Elliot Wade | It wasn't what you done to them. | 7:49 |
| Mamie Wade | No. | 7:50 |
| David Elliot Wade | It's just what they felt about you. | 7:50 |
| Mamie Wade | Right. I worked some on Carolina Beach, and you didn't go in there front—You didn't say you were going to go in their front door. You always went around. I remember working for this lady on Carolina Beach, and she would hardly feed you, and they weren't paying you anything to start with. I remember washing. She had an outside little building, and I washed. It was cold, and when I came in, she had opened a cold can of pork and beans with a loaf of bread, a couple of slices of bread like that. Hurt my feelings. I was cold. The weather was cold, and that the least she could have done was heated them. I tell you what. | 7:55 |
| Mamie Wade | I didn't, thank God, I didn't work too much on Carolina Beach. My husband, and it's nothing proud to say I suppose, but my husband was a bootlegger, and made liquor and sold liquor, and there was good money in that. And I didn't have to work as much as some people had to work, thank God for that, but some of the places I went, they were certainly rough. Then I had some mighty nice ones, too, that I worked for. | 8:55 |
| Mamie Wade | Let me tell you, one of the things I was thinking about when Rhonda called. I was trying to think of some of the things that I might talk about, that Kara might be interested. One of these things was the bus situation on Carolina Beach, not just up. It was all over, but I'm talking about Carolina Beach. | 9:29 |
| Mamie Wade | At that time, there were lots of servicemen, and when we worked and caught the bus, most of the times these servicemen would build, and women too, not just the men but men and women, they would have a seat by them, maybe—It was a long seat, maybe about three people sitting on a seat. They would sit on—They'd get on the end of that seat, but no matter where they sat on that seat, you did not sit down beside them. You had to stand up. | 9:59 |
| Mamie Wade | I declare, this is one of the things it seems hurt me more that anything. I would work all day. I was so tired, catch the bus, have to stand up, and plenty of space on the bus, but I couldn't sit down because there was a White person sitting there. The man and the bus driver, I won't forget him. Old Joe they used to call him. He would go past your road. You'd pull your card. He would pass your road every time. | 10:33 |
| Mamie Wade | One day I thought to myself, well, of course I knew. I knew that he knew where I was to get off, so I said, "I'll pull the string earlier," and I pulled it much earlier. He just, I mean, just kept, just like he's not going to stop, right on past my road. And you did not. You didn't talk nothing. Now and then you'd find some brave souls who would, but I didn't say anything. I got off the bus and came home. | 11:07 |
| Mamie Wade | The next morning, I went back to work. The lady I worked for was the head of the post office. I went in and she said, "Mamie, Old Joe passed last night. He died." Now that was as happy as I have ever been to hear that somebody was dead. But I said, "Is that right?" When she came for lunch, that's when I told her. I didn't say anything at the post office. I told her what had happened. She didn't say anything, because they liked him a lot. Well, he was nice to them you know. But that was one of the most hurtful experiences, that bus ride. I used to hate to get on that bus because— | 11:35 |
| David Elliot Wade | You, Mamie, you was lucky to get on it. I tell you what I've done, and me and my friend, there was two or three of us working for the town, and we could go to the bus station. I didn't cut you off, did I? | 12:35 |
| Mamie Wade | No. | 12:41 |
| David Elliot Wade | We'd go to the bus station, and they would sell us our ticket, sell us a ticket. We'd come on back and we'd try to get on the bus and, see, what would happen, the Black people had one seat across the back of the bus, and how could we get to the seat when they'd be lined—when the White people when the bus pulled off to go to Wilmington, they'd be standing up all on the side of the rows, and then when this man closed that folding door, they had to get out. Then when he closed them in and down through the bus, the people was standing up. All the seats was full, and you couldn't get to the back seat. And the days we did get to the back seat, we could put—I've done it a million times. | 12:44 |
| David Elliot Wade | Across there where the bridge makes a—go over the bridge, go over the waterway, I'd pull the cord there, and what he would do, he'd carry us clean to Seabreeze Road. And I lived down in the side of the waterway. He'd would carry me all down the Sea Breeze Road and wouldn't make—He'd tell us he couldn't make but one stop. Then we had to walk all the was from Sea Breeze Road back to the bridge to go into my house. He done that many times. | 13:27 |
| Mamie Wade | I'll tell you something else, too, while we're still talking about the bus. The bus station, it was awful where the Black people had to go. I've looked over so many times through. There was a little hole that we would go to, and they would serve us whatever we asked for, and the children, of course, would always, you know, "I want some ice cream," or, "I want some candy." We had to go back in this little hole and get whatever, and then they just threw it, almost threw it. Oh, it was hateful. | 13:56 |
