Days Gone By 



Swapping Stories 



By Carta B. Burgess 



The sign in back of the narrow 

 room is a little dusty. But its plastic 

 letters plainly state the menu. 

 Shoeshine, $2. Pig feet, 75 cents. Alka 

 Seltzer, 30 cents. 



If Haywood Graham is around, 

 you might also get an earful. 



From the vantage point of Floyd 

 Pollock's Shoeshine Parlor and lifelong 

 residency in this port city, Floyd and 

 Haywood can give you a personal 

 history of Wilmington. Loudly. And 

 they don't always agree. 



Ask them where television news- 

 man David Brinkley used to live in 

 Wilmington, and you might see their 

 arms pointing in more directions than 

 signs at an intersection. Consensus is 

 not an issue at Pollock's Shoeshine. 



On an early spring day, Pollock 

 and Graham talk about old times over a 

 game of cards. A tiny gas heater takes 

 the chill off the small room and heats a 

 coffee can full of water. 



Pollock was born in Wilmington in 

 1918 and is retired from Almont 

 Shipping Company on the waterfront. 

 He worked in the warehouse there "all 

 my life." His shoeshine parlor at 708 N. 

 4th St. keeps him busy and out of the 

 house, he says. 



Graham was a longshoreman many 

 years on the lower Cape Fear River and 

 loaded and unloaded everything from 

 paper and tobacco to automobiles and 

 fish meal. 



"We had a gang system here in this 

 port," Graham says, explaining how 

 they worked the waterfront. 



Graham, a "header" or foreman, 

 would choose his crew from the group 

 of longshoremen who "badged in" at 

 the union hall each morning. Then he 

 was ready to start to work a shipment. 



"I've got two crane operators, two 

 bulldozer operators, and I got a signal 

 man and about 20 more men in the 

 gang," he says, describing how a gang 

 of workers would empty a ship loaded 



with nitrate of soda — fertilizer in bulk. 



Graham says a crane would lower 

 a bulldozer onto the ship to move the 

 fertilizer so it could be placed in a 

 bucket and raised to the deck. The 

 work could be dangerous, and long- 

 shoremen were sometimes killed. 



"Sometimes it would take two or 

 three days to get to the bottom of a 

 ship," he says. The "hatch" or signal 

 man would be the liason for communi- 

 cation between the crane operator and 

 bulldozer drivers, he says. 



The crew washed down the decks 

 afterward, but tougher environmental 



regulations have banned that practice. 

 "The EPA don't play," Graham says, 

 studying his hand of cards. "Container- 

 ization" has become the name of the 

 game, he says. "They don't want any- 

 thing but clean cargo in this port now." 



A few blocks southwest of 

 Pollock's business — in a spacious 

 building at 201 Chestnut St. — you can 

 get a different historical perspective. 



Almost any weekday morning 

 you'll find Robert Fales on the second 

 floor of the New Hanover County 

 Public Library 7 . Since his retirement from 

 53 years as a Wilmington physician, he 



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