A Brief Tour of Pungo Creek

Pungo Creek was the most boring place in the world. I knew I didn’t belong there. It would never be my home. I had just washed in with the tide. On Pungo Creek I was encircled by cornfields, attacked by chickens, enveloped by kin and enclosed by loneliness.

I missed my Aunt Pearl. I missed Broad Creek Village. In Pungo Creek there was nothing to do and no one to do it with. There was nowhere to go. If I turned right at the mailbox in about a half a mile I would pass Scott Toppins place. A half mile further up, I would get to Ms. Jordan’s, the last house until I got to the end of the road. Mrs. Jordan was well known for her flowers. She didn’t grow anything you could put in your stomach, but she grew the most beautiful tulips and dahlias you ever saw.

If I turned right at the end of the road I’d get to the bridge that went over Pungo Creek. That was the bridge we watched the fireworks from on the 4th of July. Aunt Sarah told me that once her husband Harvey was in charge of the fireworks. “He got drunk and blew a hole in the bottom of the barge they were using to light off the fireworks. The barge sank taking the fireworks with it. Your Uncle swam to shore. Everybody was real disappointed.”

There was a colored town was on the other side of the bridge and beyond that was Sidney Cross Roads. If I turned right at Sidney Cross Roads I’d get to Sidney Free Will Baptist Church and the little cemetery where Daddy was buried next to Grandmama and Granddaddy and Uncle Harvey. The cemetery was almost full with Voliva’s and Stokesberries resting beside the Foremans, Burgesses and Hardees.

The closest town was Belhaven. Belhaven means beautiful harbor. I guess that might have been true at one time.

There was a one main street. On one end was the gas station. Cane poles leaned against the window next to the squeaky screen door. Inside, the smell of grape soda and Bugler tobacco would just about knock you down. Further down the street was the old John A. Wilkinson School. It looked just like it did when Mama went there. Aunt Sarah told me they don’t tear down buildings in the south. They just let them crumble of their own accord. Mama stopped at the eighth grade. I guess she decided the six-mile trip from Pungo Creek to Belhaven wasn’t worth the effort.

My brownie scout troop met on the second floor of the old school building. I learned to dance the polka and schottische on a peeling linoleum floor.

The school cafeteria was on the main floor. In the morning they sold milk and cookies for a nickel – four cents without the cookie. The lunch was twenty cents. Mama told me I could live without milk and cookies or a hot lunch and she packed me a lunch of potted meat sandwiches. “Money don’t grow on trees, young lady.”

Down the street on the left were the jail and the firehouse. That’s were the welfare department handed out the food to families like ours that couldn’t afford to shop at the Colonial Store. Each month Mama picked up cans of processed meat and peanut butter, shortening and flour. She combined the welfare food with the eggs we collected from the chickens and the fish I caught after school and we made out pretty good.

Just past the firehouse on the right hand side of Main Street was the bakery. There were two entrances. White people went in the door on the left and colored people went in the door on the right. The counter ran down the middle. The donuts and cinnamon buns were the same on both sides of the counter. I went in the wrong door once and all hell broke loose.

Across the street from the bakery was the Ambrose Barber Shop. Uncle Benjamin owned the barbershop. He cut hair there everyday except Sunday. His chair was the one in the back of the shop. You had to walk past all the other chair’s to get to his. They were empty because he was the only barber in the shop. He was the only white barber in the whole town of Belhaven.

Uncle Benjamin sometimes brought by a sack of groceries to supplement the canned meat, flour, peanut butter and sugar we got from welfare. Even I could see his assortment was badly chosen. His sack usually contained items like little powdered wedding cookies, sardines and pickles. I could see the shame in Mama’s face and I would try not to eat any of Uncle Benjamin’s food.

I missed the friends I had left behind. There were only two other girls on the road where we lived - Ivy and our cousin Kate. Ivy was practically a baby and I’d decided right away that Kate was spoiled rotten and I wanted nothing to do with her. Uncle Benjamin’s hostility towards my Daddy made me bitter and the abundance in her life made the barrenness of mine seem even more intolerable. I preferred to play alone.