| Mamie Wade | And inside the bus station, the bathrooms were awful. They were just smelly and run over, and the White people's was so different, just nice. Oh, I tell you. And then there were some of these—And some of these White people, they still got it in them. I mean, it's still there. | 14:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | I thought all that was playing away with until I went to Maryland here for the last year. Up there, you can hear more, man. It just went nigger as far as all the radio and television. It's just as bad in a way. | 14:59 |
| Mamie Wade | Now, that's one thing that I have not experienced too much around here is nigger and this kind of stuff lately. I have not that much. | 15:20 |
| David Elliot Wade | Might not have. I know a friend of mine, she—Well, I went on many days with my sister when my sister was just starting out in her early, I guess, maybe 20, anywhere from 18 to 20 years. She went out cooking for different people in the kitchen, and during that time, she was afraid when it was night. The people served supper around just, I guess now, 7:00, 8:00. Well, it be dark a lot of times when she got home, and what she would ask me to do is walk down to the beach, well went to the beach with her so I could walk back with her at night when she got off of work. | 15:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | She was working for a lady down there run a restaurant, and that woman was mighty nice to me. I could go back. Didn't use no gas or nothing. During that time, they was using wood and coal, and it'd be [indistinct 00:16:32]. I remember many a nights I'd go and sit on where they kept the coal and stuff. I'd sit on the box until my sister would get off to come home, and then we'd come on home, but one day down there, this woman, not the woman she was working for but another lady, she carried this lady, a Colored girl, carried her brother down. When they got ready to give them dinner, she told him to go out on the steps take and plate his dinner in a cantaloupe rind. Some of her children ratted her out and fed this Colored child. | 16:15 |
| David Elliot Wade | I told my sister, "Let me tell you. She couldn't have fed me out of it because I'd of throwed that right at her if she cook me to eat out of cantaloupe." She might have put me in jail. If she couldn't keep me, she'd put me in jail. You had to feed me. | 17:07 |
| David Elliot Wade | I tell you, I've been treated bad by these southern White people. I would likely need to tell what I seen around southern White people, but later on as we grew up, I got things just like they did, and so. It didn't make too much difference in my book. I done a whole lot better than a lot of Whites I seen right here in this community. But I had to work for it, though. Nobody give me nothing. | 17:20 |
| Mamie Wade | I was thinking about our pay. The other day I was thinking I couldn't believe it, all that I do for [indistinct 00:18:05], and my husband was making one dollar a day when we got married, worked all day long, from the sunrise until the sunset. It wasn't even 8:00 till 4:00 or 8:00 to whatever, nothing like that, but from sunrise until sunset. My husband, God bless the dead, worked all day long, tiring, I mean just hard behind a mule all day long for one dollar a day, five dollars a week. Now, that's true. | 18:01 |
| Mamie Wade | But during that time, you could get a lot—Well, it went farther, but money went much farther then than it does now. Of course, it had to at the time. Well, I thought that was a little bit of money. I kept—said, "I can't believe this," so I asked my brother-in-law if he ever worked for a dollar a day, and he said that yes, he worked for less than a dollar a day." | 18:44 |
| David Elliot Wade | Let me tell you, that's the reason I ain't got no education. I got disgusted. I quit school and went with my, with a friend of mine, Mamie Lloyd. I went to work for her for 75 cent a day and one meal. She offered me two meals a day, but I'd always eat breakfast home and eat supper home. That only made me eat dinners at her place, but she was a nice—There weren't no nicer woman ever went in a kitchen [indistinct 00:19:49]. I ain't saying because I went there, but I seen Colored people she dealt with, and she give me 75 cent a day and one meal a day for a long kind of time there. | 19:14 |
| Kara Miles | What did you do for her? | 20:03 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, they had anywhere from, I'd say, from 50 to 75 cows, and what they would do, she would make her own butter. She'd make her own butter and she'd sell milk and had a grocery store. And she raised vegetables. I tole Mamie, I told Mamie, I said, "I've never worked with nobody in my life being Black was done just like White people." | 20:05 |
| David Elliot Wade | Ms. Lydia, they ate three times a day, I don't care what time of day, how bad the weather was, how bad the week was, the food was on that table three times a day, and I know it because I—The reason I know because plenty of times my legs went up under that table at dinnertime and I knew what was going on. | 20:38 |
| Mamie Wade | They were well-living. | 21:00 |
| David Elliot Wade | They sure were. And I'll tell you something else now. During that time, I didn't have a bicycle and her oldest, the child she raised, her husband's children, when I went there he had three automobiles. He had a Buick, a De Soto, and a convertible Ford, and when I go there some mornings, what would happen, he'd be gone during the day. But he come in. He come in and change his clothes and get in another car and ride out in the afternoon. He done that. If that ain't the truth, I'll about drop dead before y'all leave here. | 21:00 |
