of Old Wilmington 



keeps regular office hours in the local 

 history room. 



If you arrive before Fales does, the 

 librarian can point out exactly where 

 he'll sit. 



He arrives dressed in a suit and 

 sweater vest. Once seated, he talks for 

 hours about the town. 



The native Wilmingtonian has 

 studied the history of this region for 25 

 years. He started out collecting informa- 

 tion about doctors who practiced here 

 during the past century. 



"As the work went along, I found I 

 could not separate it from the town 

 itself," says Fales, who has written two 

 books on Wilmington history. "My 

 father ran a wholesale at 116 South 

 Water Street, and when I was not in 

 school I was down there with him," he 

 says. "The only paved street we had 

 then was cobblestone." 



The cobblestones came from 

 wooden ships that sailed into the 

 harbor, casting overboard the stone 

 ballast used to stabilize the empty 

 vessels. The ships left with a cargo of 

 cotton or turpentine; the townspeople 



salvaged the material to surface their 

 streets. 



"When I was a child, everything 

 was downtown, but scattered all 

 around the neighborhoods. Chinese 

 laundries, we had lots and lots of 

 them," says Fales. 



Back at the shoeshine parlor, a 

 thin, black man in sunglasses leans 

 against the wall, listening. He is 

 exasperated because Floyd and 

 Haywood aren't telling stories as 

 vividly as they usually do. 



He's not as old, but he recalls 4th 

 Street in the 1940s as a center of 

 activity. 



"On a day like today, this place 

 would be just like the mall," says the 

 man, who declines to identify himself. 

 "There were gypsies telling people's 

 fortunes for money and medicine men 

 peddling medicine for corns." 



An electric streetcar served the 

 hustle and bustle in the city from 1893 

 to 1939. 



There was five cents in it for you if 

 you helped the driver change direction 

 when the trolley reached the end of 



the line, Haywood says. He would wait 

 with other children for the chance to 

 pull the cord that would reverse the 

 arm over the car. 



"It didn't matter how long you had 

 been waiting, you just had to get up 

 there first," says Graham. "Then the 

 driver would throw you a nickel." 



In the 20s, a nickel would buy you 

 a trip across the river's toll bridge on 

 foot or bicycle. It cost 35 cents for the 

 Pollock family's old Dodge to pass. 



Times were tough then. Pollock 



O 

 Q 



I 



remembers going down to the river 

 bank with his mother to collect coal 

 that the dredges had kicked up from 

 the bottom. This excess coal that had 

 spilled from barges during loading kept 

 his family warm in winter. 



The room is a haze of cigarette 

 smoke, dust and late afternoon sun. 

 Graham apologizes for leaving, but he 

 has to go pick up his wife. He steps out 

 into the bright light on the 4th Street 

 sidewalk. Come back some other day 

 when he's got more time, he says, and 

 he'll really tell you some stories. » 



13 



