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I remember I had the feeling that I was not quite as "good" as some of people in Denton proper because I was born and lived in a section of the town "across the river" unofficially called West Denton. Denton, located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, is in the center of the County and is situated on a major river of the Eastern Shore, the Choptank. It is about ten miles south of the head of the Choptank.
Only one other small town, Greensboro, about eight miles north of Denton, is touched by river, but the river is too shallow between Denton and Greensboro for use by commercial vessels. George Washington would have had no trouble throwing a silver dollar across the Choptank at Denton. In fact, a favorite pastime of mine as a lad was attempting to skip a flat oyster shell across the river surface to the opposite side. About forty miles south of Denton, where the Choptank merges with the Chesapeake Bay, the river is approximately a mile wide...
At the immediate northwest corner of this concrete bridge crossing the Choptank, my father operated his general merchandise store. In fact, the back end of the store rested on piers built along the river bank and it extended a little past the west end of the bridge. Almost immediately to the west of the bridge the Hillsboro-Denton road and the Easton-Denton road crossed.
There were stores on three of the corners formed by this crossroads: my dad's, Knotts' store, and Pastorfield's store. The other corner along the river bank was vacant and was used for access to barges, small oyster boats, and other vessels. Beyond this corner lot, along the river to the south, and also beyond my dad's store along the river to the north, there were fertilizer warehouses, oil storage yards, several wharves and appropriate places to tie up small boats and to fish.
The two roads mentioned formed the major streets in West Denton, although there were several smaller streets and alleys leading off from these two major ones. There were a number of houses, perhaps fifty or sixty, along these streets and alleys and several other commercial establishments such as canneries, a garage, and a shirt factory.
During the '20s, the population of West Denton was approxiamtely 200 and of Denton proper about 1,400. It was in this setting that I spent the first 17 years of my life, from 1914 to 1931.
At the beginning of this chapter I referred to being born "across the river. Some of the youngsters, and perhaps some of the adults in Denton proper, considered this the same as being born "across the tracks." Maybe this was due to the fact that in West Denton all of the people, black or white, lived near each other and not in any particular section as they did in Denton itself. It was an early example of "there goes the neighborhood." Also, the causeway, referred to earlier, was low and sometimes covered with the Choptank waters. The town of Denton rested upon an incline, which in addition to the eliteness of its environment caused us to refer to it as "uptown." I know that sometimes I wished that I lived "uptown."
It is difficult to say exactly why I felt this way, but I suppose it centered around the social aspects of the community. The fact that Denton was the county seat meant that the courthouse was there, providing the place of business for many lawyers who lived "uptown." Other professional people, such as judges, congressmen, school officials, ministers, teachers, and doctors lived in Denton. Even the owners of the two stores across from my dad's and the canneries in West Denton all lived "uptown."
Thus, most of those who lived in West Denton could be classified as day laborers with a very few in the blue collar group. Inasmuch as my father was an independent businessman, I'm sure that the feeling in our family was that he could hold his own with the professional people. He was active in his political party, being one of the chief judges at all elections, and he was urged several times by lawyer and political friends to run for public office, an honor that he rejected.
I guess I wondered many times why we didn't live "uptown" with the other profesional people. It wasn't that I considered myself above the other kids in West Denton -- I fished and played with the darkest and the poorest of them. All of the adults were my friends, no matter what their race or social status. Although I can't remember any specific incidents, I know that there were times when the "uptown" kids had some unkind remarks about those who lived "across the river."
Since most of my immediate neighbors lived on a day-to-day or season-to-season basis, I am quite certain that living in this environment inspired me to want to become prepared to live a better or more meaningful life. To work day to day when there were unskilled jobs to do and then live at other times on credit or a few dollars saved from earnings when work was available did not seem to be the way I wanted to live. I resolved that someday I would live "uptown" and not "across the river."
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