| David Elliot Wade | He had three cars and I didn't have a bicycle. And so I went around there, and I said, "Lord, if I could ever live, if I could ever live like Lloyd Freeman was living, I'd of thought Lloyd had his heaven on earth," because in the wintertime he'd come in, he'd change clothes. He didn't wear no coat or nothing. Well, it still was mostly summertime. He'd have on a nice shirt, and he went back in town where people wore long-sleeved shirts. I seen him many times, to keep his shirt from dangling around his wrists, he had on that—It was like a little garter or something around there, a little, it would go up here. He'd pull his shirt back and— Man, he had all. Lord have mercy. | 21:50 |
| Mamie Wade | I think he really did have more money than anybody else around at that time, but what did he—Was he a bootlegger, too? | 22:20 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. | 22:30 |
| Mamie Wade | It seems like bootleggers were the ones that— | 22:30 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well bootleggers, tell you the fact, that's how the whole North Carolina, down in this part, got their money. If you sitting there—I tell you what. I was at Fort Fisher. I wasn't really working. Mamie's husband come to us one day. He said, "Boys, I'm going away from here." [indistinct 00:22:54]. That was Mamie's husband. He said, "I'm going away and I'm going over to make some money. I'm going to make some time," da, da, da. | 22:30 |
| David Elliot Wade | Then Lewis come home [indistinct 00:23:01]. Then Lewis come home. Lewis had had another car. He got it in the [indistinct 00:23:08], and everybody in Wilmington knowed Lewis, and he got on his feet. | 22:58 |
| Mamie Wade | Right on his feet. | 23:08 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, he got on his feet, and he told me one day, he said, "Let me tell you something else. Things were getting kind of tough with me during that time. He said, "As long as you carry a dinner bucket," he said, "you'll never get nowhere. When you get to the place you can go up to the restaurant and buy your meals like the White man do," he said, "you can feel glad to get ahead." | 23:12 |
| David Elliot Wade | He said, "But any time you carry a dinner bucket home," he said, "you'll never get nowhere." If that wasn't the truth, I never heard it. (laughs) But I got going out with him making bootleg. We be making—That's when I got—All my whole life. I worked one job 18 years, but I'd say five or 10 years of that job I was bootlegging all the same and my boss man didn't know I'd made a drop of liquor. I could make liquor and keep my mouth closed. I wasn't a motor mouth around that time. | 23:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | Most of the way you get along was you could make it and some of your friends know you had it. You could get rid of it, but you had to let somebody know to get rid of it, but you could talk too much and first thing you know the man would have handcuffs on you. | 23:58 |
| Kara Miles | Did your husband ever get caught? | 24:19 |
| Mamie Wade | Yes, he did. He finally got caught. He made it a long time, though. They finally caught him, but he didn't—I don't know how long he stayed. Not that long. | 24:20 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, shoot, back in that time—Am I cutting you off? Back in that time they didn't—If you had made it long enough to get you some money saved up, you could—Money, you'll get out, but during them times, they didn't give you no time. I seen times, one time, Lewis got caught and then he would come home and stay home Saturday night to Monday morning. | 24:34 |
| Mamie Wade | But he kept on making it after he got out. Oh boy. Are we giving you what— | 24:58 |
| Kara Miles | Yes, this is wonderful. | 25:08 |
| Mamie Wade | Really? | 25:08 |
| Kara Miles | This is wonderful. | 25:08 |
| Mamie Wade | I knew I wanted to help because I love to listen to him. Oh, Elliot can tell us so many things that we forget or that we've never known. Some things I didn't even know. | 25:12 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, I'll tell you something else happened to me.—Oh, what time is it? 5pm— One day, I knowed I should have done it, but during that time I was young and full of dinner, so I—In the mornings, what I'd do, my uncle and my daddy raised a lot of watermelons and cantaloupes and my uncle had a lot of chicken. And at that time, he would sell all that stuff around Carolina Beach. So what I done, I'd take a mule and cart and go to Carolina Beach. I'd go— Back that time you could drive down there where the yacht base is now, just beyond the yacht base. The tide, well, I seen the time when you could walk across the sound way down to the left, but get on your feet and walk across it as long as you could, but during that time, I used to drive that mule and cart across to some of my customers. I had several customers up on the northern extension and they'd buy a lot of my watermelon and a lot of my eggs and different stuff like that. | 25:22 |
| David Elliot Wade | So that particular one, I said, "I'm going to make a shortcut." I went across the beach and put out my watermelon, and so the devil told me to come down through the bathing zone with the mule and cart, and that's what I knowed I shouldn't have done, but here come the mayor, coming down there. He's mad. I thought—If you'd have seen the excitement he carried on and hollering and talking it to me, you'd have thought I run over some of them White people's babies down there. | 26:27 |
| David Elliot Wade | So, I thought, what have I done? He said, "I don't care what." He said, "Don't you ever drive that ass down to the oceanfront no more." | 26:57 |
| David Elliot Wade | I said, "Okay." I asked him, what harm would—Now he [indistinct 00:27:16], he act like he wanted to kick me or something because I'd drove down [indistinct 00:27:23], but I'll tell you what he didn't do. He never raised his hand and hit me. It'd would have been me and a White man right together. I don't drive them, and I seen the time that when a lot of them people down there—My mother and some other of my people in my neighborhood used to wash and iron for White people before the [indistinct 00:27:49] took [indistinct 00:27:49] and run Carolina Beach. You wouldn't believe if I tell you because they couldn't pay my mother. | 27:06 |
| David Elliot Wade | Mama sent us down to carry the clothes to them on Friday or Saturday. They had to wait till they get their check during the week before they could pay us. See, they'd get paid but the 15th and the 1st. | 27:56 |
| Mamie Wade | But they had you washing their clothes. | 28:06 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, they did, but they wanted my mother washing their clothes for them and wait until they get their money, but still they wanted to tell me where not to drive or where not to come. I said, "Lord, have mercy." | 28:08 |
| David Elliot Wade | If they act like—I know that a lot of them White people, they're rolling in their grave if they know the Black people going to the beaches and doing everything they wanted to do down there. | 28:20 |
| Mamie Wade | That's right. | 28:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | They rolling in their grave if they know that that beach is full of Coloreds. | 28:28 |
| Mamie Wade | [indistinct 00:28:35] Black people are doing now. | 28:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | Shucks. I seen the time during the last war. My wife's cousin come down there, but he's kind of strange because he'd been overseas for a while, and he come down there. He come down through the business section going to the liquor house on the south end of Carolina Beach. He was looking for the liquor house, so he came down the boardwalk walking, looking for liquor. Well, since he been there, Carolina Beach burnt the beach down, burnt down, I mean to nothing. | 28:43 |
| David Elliot Wade | But they built it back up, so when he come it was all feeling strange to him. He come down the boulevard. You know, the cop got at him and didn't want him to walk the boardwalks. Niggers wasn't supposed to walk down through there at the boardwalk. Shit. Y'all don't know nothing. | 29:16 |
| Mamie Wade | I remember this particular—I didn't work too many places, I think as I said before, at Carolina Beach, but there was a place called Malcolm Inn that I worked. This lady was so nice, Ms. Hood. You remember her. She was a very nice lady, but the people that were there, sometimes I would come in and it was, "Nigger." It's just thrown off on you. "She certainly has got a tan. How would you like to have a tan like this?" | 29:38 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh, I tell you. Just Lord have mercy. [indistinct 00:30:13]. | 30:05 |
| David Elliot Wade | I was talking here a while ago about my wife work with this family of people. When their children come home, they were like a baby. My wife stayed there until they got, till their babies growed up, and they got children seven, eight, 10 years old their self now, but you know what this White lady did to my wife? Worked all that long winter, and what she would do—Now her and another girl tell the same thing that my wife raised. If this lady was setting to the table and some of her White friends come up and knocked on the door like that and she was there eating with her, she'd jump up and grab her paper plate that she was eating out of and went up in the other part of the house, that she went back there with it. | 30:12 |
| David Elliot Wade | I said, "Well, if she'd have done me that way, when she come back the next day I'd have pulled her door to and I'd have been home. Sarah told me the same thing, saying, "Ms. [indistinct 00:31:08] would be at the table. Somebody come knock on the door, her White friends, and to keep them from seeing her, she'd run up in the house and come out another door." | 30:53 |
| David Elliot Wade | How would you feel to go there and tell you you had to cook and wait. I said many times her husband would come up there and my wife would take time to—His children was in high school. I reckon they was. I'm not sure they was. And what, he would bring the shirts up there, and my wife, so many times, my wife wash the shirts and dry them and press them and give them back to him and carry back to the beaches that same day. He set in the car and wait on her to do it, to give them back, and then he didn't want my daddy to come to ask him could he make a telephone call for his business. I don't know. | 31:19 |
| David Elliot Wade | And Ms. Lydia, she just—I know where they were determined to spend eternity at because of it. I tell you. I've heard a lot of them say, "My mother's done gone on to heaven," and I didn't know that. I don't think nobody's going to heaven, but I heard some— | 31:55 |
| Mamie Wade | The way some of them have treated us, you wouldn't think. | 32:22 |
| David Elliot Wade | No. | 32:28 |
| Mamie Wade | They'd ever, huh? | 32:28 |
| David Elliot Wade | Nah, I say the way they treated us, you wouldn't had a [indistinct 00:32:31] they'd ever think about going to heaven. God ain't going to have that kind of person in his heaven. | 32:29 |
| Mamie Wade | That's the [indistinct 00:32:39]. | 32:32 |
| David Elliot Wade | I know it. | 32:32 |
| Kara Miles | You said your husband made good money bootlegging. | 32:48 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah. | 32:51 |
| Kara Miles | How much? Could you compare it to how much he would have made at a job? How much money did he make bootlegging? | 32:51 |
| Mamie Wade | I don't know, but during those times, of course it might not be much now, but it was about compared to what now? And it— | 33:03 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, just in them times you got 25, well before my time, you got $25 a case for whiskey. A case was 12 jars, and you could retail it for—If you retail it you get more. You retail, I say, for six or seven dollars a jar if you wanted it bad enough. But as far as that, you could make, if you could get in the woods and the man didn't blow his place up, you could—I said many times that if you sell—I have sold 27 cases of whiskey in less than two weeks in the [indistinct 00:33:59]. That was $500, $600 he made right quick. | 33:13 |
| David Elliot Wade | But now you couldn't make no money because stuff's so high now. And the other thing, it got to where you couldn't buy no sugar. Then the next thing, certain people you sell it would turn you in. | 34:02 |
| Kara Miles | Black people you sold it to would then— | 34:14 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, they just got just as crooked as the White men because, see, if somebody got into it, then you couldn't trust nobody. In fact, one hand couldn't trust the other one. | 34:26 |
| Kara Miles | So it was people, they would tell on you. | 34:31 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. | 34:33 |
| Kara Miles | They would tell the cops. | 34:33 |
| David Elliot Wade | Tell the cops. I know my brother, I guess Mamie came to the same thing, he got another guy to take them to town to pick him up, and he carried a little— He started a little liquor, and the same man he had hired, when the cop passed, he blowed the whistle. I mean he blew the horn, and the man came out and caught my brother. Yeah. | 34:34 |
| Kara Miles | Now why would they do that? | 34:59 |
| David Elliot Wade | Well, I guess they—Well, somebody was paying them a little money. | 35:03 |
| Kara Miles | Oh. | 35:07 |
| David Elliot Wade | Another thing, if you get into something and you're doing good, there's always somebody going to try to pull you down. They'll want to know how you got it and where you got it from. That's why I said when I was messing with it, I didn't do too much talking because I worked on a job 18 years and they didn't know where I get—I heard my boss man say many times. I'd buy new cars, like that, and one day I'd been to Sands because I was low in the field for fertilizer during that time. I come up and I seen four or five men in the line. I seen three or four of them standing around my car when I come in from loading the field for fertilizer. I said, "What are they there for?" | 35:07 |
| David Elliot Wade | When I walked up, they were standing beside my car, and one White man asked my boss man, he said, "Well, tell me how can he buy?" He said, "That's what I'm trying to find out now. How can he do it?" He didn't know what I was doing, but he said, "That's what I'm trying to do now, find out how he do do it." Shit, I don't know. | 35:52 |
| Kara Miles | When did you stop bootlegging? | 36:19 |
| David Elliot Wade | Oh, later on my wife went into the foster children business, and I had to stop because during that time you couldn't—You had to have a job and you had to keep your place in shape to keep them children. They paid so much for each child, but you couldn't do nothing you weren't supposed to do, like breaking the law, because they come out and inspect your home every month. | 36:21 |
| Kara Miles | Oh. | 37:05 |
| David Elliot Wade | And so that broke the bootleg business up, so I—Then it was getting so bad, too many people getting into it, and then everybody not getting no money no way. | 37:05 |
| Kara Miles | So about what years was this? | 37:10 |
| David Elliot Wade | Huh? | 37:14 |
| Kara Miles | When was this? What year was this? | 37:14 |
| David Elliot Wade | I reckon— | 37:16 |
| Mamie Wade | Let's see how it was [indistinct 00:37:24]. It's pretty near 20 years. | 37:23 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, I think it was— | 37:25 |
| Mamie Wade | Maybe about '18, '17, '18. | 37:25 |
| David Elliot Wade | I don't remember what year was that if I was going to tell you a fact, but nevertheless I didn't much fool with it no more. | 37:25 |
| Mamie Wade | He adopted the children, two of his foster children. | 37:41 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, that's it. I may have been better off. What I done, my wife—I don't believe I'd tell you a lie. My wife, from the first time my wife went into the business until she got too old to having to take care of the children, I bet she had every bit of 50 to 75 head of children. I seen different times she had seven at one time, seven babies. Seven at one time. I told her several times. She'd get up and try to brace up. I tell you, I've done that. You take those children into your home, if you didn't love them, you didn't need any young ones. | 37:44 |
| David Elliot Wade | What I would do, during that time I had an outhouse behind my garage. but I sold it, but I went in the house, and many times they'd carry them children off and cry because they carried the children, because I loved the children. The first one, the first child they ever brought to my house, we kept her 16 months, and during the time when my daddy talked for me and some others talked, but I wanted to keep her. But they wouldn't let me keep her, I believe. I don't know. That's what I figure. They figured if they let me keep her that me and Ida would go out of business. We wouldn't keep no fosters, and Ida was a good foster mother. | 38:23 |
| David Elliot Wade | Any time she'd go in and get one of 16 years or more, 13 or 16. It was 13 or 16 years, I know, and she kept children all that while. If she hadn't been a good foster mother, she never would have kept them for a little while. Don't know many people that kept them that long. And out of all of them we got babies, and we kept—We take the same girl we got now, they brought me over here today, me and my wife adopted her when she was three days old, and now she's pretty much 27 or more? | 39:05 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah, something like that. | 39:38 |
| David Elliot Wade | 27, and we got a boy. I think he about eight or nine days old if I remember about that. He's 18. He's in his early 20s. We went a long way. | 39:44 |
| Kara Miles | Did you all have any children of your own? Did you have any children that— | 40:01 |
| David Elliot Wade | Our own children? | 40:05 |
| Kara Miles | Uh-huh. | 40:05 |
| David Elliot Wade | We had one child. Yes, that's why I'm up there now. He live in Maryland. | 40:08 |
| Kara Miles | Okay. But your wife just like children a lot, so that's why she wanted to be a foster? | 40:14 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah, they want the money and do it, but she just—Her mother kept a lot of children, people working on the farm. That's what she was raised up there with, her mother keeping children. There wasn't no money into it, but it was doing somebody a good deed. I tell my wife many times, I said, "You work off that car with them White people talking with you. White people get the car and you getting the heartbreak." She walk inside and brace up and try to make it, come back crying on the inside when the child waving goodbye or crying in those White people's arms leaving out. She take it on the inside. | 40:19 |
| David Elliot Wade | Many White families told me, I know a lot of them, was a few working at JC Penney when she told me she knowed about we was keeping children because a lot of times my wife get purchase orders for the children. You could get a purchase order and the welfare coming out here on the first, you could take that and buy anything that they called for, for them children. I seen them children go up there many times and go to somewhere and get two pairs of shoes at one time. | 41:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | They had this man, I say, on New Hanover County. He couldn't buy his children two pairs of shoes at one time. Welfare taking care of them children in that respect. | 41:33 |
| Kara Miles | So Mrs. Wade, when did you husband stop bootlegging? | 41:53 |
| Mamie Wade | I was trying to think while you were talking. Let me see. How long? He's been dead about eight years, and—I guess I can't say exactly the time, but—You have any idea, Elliot? Do you remember? I don't know exactly. | 41:56 |
| David Elliot Wade | I don't know just what time. | 42:30 |
| Mamie Wade | Well, he stopped and went to work. | 42:30 |
| David Elliot Wade | I believe pretty much all your children were grown, really. | 42:38 |
| Mamie Wade | Yeah, they were. Yeah. It must have been—Let me see, his mother—Maybe I can tell it this way. Marcus, my youngest child, is 35. It must have been when Marc maybe was about, I guess, about 15 because he wanted to make sure his children had an education and he had to—I mean, this was his way of—He had to do it, but this was his way of educating the children. And all of them, I happy to say every one of them had an education. | 42:42 |
| Kara Miles | That's wonderful. | 43:26 |
| Mamie Wade | All a college education, except one. He's in the insurance business, but it must have been about—Marcus is 35. Marc must have been about 20, I guess, when he stopped. I'm trying to figure that in my head, so that's about how long ago, 20, 20, Marcus 20, I mean Marcus 35. It must have been when Marc was about 22 I believe maybe, somewhere in that area. But he stopped bottling that stuff, his liquor, I reckon, but I have no way of figuring that out. | 43:31 |
| David Elliot Wade | You take it. You had five or six children. You had to educate them out of working on a job, you couldn't have done it. No way in the world. I know you was breaking the law, but still you want your children to have as much education as anybody else. | 44:29 |
| Mamie Wade | Right. | 45:04 |
| David Elliot Wade | So I wish I could have had a chance when my child come along. I ain't got but one, but I had two or three people to tell me that their children was going to school a long time. Mr. Elliot, Junior and Mitchell—he told me two or three times. He said, "My daddy couldn't send us to school like you sent your boy," he say, "because you didn't have but one." All I had was one, and his family was five or six of them, and it's harder for a man to buy clothes working on the oddest job and feed his self, keep up with the insurance, and keep his children in school. | 45:07 |
| Mamie Wade | Well, excuse me. I'm trying to roughly figure it up. It must have been around '70, 1970, something like that. I think it's [indistinct 00:45:55]. Maybe about '70. That would have been just 23 years from now. So. well, let's say '60, somewhere around there. Let it go at that. But he made sure that they—And when I think about it, we used to say some— | 45:36 |
| Mamie Wade | I don't know where the other one is now. | 0:00 |
| David Elliot Wade | I hope it's worth something to them. | 0:00 |
| Kara Miles | It is. Wonderful. | 0:00 |
| Mamie Wade | I hope it is. I knew you would be [indistinct 00:00:10]. | 0:06 |
| David Elliot Wade | Will we be able to hear the tape any time? | 0:10 |
| Mamie Wade | They told me to put my recorder out so that I could have recorded this myself, but I forgot to ask Janice to do it today. | 0:15 |
| David Elliot Wade | I wish you had. I told you I had some blank tape, but I thought about—I move around so much the blank tapes didn't— [indistinct 00:00:35] blank tape, but I had some blank tapes in my drawer. | 0:22 |
| Mamie Wade | Is there any way we can get a copy of it? Or [indistinct 00:00:51] But we were, I think, about the second around here to have a television. Uh-huh. And we were about the second ones to have an inside, a bathroom. I remember that. But it was all because he was abootlegger. I think. And the other ones who got there first were bootleggers too. Jimmy. Not Jimmy. Willy Freeman Elliot. | 0:50 |
| David Elliot Wade | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 1:26 |
| Mamie Wade | They had one before [indistinct 00:01:32]. | 1:31 |
| David Elliot Wade | Willy Friedman, Jimmy Friedman. | 1:31 |
| Mamie Wade | Mm-hmm. It was Willy who had gotten the bathroom. And there were so many things that he did. He was a good provider, and he saved his money. Some folks said he was tight, and I guess he was. But anyway, he was saving a dollar. But all of the children—One of the things that he wanted was his children to get an education, to see his children grown and to get an education. And he made sure of that, because every one of them did. And he's so proud of that. That's what I can say about him. Just it was wonderful. | 1:32 |
| Mamie Wade | It wasn't always a bed of roses. Now, you can bet it wasn't. But as I told somebody too, as you get older, maybe this is it, you sort of forget. Excuse me. You sort of forget or put in the background things that weren't so pleasant. You know? You just focus on the things that way, and that makes you love to remember. | 2:20 |
| Kara Miles | Right. | 2:45 |
| David Elliot Wade | I tell you what is. This has hurt me in a way if I wish I could've had education enough to put down some of these things that I'd been and asked and different things. Tell you a fact, if I had education, I've often said, and I'll tell my neighbor's boy, right here, if I had education, Mark, I could've written a book, made a book, I don't know how it would've sold. But I, thank God, I could've written a book, different things I know all about and been done through my life. | 2:46 |
| Mamie Wade | I am so happy that you came and you interviewed him, because I've said it so many times, when his wife was in the hospital last year, whenever, we would take him up there, his brother and I, the three of us would go, and this is when I really found out how much the man knows. And my son, Mark, said, "Mother, why don't you get a tape recorder? Why don't you get something and record it? Because when Eliot is gone, a lot of history's going to be gone." | 3:31 |
| Mamie Wade | Well, and younger people, except somebody like Mark. Mark is a wonderful person because he likes to dig into these old things, history and all this kind of stuff. But younger people, some of them, don't like to hear it. They say, "I just get tired of him talking about this. I get—" But it's so valuable. And after a while, nobody's going to know anything. That's really I'm glad you have it on recorder. | 4:08 |
| David Elliot Wade | Just think, how did all these White people get so wealthy, but they had education, things they put down, and the records they kept and other stuff. And somebody had to know something. There wouldn't have been no record. | 4:39 |
| Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 4:54 |
| David Elliot Wade | I know during the time with my daddy. Now, my daddy, I don't know how he got his education, but Papa had just as good handwriting as any Negro man or any White man on this earth. And he knowed. He could tell anybody to—And different things he set out and told us. Things he should've told something to Bob, but he didn't make that much. But he told us. In fact, in his time that he saved 25 cent out of every dollar. | 4:57 |
| David Elliot Wade | And I'll tell you something else, like you have some people say, "I got to go this week and make some money." I never heard my daddy mention that in his life. He'd get in his car and go into town and come back with a box of groceries, all that, all the time. And buy us different stuff. He didn't believe in no foolishness, now. But as far as something to work with, he kept his good word with everybody else. | 5:27 |
| Mamie Wade | Excuse me, let me interject this. When his father died, he left, I think, every one of his children, two bank books. Every one except was it Bernice that didn't get one? | 5:48 |
| David Elliot Wade | Uh-huh, Bernice. | 6:05 |
| Mamie Wade | Every one of them. I don't about Ari. But anyway, how many children he have, 10? | 6:10 |
| David Elliot Wade | Ari got it. | 6:13 |
| Mamie Wade | All right. [indistinct 00:06:14] | 6:13 |
| David Elliot Wade | Ari got his part. | 6:14 |
| Mamie Wade | Now, this is the man who did it on—He was a bootlegger. | 6:15 |
| Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 6:19 |
| Mamie Wade | I think he did make liquor some, but I mean, not a real outright bootlegger. But he did this by just hard work. Those shrimp boats, and his little garden. He had a grocery store. And he just pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, so to speak. And when he died, he was pretty well off. I mean. | 6:20 |
| David Elliot Wade | Huh? | 6:38 |
| Mamie Wade | I said when he died, he was pretty well off. | 6:41 |
| David Elliot Wade | Yeah. Well, I know I didn't—I'll tell the ladies about—We should record it, but don't get [indistinct 00:06:50]. But one day later, we come in the Southport, and my daddy, during that time, didn't want to know. One Black guy in Southport had one shrimp boat, my daddy had two. And Pop was buying anywhere. I got two people [indistinct 00:07:11who can tell you that's living now—later than that. My daddy'd buy anywhere from two to three to 400 gallons of gasoline, so we had two gas— each boat was a gas burner. And he'd buy anywhere from two to, I say, to 400 gallons of gas every week if he worked all the week long. If he worked from Monday to Friday afternoon, he could get. | 6:43 |
| David Elliot Wade | And so one evening we come in from—I'll tell it. During that year, Poppa went out with a new boat, and Momma, what Momma had done, Poppa varnished all the boat up inside, it was new and looking nice, and Momma give Poppa some linoleum to put on the floor of the boat. Well, that was the wrong thing she could've ever done, but she didn't know. See, because I say it's the wrong thing because when the water wash up on the boat if the boat rock, the linoleum hold the water down, the floors would stay wet all the time. But during that time, you know. | 7:38 |
| David Elliot Wade | But nevertheless, we come in there that afternoon and Poppa gassed up, and so this White guy said to Pop, he said, "Jim, would you mind me going down inside and looking at your boat?" Poppa said, "No, sir. Go in. You're perfectly welcome. Go down in there." So he went down and he stayed down inside the boat for maybe, I say, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, looking all around. And everything was brand new. | 8:15 |
| David Elliot Wade | And so when he come out he said, "Jim," he said, "I guess you heard the expression before, you don't have a nigger's rig, you've got a White man's rig." If he didn't say that, I hope I was [indistinct 00:08:56]. I told Pop, I said, "Before I buy another drop of gas from him," I said, "I'll get me some old horse from Southport or walk home." "You don't have a nigger's rig. You've got a White man's rig." Why was a— | 8:43 |
| David Elliot Wade | But during that time Poppa had that new boat built, there was two White guys in Shallote that was having—There was three boats built on the same rail, well, not the same rail, one of them had the old rail, but there was three boats built, and two of them belonged to White people, and one belonged to Pop. During that time, you didn't see no—Most of the Black—[indistinct 00:09:37] but everybody kept different things for—he wasn't the only person, [indistinct 00:09:42] speedboats and all that kind of stuff. But the work boats, Pop and Joe Fraser's the only people you got who had that big boats you could sleep on and stay on. | 9:11 |
| David Elliot Wade | Pop went far as Fernandina one day, he and my brother, and slipped down in Fernandina in that boat. My Lord. | 9:53 |
| Mamie Wade | Carrie, are you hearing some things today? | 10:10 |
| Kara Miles | I sure am. | 10:12 |
| Mamie Wade | Have you been interviewing Black people [indistinct 00:10:19]? | 10:12 |
| Kara Miles | Uh-huh. | 10:12 |
| Mamie Wade | Okay. From this area? | 10:22 |
| Kara Miles | Yeah, well, we've been here since Monday, so we've been talking to people from this area. | 10:24 |
| Mamie Wade | Oh. | 10:27 |
| Kara Miles | Since Monday. | 10:27 |
| Mamie Wade | Okay. | 10:27 |
| David Elliot Wade | But you're not from Wilmington. | 10:32 |
| Kara Miles | No. | 10:33 |
| David Elliot Wade | I could tell from your voice you ain't sound like— | 10:34 |
| Kara Miles | No, I'm from Virginia. | 10:34 |
| David Elliot Wade | Oh. | 10:34 |
| Mamie Wade | Yes, indeed. Have any more questions for us? | 10:34 |
| Kara Miles | No. Do you all have anything else? Anything that I missed that you want to tell me? | 10:46 |
| Mamie Wade | Can you think of anything else, Elliot, that you would— | 10:51 |
| David Elliot Wade | I don't know. I'm like a batchelor, [indistinct 00:11:09]. I tell people, "Come to see me," but I come back here from Maryland the other day, and I had people come to see me that I haven't seen since my wife passed. So I told them, I say, "Well, y'all come one day." And the next day I won't have nobody, so—I told my [indistinct 00:11:25]. I was about to run down, so I told [indistinct 00:11:28]. | 11:11 |
| Mamie Wade | Enjoyed you, Carrie. | 11:26 |
| Kara Miles | Thank you. I've enjoyed you. | 11:33 |
| Mamie Wade | [indistinct 00:11:37] And what school are you going— | 11:36 |
| Kara Miles | I go to Duke. | 11:38 |
| Mamie Wade | You at Duke. | 11:39 |
| Kara Miles | Mm—hmm. | 11:40 |
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